Anton,
It's a crock only if you guage your effectiveness by your confrontation of the cops. The Clark street people weren't there to confront the cops. Sure, there was more confrontation on Dearborn, but that was the permitted march at that point. The Clark Street people were there to march. And they marched where they wanted to, and not where the cops told them to.

You should have seen the Deputy Chief freak out when the march hit Clark. He was sitting in a car on Clark, supervising the Dearborn negotiations by car radio. He jumped out of his car, red in the face, and started squawking orders for reinforcements into a Bike cops' radio. He said that it had just been agreed that the march would be on Dearborn, and was visibly upset when the crowd hit Clark.

But there wasn't much he could do. He had lost control of the Clark march. He had most of his troops on Dearborn, and only a skeleton crew on Clark.

It was odd to see the more militant people on Clark try to break out for Dearborn. I suppose they didn't realize that they were trying to leave the un-permitted march for the permitted march.

Yes, there is a strange irony here. The people who wanted confrontation were in fact taking the permitted march. And the people who didn't want confrontation actually ended up, spontaneously, taking the un-permitted route.

The band, and the bikers, have experience with un-permitted street demonstrations. They saw an opportunity, and they took it. No, they did not confront the cops, for the most part. But that's not what they came for. They came to protest the war, and to demonstrate their right to go where they wanted to.

And I thought that was the whole purpose of Saturday's march.

Clark may have been green when the day started. But it was red when the people hit Clark.