Miami Dispatch: 11/18

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Then we sit down and tell everyone that our role play has become real. We review the security plans for the house, and decide to collect all our support information now. In the middle, we get a call from Juniper that the Feds have left. She and Ruby come back with Lisa, and we hear the story.

Our visitors were from the FBI, and they claimed to be responding to complaints from the neighbors, just checking that we have legal occupancy, just wanting to go in and make sure we're not making weapons. They are doing us a favor, trying to save us from a visit from the Miami police, who can easily get out of control. We laugh, wondering if they took their script from our role play, or vice versa. Juniper and Ruby didn't give them information, just sat and said they would wait for their lawyer to appear, and finally the FBI got bored and left.

The incident confirms what I saw in last night's vision -- eyes watching us. Being here in Miami is a bit like being under the red, all-seeing eye of Mordor, a sense of continuously being under a hostile gaze. We always assume they are watching us -- and there's actually nothing we're trying to hide. Goddess knows, all they have to do is check my web site to find out everything I'm doing in Miami. I've been a public person for 25 years, a writer whose trade is the exposure of my own most intimate emotions, and that's just not compatible with clandestine actions or weapons production. We know they know who we are -- if we had any doubts the five customs agents who met my plane coming back from Cancun and took me off for a special search were a hint. It's the kind of welcome that makes a girl feel real special!

At any rate, we go off to the convergence center, where I do another training, hang out for a while, and manage not to go to any meetings. The state has not approved our use of the field for housing, the city has not come through with anything and we have nowhere for thousands of people to sleep.

Then Lisa and I head down to the fence to see the Root Cause march come in, ending their 34-mile trek from Fort Lauderdale. Root Cause is the coalition of people of color, the Immokalee Workers, Power U, and the Workers' Center, who want to draw attention to the FTAA's impact on farm laborers, immigrants, and the working poor.

The march is still some blocks away, so we walk down to the fence where squads of riot cops in full regalia are practicing their moves, running out in front of the fence to guard it. They look frightening at first, until we realize they are trying and failing to get their spacing just right, trying to get exactly an arm's length from each other and messing it up, so it becomes a bit like watching a rehearsal of a chorus line all dressed in boots and body armor and balaclavas that hide their faces and black jackets with no visible badges or names. The wind is rising and I feel the presence of Oya, orisha of the whirlwind, of fire and storm and revolution, sudden transformations and wild, chaotic change. Great forces are gathering here: Beneath the outward mobilization, I sense a confluence of enormous energies and powers, and nature herself feels angry, enraged at the continual violation. The clouds roll in like a drum roll, and the stage is set for Oya to dance.

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