Cancun Dispatch: 9/12

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We ride back to Cancun in a triumphal procession. The students pop through the skylights of the bus, and ride on the top, terrifying me more than the threat of riot cops. But they hang on, and we sing and chant and cheer through the long ride back around the lagoon and back up from the airport.

We arrive at Ground Zero to cheers of joy. The students are dancing on top of the buses, the Koreans and all the supporters are drumming and cheering and laughing. I get out and give Gloria a big, big hug. Many of the students who did this action were in the encampments with her and Lisa and me, and we are very, very proud of them. Everyone is hugging each other and laughing and crying tears of pure joy. I can hardly remember another time I've felt such pure, unadulterated happiness -- except maybe in Seattle, when we shut the meeting down. It has all been worth it -- the stress and the exhaustion and the sleeplessness, the 50 hours of meetings, the grueling work, the moments of frustration and near despair. We have shown that all their police power and weapons and barricades and fear mongering cannot, after all, keep us out, that the voice of a determined people is a force to be reckoned with, that we cannot be left out of their equations or excluded from their deliberations, that there is a power stronger than force or fear.

One of the Koreans begins beating a rhythm on his metal drum, comes over to me and motions that I should join him with my drum. We begin drumming together, and the Koreans begin dancing. They are wearing circular straw hats against the rain, and their matching beige vests emblazoned "No WTO," and they hold out their arms, waving them gracefully like the wings of leaping cranes as they rock from foot to foot. The students join in, and the rain comes down like a benediction. I pass my drum to one of the students, and we are a perfect multicultural mesh of Korean gongs and latin rhythms and sweating human bodies, dancing in the rain joyfully, with complete abandon.

At the end of the dance, the Koreans form a circle and sing a Korean song and dance together. Then they motion to me that I should drum and we should sing. The Pagans form a circle and begin our song, and others join and we do another spiral under the moonlight that gathers in all the energy and joy of our victory and raises it up in a pure release of power. In the silence after, I drop to the ground and put my hands on the earth. In many places, I've felt that this gesture of grounding embarrasses people, feels too conventionally religious. But here it is perfectly understood. We all touch the earth, blessing the Mother Earth, the Madre Tierra. The Koreans crouch in a deep bow. I offer gratitude to earth and wind and sky, to fire and rain and the moon and the courage in the hearts of all of our companeras and companeros who have brought us this moment of victory.

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