Friday

Friday April 14
7 am
The squat

I wake up to half a dozen black dogs scurrying across my legs as the sun hits the window. Once again, I didn't sleep too good - how long can this go on. Looking around, I can't believe the tangle of bodies that have crammed into the room. The room itself is pretty wild - only in the daylight did I realize the extent to which this is a squat. There are no walls, only exposed slats; there's no ceiling either, or fixtures, or plumbing. There are water marks where the rain comes in. This is truly roughing it in the urban bush, and I have an intense admiration for the folks who are making this place work.

I let a good chunk of the room stir and rise before I follow suit, clinging to my exhaustion. Some people get up, pack their stuff, and go. Others have no stuff and, having slept in their day clothes, just get up and walk out. I find this pretty impressive too. Finally, I drag myself up and follow them, out the back door and onto the street, where I hear distant sirens and helicopter blades.

Friday April 14
10:30 am
Convergence center

After checking my bag and picking at the dog-eared bagels and orange slices outside, I haul my ass upstairs to the "community organizing" meeting. I hope that this will give me some insights into effectively sustaining our movements, broadening them and making them more responsive to community needs.

I do get some good, minor points of procedure from the workshop: the idea of appointing a 'vibes-watcher' and timer in addition to the usual secretary and chair; the organizer's 'rule of halves' (if you want 100 people out, get commitments from 200, and canvas at least 400), and the canny idea of avoiding phrases like "So what do we want to do about this" in favor of "If there are no objections, let's do this."

However, as this last notion reveals, the organizers hold a somewhat perfunctory and utilitarian view of what community organizing is supposed to do. For instance, a discussion on 'diversity' is framed almost exclusively in propagandistic terms - it makes initiatives more credible to have a varied membership, it helps to get your message out to new communities. I bring up what I think is an elementary point - that if 'minority' groups are represented in your membership then they will, out of self-interest, alert you and steer you away from oppressive measures, thus helping to form the group's positions - but it doesn't even get written down on the big piece of paper.

Likewise, the big discussion on 'WHY do community organizing?' centers around its general usefulness in getting a message out to people. But what's so radical about that? Shouldn't the goal be to listen to THEIR messages - to reverse the flow of power, as they say? I find this whole thing very disappointing, and I think it stems from stale notions within the environmental movement (both facilitators were enviros) that popular opinion needs to be manipulated, rather than empowered. This is not the road to utopia, people - work on it.

Friday April 14
noon
Convergence center

Outside for lunch, Maria directs me to a remote end of the alley, beyond the puppets, where our cluster, "1919," is having a meeting - including many new arrivals from Toronto.

For those of you who have been living in Dubuque these past months, maybe now is the time to explain the organizing principles of the Direct Action Network. The whole thing centers around three levels of organization - affinity groups, clusters, and spokes councils.

 - An affinity group is a group of people who are friends, basically, and their job is to stay together throughout the action, and watch out for each other. So our carload of Torontonians comprised an impromptu affinity group.
- A cluster is a collection of affinity groups, once again with some common social or ideological base - 1919 being basically Canadians - and a shared role in the action.
- Spokes council meetings were held nightly, and were used to determine objectives and tactics. Each affinity group sent a representative to spokes council, and their job was to represent the opinions and ideas of their group faithfully, and to make proposals and resolve differences among the groups. (This method is also used, during direct action, to make quick decisions within an affinity group, using spokespeople from each cluster.)

Of course, within the action there were people in positions of relative power, who acted as general facilitators or spiritual leaders, like Starhawk; and decisions had to be made within the parameters of non-violence that I ranted about earlier. But still, this form is basically the most impressive democratic decision-making tool I can remember stumbling into. It allows for consensus decision-making among thousands of people, and it really is effective and efficient. And yes, it 'reverses the flow of power.' Really.

The meeting itself is confusing and inconclusive, but it gives some insight into the weekend's plans. A map shows the area where the IMF/WB would be meeting; beyond that is a long line indicating the barricades. Affinity groups are planning to each claim an intersection, block it off bodily, and prevent any delegates from entering. 1919 is proposing to block intersection 'B' - which sits directly South of the meeting halls, at 18th and F street.

Having been so disillusioned thus far, I am loathe to commit to this plan of action; I want my freedom of movement, and I don't feel committed to joining a blockade. So I shut up and listen, as the meeting drifts away in a wait-and-see haze. We will meet again at 4 pm tomorrow.

Friday April 14
12:30 pm
The street

There are all kinds of meetings and plans happening this afternoon; but I am tired and grumpy. I decide that if I am going to be any use to anyone, I need some time off. So I start walking toward the IMC, to give it another shot.

Around the corner from convergence, I find myself striking up chance conversations with two locals. One, a woman sitting outside a boarded-up business, lures me into the classic diatribe on big business and exploited sweatshop workers, and she is responsive and supportive of my 'education' effort. Another guy walks up alongside me, and he also figures out I'm a protester. He voices his support, and adds, "Government's gotta get out of the way of business!" To which I reply, "Business gotta get out of the way of government!" To which he replies, "That too!" See, achieving consensus is easy!

Friday April 14
1 pm
Independent Media Center

This time, on entering the room, I see that my buddy Jay is here. Once he recognizes me, which takes a minute, we have a lovely little bonding session. He takes me to the back room for a tour of the computers - and to my shock, I run smack into another one, my friend Lori from St. John's, a cohort from my arty-farty Symptom Hall days, who got down here on a grant from some local community org. We chat it up and shake our heads in disbelief.

By now I'm thinking that maybe a media role would be OK after all - at least I'm sure of my ground. I figure maybe I'll volunteer to edit some stuff, maybe audio, for the web site on the shared computers. So I approach one of the tech people and volunteer myself. Well, in between editing clips of yet another folkie, he tells me that this is not a shared computer, it's his own, but once he finishes his project he'd be happy to let me use his. In the meantime, maybe I should check with the guys in the audio room. I dutifully head over there; but the two guys in there say it's their computer, and anyway they're packing it up and leaving in an hour. I go back to the other guy, and he does give me a quick crash course in Final Cut Pro, while continuing to finesse his folkie with snail-like artistry.

Hmm - so where the hell are the shared computers? Don't tell me there are none. Don't tell me that the IMC is just a repository for solitary and mysterious individualists who've got their and to hell with the rest. Don't tell me that this place isn't revolutionary either, Jesus!

Meanwhile something else is afoot - all the equipment from the large common space is being packed up and rerouted for the side rooms. Apparently the owner of the art gallery planned an opening for tonight, and the IMC is obliged to accommodate him by tearing the whole thing down.

So now I figure it's time to go gawk at the goddamned White House.

Friday April 14
4 pm
Lincoln Monument

So I leave the IMC, and directly south there stands a statue of Samuel Gompers, a big-ass lefty from a hundred years ago. A century later, maybe they build you a statue, and ship it to the boonies - festooning it with one of your less confrontational quotations, no less.

And yes, I see the White House, for the first time since the hellish Christmas Vacation of 1984. It's not as big as I thought it would be, but it is very nice, and there's some guy in the corner of the lawn giving a press conference, and across the street some cops look bored while a solitary religious fanatic hangs out and waves his placard. Am I one of them? Say it ain't so.

Then I walk block after block of towering old buildings, some of them not even that gripping architecturally, let alone ideologically. The effect of touring these enormous, remote slabs of power all by myself is not particularly empowering. But this is nothing compared to the main event: the Lincoln Monument.

The swarms of people climbing the ridiculous flight of stairs heighten this thing's aura of Yankee Mecca; people seem to be rubbing themselves on the marble slabs for good luck. And, up at the top, sits this big - but not impossibly big - Lincoln thing, a goofily suited guard at his knee, his torso bound by reconstructive scaffolding that creates an aura not of decrepitude but of care and reverence. He is flanked by big honking pillars, beyond which are two of his more familiar speeches, one of which has something vaguely to do with slavery maybe, but both seemingly of no intrinsic ideological worth...except, of course, as transmitters of patriotism, as an available excuse for long lines of foot-high stone letters.

None of which is to trivialize the power of the thing; not even the little souvenir booth in the corner could accomplish that. In fact, I realize that I, too, am rubbing myself against the walls - feeling the sharp edges of the sandblasted text, trying to get inside this thing, to comprehend it. Because at this moment I know that this, right here, is the embodiment of all we are up against. This is the temple of all power in America, a stone Rorschach, an empty vessel that could inspire people to charge like lemmings over the cliff, only because it is so HUGE.

It is a long, long walk down the stairs, staring across this Algonquin-size park at the big war phallus on the other side, looking at the transients consummating their pilgrimage at one of several impossibly chintzy weenie huts. Five minutes' descent later, as I finally touch back down on solid ground, I stop and look ahead. Directly in front of me is a large brass band. The players are all high school students, the conductor an old guy with a beard. They are all white. They all wear football jerseys with the number "00" on them. They play their instruments with surgical, vacant precision.

The song they play is "Ain't Misbehavin'."

Friday April 14
7:30 pm
Convergence centre

Finally, after some more knocking around, I arrive back at convergence for another yummy, stewy concoction. There are only a few people left here now; they sit around and talk among themselves. On the wall inside is an announcement of an anarchists' meeting tomorrow afternoon. It's good to see that the anarchists are active and organizing alternative tactics to the main action; I think about going. But even now I doubt that I'll make it, for the simple reason that I don't know anyone else who's going that route; in the main action I may have ideological concerns, but I also have social ties, and here and now that's somehow more important to me. Still, I keep the info handy, just in case.

As I sit by the wall outside and eat, a guy emerges from our building. Addressing himself to the remaining protesters, he asks that if people don't have business here will they please leave or come inside, that the neighbors have complained. He suggests that we should go up the street to the spokes council meeting at another nearby church.

This whole thing sounds very bad. I know what 'the neighbors have complained' might lead to. So I duck inside and withdraw my backpack from the lockup, and then I head for the spokes.

Friday, April 14
8:30 pm
This other church

I arrive at the church. I'm getting paranoid; walking up by myself, I was hyperconscious of my bulging backpack, and afraid of being picked off by the cops. The escalation was beginning.

As I arrive, the spokes meeting is concluding with a boisterous circle dance. I run downstairs to take a leak, and when I return new meetings have begin - some 1919 members are discussing strategy on the lawn, and a Flying Squad meeting is going on inside. I float around between these two meetings, more a spectator than a participant; but I learn interesting things about the Flying Squads, in which mobile protesters lend reinforcement to hot intersections. 1919, meanwhile, has planned a big meeting for the next afternoon.

Eventually the meetings end for the night, and the mingling begins. But I still have questions - I feel like I've missed something during the day. I want someone to update me on the current battle plan; so I approach a woman who I had seen co-facilitating the flying squad meeting. She can't help but she suggests I talk to that woman over there - Starhawk.

When I was a lad, I met one of my sister's friends, who was a practicing witch, in the nouveau-spiritual sense - albeit with a few gothic trappings. I was fascinated, and I asked her if Wicca had an sort of a text, a Bible. She handed me a book by Starhawk and said this was the closest thing she had. And that was all I knew about Starhawk until this past December, when my email, already bulging with Seattle posts, received a missive from her, praising the protesters and documenting the repression.

So she's a bit legendary to me. I'm not a starstruck guy, and I have no time for any kind of mysticism or New Age religiosity, but I know she is Important, a figurehead for some section of this particular direct action movement, and an important organizer. And now she's standing over there, she's kind of short and heavy but with the carriage of a goddess-in-training, and I am obliged to ask her some banal questions.

But first, I see as I cross the floor, I have to get in the queue behind an earnest older fellow who has led off by praising her works and speaking his admiration, words I'm sure she's heard many times and can do without. Then, to my surprise, he continues, "I just had to speak to you, because I heard what you were saying about violence in the protests, and I think it's a mistake to create divisions in the movement like this."

So here it is, and I am walking right into it. Starhawk gives her reply: she had assured all her community and everyone she spoke to that the protests would be nonviolent. If another group of protesters want to use violent tactics, somwhere else, another time, that's fine with her. But if she were to condone violence here... "I would feel dishonest."

Buddy reiterates his concern about this, and I just have to speak up. "I agree. How can you classify swearing and property damage alongside physical violence?" Starhawk follows her line of argument, which actually makes some sense to me, that she has reached many people who might never have been awake to these issues, and they were coming and participating; but that violence would alienate them, and drive them from the movement.

I guess this is starting to look like a tussle, because the conversation is suddenly impinged upon by a cohort of Starhawk's. I had seen them consorting earlier; a fiftysomething blonde woman with pursed lips and the longest frowniest eyebrows I have ever seen, and I don't think they're fake. She forcefully offers her own take on the issue: she is "two generations from starvation and dirt shacks," and she feels that "I have to use my privilege for all that I can." This line of argument is not convincing to me. "People are starving right now," I tell her in reply, but I know - in spite of the life experience implicit in the tactic of going limp at the sight of a cop - it's not just a class issue, it's a command issue, and that is the real barrier to class solidarity. I don't quite get it out that articulately, but trust me that's what I meant. Nonetheless, the parable is lost on Frowny, who seems intent on ending the conversation as quickly as possible.

Starhawk is tired, and I didn't want to have this conversation in the first place, and the other guy just will not shut up. So I let Frowny break up the party and accompany Starhawk to the door. Being a spiritual leader is tiring, as I can imagine, seriously. And I didn't even find anything out about the weekend's plans. Sigh.

Friday April 14
10:30 pm
Outside convergence center

There's a cop car on the street. Some guys are standing around it, talking to the police, telling them to stop intimidating the protesters. Against my judgment, I get drawn into the conversation once again. The cops, who are actually not acting like jerks, tell the guys that they shouldn't think they are anything special, that there are protests in DC every week, that they aren't singling us out for special attention. And they complain about the overtime, about not being able to spend time with their families. One of the guys insists that the issues we are fighting for are worth the bother. One of the cops says he agrees. He's got family in Puerto Rico, he knows about poverty, he's seen what the IMF has done there. But he's got a job to do, etc. etc. Still, it's a bit of a breakthrough.

I don't know how much can be achieved by talking to cops. They're on one side, we're on the other; whether we change their particular minds or not is not an immediate consideration, because their minds aren't part of their job. But I feel like I have to add something. So I tell them, do what you do, but don't go apeshit with the tear gas and rubber bullets please, we don't deserve it. They all shake their heads in horror and insist that no such thing will happen.

The conversation actually goes on for the better part of half an hour. Let the record show that I did shake their hands at the end - the ones that would take it, that is.

Friday April 14
11:30 pm
Independent Media Center

The IMC has recovered somewhat from its total dislocation earlier in the day. Monitors are back up, people are working, the room is still lively. Unfortunately, the art exhibit they had worked so hard to accommodate consists of large, full-color photographs of dead birds, mice and squirrels, laid out in brilliant settings and captured in full 'ironic' disgust. This shit is punishingly awful, and it does not help the vibe.

Meanwhile, Mr. Editor is STILL hammering away at his folkie video. Clearly, this machine would not be available for a while, and any notion I have of pitching in is dying a sad death. Nothing to do but sit and talk to Jay, which I do at satisfying length.

With the hours ticking away, and having received clearance to sleep in the rear, I lay out my rig, curl up with a couple chapters of "Final Cut" (the author attends a script reading for "Heaven's Gate"), and sleep, wonderful sleep.