i need more liberation

Dan Becker
March 2nd 2009

Dreadlocks follow corduroy following beanies. The streets fill around Chinatown as the morning session ends, as the crowds of thousands spill out of the convention center. Outside, it’s brisker than the night before. Spring teases us, licking its lips. People cluster at the nearest restaurants, green identification tags slung around their necks. Like swarms of locusts, they move from place to place, finding whatever they can take, taking whatever they can find. We veer off the main path, my friends and I. My friend Dana goes to American University; she knows her way around. Together we find chili, falafel, and cappuccinos.

The night before I did cartwheels in front of the Washington Monument. Our jackets, sweaters, cell phones, wallets, and keys laid in a pile on the patchy grass of the National Mall. The air was refreshingly warm, the wind mellow. The area was empty, spare a few other wanderers. The carousel near the Smithsonians had been locked. The atmosphere was calm, the vibe nice.

The energy is different, overwhelming, inside the conference center as the crowds return for the afternoon panels. Volunteers carry clipboards with petitions to sign, buttons to pass out. Old acquaintances bump into each other, awkwardly hugging. A drum circle begins in the corner. Vendors sell posters, shirts, “start a revolution” bumper stickers. One can sit against the pillars and breath it all in as the ten thousand people hustle by.

Upstairs and in the adjacent building, signs at the hundreds of doors to conference rooms title workshops and lectures. Some of the panelists discuss energy policy, biofuel, the history and use of direct action, indigenous peoples and climate change, and creative activism, to name few. The festering of ideas is active and alive. You see it, feel it, and hear it as students pass between rooms, talk over paninis and bowls of soup, and overhear each other as they brush shoulders in the halls.

The convention center brims with life-it is a Petri dish, a colony of bacteria. With proper nourishment the few multiply and expand until they reach carrying capacity. Scientists say a bacteria population can double in less than ten minutes. Politicians and activists speak, the Roots play a concert, and the thousands explode into the main lobby. The escalators and stairs pack with individuals-hippies, hipsters, activists. They all release chants, yells, hollers. The body of the building pulses. The energy is bursting through in its excess.

Finally it breaks. People flow into the streets. A man knocks into a trashcan out the corner of my eye; we disperse. Lines of people slow the traffic in the streets. The thousands part their ways, some to the capital building, some to the Mall, and others to the metro. The subway slows the chaos, dilutes it. But in a way, the disorder is refreshing, the energy and passion invigorating. The metro leaves you with your thoughts, to circulate once more with those nearby.