Large crowds in the neighborhood, but from the vantage point of a dense mass of people jam-packed in Second Avenue in the high 50s, it was quite impossible to say how many. Trying to get anywhere near the ‘official’ demonstration site on 49th Street and First Avenue was beyond me and, it seemed, many others.

Plenty of ANSWER banners and, in a surprising echo of countless demonstrations in the UK, placards bearing the logo of the Socialist Worker Party – stalwarts of Britain’s hard left happenings for decades.

Also there for the picking, leaflets from the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. Their “vital Marxist-Leninist-Maoist viewpoint?”

“There is growing anger, rebellion and resistance around the world – and this is excellent!”