j(A)de arrives flushed and rosy from a bike ride across town.

j(A)de: (excited) Hey y'all -- check out this document on militancy that our cluster just consensed on. Geez, it feels like we're really getting somewhere! (flops on the couch.)

A pause as Regina, Velvet, and Mary digest the scratched and scribbled paper.

Velvet breathes deeply, looks up.

Velvet: (Eyes tearing.) Oh honey, so much war!

j(A)de: What, that's nothing new! Shit, the war's everywhere around us all the time. This's just finally a bit of a step in a direction where we can do something about it.

Mary: (cautiously) Is that what you see? Endless war all around?

j(A)de: Of all people, Mary, I'd think your academic research would have shown you the structural violence everywhere.

Mary: Well yes, in a sense, but I don't have to choose to live as if that's all there is. I can choose to see the bright Spring sunshine, the happy people relishing the air, the proverbial sweet-smelling flowers...

j(A)de: Shit, what privileged pomp! You can choose, because you're a privileged middle class white intellectual, you can just ignore the shit everywhere.

Regina: Gentle, child. We're your friends here.

j(A)de: With friends like these ... what are you going to do when the shit comes down, when you have to choose between the bosses' side and ours, and the blood is flowing?

Regina: (softly) How much do you know of what you speak? That's a horrifying choice, j(A)de, or at least it has often been made in horrifying circumstances. And yes, we each here may find ourselves there. But war is not something to invite lightly.

Velvet: I don't think anyone's inviting war -- but perhaps j(A)de is seeing it where we do not -- by choice, or privilege, or fear, or experience, or something else. So let me ask: where is the war in us, that each of us see and experience?

Silence.