WASHINGTON _ Globalization protesters swarmed through the heart of the capital late Saturday and came face to face with lines of helmeted
police in a tense show of will sparked by animosity toward international lending institutions.
Police estimated 600 people were arrested for parading without a permit, and similar charges, and led peacefully to waiting buses.
Riot-ready police made some 50 blocks off-limits around the World Bank headquarters, barring everyone from getting past metal barriers.
Arrests that began early in the day when police raided protesters' headquarters continued into the cool, damp night -- weather reminiscent of Seattle, scene last December of similar demonstrations against international financial policy.
Police Chief Charles Ramsey said those arrested would be charged with "parading without a permit and refusal to disperse, among other things." Some might also be charged with blocking traffic, he added.
Ramsey said it would take several hours just to get the protesters loaded, transported and processed at two locations in the city and that how long they remain in custody would depend, in part, on how cooperative they are.
Those who provide identification will be fined $50, Ramsey said. Those who don't will be fined $300.
"We have a right to be here and we also have a right to protest and we also have a right to walk away," said Larry Holmes, complaining that police had penned demonstrators in a barricaded area to arrest them.
Protesters complained that there was no warning before arrests began, but Ramsey said they were warned to get back on the sidewalks when they began to swarm into the street.
"Maybe you didn't hear it with all the people, but we did give a warning," Ramsey told reporters at the scene.
"No matter how many of us are arrested today, we are resolved to carry our message to the streets tomorrow," said Ilyse Hogue of the Mobilization for Global Justice, the key organizer of the weekend demonstrations.
Protesters, pouring in by the busload all day for demonstrations meant to peak today and Monday, took over an abandoned row house in a poor part of the city as neighbors shouted at police to do something, and another group stripped down to their underwear in an anti-sweatshop demonstration in trendy Georgetown.
But the largest group of protesters congregated as close as they could get to the World Bank and its sister lending institution, the International Monetary Fund, upset that police had shut down their protest headquarters early in the day, declaring it to be unsafe.
Protesters still holding their breakfast plates streamed out of their headquarters, an old warehouse where they were making signs, banners and puppets, and drifted 10 blocks away to another staging center.
There, they practiced hymns, street theater and passive resistance.
"This will not deter us,"' said Molly McCarthy, 21, of Seattle, a protest organizer.
"We lost our food, and our cooking supplies, and we've got thousands of people to feed," said another organizer, Antonia Jahasz, 29, of Washington. "With one of the highest homicide rates in the country, D.C.'s finest are guarding our dangerous puppets."
But as they moved through the first headquarters, authorities also found a plastic container with a rag stuffed inside to serve as a wick, said Terry Gainer, executive assistant police chief.
He said it "looks like a Molotov cocktail." Police also found soda bottles with the tops or bottoms cut off, Gainer said.
Protest leaders said police had merely come across art supplies.
"They found a plastic bottle that had rags in it that were being used to get paint off of people's hands," said Adam Eidinger, 26, of Washington.
Several hours after the raid -- and well before the mass arrests at nightfall -- Ramsey said police did not intend "to violate anyone's First Amendment rights" and allowed some protesters to retrieve the puppets.
In a light rain, with police sirens sounding almost constantly downtown, tourists who normally stroll to the gates of the White House to snap pictures were held behind barriers across the street.
In a poor section of northwest Washington, more than 100 protesters gathered by an abandoned row house and a few went on the roof and chained themselves there, holding signs saying, "Stop the evictions," and "Housing for all."
Police blocked off the area while neighbors loudly demanded that they move in and get the protesters out. "They have no business being in our neighborhood like this," said Leuns Moore, 37.
Four hours after the protesters took over the house, police went on the roof, cut the protesters' chains and arrested nine of them for unlawful entry.
A protest outside a Gap clothing store in Georgetown turned into an impromptu striptease when police took a man wearing a grass skirt with nothing underneath into custody and made him put on underwear.
That prompted a dozen or so other men and women in the crowd of 200 to strip down to their skivvies.
Prior to Saturday, police had arrested a number of people for such things as possessing materials to set up blockades and had confiscated an undisclosed amount of ammunition in one raid.
Protesters accuse the World Bank and IMF of destroying the environment with dams and similar projects, allowing sweatshops and imposing harsh debt-repayment programs.
Friday night, police raided a house where they found an undisclosed amount of small-caliber ammunition and firebomb instructions, Gainer said. The raid also produced a large supply of pipes and chicken wire used to make human blockades.
Officials said the building was a fire hazard.
"I think it's really just an escalation of tactics designed to keep us from being able to express ourselves," said Han Shan of Baltimore, from a group called Mobilization for Social Justice.