Sunday

Sunday April 16
4 am
The apartment

The four of us in the bedroom - two of us on the rock-hard box spring, two on the mattress - stir to Dave's murmured reveille. In the dark, almost silently, burnt out but all wide awake and alert, we dress, wash, and proceed ten-strong out the door toward the van, which is to take us to the park where Group B will meet.

Sunday April 16
5:30 am
Logan Circle

At our meeting spot - way, way out in the South-East end of town, presumably to confuse the cops - we have convened with about a hundred of our fellow resisters, and having waited half an hour, decide that it is time to move. With the sun just beginning to rise, Pat leads us onto the street, banging out a rousing verse of the epochal "All Police Are Assholes" on his well-traveled acoustic guitar. We don our bandannas reeking with vinegar - courtesy of Meredith, who has joined the medical squad - these will act as antidotes to the pepper spray the cops will use on us.

So far the weather is cool but dry - none of the drizzly shit from yesterday. As we follow 14th St. south - by now my cluster has narrowed down to me, Kole, Antone and Braveheart, with the others having branched off into different roles - we see several other clusters of people working their way toward their positions. The only people I see on the street are our people, and I am feeling repeated rushes of excitement, part euphoria, part terror. Today, we are taking control of the capitol of the United States. This is big. This will not be easy.

Our route is planned to take us well south of our final station, curving down and around the White House to come up 18th. Now, in fact, we are one block east of the White House. Here the barricades are up, the cruisers are out, and as we proceed past a park which is wide and deep with riot police, our mood hovers uneasily between festival and high tension. Turning on to Constitution, we see the labour buses arriving for the huge, permitted rally that will run parallel to our direct action. We cheer and wave as we pass, marching down the middle of this artery street.

By now I'm right in the middle of the march, and I'm enjoying the moment, when Braveheart runs up behind us in a panic: two youngish girls, who had been dancing and laughing at the back of the march, had been tackled by police out of nowhere and roughly arrested. Being tight there for this has really frightened her, and the fear is contagious.

Now the cops are all over us, demanding that we get onto the sidewalk. Not wanting to get arrested en masse before we even reach our positions, we comply for now and, with admonitions to keep the crowd as tight as possible, we follow the curb around the corner and on to the home stretch, our battleground before us.

Sunday April 16
7 am
18th & F

This is a wide open, bright intersection - with tall grey buildings on either north corner, a parkette south-west, and a garden and concrete concourse to the south-east. And at the North crosswalk is a long, thin barricade, standing between us and a long line of helmeted riot police. And beyond them, if you are looking for it, you can see the World Bank building sitting up a block. Someone has even arranged for an outhouse.

There are enough people here to fill the intersection fairly thoroughly, and enough arrestables to form a solid, thick line along just one crosswalk. This raises a tactical issue: which walk do we block? Calls of "SPOKES!" fill the air for the first time today as a spokes council convenes to formulate a plan. Rather than organize our line immediately in front of the barricades, we decide that it is best to move from walk to walk depending on what is coming at us. And again, our mission is that no vehicles must cross our line.

I report back to my cluster. Braveheart is still frightened from the arrests, and is thinking about splitting. Kole is looking the militant in his black bandanna, and Antone and I are bracing ourselves for oncoming drama as the two arrestables. The sun is getting high, and it's already so warm that I take off my flannel outer shirt and tie it around my waist.

To our east, we see Section A forming an even larger blockade at the next intersection, which makes us nervous about our own numbers. And to our west is an empty intersection - technically ours, but we simply don't have the numbers to cover it; actually the subject never comes up among the group. In the distance, we see cop cars circulating, watching, sizing us up.

We wait.

Sunday April 16
8:30 am
18th & F

We are hypersensitive to movement - every time a police or civilian vehicle drives by on the next block, the crowd turns and braces themselves until it passes out of sight. At one point a cop car approaches our line from the south, and we all scramble over and make our show of force, but it stops and turns around before it got halfway up the block. Another reconaissance man.

Flying squads are circulating around our area of the blockade; this is good, because we are becoming even more self-conscious about our numbers as the reality of confrontation comes clearer. There are also messengers, travelling between intersections to fill us in on the broader scene - which, so far, is holding steady.

The flying squad has passed and is heading for A. We are milling, and the scattered drummers in our group are passively doing their thing. Then from the west crosswalk comes the call:

"BUS!"

Everyone turns. on the next block, flanked by cop cars and officers on foot, a charter bus is slowly turning the corner to face our direction It is going to try to breach our barricade.

I feel like everyone around me is on fast-forward with me on slow motion, as the crowd rushes to the west and a thick line of bodies forms. I am simulating cardiac arrest as I scan the line; there are a lot of people here, and behind me the flying squad is turning around to join us. Maybe they don't need me in the front line...but no, this is why I'm here. I have to do it, and in two seconds I am locking arms and sitting crosslegged on the pavement.

The bus seems to hesitate before it lurches inexorably toward us, looking like a motherfucking Star Destroyer as it leads its convoy of enforcers toward us. It is now that I realize that I am seated on almost the Northernmost edge of the line - not only am I locked into my first act of civil disobedience, I am in the absolute bulls-eye.

I see them coming. It takes them forever. But when they are upon us, it is as if they had descended from space, as if the actors have walked off the screen. The entire line seems stunned and unsure as the lead cop, wading into the crowd, grabs the guy to my left and starts dragging him away. "Help me, people!" the guy yells as he is lifted off the ground. "I'm being arrested - pile on! Pile on!" Snapping to attention, everyone turns and puppy-piles, and soon enough he is liberated from the cop's grip.

Suddenly, I find myself lost in a sea of commotion, frantic wriggling flailing bodies trying desperately to hold their defiant torsos to the ground. Everyone is screaming, and the cops are multiplying as the bus looms a couple of feet in front of us.

Suddenly my observation is interrupted, as I am grabbed under the shoulders and dragged back by gloved hands. I am set down and the hands grab at another, and without thinking I scramble right back into position. Am I going to be arrested? Beat up? Will my glasses be smashed? It doesn't matter - now I'm in.

The bus inches forward, and I scuttle to my right, sitting myself directly in front of the grill. The bus stops inches from my face, and I sit there staring at it, looking up at the bus driver looking distraught. I spend fifteen seconds here that feel like an hour, and then I turn to look at the melee which is continuing to my left. To my left - I realize that I'm sitting here alone, away from any protective arms, completely vulnerable. In one frantic motion I extend my arms, read back and fall on to the puppy pile, my legs dangling behind me.

I spend a long time clinging to this heap of bodies, immersed in the lukewarm sweat and din, one eye on the inert front wheel of this hamstrung bus. Then, to my shock and amazement, I see the wheel turn counterclockwise, and the bus move back. The chaotic shouts of the crowd turn into an immense, unified shriek as the police silently step back and the bus executes a full retreat. Rising from the ground, jumping around, hugging and slapping in unrestrained euphoria. We won.

Out of danger and composed again, I can see that the bus is completely empty. I wonder why they tried to drive it through. Was it a mindless excuse for confrontation, a simple exercise to test our resilience? It doesn't matter. I see Antone and give him a shaky, deep embrace. Braveheart comes over with Kole - she seems completely transformed, at ease and secure again. Our numbers seem to have doubled over the course of this maneuver. The flying info girl gives us the fist and the crowd cheers. I stagger off the street, sit down in the garden, and sob.

Sunday April 16
9:15 am
18th & F

The anarchist Black Bloc is on the move - a unified mass of black pullovers and bandannas and banners - and when they come through our intersection, fists raised in solidarity, they get an immense round of applause. Everyone seems glad to see them, and I for one am reassured by the strength that they represent. Folks may bitch about them endlessly, they may make up rules that specifically exclude them, but they sure are glad to see them coming. How ironic.

Then, just as everyone has caught their breath from the last confrontation, we are approached from the other side - a cop car moves to cross the barricades and breach our line from behind. This happens so fast that we don't have time to form a line. A few people manage to get in front of it, but this is a very different scenario from the last - the car jerks ahead threateningly, blares its siren for good measure, and the barricade cops do not waste any finesse as they rush out, whip out the pepper spray and, after a few seconds of struggle, fumigate a path for their buddies. Once the car is gone, one cop sprays a guy with a camera, just for laughs.

Spokes! What the hell was that? We need to nail this down: are we blocking people in as well as out? People are confused. The verdict: no one is going to cross our line - from ANY direction - without a fight.

And it looks like a fight is coming, when the barricades are suddenly rushed by a huge convoy of cops in full riot gear. Everyone takes a deep breath as these freaks move into formation, in a long line three deep - but all they end up doing is just stand there, waiting like us, staring us down.

Saturday April 16
9:45 am
18th & F

In between confrontations, the mood turns festive. The drums start pounding 'er out, people start dancing and chanting, with a solid line of dancers replacing the blockade. The intersection comes alive under the dour glare of the helmetheads.

Still shaken from all the action - and feeling the bruises from my manhandling around the armpits - I take a few steps away from the crowd, and lie down in the middle of the street, grinning as the sun warms me up and absorbing the joyous noise of the crowd. I lie here for a while, dimly aware of the photographers scurrying and crouching, when a woman walks up to me and bellows, "Excuse me, but do you wanna look like a SCUMBAG?"

I open one eye and glare at this person, awaiting an explanation. Soon I clue in that she is referring to the photographers, who as it turns out are taking pictures of ME, the layabout malcontent running down this great country. "I did PR for Greenpeace," she puffs up, "So I know how the media work." I don't bother telling her about my degree in Radio and TV, or that I'm not here to project appropriate imagery, or that I generally don't give a shit. In fact, I'm still so dazzled at her audacity in labeling moi a scumbag, that I can only get up and limp meekly into the crowd.

Sunday April 16
10 am
18th & F

Every now and then, a car turns north on 18th and gets halfway up to us; then we all have to wave and shout "Go!" to the befuddled tourist at the wheel until he gets the point and beats it. All of these cars respect our blockade, and we applaud them appropriately for it.

The messenger comes back around to tell us that, so far, we have stopped the meeting from proceeding. Everybody cheers.

The mood is somewhat muted, though, when we see the bus rounding the parkette and stopping at 17th. The doors open, and still more riot cops trot out, spreading across the street and facing us in tight formation. Time to take our positions again.

Still not recovered from the bus confrontation, this time I just have to stand back from the front line. But there is still a good crowd, although, with the flying squad absent, not enough to occupy eighty riot cops for long. We stay in this position for many minutes, without movement. Amid the tense anticipation, one of the front-line protesters calls out, "Okay, so the cops are getting ready to move on us - but, everybody, don't be discouraged. We've done a great job today, and we're gonna win!"

This inspires a wave of cheering, but even before he has finished talking, the entire line of cops inexplicably decides to turn around, get back on the bus, and leave. Everyone is totally surprised by this - but, needless to say, very very happy.

I see Pat in the parkette - his guitar hanging useless, the D and G strings busted from too much serenading. he tells a tale from the North side, where protesters stole iron rods from a construction site and constructed a gnarled barricade in the road with some newspaper boxes. Apparently the police did not like this at all.

Sunday April 16
10:20 am
18th & F

Spokes! The issue of the moment is: do we let ambulances through the line? We have been informed that we will be in big trouble if we try to block them, and there is of course the ethical question. But there are concerns about delegates sneaking through by ambulance. Ultimately, the group decides not to let them through.

When I report this to my cluster, they are a little bit bemused. What kind of tactic is that? Kole is pissed, and brings up a new issue: disinformation. Was someone trying to plant stupid ideas in our head to undermine us? Why, exactly, would they be smuggling people through in ambulances rather than, for instance, driving them in via the deserted street one block over?

Kole takes this opportunity to introduce me to our first mole of the day: some pudgy balding 30-year-old guy, hanging out in the middle of the crowd, talking to the authorities on his cel phone. He isn't even trying to look like a protester, unless the jeans are attempted camouflage. We all go over and hang around as conspicuously close to him as possible, listening in. I don't think he cares, but it's fun.

Sunday April 16
10:40 am
17th & F

Things are relatively calk, and I need a change of scenery, so I jog down the road to check out Section A. The vibe here is quite a bit different - the group is large enough that it seems less unified, especially since everyone is split up into cluster meetings. Other than this, not much is going on.

Then, turning south, I see the first 'march' of the day - a procession of labour and justice groups emerging from the enormous permitted demonstration happening in the Ellipse park. At the head of this procession are the 'illegal' puppets - celebrating their photo-op liberation in the by now sweltering sunshine. I admire the banners for a couple minutes, then hurry back.

Sunday April 16
11 am
18th & F

Now, suddenly, a car is approaching us from the east - there's no way he could have got through section A, so he must have been parked on the street, maybe working a night shift. This takes everybody by surprise, he barrels right through the diffuse crowd on that end, and noses right into the middle of the intersection. I'm standing on the west crosswalk now, as he is about to pass the rest of the way through, and I'm mad - civilian or no civilian, this is fucking rude.

So I maneuver to my left and stand in front of his bumper - all by myself, as it turns out, a lovely Tiananment Square moment. This gives me a fine vantage point on his expression of dull contempt, and to my amazement he actually makes overtures to running me over, nudging me sharply with his front fender. It doesn't take long for people to rally around to heap scorn on this guy, and soon the cops - who you will recall have been keeping an eye on us from behind the barricades - decide to come out and play macho.

One of us tries to talk to the driver through the window, and gets nowhere; meanwhile, another kneels to take the air out of his tire. At this, a cop decides to bounce his nightstick off the guy's head with a horrifying ping!

The guy staggers in shock, and now the cop is the focus of attention. We allow the driver's friend - who has run out of a nearby building to his rescue - to negotiate his release, citing his union credentials, as if that validated his crossing our picket line and acting like such a prick. But we've got bigger fish to fry. There is a push to the barricades as the cop retreats, and there is much yelling. The guy just stands there and looks smug.

"You can't do shit like that!" I demand of the jerk. "He was totally unarmed, and you come up behind him and crack his head! There was no reason to do that!"

"Oh yeah?" the cop retorts. "Well, I was stopping him in the act of assaulting that man!" At which point he snorts, "What do you have to say to that, smart guy?"

What I SHOULD have said is that if it's a choice between a tire and this guy's head, I damn well know which side I'm on. But I was dumbstruck at the guy's audacity, not to mention that he lowered himself to engage with me verbally at all - even a moronic exchange like that. Soon enough this guy got in a cruiser and zipped away, no doubt re-stationed at some other corner where he wasn't indelibly tagged as asshole number one.

For the first time I get a good look at the cops behind the line - long since returned to their original, non-riot density. The majority are black, and there are a couple women; but all are well-trained to show no emotion as they stand. I look in vain for any betrayal of sympathy in their faces as I speak.

"When you go back to the station," I say to the remaining officers, "You tell him what you think about what he did. You know that what he did was wrond."

I hesitate.

"I hope."

Sunday April 16
noon
18th & F

As our blockade continues, we are engaged by a messenger I haven't seen before, who runs into the crowd and loudly announces that the other intersections are dispersing, so we might consider letting ours go too and join the main rally. Spokes! No one buys it, and we are staying.

Word is also circulating that the conflict is escalating in other quarters - over in A, apparently, the cops started busting things up, and in the process bumped a guy to the ground head first, causing his head to split right open and bleed all over the place. I'm sure this was an accident on the part of the cops - the pictures would have been awful public relations if anyone had chanced to publish them. In other news, the puppets have apparently been tear gassed. Cops seem to really hate puppets, don't they. I figure this is a PR move too - the last thing they want is for an anticapitalist insurrection to look cute.

Meanwhile, the protesters are talking to the cops, in an apparent effort to defuse tensions before they start. "We just want to thank you for doing such a great job today, and for keeping your cool." Everyone applauds. Aw, no, don't do this, don't go there. "We know you've got a job to do. We know you don't want to be here." "We're fighting for you, too." "We love you." Oh, no. Kole and I exchange glances.

The next part is kind of interesting, though. "Does anyone have any water for the police?" someone suggests. "It's hot out here, and they've been working a long time." Quickly, half a dozen small water bottles emerge from the crowd and are collected. The bearer of water walks up to the barricade, looks at the nearest cop as though to say, please don't cave my head in for being here; he carefully places the water just on our side of the barricade; one falls over and rolls onto the cops' side. "We aren't here to fight you, we're fighting the World Bank," someone offers, and the gushing attempts at goodwill continue as the cops continue to stare at us stoically. Then one cop steps forward - a big guy with a big forehead, a Bob Hope nose and a fishy meanie mouth, looking uncannily like Toronto's own race-baiting queer-party-crashing asshole chief of police Fantino. As the accolades from the crowd continue, he abruptly raises his foot and stomps the water bottle, causing it to splash all over the street. The crowd boos as he turns around and goes back to his position.

There, I see someone in a nicer looking hat whispering in his ear; and soon he is gone too, shipped away just like the baton geek. This is not much noticed, but I actually take this as a gesture of peace, a subtle acceptance of our attempt at conciliation. My doubts remain, but at least it's a scrap of humanity from the other side, which is some kind of victory, I guess.

Sunday April 16
1 pm
18th & F

At last the parade, having gone all the way around the barricaded section, is rounding the bend and coming to us. They cheer us, we cheer them - it is absolutely euphoric. Along with a fine assortment of banners, we are treated to a beautiful piece of non-tear-gassed puppetry, with a ravenous machine marked 'structural adjustment pulverizer' eating various resources and workers' rights, only to be jammed by a giant 'liberation' wrench. Hot on its heels comes another great performance - a transcendently prissy vocal group singing some sort of Renaissance ballad called "Dump the Bosses Off Your Back," which couches its propaganda in (I assume) intentionally hilarious poetics like "Wild plants of nature are left for to burn."

As the parade passes, our cluster discusses our impulse to follow it and check out the rest of the event. Yes, there is still a position to hold. But with the meetings already underway, with the rhetoric getting uncomfortably fruity and us feeling the first flush of encroaching sunstroke, we consense that moving on is a good thing. So we latch on to the parade and head for the labour rally.

Sunday April 16
1:30 pm
The Ellipse

To my astonishment and delight, our arrival in this huge, jammed-solid park coincides with the very beginning of the only thing I was interested in seeing - Michael Moore has taken the mic to issue an introduction for Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader. I have been following Nader with interest, in the hopes that he could point the way to some kind of real transformation of electoral politics - or at least a destabilization of the two-party fiefdom that could open a window to some of the debates that actually matter. So I am on the edge of my seat when Moore's stumpage wraps up and Nader takes the podium.

And, of course, I am disappointed. After a thunderous greeting from the crowd, the guy manages to say precisely nothing that gets them so worked up again; when the y do start to whoop and holler it is as though they are responding to a perceived obligation, an invisible cue card. He is simply not a charismatic speaker - these things matter, it's politics - and his ideology, which was so dead-on in the interviews I had read to that point, went vague in person, with his ultimate vision a depressingly slippery 'yes to kindness.' And his strategic use of ten dollar words like 'morbidity' and 'oligarchs' made me suspicious.

We beat it posthaste after this, crossing the park to stumble over free chili from some local activists, and expensive ice cream from the local park consignment. We found a tree to lie under and were there for half an hour, teetering on the brink of sleep. We might not have ever made it back to our comrades in section B, had it not provided such a convenient means of missing the Indigo Girls. I hate folk music.

Sunday April 6
3:15 pm
18th & F

When we return, all attention is focused toward the barricades - where a line of a dozen protesters is lying on the ground in a human chain - the head of one nestled between the legs of the next. They have announced their refusal to leave until the cops agree to do the same.

The sun is beating down, and they are all sweating and dehydrated, so there is a steady stream of hands passing spray bottles full of water, and holding cardboard for shade. They are leading a singalong of resistance songs among the crowd, which is at least as large as it was before we left.

As I peer over the shoulders in front of me at this scene, a burly guy on a bicycle sidles up behind me.
"Hey, can I spray the chicks down?"
Oh brother. I will waste no tact on this guy. "Fuck off."
He remains belligerent. "Aww, that's not very nice."
"Yeah, well neither was that."
"You said the first mean word."
A woman next to me turns, too. "Get lost."
I decide the best strategy is to pretend the guy doesn't exist, so I turn away. Seeing this, he tries to get my attention with a diabolical "Heh-heh-heh" - exactly like that, I swear, a mad scientist laugh.
And then he does it again. "Heh-heh-heh-heh." I refuse to indulge him.
Finally, he pumps his bike away, with a final parting shot.
"By the way, I'm a faggot too."
I have come face to face with the enemy and he is pathetic.

Having seen all we need to see of our friends lying on the ground, we walk away from the center of the action, and lounge in the garden for a while. As I sit, I see that a couple of older people have moved to the front to address the crowd. Curious, I move in. Turns out it's Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, two of Canada's upper-echelon lefties, singing their praises of our determined protests. This kicks off a bizarre and lengthy teach-in, featuring a moderate religious nut, a dodgy tunesmith with a banjo, a couple of adorable kids, and a Californian gay guy in a grass skirt who proposes that the world would be a better place if everyone took up sailing.

Throughout this, the "Thank you, Mr. Police Officer" routine remains a persistent sub-theme. At one point, one guy says, "That's bullshit - the cops are assholes!" and is roundly shushed by the crowd. Hate to admit it, but at this point I see what they mean - after a day of working out this detente, now is not the time to escalate. Needless to say, though, I see what he means, too.

Sunday April 16
6 pm
18th & F

By now, our intersection is packed to overflowing with people - curious onlookers drawn to the now-defunct teach-in, and wanderers from the many groups that have packed their own blockades in. In fact, a messenger arrives to inform us that we are the last blockade of the day to be holding their positions - very cool!

But the day is dragging on, and the messenger suggests that we should pack it in, feel good about the job we have done, and save some energy for more protests tomorrow. The human chain has a brief discussion and agrees. We cheer ourselves once more, and the crowd begins to diffuse. This incredible moment has passed.

My affinity group gathers. Having been on the south side all day, we decide to walk around and check out what's going on to the north. I take one last long look at our battlefield, and we're off.

Sunday April 16
6:30 pm
21st & Pennsylvania

We make our way around the barricades, through the still-milling crowds of demonstrators - and also through some frat-boy looking contrarians, staging a fake sit-in with bogus slogans. Some folks are trying to engage them - not us. The cute kids from the teach-in - a black girl of about eight and her toddler brother - are hanging out on the curb with signs that say "Fuck McDonald's" and "Who wants to be a millionaire - not me, I just don't want to be BROKE."

Around the corner, at 21st & Penn, the protester presence is just as scattered, but the barricades across the wide street feature a much more intense police presence. Meredith is here, working furiously with the med unit, supernally stressed out. Not far away, select protesters are attempting the police in debate. To my surprise, they actually seem to be responding, though not in any kind of favorable way. After an entire afternoon of stonewalling silence, we can't resist joining in.

The most talkative of the officers is a black woman - a sergeant actually - who is wearing her helmet on an angle. She is openly sneering at us. "You don't know what you're talking about," she says through her nose. "You're just a bunch of rich kids who don't know anything about life. Tomorrow you'll go home, and nothing will change."

"That's not true," says one guy. "We're all committed to doing this, because we believe in it."

"Well, what are you even fighting about?" she shoots back. "You don't even know what the issues are."

This makes me angry. "Well, do you want to hear it, or are you just gonna make fun of us?"

"We're fighting against multinational corporations," the guy continues. "We're fighting against these huge powerful institutions that are helping business to override the government."

Another guy adds, "We're fighting against sweatshops. The World Bank are helping corporations set up sweatshops in third world countries, they're making billions of dollars and the workers get nothing.."

Kole steps in. "Yeah, and have you heard of structural adjustment? The IMF and the World Bank are telling African countries that if they want the money to develop, they have to cut their social spending and allow American companies to come in and do whatever they want."

She has an angry little smile on her face. "What do you know about Africa?" she says. "You've never been to Africa. All you people are just giving me the same line. You don't know what you're talking about."

I decide to give it a try. "Okay, well listen. I grew up on a farm, all right? What these guys are doing is, they're going in where people have been farming a certain way all their life, for generations, and they're patenting the seeds that they use. And they're saying, you can't use these seeds unless you buy them from us. So now these people's whole way of life is totally screwed up."

"There, you see, that I understand," she says. "That's the kind of thing that makes sense to me. You guys need to talk about stuff like that."

"But it's all the same thing," Kole responds. "It's all about money and power."

"Yeah," I say, "All these things come down to the same thing. These companies go into these places, and all they do is take their money and their resources, and people don't get anything from them."

The cop thinks for a second. "You mean like Nike?"

"Yeah! Nike is a perfect example."

"Well, I agree with that. I don't buy Nike stuff. Cause they take all that money, from our community, and they ain't giving nothing to us." She looks as though she is thinking.

"That's what we're against. And I know we're privileged, a lot of this is stuff that I've never had to deal with in my life. But I'm here to say, I don't care if I've got these privileges because of where I was born or whatever, I'm going to fight for the rights of these other people. And that's important too."

"Yeah, but why do you gotta do all this? They're telling us you got molotov cocktails. What are we supposed to think if you're throwing molotov cocktails at us? And we gotta work, I've been out here sixteen hours a day all week." Her tone has changed - she's less distant now, she seems to have lost a bit of control.

I tell her this is definitely a nonviolent protest, that everyone has been going crazy over nonviolence all week. Then Kole starts telling her about how IMF policies affect Croatia, but she has retreated - she's stopped herself from engaging with the issues and focused on the 'violence' stuff. But, still, there was a gleam there - I think we got through to her, and I think it was worth doing. And I learned something about police propaganda - it's not just for us, it's for them, a reassuring excuse for their own bullshit. She was a victim of this, and I was grateful for her engagement - it was almost like she was teaching us, telling us how to make sense of these issues for the outsiders.

Meanwhile, Antone has been hanging out at the south barricade. There, he tells us, a few white male officers were openly making fun of the woman we were talking to - mocking her accent, sneering at the way she wears her hat. He actually confronted them about it - "How can you talk like that about someone you work with?" To which they responded, "Because it's true!"

And this woman was their superior. I think long and hard about how this woman got here, about why she decided to become a cop, about the barriers she had to surmount, the good intentions she must have had and the determination she would have needed. And I am saddened that, as these racist losers only helped to emphasize, she was wrong every step of the way.

Sunday April 16
7:30 pm
Umpteenth church - basement

We arrive to a spectacularly impressive scene - an enormous concrete basement room, with a raised narrow section overlooking a wider main floor, packed to overflowing with hundreds and hundreds of excited, exhausted activists. The walls are sweating like crazy; everyone is listening to the facilitator as she works her way toward the mammoth task of achieving consensus about the next day's action.

My compatriots soon realize that they are too exhausted to bear with the meeting, so they head home, leaving me to take notes and report back. I sidle through the crowd on the platform, scale a railing, and lower myself into the mainspace.

It is clear that the numbers for the next day will be somewhat diminished, as people are becoming exhausted, and the labour march contingent is gone. Having got the restless crowd's fleeting attention with the effective device of "If you can hear me, clap once...if you can hear me now, clap twice...", the facilitator begins a long session of call-and-response, in order to determine the number of arrestables remaining in each affinity group. After all the tallying is done, there are still 2000 people planning to participate, and 800 arrestables.

The next issue is the nature of the action to be taken. We know that we don't have enough people to hold comprehensive blockades as we did today; this is even more clear when it is announced that the police have now expanded the barricades to enclose an additional two dozen blocks. We know the four hotels the delegates are staying at; the possibility is raised of concentrating on blocking them from leaving, but there is concern that this will be legally construed as 'kidnapping.' Another tactic discussed is focusing on the highway, creating a comprehensive traffic snarl that will entrap the delegates. There is no consensus, though.

This is fantastically hard. Everyone has been at this for fourteen hours, they have spent a day of direct action and confrontation with police, running around in the hot sun. People are paranoid; at one point someone starts a rumour that the cops are coming down the stairs. It is incredible that the meeting is held together at all, and I have to admire the facilitator for her heroic efforts in keeping things moving. To break the stalemate, we decide to break into groups, narrow down the range of possibilities, and choose the best. The group I latch on to is low on ideas. The most compelling notion comes from a guy who suggests we simply jump the barricades and run. He says he learned this technique at the Contra-training School of the Americas, and I don't know if he means he was a protestor or a student.

The discussion that follows is long and chaotic, and tempers are short. There is considerable momentum down several dead ends, and soon the very concept of direct action is being questioned, with the feeling that we are just playing 'war games.' (This doesn't stop one fellow from yelling out his suggestion - "Throw shit at the cops! Just kidding.") The plan that is finally articulated goes like this: meet at 7 am in the park south of Constitution, and create a huge are installation expressing resistance to the IMF/WB; break at noon for lunch; then, at 1 pm, head to the prison en masse for jail solidarity.

But even once this is decided, a significant group is opposed to such a nonconfrontational approach. The facilitator can only suggest that they go into a separate room and formulate a separate action; at this point many people leave to do this. This seems to me a good time to leave, since there is at least a plan, however lame, that I can submit to my coterie; so I start making my way to the door as well.

When I am almost to the door, someone finally snaps: a bearded, burly process nerd stands up and starts screaming about how his ideas are being ignored and he's being oppressed. Then something amazing happens - in a matter of seconds, everyone else in this huge room of stressed-out people are pointing at him and going "Ommmmmm." He mellows out and sits down, and the discussion continues from where it left off. What a great tactic.

Outside, people are milling about, and some folks from this poor neighborhood are sitting on their steps, watching them. "They don't give a damn about us," one of them says. "Tomorrow they'll go home, and everything will be the same." And while this is harsh, I know what he means and allow him his point: they have more immediate concerns.

And as another police helicopter whirrs overhead, it occurs to me for the first time that it may be them, not us, that the cops are really watching.

Sunday April 16
10 pm
The apartment

I give the room the update - there's this stuff going on, but it seems shaky, who knows. As a group, we decide not to try to get out first thing, but sleep in, then walk out and just see what happens.

The news is on. A reporter on the scene describes it as "like something out of a third world country...intimidating, to say the least." He also notes the presence of "A group who call themselves 'The Anarchists.'" dressed in "somewhat intimidating garb." However, "The delegates on the inside of the World Bank are oblivious to all the protests."

On another channel, we see an expert commentator slamming the protesters relentlessly, and because we know better we can afford to find his pigheaded ignorance hilarious: "They were completely disorganized...all they did was stand around in a circle and talk to each other!" Kole's mom finds all this as ridiculous as we do.

Kole mentions the moles that we had run into during our day, and Jesse tells us about his encounter. He was sitting in a restaurant with one of the Black Bloc who was complaining that "The protests were a failure...they didn't go far enough." At this, a guy sitting at the next table bounded over and started in: "Yeah, fuck that! The only way to protest is two or three people making all the decisions themselves!" He was about thirty-five years old, wearing a black bandanna and a tie-dyed T-shirt. Incredible how, with all their billions of dollars and counterinsurgency strategies, the cops still can not figure out how a protester dresses, acts, or thinks.

Kole's mom, meanwhile, is trying to call the superintendant, to see if he has my backpack. I had practically forgotten all about it during the day, but I am still very calm about the loss. When I thought about it my guts would churn, but I could reconcile myself to it and see past the loss. But I was not looking forward to crossing the border with no ID; so if it were to turn up after all, that was fine with me. We wouldn't know until the super got back into the office - tomorrow afternoon.

And there is one final revelation, as I accompany Braveheart out to the front for her evening cigarette. Namely: I know her! She used to go out with my former best friend Andrea; she has even met my mother. The trip just would not have been complete without one more impossible coincidence.

And then, finally, we go to bed.