indymedia report

berlin at socrates.berkeley.edu berlin at socrates.berkeley.edu
Sun Apr 16 21:15:58 PDT 2000


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

address: PO Box 12244 Silver Spring MD 20908 phone: 202-237-3774

bwhite at libertariansocialist.com

Libertarian Socialist News is the only honest

unbiased source for news on protests and

demonstrations. Photos and Text. Audio/Video

soon.

print article

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

www.libertariansocialist.com



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