Last night, stood silently with a flashlght for an hour in the "Circle of Light/Circle of Hope," an action organized by Riveside Church to support those working for peace and justice. This morning, I was on the World's Longest Unemployment Line, which actually made the news. 3,000 people standing along Broadway from Wall St. to the convention site. No chanting, no singing, everyone facing north, single file, holding up pink papers with, on one side, unemployment statistics for the last 4 years, and on the other, "The Next Pink Slip Could Be Yours!" It was a very cool action.

A word about the arrests yesterday: from what I can see, the one that netted 200 people at Ground Zero was an unprovoked NYPD overreaction -- one high-ranking chief lost his cool and ordered the cops to arrest everyone. He outranked them all so they did it, but some of them were surprised at the order and said so to reporters. The other arrests were mostly, as the cops say, righteous. They were the expected result of civil disobedience, some of it very creative. There's been remarkably little overt hostility or violence from either side, given the size and number of the crowds of demonstrators and the overstretched situation the cops are in. Both sides are very well organized. Neither non-violent event I was part of last night and this morning had a permit, but both were lines of people, not a "gathering," which is what NYC law requires a permit for. In both cases a cop presence was clear but not intimidating; a couple of cops here and there, obviously ready to call in backup if they needed it but not expecting or provoking trouble. One cop this morning even told us, "You ought to see this line! People with pink slips all the way downtown!" And we got a lot of friendly honks from passing cars, including a sanitation dept. truck with our pink slips in its window.