As officials on both sides, protester and police, agreed to cooperate, the city shut down Broad Street, making an open road for the demonstrators and hour-long traffic delays.

The protest annoyed many. A man in a white polo shirt, the casual Republican uniform, stood near the open door of his green BMW sedan talking speaking on a cell phone.

"I'm a half-hour late for lunch," he said, sweating freely.

A woman walking between the spectators who crowded the sidewalks along the mile-long parade eyed the parade, and turning to her friend asked, "My God, can you smell the body odor coming off those people."

The march formed a mile-long line of demonstrators two abreast in another day of balmy heat down the center of Broad Street, the largest East-West thoroughfare in the city.

Despite the heat and possibility of arrest, the contingent was large and multiform. Young, black-masked anarchists walked with an upside-down American flag in step behind families marching with young children.

Demonstrating with his wife and nine-year old son was Tom Hirschl, a professor of sociology at Cornell University. His was the rally's common theme: America's prosperity was driving a dangerously wide economic gap between the rich and the poor.

"The government is just responding to the economy; it's going along with it, not trying to control it," he said. "The policies of the leaders of this country are creating more homelessness."