________________________________________________________________________________ sources: media: streaming: [edited] 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.... # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 2000 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. more information: mail to: majordomo@rolux.org, subject line: , message body: info. further questions: mail to: rolux-owner@rolux.org. archive: http://www.rolux.org