In all seriousness, let me share the benefit of living in DC. Do not under any circumstances do direct or even seemingly benign confrontation of protesters. It might lead you to get swept up in any arrests that take place.
I can't count the number of times that innocent bystanders in DC ended up being rounded up if the police dealt with a protest growing confrontational. It didn't happen all the time, but there were sporadic reports from protests large and small the entire time I lived there.
I can recall protests where people walking to work or tourists checking out the sites stopped at a pedestrian walk, and ended up being "on the wrong side of the street" when the arrests began. The only decision they faced once that happened was to run or stay to explain their circumstances. But when arrests begin, police procedure is almost always to take everyone in and deal with it at the station. Result: Uninvolved people wasting hours explaining themselves to security.
The best bet is just to move away and contact authorities if they are not already present. Do that no matter how angry you may feel if someone is disrupting a peaceful crowd, or defacing property, or whatever etc. Obviously if someone is in danger, that's a different matter. But that's typically not the case. A window or street-lamp or bus stop are not worth getting involved.
A couple of other quick thoughts:
Yume, I know you hate the CBC but you should really give it a rest sometimes
. It's not related to every topic. I read the CBC, and I think you and I probably agree on nearly every topic on here so what does that say? I seriously doubt millions of CBC readers have anything to do with folks planning protests in Vancouver. My sense is they must be doing a pretty good job as a new agency to be decried as both elitists
and jobless wannabees . . . . that's quite a diverse range of insults
. Globe and Mail provides some decent reporting, but I find the comments there nuttier than anything I see on CBC (not to mention the cultish camp quality . . . commenters at G&M actually "know" and address each other via the comment boards there which is just weird . . . its a news site not a blog
. And the National Post, well, don't even get me started. Having a point of view is one thing, but the amount of blatantly incorrect information I've read in their articles astounds me. Besides, I don't think any of those news organizations are major sources of information to the "network" hoping to gather in Vancouver.
Last thought on the topic is I pity the mental refuge of someone whose attitude is, "We're peaceful but, hey, if any of the folks we're dredging up to ask to join us start breaking windows, oh well." That's the strangest display of passivism I've ever witnessed. I imagine they'd invite Charles Manson to a holiday party as well? I'm sure they'll be nowhere to be found if things go awry. Geez.