A die-in staged midway through he protest resulted in three arrests. According to legal observers for the National Lawyers Guild, these included CCNY student Tanya Thurmond, writer-activist Jason Flores-Williams, and one other protester whom the NLG observers had not identified at the time of arrest. The three were bound with plastic handcuffs and carried by several officers to a police van.

One performance group at the protest, Billionaires for Bush, staged a "counter-demonstration," chastising the "dirty liberals" and praising the virtues of Bush's tax cuts for the rich. Two Billionaires chanted "Four more wars!" "Blood for oil!" and "Hands off Halliburton" and enjoined passersby to watch Fox News and go shopping. One of the Billionaires summed up the group's message best: "Never before have so many worked to enrich so few."

One Billionaire denounced Kerry as a "class traitor" for his lenient policies toward the poor and betraying the legacy of the Heinz fortune to which he is the heir. Complaining that "we paid good money for Bush" and that "we created an artificial culture war to get out the vote and get Bush into office," he accused Kerry of opposing what this support was directed toward.

Asked what billionaires could expect of a second Bush administration's military policy, another Billionaire replied simply, "More money." He added, "If you think these past four years have been great - and they have been great for me - let me tell you, when he's reelected and he doesn't have to worry about another reelection, oh boy, then the good times are really gonna roll."

Noting the prevalence of liberal protesters in the pen, one Billionaire said that they represented anarchy and bad fashion. He recommended that the police "take them out and shoot them," noting a clause in the Patriot Act that would allow them to "haul all these liberals off to jail."

Another performance ativism group at the protest, wearing American Revolution-era garb including tricorn hats, got into a lively faux debate with the Billionaires.

A third performance group, World War III Arts in Action, dramatized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with cardboard cutouts representing Israeli bulldozers and helicopters, Palestinian houses and civilians, and a blindfolded Justice figure. One of the performance activists played the part of conscience, questioning dangerous military policies, and was charged by Justice with sympathy and "not supporting the troops." The performance ended with a group chanting of "Justice cannot be blind."

In addition to the performance groups, there were several individual activists with signs and slogans. One of them, RJ, came to the protest the war and the RNC. He predicts that the RNC will "cause businesses to suffer" and that "it won't do anything like help this town." He also says that the process of making New York City into a more conservative place will expose the city to future terrorist attacks.

RJ also criticizes police and military action against protesters, saying that "the National Guard troops [who will be coming to the city during the RNC] have no idea that they're just as much victims as we are."

Another individual demonstrator, John Penley, is a veteran and also came to protest both the war and the RNC. He says, "I oppose this war. I think it's a terrible waste of American kids and resoures. We should bring the troops home now, and when the Republicans come to New York, we're going to show them that we don't want them here."

Penley links the war and the RNC, saying that "they're both the same thing: just the rich telling the poor to go off and fight and die for their wealth. It's happened over and over again in this country, and it's happening now, and we can stop it like we did during the Vietnam War," in which he fought.

Penley is also critical of police action at the protest. Of the heavy police presence and elevated use of metal "protest pens," he says, "I think we now live in a pretty near polie state, and this is happening everywhere, but this is nowhere near the type of repression we're going to see during the Republican Convention." He also speaks strongly against the practice of distributing press cards through the police, relating his experiences of being denied press cards and having them taken away by police as a photojournalist. Penley says, "[The police] control the press by controlling the press cards," adding that the problem is elevated for independent journalists.

Penley is also organizing one of the first protests of the Republican National Convention, which will take place on 79th and 5th Ave on Augst 22nd outside of Mayor Bloomberg's mansion. Calling it the "Yippie Tea Party," he says the event will include cakes, pies, and "donuts for the police" and will last for 24 hours.

Police presence at the protest was particularly strong for the size of the group involved. Several police could be found at every corner for three or for blocks around the site of the protest, and the sidewalk with the penned-off protest area had more than twenty policeman at some points, in addition to the dozen or so across the street and others in police vehicles parked nearby. As the protest group reached a peak of about thirty, this adds up to a ratio of nearly two policemen for every protester.

Additionally, the police used metal "protest pens" extensively through the extended Rockefeller Center area, shipping in and assembling the metal barriers for the greater part of the morning. By the time they finished, they had covered all of 6th Avenue bordering Rockefeller Center, much of the rest of Rockefeller Center, and several other bordering streets with the metal barricades. Some sidewalks received the double-barrier treatment, bordered on both sides by NYC metal barriers.

Protest pens had been used at previous events, particularly large marches and rallies. The police use them ostensibly to prevent violent and disorderly protesters from breaking out of the march and causing trouble outside the parade route, and they often line entire parade routes with the metal barricades, creating "holding pens" in side streets in case of police-demonstrator clashes. However, given the size of this morning's demonstration, it was strange that the NYPD covered suh a large area with the pens. It is perhaps worth noting that most of the buildings whose sidewalks were barricaded by the protest pens were owned by companies such as broadcasters CNN and NBC and financial firm UBS.

The protest effectively ended when police near the protest site collapsed the wooden barricades surrounding the protest area at 8:45 and told the protesters to leave. Most of the protesters left immediately, and the Revolutionary War performance group stayed for a few minutes, but by 9:00 all protesters had left the scene.