WASHINGTON -- (AP, Reuters Digest) Police arrested 649 people, including anti-capitalist
protesters and bystanders, in a show of force as the annual meeting of
the World Bank and the IMF opened here.
Radical demonstrators had threatened to bring the US capital to a
standstill by blocking traffic, but police moved swiftly on pockets of
protesters in central Washington streets, arresting hundreds and
swinging clubs to clear crowds.
At a 5:00 pm (2100 GMT) press conference Police Chief Charles Ramsey
announced that 649 protesters had been arrested throughout the day.
The largest mass arrest was at Freedom Plaza, just blocks from the White
House, were some 250 people who gathered for a mid-morning rally against
US policy on Iraq were penned in by riot police, handcuffed, and bussed
to a detention site.
Protesters at Freedom Plaza clutched signs reading "No blood for oil, No
war on Iraq," and "Pinochet, bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, CIA creations."
A young woman from Minnesota who refused to give her name said those
issues are "driven by corporate profit at the expense of people."
Although the protesters had pledged to shut down the nation's capital,
there were only minimal disruptions to the morning rush as the
demonstrators made their way through downtown Washington protesting
against the Bush administration's environmental policies, the World Bank
and "corporate greed."
Others protested a war against Iraq.
Most of those taken into custody were charged with blocking sidewalks or
entrances and parading without a permit.
About 65 people were charged with rioting after they clashed with
police, broke some windows at a Citibank office and tossed smoke bombs
in Washington's business district.
Elsewhere, about 200 demonstrators arrested inside the White House's
security zone were charged with refusing to obey a police order,
according to Chief Charles Ramsey.
The financial meetings that inspired the protests began without
interruption -- surrounded by fences, closed streets and lines of police.
At one downtown intersection, protesters chained themselves together.
Elsewhere, demonstrators danced through the street with mud and leaves
smeared on their hair and clothes. Fire trucks were called to put out a
few tires set ablaze on the outskirts of town.
"This is not a police state, we have a right to demonstrate," chanted a
group of mostly young people, some wearing bandanas over their faces.
After police led dozens away, the sidewalk was littered with their
personal items -- jackets, gas masks, helmets, goggles, a journal.
A few blocks from the White House, police arrested about 200 protesters
who chanted and banged on drums and plastic buckets.
Police initially surrounded the block-long park and did not allow anyone
to leave, then gradually pushed the demonstrators into one corner before
arresting them.
"I don't understand why they won't let people leave," said one
demonstrator, Keith Wagner of Brookville, Md.
One protester said she saw several people struck in the head, and
criticized the police for being heavy-handed.
"These are people trying to protest against a system that represses
people around the world, and their response is repression on the streets
here too," said Flora Little, 38, from Richmond, Virginia.
"They are not letting people assemble. It's incredible brutality," said
organizer Andrew Willis. "People were just arrested at a 'beat the war
drum' rally before they even picked up their drums."
Among those arrested: a nude woman chanting slogans against the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund. Police officers threw a sheet
around her before she was taken into custody.
John Passacantando, the US executive director of the environmentalist
group Greenpeace, was arrested while he was riding his bicycle to work
and stopped to see the gathering.
Police surrounded the crowd and did not let anyone leave, and he now
said he faces charges of failing to obey orders.
"I didn't break any law," Passacantando said, interviewed on his
portable phone while inside a police bus awaiting processing.
"It was an overreaction. The DC police force clearly got a bad order
from someone."
Sally Norton, a New York nurse in town for a conference, stopped at the
Plaza hoping to listen to speakers talking about Iraq. Instead she was
trapped in the crowd and arrested with everyone else.
"It happened at Freedom Plaza -- somehow the irony was too much," said
Norton, also contacted on a portable phone.
About 100 demonstrators broke off from the group and began pulling up
newspaper boxes and pounding on buses as they walked down the center of
the street.
Police surrounded them with clubs drawn, rushed in and arrested 56 after
a bank window was broken. The protesters were herded onto a city bus on
loan to authorities.
"They are pre-emptively arresting people" ahead of the weekend marches,
said Aaron Kreider, who came down from Philadelphia for the protests.
"It really takes the steam out of the next event."
Other protesters were arrested on a major intersection when they
peacefully sat down in the street to block traffic.
Dan Ueda, 25, said he was nervous as he awaited the signal to lock arms
with fellow protesters for a "snake march" through the city.
"We're hoping not to get arrested in the first five minutes," said Ueda
of Cliffside Park, N.J.
The Anti-Capitalist Convergence, the group behind Friday's protests,
believes capitalism breeds poverty and limits the freedom of the world's
poor, and is calling for the overthrow of the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund.
"Today's action was a success. We truly interrupted capitalism as usual
in Washington, D.C.," said Rae Valentine, a Washington organizer for the
Anti-Capitalist Convergence, at a news conference Friday.
"Our primary message today was the savagery, the devastation to hundreds
of thousands of people's lives. At the Boston tea party, do you report
the damage to the tea or do you talk about taxation without
representation?," said Zein El-Amine, another ACC organizer, asked if
his group condoned protesters breaking windows of a Citibank branch.
"There are injustices going on all around the world and the Gap and the
IMF and the World Bank are all a part of it," said Anna Gennari, 21,
from St. Louis, on why she stripped to her underwear outside the Gap to
protest the company's labor and environmental practices.
Another protest targeting the World Bank and IMF was planned for
Saturday. Organizers say they will attempt to prevent officials from
exiting the buildings after the lenders' annual meetings.
