Thirty to forty luminaries celebrated worker solidarity on May Day two years ago by dressing in black and swinging hammers at night, smashing glass and denting metal on downtown Asheville streets. An estimated $18,000 in property damage was perpetrated. The community organizers, like many socialist kids in Europe, were only giving capitalism its just comeuppins.

Eleven were apprehended and collectively faced being charged with 112 misdemeanor and 33 felonious counts.