hird party proponents, shut out of tonight's official two-party event, dumped televisions into the Boston Harbor in a ''Boston TV party.''
Left-wing actors, dripping with mock contempt for the masses, dressed as big-money contributors with top hats and three-piece suits. At a downtown protest, they held signs reading, ''Corporations are people, too,'' and chanted, ''One-two-three-four, we are rich and you are poor!''
Some 600 senior citizens, bused in from all over New England, protested against prescription-drug costs at the Cambridge offices of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc.
Anti-missile defense activists in plastic radiation suits blew air into a 50-foot inflatable missile on the Boston Common.
Throughout the streets of Boston and Cambridge yesterday, debate was already flowing as diverse and funny and unconventional as protesters say tonight's encounter between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush can't possibly be.
All of them proclaimed that both the Democrats and Republicans are ignoring the issues that affect real people's lives - and promised they would use the power of free speech to make an impact.
''It takes a lot of people, but in the end, the politicians and the companies will have to respond,'' said Geoff Wilkinson, executive director of the Massachusetts Senior Action Council, which organized the protest against Pfizer on Memorial Drive in Cambridge. ''We still have a democracy.''
Yesterday's events were just appetizers. Crowd estimates for demonstrations outside the University of Massachusetts at Boston debate site tonight range from 10,000 to 20,000 people.
Boston activists have backed off their plans to try to halt the debate. Instead, they will use performers, puppets, and discussion facilitators to hold a festival and ''street debate.''
''Some people were concerned that shutting down the debate could be seen as stifling speech,'' said Wells Wilkinson of Boston Mobilization for Survival, which is organizing protests under the name o3 Mobilization. ''We want to promote this as a positive alternative.''
But organizers are also holding their cards close to the vest. On whether they would use civil disobedience as a tactic, Wilkinson said, carefully, ''We are not publicizing any plans for civil disobedience.''
Many activists recoiled at the idea that they would limit themselves to a police-designated protest area, which they dubbed a ''protest pen.''
''We won't be told where and when we can speak,'' said activist Josh Warren-White.''
But State Police Captain Robert Bird said the protest area will be in a prominent - but as-yet undisclosed - location ''to encourage protesters to be seen and heard, without endangering themselves or others.''
Bird refused to divulge State Police plans, as did a spokesman for the Boston police. However, both departments are expected to be out in force, and the State Police were already monitoring traffic at UMass-Boston yesterday.
Today's protest events include a social justice rally at Park Street at noon, which will follow along a ''freedom for sale trail,'' and another rally in Dudley Square at 5 p.m. sponsored by the Boston Coalition for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the death-row inmate whose case has become a popular liberal cause.
Then, o3 Mobilization is asking protesters to gather at Columbus Park in South Boston at 6:45 p.m., where they will begin a march to Morrissey Boulevard and UMass-Boston.
Organizers say they want more of an upbeat, party atmosphere instead of the tense and sometimes violent protests seen in Seattle or most recently in Prague.
The evening plans involve giant puppets, music, and dancing, as well as the alternative debates.
Not all demonstrators will oppose the major candidates. Thousands of union members are expected to cheer Gore.
''He's the candidate for the people,'' Massachusetts AFL-CIO president Robert J. Haynes said.
But someone will be protesting just about everything one can think of, even the choice of UMass-Boston as the debate site.
A couple of hundred protesters gathered yesterday outside UMass President William Bulger's office on Beacon Street, objecting to the school's two-day closure. Students should be reimbursed, they said.
''It's a working-class school, and these students pay tuition out of their own pockets,'' said junior Gabe Gottlieb, who is missing a seminar class that meets only once a week, with no compensation. ''It really hurts us a lot.''
Between all of yesterday's protests, a major theme was that the debate should be open to Ralph Nader and other candidates.
''If you can't get in on the debates, you can't go up in the polls,'' said former talk show host Phil Donahue, a Nader enthusiast.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
