Copenhagen by Rebecca Sang

ARRIVAL: 12/12/2009

It’s late, way too late for us, we who have been traveling for twenty three hours and who’s biological clocks believe that its close to dawn, rather than a misty and cold evening. Our dinner weighs heavy in our bellies, the first real food we’ve eaten, and walking feels good in spite of how exhausted we are. Besides, Copenhagen almost feels like an overgrown and even-more-charming Santa’s village, fully dark at four o’clock, streets crowded with bikes and pedestrians but only a car or two, who’s headlights seem out of place among the crumbling stone buildings and cobbled brick streets. So many bikes! They whiz by in breathtaking bunches, swarm on sidewalks, throng in the streets like tribes.


Beyond its natural charm, Copenhagen has put on its eco-finest for the Climate Summit, with signs that read “Hopenhagen” and catchphrases urging a powerful change at the conference everywhere and large, beautiful demonstrations of alternative energies. It’s tempting to feel like we’ve stumbled into utopia. The occasional sirens and blue-lit “Politico” cars rushing by, followed by ambulances, reveal that there is also something fierce beneath the sweet surface. Most of the people here seem oblivious to it, wandering with hearty druken cheer down the cold street, enjoying their Friday night. There is a man playing bagpipes in front of an Irish bar for tips, surrounded by pale-skinned, slight Danish women, and a motley crew of rowdy young men hauling Christmas trees down the street and swinging them at each other. It feels sweet to be surrounded by their liveliness, even though my exhaustion makes it hard for me to feel much of my own.


Jason and I follow a trail of golden lights to an old church, one that has sat here for hundreds of years, remaining quietly stately and powerful even as the cosmetic stores and clothing boutiques and bars edge ever closer, their neon signs whispering that someday the candles that light our way will be forgotten, overpowered. The candles, flickering magically in the dark night, seem uninterested in such mundane matters. We follow them through the wide double doors and into the ancient chapel to an altar to Jesus, who’s head is ringed like Buddha’s with the golden halo of enlightenment. Without a word, we both kneel down, breath deeply, and begin to pray to him and to Mary Magdelene, who seems to have been forgotten in this church but who’s presence is so intimately, innately tied to his. I’ve never prayed to Jesus before, but here in this ancient church, I can feel his power and purity and the way he inspires so many to desire goodness and justice. It simply feels right. We ask them to come into us, to bring compassion and forgiveness and strength in the face of adversity to us during this week. And love. The love they felt for one another, the love they feel for their people, who are the people we will be in the streets with during the next seven days and the police as well, and many of the politicians and policy makers… Throughout the last couple of hundred years, so many have called upon these two loving bodhisattvas during their deepest times of need. Well, this is the eleventh hour and we must all come together to solve the troubles that we face – that’s what this summit, in its essence, is about. Even good Jewitch girls like myself. I’ve had issues in the past with the things that Jesus’s followers have done in his name, but now, in this time, I feel peace and love and unity praying in his church.
After our prayers to Mary Magdelene and Jesus slowly ebb to silence, we get to our feet and I slip a candle from a bucket near the altar into my purse, getting an intuitive hit that at some point this week it will become a major part of our work. Then we wander back to our hostel and make our way up the stairs to our room, which is a dorm we’re sharing with four other activists: a man from Germany, one from Canada, one from England, and one who slept the whole time. All men, except for me. The German fellow, who never told us his name, talked about working with the Black Bloc in Europe and gave us an anti-fascist flag from his homeland, “because you came all the way from America.”
“Fighting the nazis and fighting the corporations isn’t really that different,” he says. “Perhaps the corporations have a nicer face, but really, they do the same things – they kill so many, they suppress our freedom, the turn harshly against you if you try to speak out against them. We still have so many problems with fascists, even today. You still have problems with racism. It’s all the same.”
I tried to resist writing tonight, but its simply too exciting and too magical to put it off. We haven’t “officially” begun, and yet, its all happening. So much so, that I simply must go to sleep. I’m filled with curiosity and excitement for what lays ahead… and I really want to be over my jetlag so that I can be present for it.

Lotsa love,
Riyana

COPENHAGEN DRUMS: 12/13/2009

I’m being blown wide open. Alphonsus warned me that this would happen if I came to Europe to protest: “It will blow your mind,” he said. He didn’t mention that it might blow my heart and soul and sense of purpose apart, leaving veins of brightness shining among the shards.

I was at a gathering a couple of weeks ago and had a little tiny glimpse of what I’m feeling now. Someone I knew was performing “It’s a Wonderful World,” and something about that song, so unpretentious and heartfelt, and the fact that I was just beginning my moon blood, sunk into me in a way that it cracked the shell of my cynicism. How often, these days, do I let myself think or see that it’s a wonderful world? The skies of blue are clouded with gray smog, the red robins are dying. It’s hard. And yet, it’s still a wonderful world. In spite of all that is so very wrong with this world, and in spite of all that will continue to fester and deteriorate in the coming years even if we do sign a Climate Change treaty at Copenhagen and move powerfully and unhesitantly towards the solutions. This world is a miracle, and humans, too. I began to cry when I felt my heart cracking open, cry with both the beauty of the truth that I was hearing and the realization of how deeply I’d been feeling hopeless.

Tonight, sitting in a huge tent at Christiana listening to a circle of women create a song of birds and ancestors, humans and fey, the land and something otherworldly too, I felt my heart crack open just as it did that day that I allowed myself to see that the world was still wonderful. Using only Tibetan singing bowls and their voices, without words in any language known at this time, they filled the room with ancient beyond- time music who’s truth was all the more palpable because it could not be understood by my verbal-talking-self mind. I had just finished eating a bowl of (free!) couscous and lentil curry with Lisa, Tom, and Jason, who were already trying to figure out what action tomorrow’s action. Part of me knew it would be a good idea to start getting ready for all of that, but another part of me knew that I needed this immersion in song, needed it as much as anything that might happen in the streets.

It wasn’t only the bird-ancestor-land music that broke me open to possibility and hope, though – that was really simply the last unraveled stitch of my mask, you know, that one you wear sometimes that almost hides you from yourself. The whole day was Initiation, going bright instead of deep in too the depths of depression and despair.
The magic started with a crowd of hot pink drummers from Germany. We stumbled upon them early in the day, gathering on the side of the road like a ragtag magenta army armed with snares and toms and bass drums. Shyly, Jason and I approached and asked if we could drum with them. Our shyness turned out to be completely unnecessary: the band of twelve or so was part of a larger group called Rhythms of Resistance, a non-hierarchical drum troupe that spans many different countries in Europe and Africa. Their main premise is pretty simple: everyone can do anything in the troupe: play any drum, lead or follow patterns and marching periods, and everyone switches off. As we’d march down the street, someone in front would lead the troupe with a series of hand signals seemingly more complex than ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Just when I thought that I had it, someone would step up and start leading with a whole new series of signals, often incorporating the ones that I thought I had, and I’d realize that I still had no idea what was going on.

It was in one of these moments of self-doubt and frustration that a young blonde woman with dreds wandered over to talk to Jason and me, her demeanor notably friendly in spite of the destruction I was currently wrecking on the poor song we were playing. I felt like an ass, and asked if it was really okay that we continue drumming with them. “Of course!” she said, not even thinking about it. “You’re with the band now.”

Your with the band now. That’s amazing. Simply because you show up with a drum you just bought a couple of days ago and a desire to play.

I looked at Jason, and she caught the look between us. “This is nothing. Just you wait until the rest of the band shows up… they’re so professional.”

“The rest of the band?” I looked around at the band of drummers, which by this point had swelled to about fifteen or so. “Where are they?”

“They’re at another action, but they’re on their way. There’s… I dunno… maybe fifty more? Oh, here they come. See?”

I looked up. Sure enough, a group of hot pink and silver was loudly headed our way. Very loudly. In a couple of moments, our group doubled, then tripled. The rest of the march, all around us, was doing the same. We pulled off into a plaza next to the road that the march was going down and circled up so that we could all see one another as we played, and as we did so, thousands and thousands of people continued to pass us by: young women dressed as cows and pigs with signs that read, alternately, “fart,” “burp,” and “vegetarians against climate change;” a group of five or six people in khaki colored “bubble for one” costumes sponsored by Exxon and Chevron and the like; a group of clowns complaining that it was too cold anyhow; an amazing slate grey dragon carried by six people that danced dancing in the streets.

That’s when I first started to feel it: the cracking. Vandana Shiva was standing on the stage, though I couldn’t see her – I could only hear her voice echoing through the massive intersection the march had filled. “Welcome to Copenhagen!” her stately voice rang out, echoing across the cobblestone streets. “How does it feel to be marching with 100,000 people? Look around. These people care about the earth just as you do.”

I couldn’t see 100,000 people: I’m just one little human, and all I could see, everywhere I looked, were people. Crowds of communists with black and red flags, Friends of the Earth with blue flags, people carrying life jackets and cardboard cut outs of rescue tubes for when the waters rise – everywhere, people. The Rhythms of Resistance group began to weave through the crowd, using their signals and the power of their loud drums to get from one end of the plaza to the other, and still there were more and more people, with so many with creative expressions of their passion and anger and desire for earth healing that even listing all of the ones that I can think of doesn’t do it justice. I still don’t know if I can answer Vandana Shiva’s question. How does it feel to march with 100,000 people who love the earth, who care passionately about protecting her?

It feels like cracking open, I guess. Cracking open to hope – not light, fluffy, sweet hope but the serious kind, the kind that whispers, we might actually be able to do this. That’s the scary kind of hope – the kind that’s sort of like disillusion, except that instead of losing my idealism (a word so often confused with naiveté), I’m losing the cynicism that makes it okay to drive instead of ride my bike, and okay to sit home and zone out on the internet, and okay to put myself forward somewhat but not all the way, which I prefer, because if I don’t put myself out totally than I can’t fail totally and I also don’t have to fear being totally rejected by you or anyone else.

I’m tearing up as I write this. I’m not kidding. So much in our lives tells us that we’re doomed, or that we may as well not bother, or that we’re crazy for thinking we need to do anything at all, or that the only real heroes are the ones in storybooks or made-for-TV-movies. But let me tell you, I saw 100,000 heroes in the streets today, wearing super-hero capes that read “Climate Justice” and drums held together by duct tape and puffy bubble-for-one suits and black masks. I saw them march peacefully, but fiercely, from downtown to the Bella Center to have their voices heard. And I know, because Jason and I being here represents such a tiny percentage of the people in my community that care deeply about this issue, that the 100,000 people that I saw represent just a fraction of the people on the planet that believe that climate change is an issue that threatens the survival and wellness of all beings on this planet and who want to create sweeping changes to protect life on earth.

Eventually, it came down to us through the rumor mill that some of the march had been separated by the police and corralled onto a side street, and were being held there and possibly arrested. The fellow leading the troupe made an “O” over his head with both hands, and we circled up to talk about what to do next. As quickly as possible, he relayed the information and we broke up into affinity groups to discuss what we wanted to do. The results were surprisingly unanimous: we wanted to go there to support those being arrested.

We continued marching with the main march a little ways longer, and then as subtly as possible (considering the seventy-odd drummers and drums, some the size of a Great Dane) broke off down a side street and ran a block or two over, then cut back again and found ourselves – as we had hoped – on the other side of the police line. There were already some people there, watching and calling out for their friends to be let go. We circled up again, the sounds of our drums and our voices filling the air with a new vibrancy and authority.

BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM, “LET THEM GO!”

BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM, “LET THEM GO!”

BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM, “LET THEM GO!”

More people started to come, drawn by the drumming and the thick energy of the space. Their voices joined ours. “Let them go! Let them go!”

But as we continued to drum and play, the police presence also started to get thicker. At some point, I can’t say exactly when, I felt the energy shift – its something that happens at these mass demonstrations, I’ve noticed, ever since the RNC in St. Paul: I can feel the energy shift in a way that feels unambiguous, as clear to me as reading a street sign or sensing a car speeding up beside me on the road. Something is different now. Something is about to happen.
Jason came over to me just at that moment. “I think its time for us to leave,” he said.

I nodded. We grabbed Tom and headed off down towards the end of the street just as a police car drove up, then away. It seemed very likely they were about to “kettle” in the crowd that had gathered to support those in their first corral. Which almost made it harder, for me, to leave. I didn’t want to leave those I’d been drumming and making magic in the street with all day; but at the same time, I didn’t want to be arrested. Not here, now, for such a minor reason.

(We found out later that they arrested nearly 1,000 people today, including many of our drum troupe. Some have been released, but others are still detained, chained to benches and being denied food, etc.).

We joined back up with the rest of the march, where we stumbled upon a drum circle of a much different sort: a group of Native Americans, holding a sweat lodge in the open area next to the Bella Center, drumming and chanting. There’s more about today, but I’m about to be thrown out of the café, so this is what I’m going to leave you with: tonight, in Copenhagen at the end of a long night of protesting, I found myself immersed in the indigenous wisdom of the land I live on being used for the good of the earth, for the healing of this beautiful garden-planet. I don’t think you’ll see it reported anywhere else, these tribes that have come thousands of miles to speak for Her. But they are here. They came and spoke at Christania, too: but that’s another story, perhaps one I’ll be able to tell you about tomorrow. Until then, thank you so much for reading this, and please know how very grateful I am for all the love that you send and the work you’re doing at home.

FEELING A LITTLE HOT AND COLD ABOUT IT TODAY: 12/14/2009

Christania is like a place out of a anarchist-collective fairy tale: it
spans both sides of the canal running through the city, living spaces on one
side, the other side housing several cafes, the large tent that serves as
both temporary mess hall and workshop / speaker space, an art space, a
playground ­ just about everything you can think of, all communally created
and owned. Last night, when we first walked the grounds lit by candles and
small yellow lanterns and watched the dark, mysterious reflections of the
trees reflecting in the black water, it seemed to utopian to be believed.
This morning when we headed over there for breakfast, the trash strewed
about and disrepair of many of the graffiti-covered buildings, brought it
down to reality ­ in a good way. This place is not a fairy tale, but
really, a work-in-progress on this plane, in this world. Right in the
middle of the biggest city in Denmark, a colony of arts and sustainability
(they¹re working on it) and shared ownership; a world unto itself. As
you¹re leaving the compound -- which must be a couple of blocks square ­ the
archway reads, ³Now entering the EU.²

A couple of days ago, when Lisa was briefing us about what was happening
here and where, she told us, ³Copenhagen is like a post-apocalyptic city.
When the shit hits the fan, these are the people that I want to be with me.²

We headed down to Chistania for breakfast in the tent, which, like all off
the collective kitchens, is completely donation-based
no-one-turned-away-for-lack-of-funds (to get a sense of the generosity of
that, consider that our hostel charges 65 dkk, the equivalent of about $13,
for a continental-like breakfast. And that¹s cheap. Getting a hamburger
and fries at the little restaurant next door is about $20 US dollars, after
it¹s all said and done). As we ate, a fellow from Chistania was giving a
talk about their efforts to green the place in the workshop space next door,
followed by a Sunday morning sermon by a Unitarian-sort of preacher about
the oneness of all people and faiths, at their core. We listened for a
while and then Jason and I headed off to the Farmer¹s Rally while Tom broke
off to go to the Bella Center for a scouting mission on his bike.

I didn¹t realize we were looking for Rhythms of resistance ­ the samba
drumming group we were with the day before ­ until I realized, with
disappointment, that they weren¹t there. The farmer¹s action that we were
at, with speakers from agricultural people and indigenous folks from all
over the world but especially the global south, was one of two major actions
that day ­ the other was ³Stop the Production,² an anti-capitalist action
that aimed to blockade and shut down Copenhagen¹s harbor. Although
potentially quite exciting, in my mind, any attempt to shut down a major
port with civil disobedience sounds a bit like walking into a pepper spray
shower. Aside from which, I¹m personally very interested in food justice
activism and working with folks from developing nations. Jason, it turned
out, felt the same, and so we had both forgone the blockade in favor or the
march. But, alas, it seemed we were the only drummers who had. There was a
large, very static-y, sound system on a truck for the rally, but nothing for
the march. In fact we soon discovered that there was no march happening at
all. The speakers spoke, and then we were all standing around in the park,
all dressed up and with no place to go and no drummers to drum with. We
didn¹t know how many of them had been arrested the day before after we left
them, but we knew that some definitely had been.

Just as we had grabbed our stuff to leave, a tiny whisper of sound ­ a
pulsing, if you will ­ started to tickle my ears, kind of like when someone
is talking about you nearby but you don¹t see them. I looked up. Jason
apparently didn¹t hear it yet: he was watching the cops at the side of the
rally, who seemed for the most part pretty bored and certainly very few
compared to how many US police would have been at a rally that size in
Pittsburgh or St. Paul. I wandered over to the edge of the plaza, and as I
did, I noticed the sound was definitely growing louder. It sounded like
drums.

Sure enough, as I got to the street I could see a fuchsia-tinged raucous
headed towards us. It was the band ­ and, from the looks of it, the whole
50 or 60 person band, making their way towards us in full festivity and
intensity. The police seemed to notice it at about the same time: the samba
band was headed right towards us, taking over the street in spite of
whatever traffic had wanted to get through, lively and drawing quite a
crowd. Jason and I smiled in relief, strapped our drums on, and fell into
step with our tom-tom compatriots as they passed.

And then the march was happening. People just came ­ some of them
particpants from the farmer¹s rally, some of them people from the street ­
and followed us. They were willing to go where we were going, wherever that
was. In front of us, samba dancers were dancing in the streets to clear the
way for the band. Behind us streamed people with flags of all colors and
causes and nations. And, of course, the cops were activated. The grabbed
their shit and started following along side us on foot and then by van.

They blocked the road in front of us with their vans, and like the sardines
in the ocean move like one creature, the samba band inverted in upon itself
to turn around and went the other way, and all the people followed. Down
the streets we marched, dancing and drumming, shouting for justice for the
campesinos and food for all, food that cannot be grown if our soils are
dried-out by rising temperatures and our water poisoned. At one point, the
police blocked the way again, and the person who was acting ³maestro² (band
leader) at the time put her hands in an ³O² abover her head to signal it was
time for a huddle. So we all huddled together in the street, with the cops
around us and the people waiting patiently. It¹s really quite amazing,
really. Here we are, leading a parade, when suddenly someone has news that
requires a decision to be made. So, because we operate by consensus, we all
huddle up to make a decision while everyone ­ including the cops, apparently
­ waits.
The news was that the cops would allow us to go to the Klima Forum, that is,
the Climate Forum for the People, but no further. They were worried, it
seemed, that we were going to try to go down to the Harbor to support the
Stop the Production People. And indeed, some of the drummers did want to do
that. Others felt that it was pointless, as the word on the street was that
that action had already been kettled in and arrests were happening.

We decided to go down to the Klima Forum and stop for lunch. After lunch
(another communal kitchen experience, but this one not as peachy ­ we waited
in two different lines for food that kept running out on us, outside, in the
freezing cold, for about an hour before finally getting lucky and getting a
bowl of soup) we gathered back up with the Rhythms of Resistance band, who
were planning a solidarity action for the people in the jail. Because the
people who had attempted to do a solidarity action the day before had been
stopped at a bridge quite far from the temporary prison, we decided to form
two bands ­ one to meet with the main bulk of activists and go to the normal
way down to the prison and probably be stopped at the bridge again, and
another that would go to a different metro stop and walk around another way,
hopefully to get within earshot of the prison so that our compatriots inside
would be able to hear us.

Remembering how disheartening and depressing it can be to be in jail, I
decided that I really wanted to be a part of the smaller band, even though
it seemed more likely that band would run into trouble. Jason felt the
same, and so in spite of our rather mediocre samba skills (we still don¹t
really have any idea what those hand signals mean) we headed out with them
to the further Metro station to try and sneak around the side.

Unfortunately, we ended up at the wrong Metro station ­ not just Jason and
I, but the whole second half of the samba band. It started to snow. We
gathered in our huddle on the train platform, trying to figure out if we
should head back to the main station and get on the train that would take us
to where we really wanted to go, or just join up with the main band, who
were only one stop away. Our scouts, sadly, were nowhere to be found but
word was that they were coming to meet us where we were. Some people wanted
to leave without them, to get as quickly as possible to where we were
originally supposed to go. Others wanted to wait for the scouts and walk to
our destination, even though no one really knew how to do that, and it
seemed likely that we¹d just end up stopped with the first group at the
bridge. Consensus started to break down. People started to get crabby in
the cold. And then the cops showed up out of nowhere and completely
surrounded us, shouting for us to keep our hands up where they could see
them.

In Denmark, cops can search you even there¹s no evidence of any sort of
crime or misdeed. They separated us by gender and frisked us, went through
our bags, checked our IDs, and took our addresses. (Luckily, they didn¹t
also check to see if we had train tickets, because none of us did.)

The police showing up only made people more crabby and uncertain. After
quite a long while with more huddling, we decided to head back to the main
march. By the time we got there, though, everyone was heading back. A
group of activists had been kettled in by the cops, and everyone else
(including the first half of the samba band) was going home. It felt like a
long, cold, frustrating night ­ distinctly different from our Utopian
morning at Christania.

Jason and I went back to the Rag Center ­ short for Ragnhildgade, which is
the name of the steet that its on ­ which is another compound of activists
and communal kitchens and the main meeting space (it supposedly can house
between 1000-2000 activists). We grabbed another bowl of soup and headed
into the Spokescouncil, which was meeting to discuss Wednesday¹s ³Reclaim
the Power² action ­ the biggest action of the conference, in some ways. In
some ways, Saturday¹s action with its 100,000 people was and is the biggest
thing we could do. But the Reclaim the Power action is big in its
confrontation of the Climate Change Summit. The meeting brought up all
kinds of questions for me, like, what is really my intention being here?
What kind of actions do I want to support -- those that attempt to
cultivate and nourish the work being done at the Summit, or those that seek
to disrupt it in order to bring more voices to the table? What is my
ultimate goal, that is, what would ³success² look like?

With these heavy questions, I went to bed. It was a long day, one full of
both the good and the bad, and I felt more than ready to close my eyes and
open myself to the wisdom and rejuvenation of the dreamworld for awhile.

PLEASE SEND YOUR MAGICAL SUPPORT TONIGHT: 12/15/2009

Hello everyone!

I'm sorry to have been silent the last day or two -- its been very intense
here, and I look forward to filling you in as soon as I can. Unfortunately,
its simply been impossible for me to sit down and write to you all as much
as I'd like.

Tomorrow (which is tonight for you!) we have the potential for a truly
magnificent, magical, historical moment (and I don't say that lightly). The
action that's planned involves bringing together the earth-loving activists
outside the gates and delegates and honoraries from inside the convention
hall, mostly from the Global South, activated youth delegates, and
earth-loving NGOs with influence with the negotiators from industrialized
nations. It could be the most amazing thing in my life. Or, the moment
could pass us by because of obstructions, violence, distraction, or just bad
luck.

Why are all these people planning to walk out of the conference hall and /
or disrupt the convention if they are as earth-loving as I claim? After
all, don't we want a treaty to come out of Copenhagen? This is a question
I've struggled with for a few days. I came here fully intending to support
the strongest, most legally binding agreement that could possibly come out
of this thing, and I still feel that way. The issue is that what's
happening in there is not that. There are without a doubt many people more
qualified to discuss this issue than I am, people who understand it more
fully (Amy Goodman and Naomi Klein immediately come to mind, I'm sure
they've got stuff on their webpages about it), but I'll try my best to
explain what's going on as I understand it just to give you an idea of
what's going on.

The gist of it is this: right now, the industrialized nations and
corporations are really pushing for market-based solutions at their worst
are unlikely to do anything at all to help our planet survive, and at best
would slightly help reduce CO2 pollution but at the expense of those nations
most likely to be harmed by climate change and that have already felt the
brunt of our economic policies. There are countries out there that are in
danger of literally being underwater soon, and having their food supplies
completely destroyed by climate change issues, and these nations have been
repeatedly ignored, lied to, and condescended to during the last several
weeks while those with money and power try to find ways to maximize their
profits with carbon markets and carbon sinks. These are the people that
will join us at the People's Assembly tomorrow, when we bring the voices of
those in the streets together with theirs inside the Bella Center.

It's a powerful working, and one that will involve thousands of people
putting their bodies on the line with creative, non-violent civil
disobedience including myself, Jason, Bird (Tom) and Lisa. Our hope is that
you'll send us your energy and magic tonight (your time) at 12am-5am, which
is 9am-2pm our time. If you can't do that, since we all know magic doesn't
work linearly anyway, do it whenever you can. We have three images that
might help you line up with the magic we're doing here, so if you can use
one or more of them, that might help bring our magic together in the most
potent way...
-- The "Portal" Rune that was developed a couple of years ago at California
Witchcamp, which essential looks like an "x" with a longer line running
through the axis of it. That extra line is the third road, the mysterious
way that opens all potential and possibilities. We need these portals to
open up in fences, in lines of obstructions, in the minds and hearts of the
people inside the Bella Center.

-- This part is from Jason, bear with my construction oriented perspective
on magical imagery. I am envisioning a stone foundation wall standing
apparently strong and prepared-- call this the cops. Earth will pour into
the dug out area around this wall-- this the activists (the earth moving)
coming toward and filling the gap up to the wall. The stones are a part of
the earth too, although when used as a wall they no longer move as the earth
moves. When the pressure is added only from the outside, perhaps the wall
will break and earth will pour through to the inside. Tomorrow, bless the
goddess, earth will pour into both sides (imagine the basement also filling
with soil). Representatives and delegates will come from inside to meet our
efforts (also earth moving). When earth fills both sides of the stone, it
no longer matters if it holds strong. It will become instantly a part of
the earth. When the activists from outside meet the allies from within, the
cops will transform into holding space for the peoples forum to exist,
regardless of intent or orders. All will be earth together. I ask that
this image be held and fed with what ever earth loving energy or magic you
will. Blessings. j

-- A silver spiderweb of protection over the four of us, connecting us to
all of you.

Thanks again and again for all that you do. We're so happy to be a part of
a magical community that cares for us in this way, and to be with you at
this amazing point in history.

Lotsa love,
Riyana, Jason, Lisa, and Bird

*****
Dear ones,

Tomorrow, thousands of people will attempt to get inside the perimeter of
Bella Center where the COP 15 is talking place outside. Hundreds more who
are accreditid are expected to join us from the inside in order to hold a
parallel process of a people's assembly.

They have been pre-emptively arresting people who have been public about all
the actions that are being done by climate justice action. Lisa has been
quite public and she is hoping to remain free! We would all like to ask for
your support in advance for pressure should they arrest her..

Our small but mighty cluster here is asking for your magical support for
protection and to hold the way open so we can reach and go past the
crossroads. 15 years of the COP has delivered nothing. Now is the time for
a new way, solving this crisis from below.

Tomorrow we reclaim power to manifest a new world. Please add your energy,
we need all the help we can get!

much love,

Lisa, Tom, Riyana, and Jason