Collective non-violent direct action by

insufficient hundreds, the cannon fodder of other wars, bearing the fruits of a technology not their own:

polystyrene helmets, steel alloy hardware, urethane padding. Draped with coils of nylon rope over rubberized raincoats they came to destroy the decisions of time,

the authority of millenia of domination,

the oppression of centuries of supply and demand, the faith of decades of technology,

and the years of Atoms for Peace at 121/2 percent,

regulated return on total investment.

Decisions made not at Seabrook

but on the top floor of the twin towers of World Trade, by the cigar smoking high priests of corporate capital.

This latter day Coxey's Army confronted a machine but neither its intelligence, fears nor internal logic. A pilgrimage without reservations,

modern times confronting the past,

no less religious but bearing witness to a new faith: collectivity, non-violence, equality and consensus; a moral rectitude questioning tactical judgments

but not the means no less than the ultimate goals of action. Military tacticians without troops,

rhetoric without reality,

with seemingly inexhaustible energy.

Self-motivated but insufficient to engage critical mass to converted the anti-mass of random disintegration

to another level of activity.

With coalescence of affinities

by individuals to groups, to clusters,

with outreach by unforseen disasters and uncounted tragedies. To effect change without the aid of superprompt

critical power excursions, plutonium poisoned lungs, and bare landscapes ticking with random disintegrations for an entire astral cycle.

A blockade fashioned with twigs and tree trunks is thrown up at the gate.

In all deliberations, a front loading caterpillar rumbles up, swoop, scoop, and quickly clears the makeshift barrier.

Skirmishes in the ongoing war of two cultures. A small expression of the ultimate power of the machine that brings forth

the potential to set off simultaneously, at remote sites around the globe, thousands of Mount St. Helens,

to uniformly cover the surface of the earth, to a depth of two point five inches

with radioactive ash, to fuel the futures' millions

with genetic mutations for the young, cancer for the old,

and inexpensive metered power for all-impotent, myopic, demanding souls dying, surviving and cursing their fate. There is no free lunch, rational decisions made in the marketplace of ideas, the old shell game.

Creeping militancy, apathy, disgust, opportunism, political process, community building, career development spin off at a dizzying rate, yielding alternatives never considered. Splinters to fester the pains of humiliation and balms to salve their wounds.

A people united can never be defeated! But we a microdot in time, a unit in a hungry cipher equal

to one followed by sixteen zeros

possible combinations digested and stored by the newest generation IBM computer

keeping track of movements, thoughts, hopes, profit and loss.

It's not easy living on your own.We are all a big happy family aren't we Henry K? Radioactivity is yet another form of lethal

But we all live at Seabrook, in the Black Hills,

at Love Canal, at Rocky Mountain Arsenal, in Woburn Mass. PSCo New Hampshire is Hooker Chemical and I.B.M. has a friend at Chase Manhattan.

litter. A still life of solid waste floating on the earth Rediscovered treasure, forgotten but not lost.

A time capsule for future generations of mutant morons, to move to action the enraged, the outraged,

the concerned, the guilty and those of us still living, new forms of life created not in the laboratory.

Empires are always destroyed from within.

Lead glazing in the pottery is said

to have caused the fall of Rome.

The rage of still born babies, broken chromosomes and broken dreams was lost somewhere between Buffalo and New Hampshire.

It may be found in the false promises

of individual choice and personal wealth

or in the reality of social failure

The search goes on.

Richard Mandel