Peace!

In response to a comment on the blog on anarchists, you are right. Thousands of the protesters were peaceful. I said that many had violent intentions, not most. A friend and partner of Declare Yourself was unlawfully detained during the arrests and she most certainly was not a part of any anarchical activity.

A few always ruin it for the many. The handful of anarchists for every hundred peaceful protestors completely distracted onlookers and the media from the message of the protests. The fault of many of these peaceful protesters was that they joined the violent protesters in the streets. While most protestors and organizations were peaceful, many of them willingly marched alongside the anarchists and put themselves in danger of being associated.

In a perfect world we would be able to instantly determine which side the hundreds of people were on. Since the SWAT, Sheriff's and police departments did not possess that magical talant they were left to control what they could not determine in a manner that would have the least negative impact. There were hundreds of arrests, but no protestors were hurt, and the city and the RNC took out a 10 million dollar insurance policy to cover all the lawsuits from the unlawful arrests...so all in all it could have been much worse.