Because Nothing Hurts the IMF More Than Destroying Property in Long-Blighted Neighborhoods

I was walking to the neighborhood hardware store Saturday morning when I noticed that the two little bank branches across the street had had their windows bashed in. "Wha happen?" I asked one of D.C.'s finest.

"IMF protesters," she replied.

Jigga-what??

Protesting the International Monetary Fund by smashing up and spray-painting a PNC bank and Wachovia branch in Logan Circle a mile and a half away is roughly akin to registering your dissatifaction with a New York Stock Exchange meeting on Wall Street by urinating on some Greenwich Village ATMs.

Actually, it's even worse: Considering that some of the deadliest urban riots in United States history were epicentered just five blocks north up 14th St., and that the neighborhood is only now getting around to coming back, demonstrating against the IMF by creating a plywood-on-window-frames situation in an area that has long suffered from violence and blight is like…uh, fighting the rich by kicking a bum? Protesting the pope by slapping a Muslim? I confess that, unlike Tea Party-hater Marc Cooper, I have never much understood, let alone championed, the anti-globalization protesters that have been dogging IMF/World Bank meetings for more than a decade now.

Washington Post round-up here. Reason on the Seattle and post-Seattle protests here.