Though thousands marched through the streets of St. Paul today without incident, it was difficult to ignore a roving group of protesters who were sometimes marching and sometimes dashing their way through a parade route they reinvented by the minute.

The police gave chase from the beginning, even as less ambitious protesters gathered on the State Capitol lawn for the sanctioned march. Cell phones were abuzz with word of law enforcement officers in riot gear gathering at multiple intersections. There were early reports of pepper spray.

I left the State Capitol before the marchers did, alternately shadowing riot police and the roving protesters. For hours the game was the same: mostly black-clad protesters would round a corner chanting and dancing. The black-clad riot police would form columns. There would be a tense standoff and then, as quickly as they came, the protesters would disappear around another corner. It went on and on like this and eventually I gave up and went for water.

Then I received a Twitter message on my phone from user RNCo8announce:

We are now at the reconvergence time 3:15. There is confirmed activity of a group marching north on wabasha from 4th

Rushing to the spot, I passed this:

It was a Minneapolis Police Department squad being hauled away on a flatbed. The game had changed. Throughout downtown a handful of the day’s protesters had become much more aggressive, even violent. By the time I found the “reconvergence” it was at Kellogg Boulevard, where its participants were dragging newspaper boxes and trash receptacles into the street to block traffic — delegates or otherwise. Riot police looked on, but made no move. A few of the inconvenienced drivers left their cars to clear the roadblock themselves.

The mood among the protesters was still somewhat festive at this point. The Dead Kennedys were blaring from a stereo strapped to a wagon.

The protesters moved up the road until they were in front of the Crowne Plaza Hotel — RNC home to Texas delegates. Smooth-jazz-infused pop music was playing from speakers mounted in the hotel’s awning.

Nearby, a wall of National Guard troops with shields and batons stood two deep behind a row of police in riot gear. An officer with a bullhorn announced “This is your final chance!” — the crowd control chemicals were next. The police began marching forward, their rhythmic chanting (“Move! Move! Move!”) hushed by their gas masks.

They stopped to give the protesters one more chance to move along, which the energetic mob had done reliably all day. The riot police made a hole and horse-mounted police — horses and police wearing gas masks — approached the protesters and brushed up against them:

The protesters stayed where they were. The riot police advanced again and stopped. A woman confronted them, yelling: “I hope your parents see you on YouTube!”

An Associated Press photographer stood ready — very ready:

As most people — protesters, reporters and curious onlookers — watched from the sidewalks and green space along Kellogg, one protester pleaded from the street in a hoarse voice: “Get off the sidewalks and into the streets! These are our streets!”

In the distance, a lone drummer beat a snare drum at a heartbeat’s pace.

With voices made nasal and hushed behind their gas masks, the riot police yelled:

“Hold up!”

“Watch your line!”

“You guys tighten this up in here! Hold the line!”

Soon there was another advance, this one a bit faster. An officer took the red pepper spray canister from its thigh-holster and sprayed — sweeping from the protester in front of him to the reporters, myself included, at his side (all of us wore our press passes in plain view). We were just 20 minutes into the “reconvergence.”

In a fleeting moment of complicated levity a protester matched that initial burst of pepper spray with his own burst of Silly String, yelling: “You’ve been shot!”

Public Enemy’s “911 is a Joke” played from the wagon.

Now they were spraying in earnest, entangled as they were in Silly String. The cans were routinely misfiring and being tossed to the ground. There were sirens.

An observer for the National Lawyers Guild, clearly marked, was sprayed extensively from a roughly two foot distance just after this photo was taken:

Next it was a blue smoke canister. The AP reporter with the mask can be seen running from the street at the right:

After that, it was the “impact rounds” — fired from a 40mm rifle. Riot police fired these repeatedly during the Kellogg Boulevard incident and at other points during the day.

At one point a young male, one of the protesters, charged the line of riot police. He was tackled and struggled a bit against the force of four fully-uniformed riot police.

Finally, there were the exploding tear gas canisters. A few seconds after they are tossed by law enforcement they explode, creating a fog of tear gas and sometimes a torch-like flame.

At one point, an officer looked in my direction (there were others behind me) and tossed a canister that landed at my feet. I jumped as it exploded and ran back to snap this picture:

This guy, a photojournalist with official RNC press credentials, was soaked with pepper spray and collapsed at the feet of protester-medics once the chaos had ended.

I witnessed only two arrests when it was all over, which meant the roving protesters were roving again. The riot police stayed in formation — a line covering the entire width of Kellogg, its sidewalks, and its green space. One officer left the line to clear out yet another roadblock, assembled from, among other things, this:

With the air clear but the riot police still in formation, a bus lumbered up next to where the soaked photojournalist had collapsed just a few minutes earlier. It was a bus chartered by the Humphrey Institute. Two riders exited and paid no mind to the grimacing reporters and onlookers all around them.

From the bridge behind the bus, you could see — and hear — this:

The tear gas below was quick to waft up to onlookers on the bridge, with children among them. It was another brutal burn and a first taste for people who had simply wandered onto the scene. This riverside game of cat and mouse ended with the largest number of arrests of the day — bringing the total to at least 284 by late evening.

All photos by Jeff Severns Guntzel, who can be reached at jsguntzel at gmail.com

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