A number of reports have pointed out that the Occupy calls for a May Day general strike drew tens of thousands in the street Tuesday — with actions from the militant to the family-minded — in cities across the country, particularly in New York and Oakland, Calif. The culmination of scheduled action in New York — a mass march of around 30,000 union workers, immigrant workers and OWS supporters that descended (with a permit) on Manhattan’s financial district — felt powerful from within, as chanting bodies jostled south. But I jumped over the barricades, which hemmed in the crowd, and walked a few blocks away. Only a muffled din signaled the crowd’s presence nearby; that and the constant flow of riot cops flooding past me and the police vans lining the street as far as the eye could see.