Most of the latest Chicago march stories end with the mass arrests at Chicago and Michigan.

When the march doubled-back on the Inner Drive, we were lucky enough to go west on Delaware after the horses had run ahead to cut off the next street.

Stopping at the borders on michigan to pee, we came out and headed south across the water tower park, watching what must have been at least 100 police march in formation southward down the middle of the street. Arriving at the northwest corner of chicago and michigan, only to find vast numbers of cops coralling folks to the sidewalks on the northwest and southwest corners of the street, protesters arguing politics with the shoppers in from the suburbs, and about 15 pro-war protesters (which, of course, fox news simply wouldn't stop filming). From what I could glimpse, there was a solid wall of riot cops, multiple rows thick preventing our excursion eastward to rejoin the group. Likewise, our attempts to overflow and join our neighbors on the south side of chicago avenue proved successful for only a few moments, until cops started actively pushing people back. There were still around at least 800 people to the west of the bulk of the action at sort of a standoff for an hour or two.

Numbers started to dwindle, but soon after our comrades were bussed out (and they did receive a hearty cheer), we were marching again, maybe 400 of us going west on Chicago. We turned south on clark, and overtook the street. A couple blocks down clark, I turned around and noticed we were being persued by a wall of street cleaners! A few folks sat-down in front of the cleaners, which, while admirable, would've thinned our numbers too much to be effective for the folks that were still eager to march.

We all started moving again, meandering our way back southward and eastward. The nice thing about a crowd that size is that it's easier to direct, but still large enough to take over the whole street. The folks at ESPNzone gave us some looks I will treasure for a long time to come...

At Grand, I think, we finally headed east and rejoined Michigan, taking over all lanes on both sides. Marching over the Michigan St. bridge, the street cleaners numbers were increasing (I counted 5). On the South side of the bridge, more sit-downs occured in the intersection of Michigan and Wacker. A nice big tour bus was headed east on wacker and summarily stopped half-way through the intersection, creating some serious gridlock with the wall of sweepers. More dithering occured - are we sitting? are we marching? We all headed south on Michigan again, then when a police car appeared 2 blocks ahead, we cut west on Lake. Wacky hijinx ensued, involving an irate fellow in a BMW, the 5 street sweepers, and negotiating the narrow spaces under the L track.

We were then coralled southward by police onto State, but at this point, alas, I grabbed the red line home.

Peace.