20 ARRESTED IN NEW YORK AS ANTI-CAPITALIST EVENT TURNS ROWDY
By ERIC WAHLGREN
NEW YORK (June 18, 1999 8:11 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - About 20 protesters were arrested during a rowdy anti-capitalism street demonstration that wove through New York's financial center on Friday, briefly halting traffic on Wall Street.
The event in New York, like others planned in other major cities around the world, was timed to coincide with a summit in Cologne, Germany of the world's richest nations.
Although several New York protesters resisted arrest and vandals splashed orange paint on at least one office building, the rally was peaceful compared to protests in London, where several people were hurt and demonstrators clashed with riot police, burned cars and stormed a major financial exchange.
"It's not a protest," said Mitchel Cohen, 50, a New York poet over the din of people banging on steel tubs. "It's more a festival of resistance against the entire apparatus of global capitalism."
Cohen was one of about 200 demonstrators who massed at Liberty Square in the shadow of the World Trade Center's twin towers, symbols of U.S. business might where a terrorist bombing in 1993 killed six.
New York police said about 20 of those who took part in the demonstration were arrested for disorderly conduct but there were no injuries.
Officers made many of their arrests at the intersection of Wall and New streets where demonstrators poured into the street and blocked rush-hour traffic including a double-decker tour bus, alarming sightseers.
"I think they're all crazy," a New York investment banker said as he took in the scene.
Organized by an activist group called Reclaim the Streets, the noisy rally included students, construction workers and college professors.
The U.S. events were much smaller than protests in London, where police said up to 10,000 people took part including anti-monarchists, anti-car activists and campaigners calling on Britain to end Third World debt.
In San Francisco at least 450 activists with colorful banners, costumes, over-sized puppets and drums marched peacefully through the financial district as dozens of police watched over them.
The coalition of protesters against economic globalization targeted the World Trade Organization and San Francisco-based companies such as clothing retailer The Gap, oil company Chevron and Bank of America Corp. which they accused of committing environmental, humanitarian and labor crimes.
"We are here to throw some sunshine on these institutions," said Juliette Beck, an organizer of the rally. "They are like Draculas. Bring them out to the sunlight, and they will wither away."
At a Victoria's Secret lingerie shop, a few demonstrators in bras and panties put on a song and dance skit protesting what they said were sweatshop conditions in lingerie factories.
Police said they received calls from a number of worried corporations but had not sent out any official warnings or notices for Friday's event.