I'll probably have more to say about this morning's Microsoft bus protests later—at the moment, I've got a theater section to take care of—but a couple of initial thoughts:

First: While this morning's protest (which Christopher mentioned in the Morning News) seems to have been fueled and documented by some of your friendly municipal anarchists, it is not necessarily an anarchist-only stunt. The San Francisco Google bus protests, which this morning's event seemed to be modeled on, are also driven by union folks.

Second: Naturally, some of the early reactions to this will be puzzlement. "What exactly are they protesting," a Slogger asked in the Morning News comments thread, "the private transit that is replacing car trips?" Clearly, this protest isn't a literal-minded complaint about carpooling. Think of as a conversation-starter about our city, big business, and the influences they have on each other.

Will it be a successful conversation? That's a different question, but surely it's one worth having. The old debate about whether Occupy achieved anything is still going—even Occupy co-founder Micah White called it a "constructive failure" when he spoke at the Smoke Farm Symposium last summer—but it undeniably changed the national discussion about income inequality. It's hard to imagine the $15/hour minimum-wage campaign gaining much stability, for example, without the the foundation poured by Occupy. And it certainly made Mitt Romney look even more odious than he would've if he'd been the Republican contender in 2008.

We'll see where these small, token disruptions go—and whether the conversations they start will be worth the outrage they've already begun to provoke.