PHILADELPHIA--In early morning hours Saturday, the people are still working. They are making goats' heads out of cardboard. They are soaking rags in vinegar to protect against tear gas. They are making peanut costumes to mock money politics. They are filling water balloons with paint. From wire, chain and pipe, they are making tools to shut down Philadelphia.

The Republicans are coming in two days, but the fun and the fury start now.

The concerned, the angry, the playful and the poor are piling up in abandoned lots, in factories and on friends' couches. A movement is beginning in Philadelphia that, for hundreds, will end in a basement jail.

In the meantime, they will fill the streets with violence, spectacle and noise. Their actions will degenerate from street festival to street-fighting, and they will paralyze this city.

Their messages are many, but they all share one feeling--that something is very wrong with the glitzy Republican gala across town, and with the state of the American democracy that created it.

They may be respected by some, laughed at by others and hated by a few. But above all, parading in front of the cameras that are here for the convention, they will be noticed. And for now, that is all they want.

Calm Before the Storm

The first gathering, a rally for hundreds of progressive organizations and issues was UNITY2000, which promised--and managed to deliver--a "peaceful, family-friendly atmosphere" without civil disobedience.