this kind of sarcastic whiny guy who missed out on seeing the violence he was looking for mentions ChuckO. Do you recognize who this is?
Photos and Truthful Reporting About A16
by Libertarian Socialist News 10:40pm Sun Apr 16 '00
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A16 Goes Great!
CD Flops, Anarchists Disappear, Protest Peaceful, CNN Is Full Of Shit
April 16, 2000
http://www.libertariansocialist.com/cgi-bin/bbmat.cgi?script=libsoc
We are right now uploading photos to
http://www.libertariansocialist.com/04_16
Hey, I was at the protests. I saw the incident where "police used pepper
spray and batons on protesters", and that is
bullshit! The protest was peaceful -- super peaceful. The CD was a bad
joke, and all the anarchists had disappeared by
noon. I don't know what protest CNN went to, or any of the other networks,
but I think they were given the story and are
making things up to fit their story line.
First, the CD was an absolute failure. Myself and one comrade walked
around the entire World Bank area. The World
Bank and IMF were not shut down. In fact, there weren't enough protesters
to even block all the entrances. We walked six
blocks from the Ellipse before we even saw a group of protesters "locked
down." And do you know what those protesters
were doing? They were whining! They were sitting there going "these things
are heavy" and "can we take them off now?" It
was a fucking joke!
Then, when we got onto the GWU campus, there were a lot of protesters
locked down. In fact, there were enough that they
blocked the entire West side of the protests. However, that was pointless,
because all the streets on the Eastern and South
sides of the bank were open.
Further, these people had "blockaded" the street. With what, you might
ask? String! No joke. These guys blockaded the
streets with colored yarn. Hahahahahahahaha! It was so hilarious. And,
they put out some dumpsters with wheels, which the
police promptly wheeled back. We do have photos.
So, as we're waking along 21st Street, we're trying to cross an
intersection. They've got string all over it, so to avoid the
string, we decide to walk around it. But the CD people thought we were
trying to get through their line, even though there was
no reason to think that. One grabbed me, I almost broke his arm, and tried
to explain we were just trying to cross the street.
Then, these guys were so desperate to stop *somebody*, *anybody*, from
"breaking their line", that the got the whole street
on their feet. Why? We weren't sure. We were going parallel to their line,
not across it, and if we had wanted to, we could've
literally just beaten the shit out of all of them. So we just kept walking,
they seem confused, and then all sat back down.
We then saw some anarchists -- the only anarchists in force we saw all
day. They were parading. One of them didn't like
my shirt, which read "Innocent Bystander". He said "Innocent Bystander,
what the fuck does that mean?" I responded by
saying "It means if you say one more word to me I'm gonna kick your
fucking ass." This hard-core anarchist then very
sheepishly decided to keep marching. (Most people liked my shirt, but two
people argued.)
By the time we got to the Northeast corner, it was clear the blockade had
failed. There were no protesters past about 18th
street, even though those streets were sealed off for delegate access. We
then walked around the entire bank building.
There was one confrontation between police and protesters the entire day,
and we walked into it on the tail end of it. That
was the confrontation where CNN is reporting "police used gas and
batons." But it was bullshit. Apparently two guys who
looked to be about in their fifties tried to break the police line, and the cops
hit them with their batons, and the guys got their
head bloody and got pepper sprayed. They were treated by ambulances
that came, and were let go. However, the situation
was pretty tense, and it did look for a minute like tear gas might be fired,
so that's when we busted out with gas masks.
However, by the time we returned to that square, about two hours later,
everyone had vacated. This was not unusual, since
every had vacated most of the places by about 2 PM, but maybe there was
some more action we missed.
About seventeen thousand people attended the march and various rallies
combined -- these rallies were spread over about a
twenty block area, and the largest group was about seven to eight
thousand who attended the main protest. Every sort of
communist weirdo, including several little New York and Chicago based
groups I've never heard of, were there. There were
probably about a thousand communists overall, including about three
hundred members of the International Socialist
Organization, some from as far away as Canada. None of the local
communists were there; we hypothesize they were all
arrested.
The march was peaceful and huge. There was no fighting anywhere, and
no conflicts between demonstrators and police
once the early morning confrontations were over. While we were waiting to
photograph the march, we ran across this chick
who we had seen speaking the other night, who was doing a TV interview.
She was telling the television the CD people had
stopped delegates from getting in. Then we heard the story, and realized
the "delegates" they had "stopped" were our LSN
photo crew! So we butted in on the interview, though she didn't mind, and
told the truth. As soon as we started giving a story
different than what the camera wanted to hear, the camera turned off.. This
woman then explained to us that the demonstrator's
entire communication's network had broken down because of yesterday's
arrests, and that she really had no idea if the CD had
been effective or not. She seemed disappointed to hear that they hadn't
had an effective blockade since at least 11 AM (this
was at 1:30 PM), but thanked us.
The march happened and was peaceful. We took a lot of photographs,
particularly of the pathetic attempt at civil
disobedience these guys made, and of their "roadblocks" (look at the
photo of the two car "roadblock", it's funny. The protest
rally was good. The radicalism was laughable. We enjoyed ourselves, and
had a great dinner afterwards.
-----
Libertarian Socialist News
Post Office Box 12244
Silver Spring, MD 20908
lsn at libertariansocialist.com
http://www.libertariansocialist.com
-----
PS: We just want to point out that by the time of the march, all of the
"anarchists" were gone. Also, Chuck Munson did not
appear to have attended the march. We saw many people we know there,
but no Chuck0, and we were looking for him or
*any* local DC anarchists.
PPS: We've now seen the ABCNews report and some of the other reports.
One possibility is that the reporters were smoking
crack, but instead of that, we think the reporters are merely printing any
crap demonstrators told them. We were at this
"confrontation" by the Treasury building, we were there just after Noon, at
the time and place tear gas was allegedly fired, we
thought tear gas was going to be fired, we put on gas masks, and there
was *no* gas used. Furthermore, there was no *sign*
that gas had been used. There were two older guys with bleeding heads.
Period. All this news coverage is bullshit and lie
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