We rush off to the Really, Really Free Market the action to show the
alternatives. The delegates have ended their meetings a day early, signed a surface agreement that means little and gone home, so there is no need for confrontation. Nevertheless police have been following us all day, picking people off, arresting people peacefully walking on sidewalks. They grab a couple of kids coming out of the convergence center and crush their bicycles. They harrass a vanful of radical cheerleaders coming to the Really, Really Free Market.

The Really, Really Free Market is a beautiful oasis in the midst of a brutal police state. We negotiate with a group of homeless women who hang out in the park we have a permit for, and set up our OEbooths¹ blankets on the ground. There is a Free Massage booth, free food from Food Not Bombs, free Medical care from our medics. The Pagans set up our Living River to decorate the fences. We set up a healing tent for free trauma counseling, and another healing circle inside swath¹s of magically dyed blue cloth. We pull out the masks for the Witches¹ and Anarchists¹ Ball that we never got to hold because of yesterday¹s police riots, and the paper fish and turtle hats that never quite got to the march. We give away fairy money, little slips of decorated paper you give to your friends for things you value, like a smile, or a hug, or for courage under fire. On the back you write what you gave it for, so that as each bill flows around it accumulates a story. Soon the market has all the lively feel of a true village market, but with a sweetness that comes from constant little gifts we are making to each other, all the more poignant because of the constant reports of arrests that keep coming in. The street people join in the fun. I
look over and see the four women who live here each wearing a fish hat, and the baby in her stroller laughing in delight.

We end with a spiral dance, people holding the blue cloth over their heads and twining in and out as we sing and chant "We are sweet water, we are the seed, we are the storm wind to blow away greed. We are the new world we bring to birth, the river rising to reclaim the earth." And "Fortress walls, crumbling down, Witches healing dancing, spiralling around." And finally, "Brothers and sisters, go in peace, charges dropped, all released." We are laughing and joyful, but as we are singing, over at the jail vigil a few blocks away the police declaire an illegal assembly. They tell people to get on the sidewalk and they¹ll be safe. Then they surround the group on the sidewalk, beat people to the ground, kneel on their spines and arrest them.

Sobered, we go back to the convergence center to secure it, and pull together a debrief meeting. It¹s hard to debrief at this moment, when shit is still happening, I say, but it¹s a part of our resistance, a way of saying that our movement is strong and will continue and will grow.

In the middle of the debrief, a friend comes up and tells me that Abby and her friends have been badly beaten up, jumped by cops on their way home to their hotel, her sweet, lovely face pushed into the pavement.. "We could kill you here," the cops tell them.

I am really shaken. During the break I go off into the field and lay my head in Ruby¹s lap and just sob. She asks me what I am seeing and I really can¹t even say I feel like I¹m staring hard into the dark heart of cruelty and seeing more bad things headed our way. Two other dear young women, friends of mine, have been arrested and they are immigrants and I¹m afraid of what will happen to them. And I really, really hate this. I hate beautiful young girls getting beaten up by the cops. I hate fearing for the lives and freedom of amazing women just because they happened to be born across a border. I hate the
sneering, sly media lies and I hate the constant constant barrage of one awful thing after another directed against these exuberant, loving young warriors. I can¹t cry enough, I can¹t yell or scream or wail enough or beat enough barrels or smash enough furniture to release either the pain or the rage.

But I pull myself together and go back in to the meeting, where we decide on our strategy of political pressure and organize our jail support. At the end of the night, a young blond woman and a long-haired man are having a sword fight with leftover cardboard tubes. They are whacking each other and playing and laughing. Others join in, whirling with their swords and feinting at each other. The harder they hit, the more they laugh. Another cadre dashes in from outside, swords drawn, yelling a battle cry, and a mock war breaks out. It¹s
play therapy, I think, re-enacting the beatings we¹ve suffered, transforming them into play and laughter and joy. And that is the strength of the movement, a power ultimately stronger, I believe, than anything they can do to us.

11/22 The School of the Americas

I wake up early, catch a plane to Georgia, get driven to the School of the Americas protest to shut down the institute that trains torturers and murderers for Latin America. I have promised to speak, and I speak about the connections that the SOA trains torturers to enforce the global economic system we are fighting at the FTAA, which can only be sustained by police and military power, as we¹ve seen in Miami. Today is the rally, very calm and peaceful except for the military music blasted from the base to try and drown out the rally.

The news from Miami comes in through the day, bad and worse. Our friends are being tortured in jail. We hear about a young Latino man, taken out and brutally beaten, pepper sprayed and not allowed to wash. They are being kept in cages with no toilets, forced to pee and shit on the floor, then hosed down under the pretence of cleaning the cages. The young anarchists of color are being especially targeted. I am sick with worry for a few friends in particular, and for any immigrants that might be among the group, subject to deportation or disappearance. We hear rumors of sexual assault.

Lisa tells me we need money, cash on the ground in Miami, for bail and for all the expenses of the defense. The SOA organizers let me go back up onstage to make another announcement. I ask the crowd for help. I am asking you, readers, for help, too. All the relevant information is below. This week we have seen a blatant and ugly form of repression reveal itself. We have been targeted and attacked, not for anything we¹ve done but for who we are and what we stand for. Yet I hear no one suggesting we stop, or give up only thoughtful consideration of how we support each other and move forward, for we all know that if we don¹t, we will live with the boot in the face and the nightstick at the skull in unrelieved, grim, despair. But if we only stand together, in solidarity and love, we can withstand anything they throw at us. We are one movement, a movement of life, putting down roots and unfurling leaves, and we can and must continue to grow. This week we have seen the possibility of love unfolding in hostile soil. Help us nurture that love and keep it alive.

Daily updates are posted at www.starhawk.org and www.utne.com.
www.starhawk.org -- Starhawk is an activist, organizer, and author of Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising and eight 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 trainer¹s collective,
www.rantcollective.org that offers training and support for mobilizations around global justice and peace issues. To get her periodic posts of her writings, email Star...@lists.riseup.net and put OEsubscribe¹ in the subject
heading. If you¹re on that list and don¹t want any more of these writings, email Star...@lists.riseup.net and put OEunsubscribe¹ in the subject heading.