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with demonstrators coming to dc to shut the place down, this
bureaucratic capital responded as only a bunch of technocrats
could: they shut the city down:
- The Virginia Department of Transportation closes HOV
[high-occupancy vehicle] lanes into the city for
possible use by law enforcement and military troops.
- Federal workers are told they can stay home if they
don't feel safe.
- George Washington University closes for the weekend,
canceling events, banning overnight visitors, and
locking the library doors.
- Panic at American University as well, though some
miles from the protest scene, as officials cancel
a debate on the World Bank and IMF
- Pepco, the local electric utility sends 1,100 workers
home.
2:57PM
GILLIAN ANDREWS & JOHN TARLETON, INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER:
DC police and fire department officials shut down the
convergence center at 1328 Florida Ave. this morning.
Plainclothes fire officials entered the center around 8:30
on a preliminary investigation, just as protesters were
finishing breakfast and preparing for nonviolence training.
Protesters escorted the officials in as required by law.
Eyewitnesses said it appeared that officials did not know of
fire hazards before they entered the building.
[Jay Sand, DC coordinator of the Independent Media Center,
was attending a meeting when firemen interrupted and brought
in police to clear people from the building. Reports from
media teams inside the center claim that the firemen were
wearing ATF badges. Firemen said that if IMF/World Bank
critics didn't immediately evacuate, they would be forced to
call police.... Sand said, at the time of a phone call to
the IMC at 9:20 AM on Saturday, that police were barricading
activists inside the alleged fire trap. IMC sources noted
that the police were not wearing identification of any
kind.]
Officers from the city's police Emergency Response Team
followed soon after. When they were asked if they had a
search warrant, they did not respond....
Peter Lumsdaine of the California-based Resource Center for
Nonviolence was inside the building helping to prepare an
agenda for the afternoon's spokescouncil. He said the fire
marshal made no attempt to work with organizers. . .
Crowds of late-arriving activists who gathered outside the
building were pushed back to the corner of fourteenth and
Florida by a wall of police. They quietly milled around in
the intersection, failing to live up to their violent
reputation. Some asked police for their names and missing
badge numbers....
The protesters weren't the only ones banned from crossing
the police line. Legal observers were stopped from
re-entering the block. Press corps members from the Canadian
press, Harper's Magazine, and other publications were denied
access to the press conference which was held behind police
lines. One Canadian reporter planted herself in front of the
police lines and began to chant, "I am the press! I am the
press!" Other reporters picked up the cry. Police lines only
parted for the local ABC affiliate, Associated Press, and
other journalists with government-issued press passes.
[INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER: No press credentials for weekly
newspapers, community radio stations, and other small media
outlets that want to cover the IMF and World Bank spring
2000 meetings and the large demonstrations planned by social
justice and environmental activists. In what appears to be
an attempt to prevent media coverage that is unfavorable to
its policies, the IMF has denied press passes to journalists
who work at the Boulder Weekly, KAOS radio of Olympia,
Washington, CorporateWatch website, and other independent
media outlets.]
DC Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance Gainer alleged
that the raid was a response to complaints about the
building. Gainer said that the fire marshal alleged that
stairways and exits in the building were blocked and that
the electrical system of the building was jerry-rigged....
Nadine Bloch, one of the key organizers of the mobilization,
announced at 10:30 a.m. that the convergence was relocating
to the Wilson Center at 15th St. and Irving....
WASHINGTON, April 15....
Lines of police officers in riot helmets stamped their feet
rhythmically and pumped their nightsticks in front of their
chests as they moved in on the protesters a few blocks from
the bank headquarters.
By late evening, the authorities said, about 600 people had
been arrested....
Although the marchers and their supporters on nearby
sidewalks chanted for the police to let them go, Police
Chief Charles H. Ramsey said later that the crowd had
refused police orders to disperse. Reporters who had
observed the march had not heard any such order....
EXTRA! APRIL 15 11:47 PM
SCOTT POMEROY IN A NEIGHBORHOOD ONLINE NEWSLETTER: The
protestors have been using the Manhattan Laundry Building as
a staging headquarters where people go to find housing,
training, and where to go next. While there they have
assisted the Booker T. Washington Charter School programs.
They aided in cleaning and gutting a local abandoned
building. They are patronizing our local businesses. Why are
we treating them as criminals when they aren't committing
crimes?
I understand the need to protect the city from the
possibility of property damage, similar to what happened in
Seattle. That is why I and local officials have been
actively meeting with and integrating the protestors into
participating locally and assisting the residents at a grass
roots level. Trying to educate ourselves about one another's
missions and how to help each other. Because of the police
action today we now have thousands of people wandering
aimlessly around the streets, who are now wet, cold and
upset.
JASON VEST, THE PULSE: The importance of the different
perspectives alternative media bring to bear became clear in
the coverage given to last year's "Battle in Seattle" World
Trade Organization meeting. Few members of the mainstream
media initially attached much significance to grassroots
opposition to the WTO. Once a handful of rogue protesters
started smashing a Starbucks, those media began paying more
attention to the opposition, but seemingly with an eye
towards marginalizing it. Rather than respectfully examining
the years of organizing and scholarship done by protest
leaders like of Walden Bello, Vandana Shiva, Lori Wallach,
John Cavanagh and scores of others, mainstream headlines and
pundits let fly terms such as "kooky crowd," "motley crew of
protesters," "one-world paranoids," and, of course,
"Luddites." Several community radio stations have been shut
out of this week's meetings, as well as reporters from
alternative weekly papers, both foreign and domestic. None
have been given good reasons -- or any reasons at all -- for
the refusals. (IMF staff did not return calls from
SpeakOut.)
STEELWORKERS WELCOME STUDENTS
Proving once again that history seldom acts the way it's
meant to, one of the most dramatic demonstrations of recent
Washington history took place this morning with only one cop
and a handful of media in attendance -- as 700 steelworkers
gave a warm standing ovation to the student activists in
their midst.... [A] burly George Becker, International
President of the Steelworkers [stood] before his members and
declare[d], "These are my sons and granddaughters. This is
my family." And the members applauded.
"Every generation has to reestablish itself," said Becker,
head of a union that not only organizes steel and aluminum
workers, but those in rubber, mining and the chemical
industries. The students had been invited to a panel
discussion in which young and old activists could talk with
each other. Included were veterans of more than 50 campaigns
dealing with sweatshop and campus labor issues -- over 30 of
them already successful in an explosion of college protest
still downplayed by corporate media....
One speaker described the college activism as the first
student movement to protect workers' rights....
LAWYERS GUILD CHARGES FALSE ARRESTS
"The Foggy Bottom neighborhood resembles an occupied city.
Streets are closed, and public sidewalks are open only to
people with acceptable identification. An officer with a
video camera sands on the roof of the PEPCO building at all
times, and other officers wander the area taking still
photographs and video of people in the area, even if they
are not attempting to enter the restricted zone. Anyone
wearing buttons or carrying signs is given especially close
scrutiny. The result is a chill on the expression of
political views."
NORMAN SOLOMON: ... Last Tuesday, as a warm-up, The Wall
Street Journal began its lead editorial with the declaration
that protesters "will be bringing their bibs and bottles to
the nation's capital this week to have a run at the annual
spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank." In the next
sentence the newspaper labeled the array of expected
protesters "a smorgasbord of save-the-turtles activists,
anarchists, egalitarians, Luddites and Marxists."
WASHINGTON POST:
Police and landlords are showing merchants video clips of
some of the unruly action during the protests against the
World Trade Organization in Seattle in the fall . . . John
Faison, general manager of T.G.I. Friday's, said his
landlord showed him scenes of demonstrators....
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