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We are standing inside the "Convergence Center" in a warehouse on Florida Avenue, in Washington's Adams-Morgan district, where all around us activists like Celeste (who declines to give me her last name) buzz in their preparation for the Mobilization for Global Justice's anti-World Bank and International Monetary Fund protests scheduled for Sunday and Monday.

Most of the two-story, 20,000-square-foot warehouse -- donated by the Quaker-run American Friends Service Committee -- is crammed with hundreds of activists who float in and out of the building, signing up for the protest, collecting information and attending seminars.

Celeste is not the angry sort, and her shot against the uninspired is fired softly and with an adorable smile, and only after I ask her why she came to D.C. and, indeed, why she has dedicated herself to activism.

"Once you know something about these things, I don't understand people who don't do anything," Celeste says.

Like her 27-year-old sister, for instance, whom she calls a "yuppie" and sneers at for continuing to shop at the Gap despite her awareness that they employ sweatshops abroad.

"She would never keep a woman in her closet sewing for her," she says of her sister, "just like she would never keep a chicken in a shoebox to lay eggs for her -- but still, she eats eggs." Celeste's a vegan, she wants me to know.

But there's hope for her sister yet: Celeste and her boyfriend, Conner, 29, flew here from Austin by using her sister's frequent-flyer miles.

"She's very supportive, even if she does think we're freaks," Celeste says.

Her parents, too, are supportive if somewhat leery, Celeste says. It's been like this from the very beginning of her days of activism when, at 11, she was drawn to an animal-rights center after seeing some posters. "I thought it was going to be rescuing kittens and puppies, not seeing pictures of vivisections and cows getting clubbed over the head," she says. "But every 11-year-old should see that."

Celeste is my appointed "Media Escort" in the Convergence Center. She's there mainly to make sure I don't stick my nose where it's not wanted -- like the workshop on blockades, for one -- as well as to ensure that anyone I talk to knows I'm with the media. And to be helpful and answer all my questions, of course.

On Sunday, during the spring meeting of the board of governors of the International Monetary Fund, Celeste, Conner and thousands like them will take to the streets of Washington to protest its policies. On Monday, they will do the same for the World Bank, which is holding a comparable meeting that day. Those who are willing to risk arrest will try to shut the meetings down. The more timid activists can cheer on their comrades from the sidelines or attend various other events, including a Sunday rally at the Ellipse -- between the White House and the Mall -- which will feature music and be hosted by sloppy lefty filmmaker Michael Moore.

"It's not just people standing there holding signs," Celeste says. "It's so much more creative than that these days." There are huge puppets being constructed around us -- artistic papier-mâché likenesses of President Clinton and various anonymous fat white men, representing corporate America. An immense three-headed cobra stands poised to strike, the heads of the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization emerging above its flared hood. A map on the wall lays out Kabuki-like instructions on the physical dynamics of the play that these puppets will enact.

"It's so simply put, people can get into it and be entertained without the remote control," she says.

There's more than that, Celeste says, pointing to a squat guy with whom she did guerrilla theater when she was in Seattle last year for the WTO protests. They scurried around from coffee shop to mall to grocery store, getting and waiting in line when suddenly they would begin holding very loud scripted conversations about the evils of the WTO. It sounds annoying and preachy to me, but Celeste seems so sincere and committed to her beliefs in the evils of corporate culture -- beliefs I share a bit, though I'm also a lame-ass carnivorous consumer, so clueless I actually wore a Nike shirt today -- so I don't tell her that.

"What's radical cheerleading?" I ask her, pointing to a sign on the wall at the entrance of the Convergence Center where everything from housing information to personal ads are taped.

"That's the best!" she says, taking out and unfolding a wrinkled leaflet from her pocket. It's from a Texas rally for International Women's Day and with the lyrics come a clearer understanding of radical cheerleading. These aren't just your average "Hey hey, ho ho" cheers I recall from college "Take Back the Night" rallies:

Hey Ladies! (Yeah?) Hey Ladies! (Yeah?) R U Ready? (For what?) To shoot that rapist? (Yeah!) You put that .45 up to the sky And shoot that dick between the thighs! Shoot the rapist! Shoot shoot the rapist!

"What's that about?" I ask.

"An alleged rapist cop in Texas," she says, "Samuel Ramirez. He allegedly raped a pregnant black woman." (She makes sure to say "allegedly.") But they put him back on the force, she says, charging him with only "official oppression." Celeste and several other Texas feminist activists made a point of disrupting his trial for "official oppression," since they thought it a sham.

Next page | Consumption, consumption, what's your function?