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It seems like this thread has been fairly de-railed into the realm of what the Civil War was or was not, but I'd just like to state my opinion that the WTO protests don't deserve to be mentioned in the category of "peaceful protests met with overbearing police force." A series of carefully designed stunts created a shitstorm of bad publicity and cloaked the fact that few of the protesters were engaged in any conduct that could be considered "peaceful." Their intent was to shut down the city, to prevent people from engaging in their day to day life and to disrupt the conference as much as possible. They put police officers and uninvolved citizens in dangerous positions and engaged in wanton destruction of private property. The wikipedia article shows that fact fairly conclusively.
Now, I certainly understand that not everyone there was involved in that and I understand that some of the actions which the police department took in response were well beyond what was either legal or appropriate, but this was not a case of innocent protesters suffering at the hands of fascist government. The protected right to protest is subject to reasonable and narrowly tailored time, place and manner restrictions. Many of the WTO protesters (and a lot of the ones who generated the most press) were operating well outside of that right.
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