The Rivers for Life meeting underway this week in Rasi Salai, Thailand, is no ordinary conference -- and not just because organizers have shunned bagels and banquet rooms in favor of Thai food and hand-built bamboo huts. More than 300 activists from 60 nations have congregated near the banks of the Mun River for this gathering, officially known as the Second International Meeting of Dam-Affected People and Their Allies. Many of the participants know firsthand of the devastation caused by large dams -- fish populations decimated, fields flooded, whole communities uprooted. But as Tara Wesely, this week's Grist diarist, reports, when these activists come together, it's not to bemoan their fate -- it's to share tactics, sing songs, celebrate victories, and get reinvigorated to fight for the rivers they love. Read dispatches from the scene, only on the Grist Magazine website.