In one of the largest closures in downtown Washington, police made some 50 blocks off limits, barring everyone from getting past metal barriers. Police clustered at every barricaded intersection.
Late in the day, with the standoff intensifying, riot-ready police appeared to pen in several hundred protesters in a blocked off area, and led more than 60 away in handcuffs, placing them on waiting school buses.
"Let us go," demonstrators chanted, when it seemed police were preventing them from leaving. The protesters also sang hymns from the civil rights movement.
"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 protester Larry Holmes.
Earlier Saturday, in the ultimate morning wake up call, police in Washington, D.C. raided the protesters’ headquarters. Then they ousted about 300 organizers on the excuse their building had become a fire hazard, reports CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews.
"This is a clear repression of people's rights to make their voice heard," said one protester
. While the protesters, possessions in hand, said the raid was a sham, the police said they found the makings for arson.
"One that I personally saw was a Molotov cocktail. All of that has been confiscated," said Terry Gainer, assistant chief of police in D.C.
[a4a: This is such a lie -- the cops made this up. I'm sure the flammable materials they were referring to was papier mache for the street puppets!]
All of this is prelude to the World Bank/International Monetary Fund meetings Sunday, which the protest groups have vowed to shut down. It's the same hodgepodge of groups that disrupted the world trade meeting last December in Seattle.
At any given time in Washington, D.C., this week, one could find a street protest, for animal rights, against development, for third world debt relief, and a protest against sweatshops.
Jamming a Georgetown sportswear shop Saturday, activists demanding higher wages overseas stood beside union members protesting jobs going overseas -- latter-day radicals meet the steelworkers.
"It's time that the older workers join with the young generation,"said Stan Daniels of the United Steelworkers.
Their common ground is the World Bank, whose loans, they say, harm the environment and perpetuate poverty. Organizers have promised 10,000 marchers Sunday.
Among the issues to be considered are the world economic outlook, ways to streamline IMF lending policies and proposals to safeguard against government misuse of IMF loans.
On Thursday, IMF acting managing director Stanley Fischer delivered an impassioned rebuttal to the claim by critics that the lending organization's policies are making things worse for poor nations.
Defending the most controversial policy -- globalization -- Fischer argues that import restrictions and measures seeking to ignore the global marketplace simply do not work. "All the evidence is that the best way to grow is to integrate into the global economy. We are not trying to keep poor countries down."
The IMF director says the voices of the protesters are nonetheless being heard. "We have to listen to the demonstrators, and we are trying to do that. We have the same goals as the demonstrators, and we both want to reduce poverty all over the world, especially in the poorest countries."
The police promise this won't be another Seattle. They have sealed the streets around the World Bank -- and in Saturday morning's pre-emptive strike, turned these protesters against economic injustice into refugees.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington braced for a another day of anti-globalization protests outside IMF meetings here but heavy rain during the morning commute put a damper on the second day of planned mass rallies.
By 7 a.m. less than 100 protesters had arrived near the International Monetary Fund and World Bank where financial leaders from around the world were set to meet later in the morning.
By comparison, on Sunday at the same time more than 500 protesters had gathered to voice their concerns about how the global lenders' policies hurt poor country economies.
Demonstrators succeeded in disrupting the start of the IMF's meeting yesterday by blocking the entry of several finance ministers and severely delaying others.
"We're looking very good. God saves the best till last and a little rain today certainly doesn't hurt," Washington police chief Charles Ramsey told CBS television news.
Organizers declared victory, saying the disruption made it difficult for the IMF's policy-setting board to conduct its business but the IMF said its meeting went ahead as planned.
On Monday, the World Bank is set to hold a similar meeting and early signs were that there were not enough demonstrators on the street to seriously disrupt that event.
Protesters once again sat across streets to block delegates' buses, but unlike at Sunday's rally, they were unlikely to be effective as their numbers were too small to ring the entire security perimeter, which police have erected for the meetings.
Indeed, while protesters succeeded in turning away some delegates early on Monday, those buses passed through the security perimeter just a few block down the street.
Police used pepper spray on three people in the face after one van was blocked at an intersection by protesters sitting down on the street. "It feels like my face is on fire," said Tim Westberg, 20, Harrisburg Penn.
The U.S. government ordered a partial shutdown on Monday in anticipation of large throngs of protesters.
In a rare move, the federal government announced late on Sunday that only emergency workers should report to work on Monday in a large area surrounding the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, where thousands of protesters were expected again to target world financial meetings.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said nonessential federal workers at the State, Treasury, Commerce and Interior departments, the White House, and other key agencies would have an unexpected day off, at the recommendation of federal and local law enforcement officials.
Police had predicted heavy traffic during Monday's morning rush hour as protesters converged to try to block the sixth and final day of meetings at the IMF and World Bank.
Protest organizers claimed they had 20,000 demonstrators on the streets of the capital on Sunday. Police estimated 10,000 protesters attended one demonstration on the grassy Ellipse near the White House, a good-humored rally that drew supporters from causes ranging from AIDS to Third World rights.
As in the anti-trade protests in Seattle last December, the demonstrators in Washington underwent weeks of training and appeared to be highly organized. But unlike Seattle, District police quickly responded to attempts by protesters to disrupt the meetings here, keeping the crowds mostly under control.
[a4a: Note that it's not "anti-trade" -- it's anti-capitalist. Trade came before capitalism, and will continue after capitalism.]
Police beat protesters with batons, fired pepper spray and rode their motorcycles into the crowd to try to break up demonstrations just blocks from the White House.
In what seemed to be an isolated incident, police appeared to use tear gas after skirmishing for several hours with the crowd, many of whom were wearing bandannas and masks. The use of force calmed the volatile situation.
[a4a: Note the justification of the use of force -- the cops attacked the demonstrators outright, without justification, but this isn't seen as violence, but rather as a force for "calm".]
CBS News Correspondent Lee Cowan reports they began pushing and shoving their way toward the headquarters of the IMF and the World Bank -- where tense fights with police broke out over issues such as globalization and corporate greed.
Police, determined to used all force necessary to prevent the kind of chaos and disruptions that marred previous meetings in Seattle, have arrested nearly 700 of the protesters, including about 20 people on Sunday. One police officer was hospitalized for back pain and another for heat exhaustion.
[a4a: Guess those cops threw out their backs and wore themselves out beating up demonstrators.]
The street protests kept a handful of international delegates out of the opening meeting -- which was what the protesters wanted all along.
The finance ministers of France, Brazil, Portugal and Thailand were thwarted by the crowds and sat at the Watergate Hotel six hours after the meetings started, wondering what to do. They eventually made it to the spring meeting of the IMF.
Police sent buses under the cover of early morning darkness Sunday to pick up world finance ministers at their hotels, and used circuitous routes and U-turns to get them to work.
As Sunday began, the police were upbeat, expressing their support for the right of the protesters to demonstrate.
[a4a: The right to demonstrate?? Those words are in contrast to the beatings they administered to the protesters.]
But soon the anger spread, and police in riot gear -- outnumbered and on the defensive -- began to fight back. Delegates were told to stay inside as the air around their buildings filled with noxious gas and pepper spray.
But while these demonstrators got the most attention from police, they were not in the majority. Blocks away, thousands spent the day peacefully, on the grass and in the sun, flying colorful banners and promoting a number of causes, from "Save the Turtles" to "Free Tibet" -- issues many felt were lost in the violence of the Seattle demonstrations.
Not lost on D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey was the sophistication of the new millennium-style protester.
"We learned a lot from Seattle," said Ramsey. "We learned that they're very well organized. They think through what they're doing."
And even demonstrators noticed the difference. "The police restraint in D.C. is directly related to the brutality in Seattle," said one.
CBS News Correspondent Eric Engberg reports the police also demonstrated a noticeable level of sophistication. Some 3,500 police were on the streets, many of them specially trained in riot control. The tight command and control system, missing in Seattle, included the use of rapid response teams, futuristic equipment, and field commanders overseeing individual officers -- and making key decisions on the scene.
Andrea Durbin of "Friends of the Earth," explaining what is driving the demonstrations, said, "The World Bank and the IMF promote policies that lead to moral degradation around the world that leads to more impoverishment, and really neglects the people they're trying to serve -- the poor around the world and instead supports more interests of corporations," said Durbin.
But CBS News Correspondent Jacqueline Adams reports the World Bank has already shifted much of its lending away from projects like oil and mining toward poverty programs and social reforms. And since 1980 it has almost tripled the amount of money it loans to economically troubled countries like Ethiopia.
While social programs are all well and good, analysts say industrial projects are still necessary to help attract big business.
And while the bureaucrats and demonstrators both want to eliminate poverty, they still differ on how to do that.
[a4a: The above two lines are such a crock -- the US has plenty of industrial projects for big business, and yet has poverty been eliminated here? Hell, no. So it's ridiculous to think that this same policy will work in the Third World. The difference in priorities is that social spending helps poor people live better, while industrial projects help foreign investors get richer -- you can see who matters, yes?]
More protests were set Monday, when the resumption of the weekday rush hour threatened horrendous traffic problems.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Police arrested 600 demonstrators Monday and hurled tear gas and sprayed pepper to crush protests aimed at disrupting the final day of talks between world financial leaders.
Protesters ended their second day of intense rallies here Monday afternoon as they ran out of steam after struggling against a highly organized police force during a day of torrential rain which left many fearful of hypothermia.
Monday's arrests brought to about 1,300 the number of people detained since protests began a week ago against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, whom they accuse of hurting rather than helping the poor around the world.
The arrest total was more than twice the 525 people who were arrested late last year when riots and vandalism helped sink trade talks in the port city of Seattle.
Demonstrators brought large parts of downtown Washington to a standstill for two days but failed to halt the meetings. The protests ended with little of the vandalism and property destruction in Seattle.
As demonstrators dispersed many promised to travel to Philadelphia and Los Angeles in mid-year to rally at the Republican and Democratic political conventions. They also plan to continue their anti-International Monetary Fund theme when the lending agency meets in Prague in September.
"I know people who are organizing protests in Philadelphia and in Los Angeles right now. Work is already underway, there are a lot of things planned," said Adam Eidinger, spokesman for the Mobilization for Global Justice.
Police Chief Charles Ramsey, who estimated the force spent up to $5 million on its security operation, said there could be problems should the protesters travel to the conventions.
"I would hope that there's no problems in Philadelphia ... (and) in Los Angeles. But if this same group of individuals choose to visit either of those two conventions they've got problems," Ramsey told a news briefing.
Eidinger said among the issues likely to be high on the list of issues for activists at the conventions would be the environment, political and campaign finance reform and a "living wage" for menial workers at the conventions -- a topic they hope would swell their ranks by attracting labor unions.
Activists from both cities attended boot camp training this week to learn lessons and tactics from those who organized the rallies here and in Seattle.
Monday about 5,000 protesters massed behind police barricades a block away from the IMF and World Bank buildings, where world financial leaders started talks two hours ahead of schedule to avoid the demonstrators.
Protesters lined up in driving rain behind police barricades just one block from the bank and IMF buildings and several blocks away from the White House. President Clinton was out of town.
After a tense stand-off for about an hour, police allowed small groups to cross the barrier and then face arrest. Eventually 400 people passed through the barricades to offer themselves up for "peaceful" arrest. Two hundred others were arrested in various scuffles throughout the day.
Washington's Deputy Police Chief Terrance Gainer, who helped to negotiate the "peaceful arrests," accepted a bunch of roses from protesters at the barricades.
Protesters told Reuters the group's "tactical committee" had originally voted to storm the barricades and break into the building where world financial leaders were meeting, but then decided to opt for peaceful arrests as a sign of protest.
Police Chief Ramsey said he believed his police force was the most professional in the United States. "I've never seen a police department operate as efficiently," he said.
Movie stars Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins joined the demonstrators, who caused traffic chaos in the city during Monday's commute and led the federal government to order only emergency workers to report for work in a large area surrounding the IMF and World Bank.
Robbins said he was impressed by the demonstrations. "I think this is exciting because it is such a wide coalition of people. You haven't seen this kind of unity before."
Police sprayed pepper frequently during the day and Washington Mayor Anthony Williams said tear gas was used once.
He denied accusations from protesters that the police used heavy-handed tactics. "The police have shown great poise and discipline throughout this episode," Williams told CNN.
[a4a: Yeah, right.]
Steve Kretzmann, a spokesman for the Mobilization for Global Justice, said the protests had been a victory for the organizers but that the police had gone too far.
"They (police) have militarized our capital. This kind of force only strengthens our resolve. We will not back down," Kretzmann told a news briefing.
But as activists dispersed some acknowledged that Ramsey's role as peacemaker had surprised and pleased them. While most felt that the police lashed out unnecessarily on occasion and reacted at times with too much force, they remained impressed at the way police repeatedly diffused tense situations.
[a4a: This happy ending (?) stands in contrast to the other reports of beatings what gassings by the police. Seems like the cops are being praised for not completely kicking the crap out of the protesters.]
While organizers succeeding in attracting 20,000 people on Sunday and 5,000 people Monday in terrible weather, they were ineffective in shutting down the World Bank meeting and merely delayed the IMF's event Sunday.
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