Miami Dispatch: 11/21

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MIAMI -- A strange and hard day. We are all in a bit of shock after yesterday. The Pagan cluster meets for an emotional debrief, very stressed because time is short and we are committed to taking part in the Really, Really Free Market action at noon. We have so much to say and so much emotion to share, grief and rage and shock, about yesterday's police attacks. Many people in the cluster are new and have never experienced anything like it. Some of us have, and each new incident stirs up an old well of grief and anger.

We rush off to the Really, Really Free Market -- the action to show the alternatives. The delegates have ended their meetings a day early, signed a surface agreement that means little and gone home, so there is no need for confrontation. Nevertheless, police have been following us all day, picking people off, arresting people peacefully walking on sidewalks. They grab a couple of kids coming out of the convergence center and crush their bicycles. They harass a vanful of radical cheerleaders coming to the Really, Really Free Market.

The Really, Really Free Market is a beautiful oasis in the midst of a brutal police state. We negotiate with a group of homeless women who hang out in the park we have a permit for, and set up our 'booths' -- blankets on the ground. There is a Free Massage booth, free food from Food Not Bombs, free Medical care from our medics. The Pagans set up our Living River to decorate the fences. We set up a healing tent for free trauma counseling, and another healing circle inside swaths of magically dyed blue cloth. We pull out the masks for the Witches' and Anarchists' Ball that we never got to hold because of yesterday's police riots, and the paper fish and turtle hats that never quite got to the march. We give away fairy money, little slips of decorated paper you give to your friends for things you value, like a smile, or a hug, or for courage under fire. On the back you write what you gave it for, so that as each bill flows around it accumulates a story. Soon the market has all the lively feel of a true village market, but with a sweetness that comes from constant little gifts we are making to each other, all the more poignant because of the constant reports of arrests that keep coming in. The street people join in the fun -- I look over and see the four women who live here each wearing a fish hat, and the baby in her stroller laughing in delight.

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