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You'll read about today's demonstration in tomorrow's newspapers. You can see it on the television in an hour or so. Or you could find out about it here first.

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Today’s demonstration has lived up to expectations of a tense confrontation between demonstrators and police.

Only a few minutes after the marchers had left Wits University, the police fired 4 or 5 stun grenades at the crowd, injuring at least two people. One, Karen Locq, a Canadian, is reported to have a nasty burn on her calf. The other, Dudu, a march organiser, is said to have dislocated a knee.

The crowd panicked and ran for the safety of the university – a few trapped cars reversing at high speeds up the road.

Soon, however, the crowd re-grouped and a tense stand-off resulted between 90 heavily armed police and a few hundred demonstrators.

A journalist, Rehad Desai, was arrested, after provoking police by filming right into the vehicles, even after being asked to desist.

"This is an illegal demonstration," said Commander Schutter, a police spokesman. "We are bringing trucks up as soon as possible and will then start arresting people."

Word of his statement filtered out to the crowd – though there was no formal announcement. Slowly they started to move back, leaving only a few stragglers to dance around a small paper fire. They too seem to have also dispersed, though this is unconfirmed.

"It was a tactical withdrawal," said a spokesperson for the demonstrators. "We had many international guests showing solidarity and we felt we had made our point. We are waiting for August 31, when the police can arrest as many people as they like."

As WSSD stutters into action, the protestors hold the field.

So Daily Summit will continue to follow the activist agenda today – before bringing you news from the main summit tomorrow as UN high command hold their first press briefing.

If you read our posts from today and yesterday, you will see two main themes emerging.

First, those who said this conference was not a significant date in the anti-globalisation movement are quite mistaken.

Already the cycle of rallies, protests, and arrests is starting. The movement may be fractious – today they squabbled for an hour over whether to give a fairly innocuous press statement – but, in its own way, it is well-organised.

It also bumptious, excitable, confident, sophisticated, ruthless – and angry.

Arrests are good. Deportations are good. Want to stop an oil field? Send in 300 women to occupy the platforms (as has just happened in Nigeria). What chance the soldiers will shoot at them? And what consequences if they do?

Second, the movement currently has one target in its sites. Big, transnational businesses. The objective is clear – by whatever means, bring them low.

At a "teach-in" today at Witts University, a crowd of perhaps a thousand whooped, cheered, sang, ululated, groaned, and gasped as a parade of speakers spoke of the wickedness of big business.

The movement’s poster girl is Naomi Klein who said capitalism doesn’t just suppress its victims, it attempts to erase them.

"We have won the argument," she said. "They sound like us these days. But you only win the battle through argument. You win the war through mass struggle."

The movement’s chief martyr is Ken Saro-Wiwa – who was executed for his leadership of the Ogoni in their struggles against Shell and the Nigerian government.

His brother, Owens, now in exile in Canada, told the teach-in that “we need a global mechanism to hold corporations and individuals within corporations accountable.”

The international criminal court, he said, should not just be for dictators. Its power should be extended so that it could hold corporations accountable for their actions.

Finally, the movement does not forget the disaster at Bhopal, where many thousands died and many more have had their health wrecked by a chemical explosion. One of the survivors from Bhopal, speaking through a translator, shocked the crowd with her tale.

She called for a global fast on 27 August and for all those who are fasting to wear red armbands, so they can recognise each other.

In many rich countries, the left is often preachy and boring.

Well, this teach-in was often boring too. Every speaker ran over time, and as the programme ran later and later, the man next to me fell into a deep sleep.

But outside the main conference room, the movement’s vibrancy could not be suppressed. Lined on the steps of the university’s great hall, speakers announced plans for a march on Johannesburg’s prison to whoops of delight.

The crowd was dominated by its women – some as young as 14, but a surprising number in their 60s and 70s. Their voice was loud, rooted in the long tradition of struggle and protest against apartheid.

Naomi Klein told Daily Summit “success for us would be failure for this summit” (more from this interview soonish).

The protesters start their next illegal demonstration in just a few minutes. They will be calling for that failure. The South African police can ignore them. More likely, it will try to arrest them.

Either way, it seems, the protestors win.

"Governments have colluded with corporations to offer partnerships for sustainable development. We refuse to even sit at the table with these corporate criminals," says Michael Dorsey, Director of the Sierra Club in an interview with Daily Summit.

Mr Dorsey accuses Clare Short of having "no sense of the absolute negative effects of globalisation on the world’s poor" and suggest that Colin Powell will be ineffective at the summit, because of elements in the White House who would like to see him relieved of his duties.

US NGOs, he reveals, now look to the EU for leadership, and admire their model of regulation and enforcement. The summit can still, he hopes, lead to a binding process for global corporate accountability.

Read the full interview here…