Parts of the Ardoyne Road are a mess of broken bottles and rubble. Still, each morning two cleaning carts drive in, moving slowly and noisily down the road, reducing but not eradicating evidence of another night's rioting.
Last week men with beer bellies, teenagers in tracksuits and mothers with prams gathered from around 7 a.m. to stand around this Protestant housing area looking sullen. They know the world is watching and they know what the world is thinking.
"All they can see is the blastbomb, the stones and the tears on the faces of screaming children," says a 19-year-old man standing on a corner. "They don't understand that this is not about schoolchildren, it's about the thugs that bring them into this area posing as parents. But you might as well be talking to the wall."
It's not about children. Nothing to do with them, in fact. You hear little else on this part of the Ardoyne Road as the RUC moves in, parking Land-Rovers on each side to create a corridor it hopes will protect the students of Holy Cross primary on their 300-yard walk to school.
It is an unremarkable street, with unremarkable terraced houses. The facades, made ugly by metal grilles on the windows, have been jollied up with white shutters and pillars around the doors. Countless paramilitary flags flutter from lampposts.
According to locals, the dispute is not about sectarianism either, although that might confuse those who heard the shouts of "Fenian whore" and "Fenian bastards" directed at the parents of children since last Monday.
"That's just Northern Ireland," explains a Protestant man standing on the road. "We don't hate Catholics, but when things get heated, verbal abuse is part of the culture of the place. What we hate is known republicans coming into our area, attacking our homes and murdering our people. We are the minority here. They want our houses for themselves, and we have had enough."
The question of why children must be brought into what is clearly a very adult quarrel never gets a satisfactory answer. It is "unfortunate" that children are caught in the middle, says Jim Potts, an imposing man with a gold earring who is one of the main spokesmen for residents.
Look at it this way, he implores. Would the Protestant community be allowed to develop four Protestant schools in the heart of Catholic Ardoyne and walk in and out of the area twice a day for nine months of the year wearing Rangers tops and blasting Orange tunes out of car windows?
"No, it wouldn't happen," he says, answering himself. "But we are expected to put up with that."
Mr Potts had a lifelong friend who he says was murdered in the next street by republicans in December. "His only crime was his religion. There have been attacks on homes and people around here for years. One young man who had just moved in here didn't understand the geography of the area and attempted to walk home after a party. He was attacked on the Lower Ardoyne Road and needed 28 stitches. Now they expect to walk up the road as though nothing has happened."
What sparked the protest, according to those in the Protestant community, was an incident on June 19th when four men arrived from the nationalist area in a car "under the cover of all the other parents going to school" and attacked Protestant men.
"They are the hardest republicans you will find anywhere. They have murdered our people for 30 years, and what we are saying is: `This is our territory. You leave us alone and we will leave you alone'," says Mr Potts.
It is Thursday, the day after the blast-bomb was thrown at the RUC officers who were escorting children to school. Images of terrified young faces and panic stricken parents running to the safety of the school gates were flashed around the world to a shocked audience. On Monday we had watched as grown men and women hurled abuse and spittle at little girls on the first day of their school term.
Shortly before the children are due to walk down the road, a 21year-old university student berates her Catholic neighbours for putting their children through the ordeal. "My mam said she wouldn't put me through that," says a little girl in pigtails. "Mine, too," says her friend.
When the children walk past shortly after 9 a.m, flanked by hundreds of RUC officers, their parents and dozens of LandRovers, the Protestants use fresh tactics, turning their backs, banging dustbin lids, blowing whistles, sounding horns.
When the sea of new sandals, white knee socks and pretty ribbons has past, they smile triumphantly at each other, faces red from whistle-blowing, but what they have achieved is unclear. "We will keep doing it until they learn to walk up the other way," says a girl in school uniform.
Posters along the road read "There is an alternative route."
"They shouldn't be coming up these areas at all. They should be going up the Crumlin Road. If we can't walk their streets why should they be able to walk ours?" asks an angry man, pointing towards the nationalist area.
"They are bringing terrorists up here. We can't go to their shops or their post office, or go to the library. That is what this protest is about. Now, fair enough, I don't like to see children getting hurt, but that's the way it is."
At every turn in this dispute there are reminders of Drumcree. This time it is the Catholics who talk about the old days when the Protestants would greet you as you walked your child to school in the same way Orangemen plead annually that Catholics used to enjoy the marching season.
In Ardoyne, community observers with bright bibs mill around chatting to nationalists but steer clear, as is the case in Drumcree, of the Protestant community. Here it is the Protestants who complain that they are afraid to shop in the Catholic area, just as, in July, residents of the Garvaghy Road will tell you they dare not shop in Portadown.
The difference, of course, is that Drumcree is an argument between grown men and women. In Ardoyne the dispute involves children between the ages of four and eight who, if the protest continues, will be lucky to keep walking their "traditional route" to school without lasting mental or physical injury. "Unfortunate" is certainly one word for it.