About 700 people demonstrated today against the WTO ministerial meeting in Montreal. The protesters woke up early, meeting at two different assembly points on either side of the downtown core at 6:30am. The marches wound their way through downtown and converged near the Sheraton Hotel, where the meeting was being held. The police had set up a perimeter of riot police and barricades around the hotel, closing off several blocks to traffic.

The demonstration zig-zagged for about two hours, outmaneuvering the police. Mailboxes and dumpsters were dragged into the street to slow the police vans following the march. At several points the demonstration stopped at construction sites and used the material to build barricades in the streets. As the police and protesters played cat-and-mouse, some light rioting began. The windows of the Canadian army recruitment center were broken, as well as the Gap. Two trash cans were thrown through the windows of a Burger King, and the Israeli consulate was graffittied. Perhaps a high-point of the demonstration was when black-clad hooligans trashed a Porsche, parked next to the demonstration, as its owner stood by helpless and infuriated. After about 2 hours the demonstration suddenly and quickly dispersed (a rarity for Montreal demonstrations).

Obviously annoyed at their own ineffectiveness, the riot police surrounded the non-confrontational "green zone" halfway across the city, and arrested about 150 people hanging out in a vacant lot. In other parts of the city there were arrests as well, as police chased small groups of dispersing demonstrators.

The mood here today was best expressed by a slogan graffittied on Montreal's busy Boulevard de Maisonneuve. It read "tremblez bourgeois" [tremble bourgeois].