Yesterday was the big march
in Edinburgh. We grabbed a ride on the transport van from the convergence.
It’s an aspect of this mobilization that someone has thought about every
possible support feature—even down to hiring minivans to transport demonstrators.
Mark, who has led climbs in the Himalayas, was our driver. “How
long will you be picking people up,” we asked. “Until everyone
gets home,” he replied. I was thinking about how bus driving is
one of those unglamorous jobs that aren’t high status in ordinary life,
and how missing the action in order to drive other people to it is the kind
of thing that a hierarchical society reserves for some lesser class—but
here it’s a job that has plenty of volunteers, because it needs to be
done. And how we appreciate it!
Edinburgh was packed with people, and full of the energy of a city when a big
demonstration is happening. The organizers of the Make Poverty History
march asked everyone to dress in white, and most people did. Not the clowns,
the fairy army or the anarchists of course, but the overall impression was a
sea of white and those of us who had neglected to pack any white clothes stood
out like little dark blots. Lisa, Juniper, Geneva and I cruised through
the rally area, then ran directly into a small group of the local Pagans with
whom we had a date to have a ritual later. Niall, Louise and Victoria
were carrying a banner for the combined Dragon Network—a Pagan activist
network in the British Isles, and Scotland Reclaiming. “Now
is the day, Now is the hour, Ours is the Magic, Ours is the Power!” it
read.
We marched together for a short while, but the march was so crowded the pace
was more of a crawl. I’m always glad for that, politically, as it
means that there are lots and lots of people there—over 200,000, we’re
told. But I’m not so glad for that personally, and our group of
four cut out after a bit to do what we like to do: walk fast along the
edges of the march, duck in and out, meet friends and hang out with them, stop
off and check out the side streets. We stopped into the Dissent meeting
and training space at the Edinburgh University Student Union, We
had some moments of excitement when we heard a call to go support a group of
anarchists being chased by the cops. We watched a lot of very nervous
cops in light blue vests being ordered around the streets, running after a contingent
in black. The captain was bawling out orders, and we realized that in the U.S.,
they all have radios so we never hear the orders. Here they don’t.
They also don’t have guns! Later they brought out black helmeted riot
cops, who also did not appear to have guns, and surrounded the group in black
and penned them in. People came out onto the street above to cheer and
chant and support them, and our friends in the great action band, The Infernal
Noise Brigade, serenaded them. The cops eventually let them all go.
The nice moment for me was that we actually had half an hour to sit in a café
and eat something while sitting still, not driving, walking, or in a meeting.
Well, it turned into a sort of informal meeting about the actions, with
a friend we met. I went outside to go over to where we’d planned
to meet for the ritual, and ran into Rooh and Maren, friends from the EAT course
who also wanted to come. Rooh writes amazing and wonderful chants and
we cruised back through the crowd, singing.
About forty people gathered for the ritual. Niall and Louise and Victoria
had planned the first part, to introduce the rest of us to the Scottish land
spirits. Some of the Tribe of Brigid arrived from England, women I knew
from Reclaiming events, and a group of the Findhorn people I’d met the
week before, and we began. There was some trouble and misunderstanding
at first, trying to mesh our various traditions. It’s been my experience
that when people meet who are channeling strong powers, but at somewhat different
frequencies, the energies create what feels like either intense anxiety or irritation
until they mesh. When we finally meshed, Niall and Louise led invocations
to Bride and the Cailleach, the Old Woman, invited us all to invoke whatever
deities we felt moved to call, and then led a beautiful visualization of a web
of healing that we are all creating for the earth. I led a spiral dance,
and we raised a very intense and wonderful cone of power. Niall was holding
my elbow and I could feel our energies gradually align, and feel the Wild Old
Woman howling through me, whipping up the winds, raising a storm, and then Bride
the healer singing love and compassion. The rain was indeed threatening
as we grounded and opened our circle, and word came that gale force winds were
expected back at the convergence. Alarmed, we headed back, again gratefully
catching the vans.
Today was the day of the various Alternative Summits, but though I was originally
scheduled to speak at one of them, no one had contacted me recently, I couldn’t
find my name on any of the programs or schedules although others kept telling
me they’d seen it somewhere on the internet, and I eventually gave up
looking for it and settled in to work on the greywater systems. Almost all of
them needed some major reworking, as they were based on the premise that water
drains away through soil, and the soil we’re camping on is such pure clay
that they simply weren’t draining at all. Applying the permaculture
principle that the problem is the solution, we’re turning them into ponds,
but that required the use of a mini-bulldozer digging machine, and a lot of
time and redesigning. So I spent a lot of the day appreciating some deep
irony in the universe, as I worked on the pond being dug by Fuzz, whom I met
in Rafah right after Rachel Corrie was killed, crushed by a bigger version of
an Israeli army bulldozer as she tried to prevent it from demolishing a Palestinian
home.
Tonight the camp is filling up. Lots of trainings and meetings and new
people eager to help are arriving. Tomorrow is the Faslane blockade. I
am hoping to go, but also pulled to stay and finish the greywater systems. I
haven’t had time yet to do any of the usual things I like to do: trainings
for actions, facilitating meetings, obsessing about actions. But for once,
there are plenty of other people around to do them, and lots of support.
Now for a shower!
-- Starhawk
Donations to help support Starhawk’s trainings and work can be sent to:
ACT
1405 Hillmount St.
Austin, Texas
78704
U.S.A.
The G8, the annual agenda setting meeting of the heads of state of the eight
most powerful countries in the world, will meet in Gleneagles, Scotland,
July 6-8. For more information on the mobilizations, or to donate directly to
the action, see: www.dissent.org.uk
Indymedia Scotland page scotland.indymedia.org
Feel free to post, forward,
and reprint this article for non-commercial purposes. All other rights
reserved.
Starhawk is an activist, organizer, and author of The Earth
Path, Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, The Fifth
Sacred Thing and other books on feminism, politics and earth-based spirituality.
She teaches Earth
Activist Trainings that combine permaculture design and activist skills,
and works with the RANT
trainer’s collective, that offers training and support for mobilizations
around global justice and peace issues.