the first thing i wantyou to know is that, at least in rio, yesterdays protests started outbeautifully. in the morning, about2000 of us met up at candelaria church before taking over rio branco, the maindowntown commercial drag, and marching to lapa, a little more than a mileaway. (foreign news reports iveseen said there were about 500 protestors, which means gringo journalists arerelying on official police numbers, otherwise known as total bullshit). a few hours later, there were another800-ish of us in copacabana, walking the length of the beach, next to the giantscreen showing the opening game and the theoretically-open-to-the-public-but-actually-mostly-closed-and-very-heavily-guardedfifa fan fest.poor batman, a local protest icon, is crucified on one of the missing beams that "disappeared" during rio's major construction projects last year. image by carnavandalirizacaoit was sunny and thechants were loud. people danced,and at each of the parades, there was music from a couple of differentpercussion groups. maybe its justmy leftist romanticism talking, but the marches was noisy and vibrant andcolorful, and it seemed like people who actually give a shit were comingtogether, not just assembling; it felt like, however briefly, a kind ofcommunity was being built. therewere communists, anarchists, hipsters, homeless people, high school students,and striking teachers coming together. and we werent together only out of shared frustration at theincreasingly impossible cost of living in rio, or outrage at violent cops onthe streets and in the favelas, or despair at a city that kowtows to megaeventsand business interests while shooing away its most vulnerable residents orusing them as collateral. we were out in the street because we share acommitment to do something about it. i know this all soundsidealistic and naive, and im definitely guilty as charged. since last june, experience hasreminded everyone in rio that its much easier to bring people together for aprotest march than it is to figure out how to take that energy forward. its easy for a diverse coalition tofracture along ideological lines. on that note, the second thing i want you toknow about yesterdays protests is that its easy for the hundreds of riot copswho followed us at both marches to fracture this diverse coalition physicallyusing tear gas, pepper spray, and nightsticks. at the first march, it happened almost as soon as wed madeit to the central plaza in lapa. at the second, it took longer: there were tens of thousands of loyal soccer fans packed along thebeach, and it would have made for pretty bad press to tear gas them along withthe black bloc kids. both times, iwas too far away to see exactly what happened and how it started, but pastprotest experience and yesterdays video footage makes it pretty clear who got violent and how (spoiler: it was pretty much entirely thecops. also, if you don't understand portuguese, the commentators are pretty transparently reactionary). things got especially nastyin sao paulo, where a journalist for cnn broke her arm after apparently being hit with a stun grenade. protestors dont have those.unfortunately, taking a cold, hard, cynical look at the situation, the cnnproducers broken arm might wind uphelping local protest movements if it generates