BOSTON -- Even before the 2004 Democratic National Convention kicked off in a puff of pomp and patriotic smoke, much of New England had already grown sick and tired of the whole ordeal. A three-city-block radius of prime expressways and urban thoroughfares around the Fleet Center downtown had been closed off, as well as sections of the city Transit line to deter any would-be terrorist mischief. Senior citizens living in the neighborhood were told to keep forms of identification on them at all times, lest they be mistaken for Al Qaeda sleeper cells. Worst of all, the state security apparatus had erected a "free speech zone" in damp quarters hidden under the train tracks and surrounded by barbed wire and netting, into which the authorities will seek to confine the thousands of protestors expected to crash the big party.

Analogies to Guantanamo Bay -- even Auschwitz -- abounded.

"I would expect to see this in other countries, but not in America. This is not what we're about," said John Tompkins a Bostonian whose family of three was legging out a three-mile detour on their typical evening stroll for ice cream.

"It doesn't sound very good," echoed Congressman Dennis Kucinich, after speaking at a panel at the Boston Social Forum on Saturday. "It doesn't sound very consistent with a Democratic society."

Before the Convention got under way on Monday, approximately 60 organized protestors gathered in the Free Speech Zone at 9 a.m. to act out scenes of oppression reminiscent of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Activists wearing DNC shirts ordered others in street clothes to don black hoods while their hands were bound behind their backs. The "prisoners" were then forced into the Free Speech Zone and forced to kneel in uncomfortable positions. Sound familiar?

According to Gan Golan, a graduate student majoring in urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a local member of the Save Our Civil Liberties group, the "prisoners" wore civilian clothing and not the orange suits of Guantanamo Bay infamy to show that they are normal, everyday people.

"This insulting protest pen proves that Democrats are unwilling to differentiate from Republicans on issues relating to civil liberties and our inherent right to protest," Golan said. "Many of us naively thought this wouldn't happen in Boston, but the lockdown is becoming an established pattern at mass protests. Over the last few years we've seen police gradually increase security and the potential for violence, even though the U.S. protest movement is one of the most nonviolent in the world. We don't throw Molotov Cocktails here! By trying to put free speech in a cage, Boston has unwillingly declared the whole city a protest zone," Golan foreshadowed.

Sure enough, roughly two hours after the powerful street theater display, city police used physical force to pry Code Pink's Medea Benjamin away from a "Bring the Troops Home" banner, before removing it from a fence adjacent to the Free Speech Zone outside the perimeter of the Fleet Center.