D.C. police, taking a lesson from WTO, are playing hardball
by John Hendren
Seattle Times Washington bureau
WASHINGTON - Seattle, the name on a thousand lips in the nation's capital, has become a national Rorschach test. What it means depends on where you stand.
To the movement that seeks to turn Washington, D.C., into "Seattle East" today, the name that remains linked to last year's convulsive World Trade Organization meeting is a symbol of unity and raw grass-roots power.
"I think it's fair to acknowledge that we seriously embarrassed the powers that be in Seattle," said Patrick Reinsborough of the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network. "And they're not interested in that happening again."
Washington police cite it as a worst-case scenario.
"What we're trying to do is avoid what happened in Seattle," Washington Police Chief Charles Ramsey said yesterday. Yet regardless how often the comparison is drawn, the District of Columbia is not Seattle, where protesters controlled the streets for four days, forcing confrontations with police, paralyzing the downtown retail core and frustrating the trade talks.
For reasons that have become apparent in the warm-up rounds, demonstrators face a much higher hurdle here to reach their stated goal: shutting down two days of meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that begin today.
Animal-rights activists on Friday dumped a waist-high pile of manure in front of the World Bank. But within an hour, police had arrested two activists, impounded the truck, cleaned up the offending mound and held a news conference.
Later that night, police arrested two women in a D.C. home, where they found instructions on building Molotov cocktails. And yesterday, before protesters could shut down the economic meetings, city authorities shut down their headquarters. Police took custody of the building, arguing it violated fire-safety codes - a pre-emptive move that left protesters in disarray.
Early yesterday evening, some 600 hundred protesters were arrested after a confrontation with the police a couple of blocks from the World Bank.
Despite those countermoves by police, organizers remain confident they will be heard when the meetings begin. Demonstrators learned how to organize in Seattle, and they vow massive civil disobedience that could rattle even D.C's veteran force.
"They're already nervous, and I can see it in their faces," said Antonia Juhasz, a veteran Seattle protester and lobbyist for the American Lands Alliance. "They watch us with fear."
But demonstrators were not the only ones who took lessons from WTO. Ramsey has consulted Seattle police and shown his officers videotapes of the December demonstrations. Their main conclusion: Seattle wasn't ready for the onslaught.
Ramsey, Washington D.C.'s top cop, appears unwilling to have that said of him.
"Seattle?" an officer said as he inspected a Northwest journalist's credential. "You might as well go home. It's not going to happen here. We're prepared."
What protests are about
The protests revolve around two international organizations that provide financial assistance to developing countries. Demonstrators argue that the lending practices of the World Bank and IMF damage the environment by replacing watersheds and forests with dams and cash crops. They claim Third World economies like Haiti are forced into bankruptcy by having to open their markets to cheaper competitors.
But the U.S. government and other world leaders say IMF and World Bank loans help developing countries build the infrastructure they need to feed their people and compete in the global economy.
Organizers came a week ahead of the meetings, some driving in caravans from as far as Seattle and Oakland, Calif. Union members flew in, and 11 busloads of Philadelphia activists from the AIDS group ACT UP were expected to arrive by today.
Protest organizers say they expect 50,000 people to gather this weekend. If those estimates hold up, the crowd would rival the numbers that marched and demonstrated during the busiest days of WTO.
Unlike Seattle, where police reinforcements were not deployed until protesters controlled downtown, the District of Columbia began days ago to amass a dizzying array of law-enforcement agencies beyond its 3,500-member force.
Among them: The FBI; the Secret Service; Capitol Police; Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents; the Federal Protection Service officers who protect government buildings; the local National Guard, suburban officers from Arlington, Va., and Montgomery County, Md.; and Virginia State Police. There are others, Ramsey said. "I can't remember them all."
The city has spent $1 million on protective police gear. In another painful parallel to Seattle, which hasn't seen the $5 million the city requested from Congress after WTO, the district has asked Uncle Sam for the same amount to cover this weekend's security.
None of the law-enforcement agencies here will disclose how many officers they've deployed. But their presence becomes apparent wherever protesters gather.
When fewer than 100 people met to hear anti-World Bank speakers in front of the U.S. Treasury building Friday, more than a dozen baton-wielding, blue-suited metro police bordered the crowd.
On the White House lawn next door, a line of uniformed Secret Service officers stood in full riot gear with batons in hand. Outside the fence, helmeted federal Park Police lined the perimeter. Motorcycle police sat parked along the curb. And, above the president's home loomed a dark-windowed Secret Service command post that never closes.
"We are always at a high state of alert here," Secret Service spokesman James Mackin said.
Harder to block delegates
The logistics of Washington are unlike those in Seattle, and appear more favorable to police.
At WTO, many delegates stayed at the downtown Sheraton and other hotels within walking distance, making it easy for protesters to encircle them and keep them from leaving to get to meetings at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center.
In Washington D.C., there are dozens of hotels - most of them not within walking distance - and many delegates are reportedly staying in private homes. So it's more difficult for protesters to surround their targets.
For days, police have had the perimeter of the neighboring IMF and World Bank buildings cordoned off on all sides. Officers are manning every corner of Pennsylvania Avenue for blocks on either side.
If all else fails, there are two subway stops within four blocks of the meetings, giving delegates a variety of ways to arrive. Still, the protesters seem determined.
"I think we're going to have lots of arrests," said Ramsey, the D.C. police chief. "We don't intend to use chemical instruments, but we have them available, and we'll use the force that is needed. . . . Our people are very much accustomed to handling crowds."
Juhasz of the American Lands Alliance counters: "Not this kind of protest. It's been 20 years since we've had massive civil disobedience in Washington, D.C."
An unprecedented demonstration could drive even seasoned Washington police to extreme measures, Juhasz said.
"I think they're ready to snap," she said. "And that's what happened in Seattle."
Many neighbors are taking no chances.
George Washington University, located blocks from the World Bank and IMF, closed Friday and won't reopen until Tuesday. So did many shops along Pennsylvania Avenue.
Bus stops that usually connect Georgetown residents to Capitol Hill now bear "discontinued" signs.
District police have tracked the protesters' schedules through Internet sites such as http//www.a16.org .
Headquarters shut down
On Thursday, outside the "convergence center," the headquarters where protesters were making massive puppets and taking courses on how to remove tear gas from the eyes, two dark-suited men talked on cellular phones in a navy blue Ford with four aerials. Police helicopters sometimes hovered above.
About 9 a.m. yesterday, as many demonstrators were still sleeping, city fire marshals marched in and shut down the warehouse and alleyways.
"It really was a hazard to a lot of the young people in there," said Assistant Police Chief Terrance Gainer said "I don't see it opening soon."
Police later returned the icons of their protest: frowning 15-foot puppets labeled, "IMF," "World Bank," and "WTO"; cardboard chain saws and bulldozers; an 8-foot papier-mache monkey wrench with "Liberation" on the handle; an alarm clock "to wake people up."
The center was part school, training devotees how to treat tear gas and negotiate with police, and part studio, with artists creating banners and puppets.
It was also part '60's love-in. One day before the headquarters was closed, a white-haired man in an orange wrap and turban smiled at three men in United Auto Workers jackets. Outside sat youths clad in free-flowing clothes their parents might have worn.
In a nonviolence workshop, demonstrators did role-playing with colleagues acting as aggressive police.
In legal training, members are advised on how to gum up the judicial works: Carry no identification, give no names when arrested and demand the right to a speedy trial. Then plea-bargain as a group.
In Seattle, this tactic helped get more than 500 cases dismissed after WTO was over.
"If everyone acts as one, it's very hard for the legal system to just deny that power," said Paul Marini, a shaven-headed, briefcase-bearing paralegal for the Midnight Special Law Collective who was jailed in Seattle. "People are empowered by the success of solidarity in Seattle."
Teach-ins in the center and elsewhere educated those with only a passing understanding of the World Bank and IMF.
Many of the dreadlock-wearing, body-pierced rank-and-file attended courses with names like "World Bank and IMF 101."
Police sought to keep tensions low by giving protesters some latitude in the early days of the protests. When they launched an unscheduled march to the National Press Building, where Michael Moore, director general of the WTO, was speaking, demonstrators chanted and sang. A young woman told a metro officer she couldn't think of a song to sing to him. He smiled.
"Just relax," he said. "You'll think of something."
When a confrontation at DuPont Circle grew so contentious that officers handed one another gas masks, demonstrators chanted, "Where's your badge?" to officers who wore none. They later put them on at a lieutenant's urging.
If protesters overcome obstacles with police, there is one more potential worry: the cautious role of labor, which has distanced itself from the most extreme elements of Seattle. The AFL-CIO is joining an anti-IMF/World Bank rally today.
But the Teamsters union, which is part of the AFL-CIO, has refused to sign on, even though 2,000 members were already in town lobbying against trade with China.
"While we are sympathetic to the basic issues of the (IMF/World) protest, we are not in total agreement with that approach," Teamsters spokesman Chip Roth said.
"We don't feel like the IMF or the World Bank should sacrifice what leverage they have to promote human rights and core labor standards in the countries that they help."
Labor organizers sent their members to Washington over the past week largely to protest a congressional bill to establish permanent trade relations with China.
Union members such as John Goodman and Don Kegley, steelworkers locked out of Kaiser Aluminum's Spokane plant for 15 months, traveled more than 3,000 miles to protest both - trade with China and the World Bank. The union helped pay for their plane tickets.
"They're using this money to keep people in wage slavery around the world," said the shaven-headed Kegley, draping an arm of support around a passing protester.
Yet China evokes more passion from union leaders, than global finance organizations.
"The IMF/World Bank meetings are somewhat incidental to our (China trade) issues," steelworkers' spokesman Gary Hubbard said.
But one of the few Teamsters at the protesters' hideaway lamented his union's timid stand.
"The union is missing out," said Matt Latzo of Columbia, Md. "They could be recruiting for the future. These people are all under 30."
Whether Washington ends in success or failure for the protesters, organizers say the movement will go on to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.
"The important thing is we've already won," said Reinsborough, of the Rainforest Action Network. "This is history in the making."