...and demand the immediate
release of the Permibus.
Our whole cluster is safe—one person was arrested but is out of jail.
My account begins below and will continue later today when I get a bit
of time to write, love -- Starhawk
A Spiral Dance in the Streets
Monday morning: we gather up with the cluster at the beginning of the march.
We meet early, on a quiet space near the Korean War Memorial at the Capital,
where ghost soldiers hover around us, reminding us why we are there to protest
war.
We had planned to march as a cluster and then, after, join the blockades in
the streets that would attempt to disrupt the beginning of the convention. But
all plans have changed, as Hurricane Gustav bears down on the Gulf Coast. The
Republicans have condensed their convention, cancelled Bush and Cheney’s
planned speeches, and moved the timing to earlier in the day. We have
moved up our timing as well, in order to intercept the delegates.
Why do we want to interrupt their convention? For me, the answer is simply
this: Bush, Cheney and by extension the party that supports them have
violated their public trust. They lied to bring us into a war that has
cost thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. And
no one has held them accountable. The Democrats refused to even consider
impeachment, although both of them have committed grave offenses. The
Democrats have continued funding the war even while speaking against it. The
political process has not brought reckoning for the lives they have destroyed
and the resources they have squandered. So we will, directly, by putting
our own bodies in the way of their immediate ends and goals.
Our cluster is deeply committed to nonviolence. We see nonviolent direct
action as a powerful form of magic, of consciousness change. When we commit
to nonviolence, we say, “Violence stops with me. I might receive
it, but I won’t pass it on. I won’t inflict it, or resort
to it to make my point.” When we commit to direct action, we say that
we won’t wait for someone else to redress a wrong for us—we will
do it ourselves in some way, if only by interposing our bodies into its operations
and interfering with its ends.
But we’re also aware that not everyone who will be in the streets shares
our philosophy or our goals. The police, and the Republicans, certainly
have no commitment to nonviolence. So we are very tightly organized. We
each have a buddy. We have scouts who can roam around and bring us back
information. We have a medic and a person who will compile any needed
information for the legal team. We have a flag to follow, for those willing
to enter situations of more danger, and another flag for those who want to stay
more safe. Those who do not want to risk either arrest or the other consequences
of action will stay with the march.
We circle up, sing, put protective circles around us, bless each other. Then
a small group heads off for the march, and about twenty of us head into the
streets.
Ahead of us Funk the War, a group of several hundred young people who roam the
streets with portable sound machines--direct action by dancing and sheer exuberance.
We want to stay a bit away from them—love the kids, hate the sound
system, which makes it impossible for us to drum or sing or do the things we
do to raise power. Following on their tail, we find ourselves on the edge
of a mass of people trapped in an intersection, with riot cops closing in behind.
We see an escape route, but we also see an open space in front of the
line, and decide to run in and begin a spiral dance. We’re singing
“Rising, rising, the earth is rising, turning, turning, the tide is turning”
and spiraling in front of the bemused cops, weaving in and out with some of
the kids joining us and a hundred cameras clicking away, and when I look up,
the riot cops have moved off. Just like magic.
It’s the first victory of many—but now the tension between living
life and writing about it has reached crisis point, and I’ve got to go
off and play with the grownups today at the Peace Island Conference. So
this account will resume later.
Copyright (2008)
by Starhawk. All rights reserved.
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