Miami Dispatch: 11/16

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While we're finishing up, we get a call. Our friends down at the fence are surrounded by police who swarmed them just as they were getting out of the bus that the North Carolina group came down in, a converted airport shuttle. We hop into Mike's van and rush down to support them. By the time we arrive, the police have backed off, but they are still present, following behind us and circling around us like a wheeling pack of wolves. They'd threatened to arrest anyone who touched the fence, telling them it was a construction zone and a felony to interfere with it.

Two of the group, the youngest members of our training, have disappeared and we are worried about them. Finally they turn up -- they simply left when the police came. I am pleased at how quickly the training in attention has born fruit -- but we explain to them how important it is to let other people know what you are doing and where you are going or at least that you are going and haven't just been grabbed when we weren't looking. A very real-life role play.

We head back to the convergence center. Our group has a meeting about the joint Pagan Cluster/Anarchist plans. We firm up plans to do a ritual together, but after a lot of thought we finally abandon our vision for the 19th, when the delegates will be taken to the Viscaya Palace Museum for a reception with the American Business Forum. It's an event just asking to be protested -- but highly likely that any protest will lead to mass preemptive arrests and we don't want to lose strength for the 20th. We'll meet in the morning to consider new plans.

A wonderful local woman, a truly angelic being named Jane who teaches religious studies in a local university, brings me an incredible lunch, salmon and shitake salad and goat cheese and key lime pie. She's offered to cook me a home-made meal but has realized I'll never have time to eat it. I share the food around but fortunately most of the activists are vegetarians so there is plenty for me, and not just the dose of protein but the kindness and warmth of the support re-energize me enough to be in three meetings somewhat simultaneously, one to firm up our site plan, one to work on the agenda for the first spokescouncil, one for the Pagan Cluster to work out our own communications methods and plans. We will have a voicemail by tomorrow, a nightly 6 p.m. meeting/orientation for newcomers, a phone tree, our own central communications person for each major day of action. Many new tasks arise in the course of discussion, and someone takes each of them on. We are a full employment movement -- there's a job for everyone. Between meetings I have fun dumping water from the sinks into our graywater system and watching water percolate out the bottom. It works! But still needs a bit of pond scum to get the right bacteria going.

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