As kings, presidents, prime ministers, and delegates nattered on through their five-minute soapbox oratories at the UN's Millennium Summit, 91 scheduled protests erupted throughout the city. The designated protest space during the summit—Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, at First Avenue and 47th Street—was hard to spot, what with the thick lines of police officers and sawhorse barricades. It seems that much effort was made to block views of such untidy dissent. But the variety of causes was staggering: Bangladeshis calling for an end to "the tyrannical regime of Sheik Hasina" were pressed up against Hasidim denouncing Israel's prime minister Ehud Barak's negotiations over Jerusalem, Iraqis demanding an end to U.S. sanctions were shoulder-to-shoulder with anti-Castro Cubans, and next to them, hundreds of Falun Gong were silently meditating to protest China's campaign of terror against them. At the embassy of Myanmar, Burmese activists demanded the release of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, while at the Mexican embassy protesters called on the new government to meet... More >>>