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The first canister hit the asphalt at 6:47 a.m.

By 6:59, fourteen shopping carts had cleared Checkpoint 7.

It took the Radical Love Coalition four months to plan the Redfern Run—what members are calling the largest single breach of Klickian supply blockades since the Civic Priorities Emergency began. Forty-three volunteers. Fourteen carts loaded with infant formula, prenatal vitamins, menstrual supplies, and water purification tablets. Three diversion teams. Two medical units on standby. One twelve-minute window.

“Everyone wants to know who ‘led’ the run,” said Darla Freeman, 43, the Coalition’s lead coordinator, when I spoke with her the following day. She was icing her left knee, which had taken a baton strike during the breach.

“That’s the wrong question. You know how many people it takes to move fourteen carts through tear gas?”

She answered before I could respond.

“Forty-three. It takes forty-three. Plus the twenty-six who spent the last two months gathering supplies. Plus the eight running comms from three different locations. Plus the medics who treated us after.” She shifted the ice pack. “You want a headline? There’s your headline. Seventy-seven people decided those babies in Redfern mattered more than their own safety. I just happened to be pushing one of the carts.”

The operation began well before dawn. Diversion teams deployed to Checkpoints 5 and 9, drawing security personnel away from the target site with what one volunteer described as “a lot of noise and some very convincing fake emergencies.” Meanwhile, the supply runners gathered three blocks from Checkpoint 7, their carts hidden beneath tarps in a sympathizer’s garage.

Keisha Montague, 52, a retired nurse who served as lead medic for the run, described the atmosphere as “terrified and completely calm at the same time.”

“We’d trained for this,” Montague said. “Everyone knew their role. When the signal came through, it was just—go. No hesitation. You trust the person next to you and you move.”

The gas came almost immediately. Guardsmen at Checkpoint 7, caught off-guard by the scale of the breach, deployed canisters in a wide arc across the road. Volunteers had been issued vinegar-soaked rags and saline solution for their eyes, but several runners reported temporary blindness during the crossing.

“I couldn’t see the checkpoint,” said Darnell Whitfield, 19, a first-time volunteer who pushed one of the rear carts. “I could just see the back of the cart in front of me. Miss Darla’s cart. I just followed her and prayed.”

Freeman dismissed the characterization when I relayed it to her.

“Darnell made it through on his own legs,” she said. “Nobody carried him. He made a choice, same as the rest of us. The last thing we need is people thinking this work requires some kind of special bravery. It doesn’t. It requires showing up. That’s all. That’s everything.”

The fourteen carts delivered enough supplies to sustain the Redfern Women’s Shelter and two informal aid stations for approximately six weeks. Coalition volunteers have already begun planning the next run.

I asked Freeman about the risks. Three Coalition members were arrested last month; two remain detained without charges. A supply warehouse was raided in June. Freeman herself has been questioned by Municipal Security four times this year. Her face is almost certainly known to Klickian intelligence.

“Of course I’m scared,” she said. “We’re all scared. Anyone who says they’re not is lying or hasn’t understood the situation.” She removed the ice pack and tested her weight on the injured knee. “But fear is just information. It tells you something matters. The question is what you do with it.”

What the Coalition does with it, Freeman explained, is build structures that don’t depend on any individual’s survival.

“If they take me tomorrow, the work continues. That’s not a slogan—it’s operational reality. Everyone in this organization can train someone else. Everyone knows how to run a supply line, how to set up a mobile clinic, how to teach someone to do what they do.” She gestured toward the window, where volunteers were inventorying supplies for the next action. “We’re not a hierarchy. We’re a practice. And you can’t arrest a practice.”

This philosophy—what Coalition members call “radical love”—suffuses every aspect of their work. But Freeman is quick to clarify that the term carries more weight than its surface sweetness might suggest.

“bell hooks wrote that love is an action, not a feeling,” Freeman said. “Angela Davis taught us that freedom is a constant struggle—not a destination. You put those ideas together and you get something that doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker.”

She paused, watching two young volunteers—neither older than sixteen—stack boxes of formula with practiced efficiency.

“Love is Keisha staying up all night to train those kids in field medicine. Love is Darnell showing up even though he’d never done anything like this before. Love is the twenty-six people who spent months collecting supplies a bottle at a time so those carts would be full.” She turned back to me. “And sometimes, yes—love is forty-three people walking through tear gas together because they decided, collectively, that children don’t deserve to starve for their parents’ voting record.”

Governor Klick Sr.’s office did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Municipal Security Bureau described the breach as “an unlawful interference with civic infrastructure” and warned of “appropriate consequences” for participants.

Freeman is aware of the consequences. She’s also aware that the Redfern supply shortage has already claimed eleven infants this year, according to unofficial counts maintained by shelter staff. Official municipal statistics do not track infant mortality by district.

“They’re not counting the bodies,” Freeman said. “So we are. That’s part of the work too—witnessing. Making sure there’s a record.”

As I prepared to leave, Freeman was already turning back to the endless tasks that fill her days—inventory, training schedules, communication protocols, supply acquisition. I asked if she had a message for readers who might want to help.

She shook her head.

“I don’t have a message. Messages are for people who want to feel inspired and then go back to their lives.” She looked at me directly. “If you want to help, find your own Redfern. Find the place in your community where people are being deliberately harmed and figure out what they need. Then figure out how to get it to them. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.”

She returned to her work. Around her, volunteers moved with quiet purpose—sorting, counting, planning. The next action was already taking shape.

“Radical love isn’t just a philosophy,” Freeman said, not looking up. “It’s a practice. And practices require practitioners.”