BOSTON -- The Revolution officially began at noon yesterday with a Battle of the Bands between the Lyndon LaRouche Youth Movement and a cadre of anarchists dressed as pirates.

The LaRouchies, a weird amalgam of far-right conspiracy theorists, have taken to singing black spirituals and Bach cantatas all over town. They do this in four-part harmony and do it quite well.

The anarchists, who had gathered in Copley Square to prepare to march on the FleetCenter convention site, took offense at the LaRouchies crashing in. They crowded against the intruders, banged on drums, and chanted, "Are you hungry? Eat the rich!"

This went on for about 10 minutes, at which point one of the pirates engaged in a mock duel with a masked guy carrying a toilet plunger. For the record, the pirate won.

Boston has been anticipating trouble for a week now. Under an umbrella group called The Bl(A)ck Tea Society -- the "a" in black is parenthesized to stress anarchism -- an assortment of left groups sent a few hundred marchers to send the message that the only difference they can see between George W. Bush and John F. Kerry is about four inches in height.

Thursday was the day for "decentralizedw actions," which meant some groups planned to break the law, but wouldn't tell the organizers. One thing these guys learned from the Reagan administration is the importance of plausible deniability.

The first action started around 10 a.m. when a dozen young men on bicycles, led by the chief pirate, whose attitude toward reporters would have done Teresa Heinz Kerry proud, lazily circled the intersection of Boylston and Clarendon.

"Hold the intersection!" the chief pirate yelled. Traffic was blocked for a few minutes, until a woman in an SUV edged her way through and shouted her displeasure.

"We're protesting the DNC!" one bicyclist yelled.

"You need a sign or something, you idiot," she replied. In Boston, dissent is respected, but people demand clear labeling.

Suddenly, a phalanx (and I've been waiting to use that word all week) of police arrived. On bicycle. There was a bicycle chase. The anarchists sped down Clarendon, followed by 30 uniformed Boston policemen pedaling hard. The group made a long circuit around the Copley Square area, then returned.

There were no arrests, motorists were annoyed and, possibly to everyone's amazement, the United States was still a capitalist nation. The Democratic National Committee is invulnerable to bicycle attack, but the attackers didn't seem to be trying terribly hard.

"I think a lot of people are saving it for the RNC. This is just for fun," said Aaron Lipman, a kid from Vermont who came south for a week of protests.

	John Beale, Post-Gazette The final day of the Democratic National Convention brought the first confrontation between police and protesters as several hundred demonstrators converged in an area on Canal Street -- near the FleetCenter but outside of the fenced-in "free speech zone." Click photo for larger image.

Sadly, not everyone saved himself for a committed hate relationship with the Republicans. After nearly two hours of drum banging across downtown Boston, the marchers, possibly 300 of them, coursed their way down Canal Street, a short stretch of restaurants and shops, where it bangs straight up against the eight-foot fence around the FleetCenter.

They chanted. They beat on drums. They put on masks. Diners at sidewalk cafes flashed the peace sign, smiled, and seemed to think it was part of the convention entertainment. One family, Tom and Maureen Daniels, of Hollywood, Fla., brought their 8-year-old twins, Sean and Meghan, to the scene, hoisted them on their shoulders and watched as the protesters ignited a giant effigy that had Kerry's face on one side, Bush's on the other.

"It's neat to see somebody who cares enough about something to be this fanatical about it," Tom Daniels said.

With any luck, the Daniels family had left by the time police grabbed a protester they thought was carrying a Molotov cocktail, igniting a street fight that lasted half an hour.

"Let him go! Let him go!" the crowd chanted, surrounding about 20 uniformed police officers. Somebody took the hat off Police Superintendent Robert Dunford, then took a punch at him.

	John Beale, Post-Gazette Protesters refuse to move as they sit near a FleetCenter entrance yesterday. Click photo for larger image.

One protester, Jared Paul, of Providence, R.I., said the crowd encircled the police "in an act of unison" with the arrested. Riot police formed a line at the end of the street, taking back about half of Canal and taking away two people, one for holding a bottle of "accelerant" and another for assault. Four other demonstrators had their bolt cutters taken when they tried to cut down the fence around the designated protest area, which up to that point had been used by almost nobody.

The standoff lasted roughly an hour. A man with a beard worthy of Methuselah read to the helmeted policemen from a military manual on how to properly deal with crowds. He gave his name as Vermin Supreme and, understandably, I asked for some ID. He pulled out a Massachusetts driver's license and it reads, "Vermin Love Supreme." Under questioning, he admitted to a name change. His parents are blameless in this matter.

Finally, Elly Guillette, organizer of the Bl(A)ck Tea Society, called for the crowd to roll back to Boston Common. Whatever anger they felt was exhausted. They began to walk.

Vermin, and after yesterday I do feel I'm on a first-name basis with him, bid farewell to Boston's finest.

"OK, riot police, it's been real," he said. "It hasn't been real nice, but it's been real."