Despite the dramatic images on video and in photographs, and despite the highly emotional and polarized commentary that's already happening and will continue to happen, the anarchist component of May Day 2013 was a colorful, but fairly simple affair—as was the immigrant-reform march (a photo of which is above).

It showed that Seattle has a robust dissident community. It failed to smash any big, symbolic targets this year (say, Chase Bank), which might show a lack of planning, vision, and discipline. I had privately hoped that radical activists would cash in on all the municipal anxiety from last year's smashy-smashy May Day to conjure up a phalanx of riot cops and then do some Black Bloc community service—get doctors from the Carolyn Downs clinic to offer free healthcare in Westlake Plaza, with the image of tanks (or the SPD equivalent) behind them. Or set up a soup kitchen. Or gather in a poorer neighborhood to appropriate a vacant lot and do all the heavy-lifting work for a new community garden. That would have been creative and visually powerful and upended everyone's expectations of what anarchism and radicalism in Seattle means. But nobody asked me, so I can't complain.

Instead, they had an old-fashioned street melee with police when the protesters pushed back against some arrests. (We don't know what those arrests were for yet—I saw several, and they seemed to come out of nowhere.) A tense standoff happened, with police firing incendiary devices directly into the crowd. I watched this and thought it looked extraordinarily reckless on the SPD's part. The photo below shows one about to go off a few feet away from someone's feet, but I saw those things explode right against people's shoulders and torsos:

I found this guy limping away from a protest—he got nicked in the knee by one that he said the police deliberately fired at his legs:

In response, activists shot off fireworks (which, you must admit, is a decidedly more peaceful and pleasant thing to do than shoot at people's bodies):

If there was a master plan for the march, it was derailed by the downtown standoff over the arrests.

A few other thoughts: For the journalists and others who say May Day in Seattle is upstaging the immigrant-reform march: (1) If you want to write about it, then do so! Nobody's stopping you. (2) You never seemed to write about it much before, so are you really aggrieved or just fishing for another excuse to discredit the radicals? (3) May Day is (historically) a labor/anarchist event anyway. So it's not like anarchists have "appropriated" May Day from immigration reformists. (4) Most importantly, the immigration-reform people and the anarchists agree that the way we manage our borders is inhumane and foolish.

One favorite moment: Activists kept shooting silly string at members of the media, including me. A particularly clean-cut and nice-seeming TV anchor kept asking earnestly, while being hit with silly string: Why are you doing this? What is the point? Aside from one lady, who tried to give a five-second explanation of anarchism (always a losing proposition), nobody would answer him. He seemed exasperated.

Soon afterwards, he went from exasperated (at the hands of activists) to actually pained (at the hands of police). I saw him and his camera crew getting aggressively shoved by SPD cops with batons. While his expression was mildly aggrieved by the silly string, it crumpled in surprise over being rib-punched by baton-wielding police officers. And I thought, but didn't have the chance to tell him, there is your answer to your previous question. If you, as a fellow member of the media, commit an equal offense—asking irritating questions—demonstrators will hit you with silly string and cops will knock you with wooden batons.

So, in the end, May Day was not that big a deal: Big immigration-reform march, smaller radical march, then (after the police had split the radicals into small factions) some running around and window-smashing and garbage-dumping and further arrests. Pretty simple.

However! I deeply lament the fool who smashed a window at Bill's Off Broadway—smashing a favorite neighborhood bar is definitely not the way to win hearts and minds of your fellow city-dwellers. Though I (and others) spotted some police "Black Bloc" plants in the crowd, both by their dress and their demeanor. (I'm a theater critic, and I know bad acting.) Like this guy (Detective Hall?):

I'd like to think some goofball agent provocateur broke that window, because it was such a ridiculously counterproductive thing to do, but there's no way to know—protests, especially radical ones, attract all kinds of people who don't always make the best ambassadors for the root cause.

Either way, marches that turn on small, beloved neighborhood bars are shooting themselves in their two left feet.