1 Kindling for the Spark: Eros and Emergent Consciousness in Occupy Oakland Mike King and Emily Brissette [Pp.171-189 in Spontaneous Combustion: The Eros Effect and Global Revolution, edited by Jason Del Gandio and AK Thompson. Albany: SUNY Press, 2017.] As we marched through West Oakland, toward the long, isolated overpass straddling line after line of rail track into the Port of Oakland, we felt anticipation tinged with uncertainty. Well, actually fear. No visible police is generally a good thing, but in this moment it seemed foreboding. Were they waiting on the other side of the bridge? Would there be a thousand riot cops ready to unleash a hail of rubber bullets to bounce off the pavement, a cloud of chemical gasses, another fog of repression blowing in off the bay? That had been the case a week earlier downtown, when police relentlessly attacked a much smaller crowd. It was the case when an unsanctioned march came over this same bridge in 2003 during a protest against the Iraq War. As we walked, too fast at times, the thought ran through me as it had all week: how could they not block the overpass? Geographically and tactically, it was an easy space for police to defend. With no alternate route except back the way we came (maybe) or down into the railroad maze below (damn, I hope nobody does that), we pushed forward—too fast, and in too loose a formation. The bridge curves and arches up, with no clear line of sight to the other side. Gritted teeth, acutely aware of everything. Quick meetings of eyes as I looked back at strangers marching with me, reflecting the tension in my face though we had never and would never speak to each other. Like nervous kids waiting to open a mystery box that might contain pure joy, or an impersonal ass-kicking. And then we came over the peak: no police. We shut down the Port of Oakland. In spite of what so many of us had feared at the outset, we had done it. On no notice. Against the opposition of the entire city administration, the police, and even the newly-elected reactionary leadership of the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union). Just days after being barraged for hours by an arsenal of riot-squad weapons, and facing an Oakland Police Department not known for sitting out the chance to beat people with impunity, we had done it. The look of exuberance on people’s faces—of empowered joy and exhausted relief—marked the presence of eros rippling through that march. According to George Katsiaficas, the eros effect arises when the life instincts are liberated as mundane and soul-deadening routines are suspended and existing power relations are ruptured. In this newly opened space, imagination is unleashed, new collective actors are forged, and (for a time) participants experience communion with others in an “ocean of universal life and love” (Katsiaficas 1987: 6). Such moments do not emerge out of nowhere, nor do they remain contained within a single locale or confined to a single struggle. For many of us at the port, buoyed by an acute