I went to Chicago for May Day and all I got was poked with a lousy stick

That's not true. (Well, it's true I got poked with a stick. More on that later.) I also got a train ride and civic pride and some free hate literature.

First, the train. As it turns out, University Park is not "avoid it at night" in that it's a sketchy area of urban grit and decay; University Park is "avoid it at night" in that it's a parking lot in the middle of BFE, which a train occasionally stops by. And during non-rush hour, the train only comes once an hour. Since I got there about 10 minutes after the train, I had plenty of time to check out the situation. Trust me. It's a parking lot in the middle of nowhere. On the plus side, it's cheap and it's double-decker and it gets you into the city easy peasy, so it's nice to know it's there.

I got into Millennium Park towards the end of the immigration rally. Lots and lots of people were leaving, or were waiting around for busses to take them back to Joliet and Cicero and Kanakakee. There were lots of Mexican flags, lots of American flags. And lots of police. There were about 6 helicopters circling Millennium and Grant parks, and all the streets in the area were closed off. The cops wouldn't let anybody walk on the closed-off streets, though; one or two people would step off the sidewalk to cross the completely blocked-off streets, and a cop would hasten to point them back onto the sidewalk. I was trying to get back up to Randolph, but I couldn't cross the street. So I kind of got caught in the middle of a very big group of Latino ralliers leaving the park, with drums and hats and flags and the whole bit. Viva Mexico!

The best thing I saw all day: A little boy, about four years old, standing in the middle of a completely empty Michigan Avenue, happily waving like a madman at the helicopters circling over head.

The most disheartening thing I saw all day: The couple walking down the street against the flow of the crowd carrying a confederate flag. The demonstrators didn't pay them any attention, really, but then neither did the cops force them to step off the empty street onto the sidewalk.

About 5:00 I headed over to Haymarket for the labor rally, and gee whiz. Hello, five-oh! I tell you what: there were a lot of cops at Grant Park. But there were an astonishingly disproportionate number of cops at the labor rally. I mean, I get why--if people gathered to celebrate the day somebody threw a bomb at a group of like, baton twirlers, I'd be kind of touchy--but damn. Many of them were wearing full-on flak vests. They stood in big groups at the back and the front of the crowd. Then again, police usually have a great union, so maybe they were there FOR the rally. I shouldn't presume.

There were reps from the carpenters, hotel workers, hospital workers, IBEW. A few Teamsters, a few bike messengers. There was a group of teenagers looking for the rebellion, all "What? Oh, labor, yeah, sure. Totally. FIGHT THE MAN!" They were wearing bandannas over their faces, you know, for the inevitable gassing. One of the kids came over to the rest of the pack and said "dude, I heard one of the cops say to his cop buddy that they were going to wait until the rally started to break up, and they'd just move in and arrest the troublemakers. We've got to figure out how we're going to get out of here, man." And they proceeded to...walk away. Wily! I sure hope they made it back to Winnetka before mom got home!

The speakers were good, the memorial sculpture is good, the band that played "Solidarity Forever" was good. It was brief. When the band struck up, the cops got in their po-po van and drove away, with nary an arrest. Oh--but then tragedy struck. A woman with flag sticking out her shoulder bag moved in to hug another woman, and in the process, jabbed me in the back with the stick on the flag. (I know! The outrage!) In spectacularly graceless fashion, I skittered around to see what was sticking me, and twisted my ankle. See, it's like the Haymarket Martyrs! Except instead of being executed in a show of sham justice, I got poked with an American flag! Man. I know how it feels to suffer for the cause.

I headed back towards the lake, all gimpy and slow in comparison to the sprightly office workers heading home. I missed the train again, and broke down on my "no buying" resolution to buy a very American beer from a very, very American style sports bar. (As it turns out, not much concern about the boycott in the chain bars on Michigan Avenue. This is not at all a crowd of people who stopped by on their way out of the immigration rally.) I sat there with my ankle up watching the Red Sox–Yankees on one TV and the White Sox–somebody on another TV, listening to these guys debating the justness of calling Johnny Damon "traitor," and whether or not Alex Rodriguez is earning his keep, how Jorge Posada ranks as a catcher, whether Ozzie Guillen can do it again. And I thought, this is how they could get the confederate flag, big truck crowd to see immigrant workers. Can you imagine the Day without Immigrant Labor if the pro sports teams had signed on? It'd be, like, Randy Johnson and Chipper Jones and Greg Maddux in a stadium full of uncooked hot dogs and dirty bathrooms. Dirtier bathrooms. Wouldn't that be sweet?