Call Up the Troops, Then Clean the Grill

In the garden right in front of him is a joke tombstone. It reads: "I tried, but it died."

Eighteen miles away in a Woodley Park apartment, Vijaya Thakur, 20, is holding her own house party. She's called it the "Progressive Love Fest," because "there's a Republican in my office who was making fun of the MoveOn parties and calling it that."

Thakur is a student at Bryn Mawr and works at the Genocide Intervention Fund. The 30 or so people who've shown up are mostly young singles. The apartment is dorm-ish and looks like it could be packed up in an hour -- a mattress on the floor and a few mismatched chairs, two old desks covered with bags of Utz pretzels and potato chips, an old TV with a turn dial, nothing on the walls.

Thakur has the energy of an undaunted activist, something more solid and serious than peppy. She says the group at the party already addressed the notion that they are powerless to affect Bush's decision, and pulls out a chart the group has written up explaining their demands.

"The process must be inclusive," it says. "There must be actual CONSULTATION." That last word is capitalized and written in a different colored marker, for emphasis. "The country belongs to all of us."

Here, too, the guests go around and explain what brought them here. They pass around a lime, and only the person holding it gets to talk. One woman is from a family of activists and complains about the "fascist administration." A man from Iceland says he feels "sorry for you Americans." A teacher says she is "more and more scared about what's happening to our country."

They debate over form letters vs. personalized ones, delivering correspondence by hand vs. mailing it, and other basics of community activism. At some point the lime makes its way back to Thakur. It's late, and she is now lying with her head on the mattress. She has an e-mail list drawn up, a phone tree organized. For her, the night has been a success.

"Yea, us," she says, and invites everyone to stay and watch a movie, "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism."