THE SECOND COMING IN WASHINGTON D.C. YOUTHS' INSURGENCE AGAINST GLOBALIZATION By Roger Burbach
Washington D.C. April 20, 2000
If the "Battle of Seattle" introduced a new politics of protest, the demonstrations in Washington D.C. this past weekend marked the unequivocal appearance of a new generation of activists dedicated to challenging globalization and the powerful financial and corporate institutions that stand behind it. The number of participants in Washington was much lower than in Seattle--estimates are that about 20,000 came to Washington while upwards of 50,000 were present in Seattle.
But the commitment and predominance of demonstrators in their teens and early twenties was far more pronounced in Washington. As the Washington Post noted: "most of the demonstrators were young." They came in chartered buses, cars, planes and trains, predominantly from east coast cities, but also from California, Oregon, Washington state and many points in between.
The anti-sweat shop campaign, which is particularly strong on university campuses, fed into this insurgent youth movement. At many universities across the U.S., workshops and meetings were held to prepare for the new battle in Washington. Just a week before the protests, a conference was organized at New York University called: "Labor's Next Century: Alliances, Sweatshops and the Global South." Hundreds of students attended two days of workshops, discussing issues such as the political economy of globalization and campaigns against corporations like Nike for their third world labor policies. Direct Action, one of the main organizations involved in civil disobedience in Seattle and Washington, was also present at the conference discussing tactics and strategies.
The young anarchists, who created such a stir in Seattle because of the damage caused to the stores of some of the city's merchants, swelled their ranks from about 50 in Seattle to upwards of 300 in Washington. They call themselves the "Black Bloc," referring to their black garb and flags as well as their official name, the Revolutionary Anti-Capitalist Bloc. They were the more militant contingent of the youth movement, but their tactics had shifted since Seattle. While they paraded through Washington chanting "Whose streets? Our streets," virtually no violence directed at store fronts, even against big names like Starbucks and Nike.
And unlike Seattle, there were few if any divisions between the anarchists and the rest of the movement over tactics. The anarchists focused their more strident actions on trying to breach the metal and armed police barriers preventing access to the World Bank and the IMF. They also threw up their own barriers comprised of newspaper boxes, chain-link fencing and whatever else they could scavenge from the streets to block the police from attacking them and other demonstrators.
The Washington police for their part proved to be far more sophisticated in their repressive actions than their counterparts in Seattle. They spent months preparing for the protesters, viewing videos from Seattle and discussing contingency plans for dealing with the anti-globalization demonstrators. They augmented their weaponry, ordering up particularly large quantities of rubber bullets and tear and pepper gases.
However, prior to using this new ordnance, preemptive strikes were carried out by the police. On Saturday, the day before the large demonstrations of April 16, or A-16 as they were called, the police moved aggressively, and probably illegally, to intimidate and disband the demonstrators. In the early hours of Saturday morning the police raided the warehouse where "the Convergence," the civil disobedience organizers, were meeting to plot their strategies for A-16. The alleged reason for the raid--the warehouse's fire code was being violated.
The police forced the protesters to leave the building so quickly that many could not pick up their personal possessions. Scores of puppets and banners being prepared for Sundays activities were confiscated. Katya Komisaruk, a lawyer present at the site said: "I think that D.C. is now safe from puppets." She added: "It is clear that the police chose Saturday deliberately as the courts are closed and its unlikely we will get justice until Monday." Deborah Thomas, a local resident, noted: "There are other buildings in this neighborhood that should have been addressed decades ago."
On the same day, the police made big busts of protesters in downtown Washington as the anarchists and a large contingent of youth marched through the streets denouncing the World Bank and the IMF. Helicopters hovered overhead, and the police quickly closed off the streets and any escape routes, arresting all within their ring of force, including a few young tourists visiting Washington on their spring break. Some six hundred people were charged with "parading without a permit" and held until the following day. They had destroyed no property or store fronts contenting themselves with yelling slogans like "Spank the Bank," "Capitalism Kills," and "More World, Less Bank."
In Seattle the demonstrators were successful in disrupting the meetings of the World Trade Organization on its first day. In Washington, the demonstrators could claim no such victory as the two days of scheduled meetings of the World Bank and the IMF on April 16 and 17 went off punctually. On Sunday, it was warm and sunny with temperatures in the 70s. The Japanese delegation arrived at four in the morning in order to avoid the demonstrators, while many other delegations assembled at designated hotels to be taken to the meetings in police-escorted vans and buses.
But the punctual meetings of the world's leading lending institutions were a pyrrhic victory. Like the WTO meetings in Seattle, the "whole world was watching" due to the demonstrators. While the Washington media sided with the police in playing down police abuses, newspapers from New York to London to New Delhi carried front page photos of the police clubbing demonstrators. Police violence and repression was methodically applied throughout the day. They used armored personal carriers, charged demonstrators with their horses, ran over protesters with motorcycles, and sprayed pepper and tear gas on non-violent activists. The police's favored weapon of choice, the baton, was used with impunity, even against journalists and innocent bystanders.
On Monday the demonstrators, beginning at six in the morning, continued their efforts to block the meetings with chants of "break the bank" and "defund the fund." Unlike Sunday, this was a rainy day with the thermometer plummeting. Once again youths carried the day. After brief skirmishes, a thousand demonstrators finally stood face to face with the police at noon on 20th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, a little over a block short of the World Bank/IMF meetings. Then, in an agreement with the police, demonstrators in groups of ten were allowed to pass through the police lines just inside the closed off perimeter where they were immediately handcuffed and hauled away.
As the cameras and media recorded the civil disobedience arrests, a reporter suggested this was an utterly futile gesture. Replied a student from the University of Colorado in Boulder: "You just don't get it. This is a moral issue. This is about what the World Bank and the IMF are doing to millions of poor people around the world. We feel obligated, even privileged, to do what little we can to publicize the crimes committed by these global organizations of tyranny."
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Kevin Danaher and Roger Burbach have edited a new book on the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle: "Globalize This! The Battle Against the World Trade Organization and Corporate Rule." Published by Common Courage Press. For copies call 1 800 497-1994, or write Global Exchange, 2017 Mission St., SF 94110.:
