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LOS ANGELES — Lisa Fithian marched, jogged, skipped and trudged more than 20 miles this week through the streets of Los Angeles. She pleaded with police officers. She cajoled angry, masked anarchists clad in black. She chanted into megaphones. 

By the end of the week, Fithian, a labor and community organizer, wasn’t tired. She was dancing. 

“We proved this week that the protests are not just a unique, one-time instance,” she said. “This is a new movement. We’re vigorous.” 

Thousands of demonstrators who spent the week of the Democratic National Convention marching in the streets and occasionally clashing with police said they got their message out and energized their movement, one that barely registered during the party’s last convention in Chicago. 

If there was one unified cause in Los Angeles, it was against police brutality. In many protesters’ eyes, that cause took on new meaning after Monday night, the first night of the convention, when police broke up a rally of thousands firing rubber bullets and pepper spray at the crowd. 

“We tamed the LAPD!” proclaimed Sarah “Seeds” Willner, 49, a veteran organizer from Berkeley, as she helped lead the week’s final march to the Los Angeles county jail Thursday. 

The demonstrators also proved their organization, she said, by setting up three to four marches each day of the four-day Democratic convention. 

“We were supposed to get knocked on our butts in L.A., that’s what the police wanted,” Willner said. “If delegates didn’t get the message, then at least the police did.” 

She also claimed a victory in the clash between police and the media after reporters claimed they were targeted by riot police wielding nightsticks and rubber-bullet guns. 

“The media coverage showed things from our point of view because the media was getting knocked around just like we were,” she said. 

The movement, while a continuation of activism that is an intrinsic part of U.S. history, was revitalized last year in Seattle when some 50,000 protesters took over the city center in opposition to World Trade Organization meetings being held there.  

Thousands of anti-globalization protesters again showed up in April in Washington when the International Monetary Fund and World Bank held their spring meetings, and protests also went on just weeks ago during the Republican Convention in Philadelphia. 

In Los Angeles, there were demonstrations for women’s rights, gay rights and youth rights. There were marches against police brutality, against U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq, against global corporatization. And there were rallies, sometimes as many as 10 a day, where demonstrators with dozens of different causes joined together to chant slogans and listen to speeches. 

“There’s been a resurgence of protesting and activism,” said H. Eric Shockman, associate professor of political science at the University of Southern California and an expert on protest movements. 

“The means look very similar; the goals seem to be different,” he said. “I get a real sense we’re on the cusp of a very different paradigm when we’re looking at the connections of protest movements.” 

Justin Eckert, who watched a demonstration of about 2,000 people trudge through a traffic tunnel in Los Angeles, agreed. He said he was impressed by “a definite groundswell of movement.” 

But, in a concern that was expressed by other protesters, he said he feared the diversity was a drawback: With so many different causes, he doubted any particular message was getting out. 

“Obviously there are a lot of very passionate people here, but there’s no central message,” he said. “I’ve seen a sign for every extremist political cause there is marching past me.” 

David Bolog, who rode his bicycle in most of the demonstrations, said that while everyone has their own cause (his is to support the Green Party), all of the causes remained interrelated. 

On Thursday night, at the end of his last protest of the week, the 30-year-old masseuse from Santa Monica ran his fingers through his sweaty, spiked red hair and said he’s proud of what was accomplished at the convention. 

“By joining together, we were able to realize that there’s a lot more people who are concerned about the well being of this country than we, as caring individuals, originally thought,” he said. 

Alan Wolfe, a sociologist at Boston College, acknowledged that “something’s happening.” But he said the movement seemed passive, responding to events such as the Democratic National Convention rather than setting its own agenda of actions and protests. 

“It’s reacting, rather than taking the initiative,” he said.