Miami Dispatch: 11/17

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A few blocks away, we get an even more frantic call. The police are there, now, and he couldn't keep them out. "I'm not dealing with them at all," he says and we reassure him that we're almost there.

We arrive to find most of the crew from the morning standing around again, this time in a much more agitated fashion. The tent crew has begun setting up tents but now they've stopped. Suzy, the manager from the county who was warm and helpful this morning, is demanding to know if we really have authorization from Camillus House. She's scared that she has let the tents get set up illegally. I have already put in a call to Juniper who is heading over and I tell her that, to my knowledge, everything was set this morning and we had okays from all the necessary parties, but I wasn't at the meeting and the person who was is coming. Dr. Capp from the Community Relations Board, is there, and his big, solid, warm presence is comforting and seems to radiate a calm and good-humored authority. But there are so many agencies, bureaucracies, lawyers, and different stories involved that it becomes completely confusing. The police are standing quietly in the background, but they're there. Channel 7 is eager to film. I am thinking quietly to myself that this whole sequence of events is a perfect argument for anarchism. Finally Juniper arrives, and we try to sort things out. Meanwhile, the tents have been taken down and the parts reloaded on the trucks. A few campers have started to arrive, but they turn back when they see the scene in progress. I get Channel 7 to film an interview with Juniper, who is lovely and convincing on the subject of the city's unwillingness to provide for public health and safety. "Eight point five million dollars to teargas me," she says, referring to a line item in the $87 billion Iraq appropriations bill. "And not 25 cents for water!"

We go back to the convergence center to strategize. It is now crowded, wall to wall, with people newly arrived and attending the first General Assembly, to deal with our own internal processes. I am afraid to think about how we will fit in the thousands and thousands more who may materialize over the next days.

But I have to go off to the Unitarian Church for a ritual. I head off with Nyx and Tom, who drives like an anarchist but gets us there in time to eat some of the potluck dinner that has been provided for the group of Unitarians who have come from Portland for the protests. I am in action/survival mode now and head straight for the food. My friend Luigi is there and it is good to see him -- he is tired from organizing a big Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender conference a week ago but has brought his men's group to drum. The Reverend Lucy, who has arranged this evening, was in jail with us many years ago when we were protesting nuclear weapons at the Livermore Labs in California. I speak a bit before the ritual, and it's a relief to not need to go through the whole FTAA bit because this crowd already knows what it's about -- that's why they're here. We raise some powerful, beautiful energy for the actions, then head back to our Pagan cluster house for a late-night meeting and magic. More people have come in, including my friend Donna, who has brought our eight-minute video on the Green Bloc and permaculture projects in past actions. It's great fun to watch it with everybody. We keep the meeting short, and do ritual, a drumming/chanting trance. And finally, at 2 a.m., go to bed, waiting to see if the morning will bring a home at last for the multitudes who will be arriving soon, or if the action will remain among the homeless of Miami.

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