CLEVELAND -- Activists marched illegally down streets, fought with one another and defied a downtown tennis ball ban Tuesday during the second day of the Republican National Convention. But as the excitement unfolded, some activist leaders wondered where the crowds were.

Cleveland has seen far smaller protests than those at other recent conventions, despite the nomination of Donald Trump eliciting a rage from progressives that rivals or exceeds their hatred of former President George W. Bush. In a further distinction, it has also seen very few activism-related arrests.

“Look, I’ll say this: It’s not a good thing people aren’t here in a bigger force when an openly fascistic candidate is being nominated,” says Noche Diaz, who served as spokesman for the day’s highest profile march, which promoted revolutionary communism and the jailing of “killer cops.”

“Why? I don’t know all the reasons, you’ll have to ask them,” Diaz said after the hourlong march by about two dozen protesters, a greater number of reporters and likely even more law enforcement officers, who rode bicycles alongside and behind the group.

“Slavery, genocide and war, America was never great!” the group chanted as they walked past Republican convention-goers, one of whom shouted that they should consider moving to another country.

Nearby, members of the feminist peace group Code Pink handed out tennis balls, which are specifically prohibited within a 1.7 square mile event zone around the main convention venues. Police seized those they could.

“They did get taken away, but we gave away hundreds of them first!” says Alli McCracken, a leading member of the organization. “We expected to get arrested, but we didn’t.”

McCracken says she’s not sure why relatively few people showed up to protest in Cleveland, but she believes many were scared off by Ohio’s open carry laws, which allow people to carry firearms -- despite the ban on tennis balls and aluminum cans -- near the convention.

Larry Bresler, the executive director of Organize Ohio, which hosted one of two major progressive marches on Monday, says he’s disappointed by the showing so far, though he doubts it has any broad meaning for U.S. politics.

“With all events there have been fewer protesters than were anticipated -- even ours was lower than we anticipated,” he says, estimating turnout at 2,500 for the anti-poverty march. “I’m absolutely, positively convinced the reason for that is the fear factor.”

The organizer, one of the city’s most prominent, says “people contacted me saying, ‘boy I would like to attend but I’ve been hearing about all this violence and people bringing guns… and the huge number of police.' People just did not feeling comfortable coming.”

Tom Burke, a spokesman for the coalition that hosted the other large Monday march, says organizers were satisfied with participation -- estimated at 1,000 people -- and thrilled that nobody got arrested, despite throngs spilling through barricades near the convention.

“We thought it was possible more would come, but we were happy with the turnout,” says Burke, who returned to his home in Michigan on Tuesday.

Burke says, however, he would encourage more like-minded people to show up to the week’s protests. “The more the better, we’re trying to build a movement to put an end to the racism and hatred that Trump feeds on,” he says.

Kris Hermes, a veteran political activist who wrote a book about mass arrests and aggressive policing at the 2000 RNC in Philadelphia, says he wouldn’t venture a guess about why crowds are thinner than in the past, though he agrees that seems the case.

Coupled with the low turnout, there have been very few arrests, despite ample opportunity for police to fill a convoy of police vans, as they have at previous conventions for offenses such as marching in the road.

Hermes, serving as a spokesman for Ohio’s chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, says there have been some arrests this week. On Monday, a local Cleveland activist was arrested, reportedly on an outstanding warrant as she engaged in a political speech. And early Tuesday, he says, the guild received word that three environmentalists were arrested hoisting a banner on a flagpole. The individuals, he says, were charged with trespassing and criminal mischief.

Tuesday afternoon presented many opportunities for a crackdown, and police did impose themselves on activists, forcing themselves between groups in the city’s large Public Square, a focal point for demonstrations.

A group of anarchists, separate from the revolutionary communist group, belted a related chant of “smash the system, smash the state, America was never great!” and called officers pigs.

Members of the anarchist group got into a tussle with conspiracy-minded Internet personality Alex Jones at the square, leading to the massive police response that sectioned demonstrators into smaller groups.

A police scanner transmission reportedly claimed members of the Westboro Baptist Church, the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Lives Matter movement were throwing urine at each other, but if that happened it escaped the notice of just about everyone. There were no visible self-identifying KKK members and opponents of police brutality were based far from fanatical church members, who were surrounded by police.

The Cleveland Police Department tweeted at 4:30 p.m. ET there had been no arrests in Public Square.

Hermes says the guild, which has many volunteers actively monitoring protests and a hotline for arrestees, is aware of just one afternoon arrest -- of a person who allegedly threw a punch during the fracas involving Jones at the square.

But he says even if police aren’t arresting people, their presence can be objectionable.

“If you are in downtown Cleveland you can literally throw a rock and hit a police [officer]. It’s very intimidating,” he says. “It certainly is chilling for First Amendment rights.”

Though the rage Trump inspires among his opponents is unlikely to dim, it’s unclear if progressive activists will see an uptick in participation in demonstrations as it becomes clear mass arrests and gun-involved violence are not happening.

Bresler isn’t optimistic.

“Yesterday was going to be a bigger day than Thursday and I don’t know what’s going to happen on Thursday now in terms of size,” he says.

But McCracken says she could see more people deciding to make a last-minute trip.