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Thousands march to protest Washington Finance Summit |
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April 18, 2000
WASHINGTON, APR 17 (AP) - Thousands of marchers failed to stop world finance leaders from meeting, but paraded through the capital in a show of celebration and anger that provoked one ugly episode - a surging crowd met by a stinging cloud of irritants fired by police.
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Festive street theater with giant puppets coexisted Sunday with pushy confrontations between police and protesters agitating about the plight of the poor and "decadence" of the rich. Protesters accuse the World Bank and IMF of destroying the environment with dams and similar projects, allowing sweatshops and imposing harsh debt-repayment programs that weaken developing countries.
At one point Sunday, police in riot gear and on motorcycles charged into a crowd that had surged toward the police line. Police used pepper spray and what they said were smoke bombs to drive back the protesters, who were convinced they'd been tear-gassed.
"Coughing, burning, numbness around the mouth, eyes watering, skin irritated," said John Hamilton, one of the victims.
But unlike the protests that overwhelmed police and smashed windows in rainy Seattle at trade meetings late last year, the weekend demonstrations were largely nonviolent - and the sun beamed on them Sunday.
"I've seen a whole lot less property damage than after a Bulls game in Chicago," said Han Shan, a protest organizer from the San Francisco-based group Ruckus.
More protests were set Monday, when the resumption of the weekday rush hour threatened horrendous traffic problems.
Police in America's security-savvy capital sent buses under the cover of early morning darkness Sunday to pick up world finance ministers at their hotels, and used circuitous routes and U-turns to get them to work.
But some VIPs were stranded: The finance ministers of France, Brazil, Portugal and Thailand were thwarted by the crowds and sat at the Watergate Hotel six hours after the meetings started, wondering what to do. They eventually made it to the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund.
"I think there is a great misunderstanding," French Finance Minister Laurent Fabius said.
Police, who estimated as many as 10,000 protesters were on the streets, blocked off a downtown area as large as 90 square blocks and let demonstrators largely have their way outside the security zone.
"Today we had a victory party in the streets," said Beka Economopoulos, member of Mobilization for Global Justice. "We have every right to tout this as a victory. I think we were up againstincredible, impossible, odds."
Protest leaders estimated their crowds at more than 30,000.
Shan credited police with being relatively restrained, if suffocating in the size of their force. "Overall, they maintained their composure quite a bit," he said. "They have brutalized a few people without provocation."
The atmosphere was less tense than on Saturday, when police raided and closed the protest headquarters during the day and arrested more than 600 people in the evening.
About 20 people were arrested Sunday, police said. One police officer was hospitalized for back pain and another for heat exhaustion.
The protesters chanted, beat on plastic buckets and wore papier-mâché puppet heads cast in the likeness of the leaders they hold in contempt.
It was all meant to disrupt the World Bank and IMF meetings being held Sunday and Monday.
But the anger sprang from a bazaar of causes - human rights atrocities in Ethiopia, the "prison industrial complex." biotechnology in food and much more.
"Keep your genes out of our beans," said one T-shirt.
"In all your decadence people die," said a sign.
Protesters accused the World Bank and IMF of burdening poor countries with crushing debt payments, unsafe food, environmental destruction and sweatshops.
One group of demonstrators, some holding sections of chain link fence, charged toward motorcycle police and an anti-riot squad dressed all in black.
Police counterattacked with clubs and six to nine volleys of irritants, according to Associated Press radio reporter Ross Simpson, who was both clubbed and sprayed.
Stunned demonstrators were dragged away by friends and taken to medical teams standing by with jugs of water to flush eyes.
Protesters thought they were tear-gassed but Police Chief Charles Ramsey said "smoke dragons" were used, canisters containing less severe irritants.
He said homemade versions of pepper spray were used against police, and some officers were hit by stones and bottles, but none seriously hurt.
Ramsey also said a protester in a black mask was taken into custody and found to have at least four bottles of flammable liquid believed to be gasoline.
Most demonstrators were in their 20s, but some, like Elizabeth Burke, 66, of Santa Barbara, California, have been activists for decades.
"In Vietnam, some jumped on the bandwagon to save their own skin," Burke said. But here, "Nobody's going to be drafted, so here it's different."
Much of the action swirled around the White House, itself an island of serenity. Police horses munched hay in nearby trailers. President Bill Clinton was out of town.
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