Chapter 10-Grito Day Solidarity Rally

Verdad full page cover photo from the highest bleachers of the sport arena, an oval of thousands of people and in the center, lit bright, the gathered speakers and artists at the closing of the Karayan Independence Solidarity Rally.
Marina stood all by herself , surrounded by 20,000 people who had packed the sport arena for the Karayan Independence Solidarity Rally the Partido had been working on for the last year, feverishly for the last three months. She clutched the clipboard she was taking notes on. She had been promoted twice, first to reporter, and last month to managing editor. How could any written report capture this? The dozens of speakers from every movement in the City, including mainstream figures from politics and the arts, Island performers and even that famous becrazed crossover Karayan singer and ,recently, movie star. Pedro Biaggi was singing right now. He was belting, “The world is in flames” and the audience was singing with him. Marina's voice joined in and the power of the voices coursed through her. She was not alone. She was no longer uprooted. She never had been. That had never been true.
Danny walked over and stood beside her. She saw tears on his face. She wanted to tell someone her amazing realization, but Danny was not the one, and anyway he was gone back to where the Solidarity group contingent was sitting close to the stage. She walked among the aisles, looking at the audience, wishing she were a photographer or filmmaker and not a writer. She understood why rallies and gatherings were important, transforming, reminded us we are not single beings, or not only single beings, isolated; that when we are together we are something different, a different beast that knows different things than we know when we are alone. She heard her name, and turned to where Jimmy and Marlen sat together, holding hands. Osmani jumped from Marlen's lap and ran to hug her, the little diplomat. She had been just a bump in their marital life. He had spent a few weeks in his warehouse but gotten tired of the homeless life and gone back home, to his real home. Jimmy was not the one to tell her realization.
She had to tell her insight or she would forget. She would tell herself. She wrote, “mi nacion es la lucha” on her clipboard.