MF Protesters Prize Intensity Over Numbers
BY HELENE COOPER and MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- As this city hunkers down to host the weekend's Evils of Globalization protest party, one thing is already clear: The activists here won't have the numbers they had last year when close to 30,000 labor-union members joined 10,000 other activists outside the meetings of the World Trade Organization in Seattle.
Indeed, labor's big protest day was Wednesday, when 14,000 union members rallied in front of the Capitol against globalization and, more specifically, the pending China-trade bill. Now, those activists have largely left town, leaving the rest of the anti-globalization crowd -- namely environmentalists and other activists -- to pretty much fend for themselves.
But that might not matter, because the protesters planning to disrupt International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings aren't relying on mere numbers to make their point. "You won't see the concentrated sheer mass of people you saw on Nov. 30 in Seattle," says Michael Dolan, field organizer of Public Citizen and a primary planner of the Seattle protests. "But there's going to be a lot of people -- students, militants, anarchists -- doing lots of things," he says.
Those things will include chaining themselves to each other and surrounding city intersections, the better to prevent delegates from attending meetings. They will include marching down various city streets -- with or without permits -- to further disrupt traffic. And they may include violence from a fringe element of anarchists trickling into the city this week.
Indeed, an e-mail signed by a number of anarchist groups -- titled A16 Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc statement -- states that "we do not necessarily advocate violence or encourage the destruction of property," but adds that protesters should "recognize the very real possibility for confrontation and be open to a diversity of tactics as a means of legitimate defense."
E-mail signers include the Monogahela Anarchist Group (Morgantown, W.Va.), We Dare Be Free (Boston) and Movement Against the Monarchy (London).
Most of the protesters say they intend to remain peaceful, and criticize the violent fringe element that trashed stores in Seattle last year. But even many of the peaceful activists acknowledge that getting arrested is part of their aim.
"There are going to be arrests," one activist said. "The only question is whether there will be tear-gas foreplay."
In many ways, the local police may end up deciding whether the Washington protests turn into another Seattle. Police here, by all accounts, are far more used to dealing with street protests than were their Seattle counterparts, who failed to secure the WTO meetings from protesters and then resorted to tear gas and rubber bullets to ease delegates' entries into the meetings.
In Washington, police have already blocked the entrances to the IMF and World Bank, and have been patrolling outside government buildings and other likely targets in shows of force. "They've mobilized more police than I've ever seen in my life to defend these institutions from the American people," said activist John Sellers of the Ruckus Society, an activist group based in Berkeley, Calif.
If police do resort to tear gas, they will be playing into the hands of the protesters, since the American public will once again be treated to television footage of armed troops gassing unarmed protestors.
Activists say they will consider it a victory if they manage to shut down the IMF/World Bank meetings. They wouldn't mind shutting down the federal government for a day or so either.