33: Oregon

“So,” Zil said, “Marge will lead the main group along the official route while the black bloc splits off and does direct action?”

B nodded sharply, or seemed to, his chin half-buried in a black bandana.

We all looked at the map, a red-sharpied route drawn arbitrarily through a mass of green. It had been my idea to stage a city-style protest in Deschutes National Forest, a huge parade chanting “Whose trees? Our trees!” past a line of riot police poised uncomfortably in a patch of wildflowers. Now we’d been planning this thing for days, or plotting I guess, and I couldn’t help but feel like the absurdity of it was getting away from us.

Marge was already in the middle of a new sentence. “And we need to keep the non-arrestables separate,” she was saying. “Maybe that’s something for the street medics?”

“You mean tree medics?” I asked.

“What?” I shrugged and Marge started talking again.

My gaze slid over to the window, over the parking lot of the Bend Super 8, a semi-derelict strip mall, the highway. Suddenly everything seemed to come apart before my eyes, exploding into component parts and processes, multi-dimensional schematics of materials and labor stretching back through history.

In another time and place it might have been a religious experience, struck me as a divine plan, but here and now it just seemed incredible that so much effort could go into something so banal, that this was the world we all agreed upon.

“The chants need to be inclusive,” Marge was saying. “I feel like no one should feel like their voice is being silenced.”

Zil nodded. “Maybe we should schedule another meeting to come up with ideas?”

B shook his black-hooded head. “Fuck more meetings,” he said.

“Did we ever agree on a plan of action?” I asked.

“Oh for Goddess’ sake,” said Marge. “I propose we follow Zil’s.”

“Seconded.”

“Major objections?” Zil asked. “Minor objections? Friendly amendments?” We all looked around silently.

“Consensus.”