Monday

Monday April 17
8 am
The Apartment

I wake up and emerge to see the rest of the group watching television again: the Black Bloc had been savagely busted en route to an early morning action, about 50 of them have been arrested. We aren't out of the woods yet.

Kole's mom has made us a great breakfast of bacon and eggs and cheese and toast, and as we eat we discuss our plans. Since we all have different plans and priorities, we decide to split up, and rendezvous back here at 4 pm. This is a dicey plan, since in the current vacuum anything could happen, but it is the best we've got.

My group today is down to Kole, Antone and myself. We take the elevator down to the street, and step out into the pissing rain.

Monday April 17
9:30 pm
New Hampshire & M

Having no idea what is really happening or where, we just decide to walk. By now the barricades are damn near at our front door, so we just follow the edge of it north. It takes us about three minutes to find the action.

Coincidentally, we run headlong into the boisterous march-in-progress at the very corner for which they were destined. Here there are not only a huge number of police, but also some big armoured tanks, with beefy National Guard lackeys dripping off the sides. The protest pours into this odd-angled intersection, and continues to chant and yell.

We are at the very same corner where the Gap demo took place on Thursday - someone has hung a sign in the store window which reads, "Clothes made by children, for children." This is funny.

What follows is a classic 'demonstration' - an extended session of autonomous chaos. There are at least a thousand of us, and arbitrary pockets of energy and inspiration are everywhere. Someone hands me a sign, someone else hands me a puppet. The rain continues to come down. There are worries that the police will circle around and enclose us, like they did to the Saturday march, but this never happens.

After a while, a drum circle breaks out towards the back, and having no other focus, we join the large crowd dancing in its midst. While we boogie, Kole whispers to me, "That guy is definitely not a protester," and I look over to see this huge soccer-player-looking guy with cauliflower ears, dressed in neon orange shorts, doing the frug to the bongo beat. All three of us have a hard time not openly laughing at him.

Monday April 17
11:30 am
New Hampshire & M

The party drags on, and there is still no clear sense of direction. With people still sunburnt from yesterday, the rain is promising rampant hypothermia. Several spokes! ensue, in an effort to determine a strategy. Around this time, a big guy in a bandanna collars me: "Jonathan!" he pulls off his mask, and I see that it's John Johnson - one of my chip-mill fighting friends from Tennessee, and one of the stars of the video that I was scoring at the start of this whole shebang. We embrace and exalt.

Around this time, a new wrinkle is added and repeatedly utilized in the collective communication process: the use of massive "repeat after me's" to transmit info without a megaphone. Through this process, the protest finds a focus: if we will not be allowed to approach the World Bank buildings legally, then protesters will cross the barricades en masse and give themselves up for arrest.

This idea is so instantly popular that there is a rush for the barricades, resulting in major beating down and pepper spraying that I watch from halfway back in the crowd. This slows things down: hundreds of us sit down on the ground in front of the barricades, and begin to chant and sing, waiting to be arrested. Among this crowd is Antone, wo hands me his backpack and says he'll find his own way home, that he wants to go to jail.

As those at the front attempt to negotiate, a woman with a bicycle and a megaphone starts blaring the Darth Vader theme into the crowd, which nobody finds more hilarious than me.

The negotiations take so long - well over an hour - that Antone has time to find the whole thing pointless and change his mind. Finally, the negotiators announce an agreement - the protesters will be allowed to cross the line, and will be arrested.

Monday April 17
1 pm
New Hampshire & M

The protesters are instructed to line up, lock arms, and proceed toward the barricades ten at a time. This is made somewhat difficult by the swarm of media that gather around, snapping and shooting all over them. After extended chaos, I help to organize a human barrier, locking arms in two long lines on either side of the hundreds of people who have chosen to cross. One photographer tries to muscle past me. I tell her that we have been asked to not let her through, and she acts all indignant and busts through the next available set of arms. Oh well, I tried.

The rain continues to come down as the first group crosses the line. Whatever misgivings I might have about this tactic - I never even consider crossing myself - I am carried away with the emotion of the moment, as wave after endless wave of people cross through the line and are led away to jail. It takes at least two hours for everyone to pass through. A journo asks me how many people are crossing, and while I have no idea, someone nearby suggests that the number is over five hundred.

Throughout it all, a guy who I think is the chief of police is at the barricades, cracking jokes and motioning people forward like he's directing traffic. He is definitely playing to the cameras, yet again, and I have little doubt who will get the sympathetic edge in the coverage - my only question is whether this act would get any mainstream coverage at all.

I see John crossing the line, yelling slogans and howling triumphantly as he goes. And not far behind him is my IMC buddy Lori - my first encounter with her in days. Just as her line is moving forward, she rushes over to me and gives me her mother's phone number. I am to tell her that she is in prison, but she is safe and happy. I hug her goodbye and she, too, tumbles into the police state's maw.

Finally, the last of the arrestees have gone. I find Antone and Kole, and as it's now past 3, we decide to head back and prepare to go.

Monday April 17
4 pm
The apartment

I call Lori's mother and give her the message. She seems concerned, but resigned, like she has been through this before.

I hang up, and Kole's mom struggles through the front door...and she has got my backpack! Oh, my God! She says some tenant thought it was a bomb, and made him take it down to his office. I am in heaven.

When the rest of our party arrives, I fish out my souvenir bowling ball and get everyone to sign it. One of the Montreal guys comes up with the perfect double-edged inscription - "STRIKE!"

We all hug Kole's mom goodbye, wander down to the street, and we're off - into the rainy afternoon, toward long hours on the highway, atrocious small-town pizza, an easy border crossing, and some of the most harrowingly bad driving I have ever witnessed. So long, DC.