Jones is in the minority. One reason that many groups -- including the big unions, who brought out most of the protesters last year in Miami -- stayed away from Georgia is because they're saving their energy and resources for New York. Several people in Brunswick admitted they were too scared to go to the Republican Convention, but more said they couldn't wait.

Still, it was clear that Miami, coupled with the state of emergency in Georgia, had severely shaken activists. "A lot of people have really been scared by what they know happened in Miami," said a gray-haired woman from Atlanta. Like several older protesters, she refused to give her name, saying she feared for her job if she went public with her politics.

Jean Grossholtz, a 75-year-old retired Mount Holyoke professor, was appalled by the success of the intimidation. "The fear factor raised here was extraordinary," she said. So was the sense of impotence. "People were told in no uncertain terms that they won't be allowed to demonstrate," she said. "They knew they wouldn't get anywhere near the G-8."

Grossholtz, who'd driven down in an R.V. from Massachusetts, had previously traveled to anti-globalization protests in Prague, Czech Republic, and Genoa, and seemed irritated that people were so easily spooked. "What are people scared of?" she asked. "They push you around and put you in jail for a couple of days. They're not going to kill you."

Grossholz said she was glad she came, though, because it showed her what she needs to do to prepare for the Democratic and Republican National Conventions this summer. When she returns to Massachusetts, she said, she planned to launch a campaign to force local and state officials to acknowledge the rights of demonstrators during the Boston Democratic Convention.

Such a campaign has already begun in New York. Last Sunday, the New York Civil Liberties Union held a press conference at City Hall with Democratic Reps. Major Owens and Jerrold Nadler, City Council Speaker Gifford Miller and Deputy Majority Leader William Perkins to announce the launch of the Protecting Protest campaign.

The congressmen are pressing Mayor Michael Bloomberg to sign a memorandum of understanding, endorsed by five members of New York's congressional delegation, safeguarding the rights of demonstrators at the RNC.

Meanwhile, Miller has introduced a resolution in the New York City Council calling for police to act quickly on protest permits -- eliminating the stalling tactics that have frustrated the efforts of many organizers -- and to cut back on the use of the barricades that hem protesters in and break up large gatherings.

At the press conference, Owens spoke of the NYPD's recent use of mounted policemen against peaceful demonstrators. "In the civil rights struggle, I had to face the horses a few times," he said. "I thought those days were over." New York City, said Owens, needs to "let all of us who stand against [Republican] policies be able to say that in a meaningful and significant way."

But Grossholtz insisted that protest can't be about what the police let you do. "For me, what we need is a million people standing in the streets with a sign saying, 'No to Empire. No to Bush.' We don't need slogans. We don't need loudspeakers. We don't need puppets. We have to say to the world that there are a million of us over here who are opposed to this. First of all you get the numbers. Then you get people to go out and sit in the streets and you don't move. That's what protest means.

"We're losing something that was traditionally our right," she says. Gesturing toward the largely empty campus where the protesters had been corralled, she said, "You can consider this a victory for the fear factor."

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