I was part of the anti-invasion march in Manhattan on the 15th, and was one of tens of thousands who never got to First Avenue because streets east of Second (and in some cases Third) Avenue were barricaded by the time we arrived on the East Side.

I saw obnoxious behavior by some of the Bullies in Blue, but heard many more stories of police horses being backed into crowds, elderly demonstrators being thrown to the street, arbitrary arrests, etc. The NY Times reports today on videotape of excessive force by the police, which includes a cop "using pepper spray on penned-in people" asking them "That makes you feel good, doesn't it?"

This Counterpunch article details more of the heavyhanded steps the City took to limit our rights to peaceably assemble.

This is an increasingly ex-free country, and I am pissed. So are these folks posting on IndyMedia about what they witnessed...

We had the opposite problem with with a bunch of dumbass protesters who smashed windows beat up policement set things on fire and generally made all the normal marchers look bad by association. The SF police did a great job in showing maximum restraint, perhaps a little too much so, and just let them act a fool till they got tired. destroying all sorts of stuff in the process.