The Battle After Seattle

Reason's man in Washington, DC works the IMF/World Bank protests.

Michael W. Lynch | April 17, 2000

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The protesters didn’t count on the professionalism of DC’s police force. DC’s various cops are used to keeping track of wackos, as I told a reporter from the New Haven Advocate, who was complaining about police surveillance. While they didn’t want to unnecessarily arrest anyone, they didn’t shirk from cuffing the protesters either, as last night’s arrest makes clear. They kept the protesters at bay, while others snuck in the delegates. The cops were still on the barricades this afternoon, keeping protesters out, long after the protesters, who were supposedly going to keep anyone from going in or coming out, had gotten tired and left to march about with the topless women.

But marching wasn’t without conflict. On 21st Street protesters had to pass a strip of student housing for George Washington University. "Go home hippies," taunted Tony Watkins, a senior finance major who claims to have already landed a job in New York, from his stoop, a Bud Light and Marlboro Light in hand. The marchers were chanting something about animal rights. Said Watkins, "There’s no such thing as Animal Rights, you fucking retards."

What was the question?
WASHINGTON, DC, APRIL 17 -- "I’m here because of that sign, said actor Tim Robbins, to a rain-soaked group of reporters and protesters attending a demonstration two blocks from the World Bank. He pointed to a sign that read, "Wake Up" and continued, "The more I learn, the less I like."

Accompanied by his significant other, actress Susan Sarandon, Robbins walked around in a daze, sporting the smirk that George W. Bush lost recently. This much at least still links him to W, however: His knowledge of international economic institutions (and that of Sarandon), is on a level of Bush’s knowledge of foreign leaders.

I managed to make it to the front of the interview pack, but I couldn’t get either Robbins or Sarandon to tell me exactly what the World Bank and IMF did wrong. After someone else mentioned interest rates, Robbins compared the World Bank to the loan sharks from the neighborhood in which I gather he grew up. "To me it’s like the old neighborhood where they would loan you money for five times the amount of the loan." A woman from Ethiopia kept trying to get Robbins’ attention. "Please help, Mr. Tim," she said, finally able to hand the glazed-eyed actor a paper that no doubt detailed her country’s many problems.

Meanwhile, Sarandon was collecting her thoughts. The pair was obviously unprepared for an impromptu press conference. I imagine they had aides collecting the thoughts they would present at the "official press conference," as Sarandon put it, after I pressed her on what exactly the World Bank did wrong. But there she was, caught in the rain, and there were questions that needed answering.

"First of all, let’s start with accountability," said Sarandon, recalling that accountable government is good government, even on an international scale. "We need to know what’s going on," she said, sounding suspiciously like a Republican. She then turned the tables and attacked me, as if I was personally responsible for her ignorance. "You’re the press," she said, fingering my yellow credential. "You should know." She then said some things about strings attached to loans, and about environmental and labor problems, before being escorted off.

Lest you get the wrong idea, Day Two of the "Battle After Seattle" wasn’t all celebrity interviews. Indeed, I was lonely for quite a spell.

The main entrance to the World Bank, populated by a vibrant barricade community only yesterday, was all but deserted Monday morning at six. The cops, who’d been on duty since 3:30 AM in expectation of protest activity, had let in all the World Bank delegates and were even granting entrance to folks who just worked in the area. That's something they didn’t think they’d be able to do if the protesters were present. The anarchists were nowhere to be found. "Perhaps they’re home working on their taxes," I told a cop as two George Mason University students approached for a chat.

The students had stayed home yesterday to work on papers, but were on-site at 4 o'clock this morning. They said that only one other person was on hand this morning—a whackjob in a skeleton outfit and horns—who the cops were making fun of. "They were taunting us to jump over the fence so that they could beat us," said Justin Stafford Harris, who’s majoring in history. Stafford Harris and his buddy, Patrick McCann, hate the IMF and World Bank for all the right reasons.

"I’m not for the World Bank, but I’m not for any government interference in the economy," explained Stafford Harris. Unlike Sarandon or Robbins, he explained how the IMF and World Bank provide perverse investment incentives and generally screw things up.

Two blocks over, roughly 15 would-be protesters stood in the rain trying to figure out 1) Where the others protesters were (here's a clue: They were sleeping) and 2) What direct action they should take. The choices were to sit in the rain and try to block the intersection, as they had done the day before, or march. Since all the World Bank delegates were safely inside enjoying coffee and breakfast pastries, and the protesters weren’t at the intersection through which the delegates enter anyway, Option 1 was obviously foolish. Option 2, however, was only slightly less so, since a march of 15 people is ridiculous, even more so since there were thousands on the streets by this time the day before.

Still the protesters set to wandering around Washington at 6:40 AM and by 8:10 AM they’d accumulated probably 300 comrades, some of whom were anarchists finished with their taxes. That’s when the shit hit the fan. A block after the black and red flags showed up, tear gas and pepper spray were in the air, protesters were scrambling, and my nose and eyes were burning.

The march showed up at 18th and I Streets at precisely the moment a bus from the World Bank, escorted by cops, arrived. The anarchists surrounded a cop car, and a cop came out swinging his nightstick, according to two eyewitnesses, who may be lying. One cop thought he threw out a smoke bomb—at least that’s the official story. But oops, it turns out to have been tear gas. Other cops shot pepper spray from hand-held canisters that resemble fire extinguishers. The melee escalated, with cops and members of the media outnumbering the protesters. One cop wrestled an anarchist to the ground, a black flag flinging up in the air at the moment of the pin. Another, most likely one of the actual homeless, not a slumming college student, tried to steal Executive Assistant D.C. Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer's radio. Stupid move. Gainer tackled him and made the arrest.

A woman on her way to work handed me an Israeli gas mask, which she said a cop had given her, after I inquired why she was carrying the mask. (She was professionally dressed and the mask didn’t accessorize well with her handbag.) The remaining protesters, now outnumbered by media by at least 3 to 1 and cops by another 3 to 1, taunted the cops from the sidewalk on K Street, before retreating to the Ellipse, where it was rumored a celebratory dance of some sort was to take place at 8:30. I followed them as far as Starbucks on the corner of 14th and New York.