Thousands of protesters massed in the nation’s capital Saturday bearing messages of support for the Palestinian people, opposition to America’s war on terrorism and unhappiness with the International Monetary Fund.
College-age students danced and sang “We all live in a military state” to the tune of the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” and played on drums made from buckets and water jugs.
People waved signs declaring “Sharon is an obstacle to peace”–a reference to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon–“Drop debt, not bombs” and “Civil rights, not corporate fights.”
Police officers wore riot gear and carried batons but said the crowds were calm and no demonstrators were arrested.
“It’s been very peaceful, very orderly, just the way it’s supposed to be,” said Terrance Gainer, assistant police chief in the District of Columbia. He estimated the number of protesters at 35,000 to 50,000; some organizers of the day’s events said up to 70,000 took part.
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Late in the day, after the protests concluded, 25 people were arrested for unlawfully entering an underground parking garage and using it as a sleeping area for the weekend demonstrations, said police spokesman Quintin Peterson.
Although Saturday’s protesters were drawn to Washington by the spring meetings of the World Bank and IMF, anti-globalization was just one of several causes. The protests were “all connected in the sense that it’s all part of how the world economic structure works,” said Brad Duncan, 24, of Detroit.
And they were a marked change from the protests here two years ago, when more than 1,300 people were arrested.
This time, police used surveillance cameras mounted atop office buildings and aimed from helicopters to help watch for trouble spots. The protests stretched from the IMF offices to the Ellipse and from the Justice Department to the Capitol.
`A global doomsday economy’
Outside the barricaded buildings of the IMF and World Bank, where world financial powers were meeting, protesters had erected a 30-foot-tall inflated Earth bearing a “For Sale” sign and the Citibank logo.
“It’s becoming a global doomsday economy,” said 22-year-old Rob Fish of New Jersey.
Alex Okrent, 19, of Evanston, Ill., came with about 90 other students in buses rented with the proceeds from bake sales at Ohio Wesleyan University.
“The government is committing atrocities all over the world, and they say they’re doing it in our interest,” he said. “I’m trying to make my voice heard that I don’t want people killed in my name.”
Some people marched with open wooden coffins to show solidarity with Palestinians and protest a perceived U.S. government tilt toward Israel. A few hundred counterdemonstrators carried signs that said “Peace through superior firepower.”
A group of students from Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., carried a sheet with the 1960s slogan “War is not healthy for children or other living things.”
Shawn Cuevas, a Knox College junior, received a grant from the college to come to Washington, along with eight other students, to make a documentary comparing activism of the ’60s to that of the present.
One group, International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism), protested the fight against terrorism.
“We formed in response to Bush’s phony war on terrorism–an excuse to pursue a pre-existing right-wing agenda, which includes rounding up and detaining illegally over 1,200 Arab and Muslim people,” said spokesman Tony Murphy.
Murphy said the group also wants to stop the United States from providing more than $3billion a year in aid to Israel.
“The whole world is reacting in shock to the reduction of the [Jenin] refugee camp to rubble,” he said. “You look at some of the photos and you can’t see the next house, it’s just air, a pile of rocks and twisted steel from what used to be people’s homes.”
It’s `babble,’ Hastert aide says
John Feehery, a spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), said the protesters were unlikely to affect the political and policy debate involving the Middle East. He called their messages “a lot of babble.”
“The House has traditionally been pro-Israel and will continue to be,” Feehery said. “I don’t think those protesters are going to make any difference in anyone’s thinking.”
President Bush was not in town to see the protests. He was spending the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.
Nevertheless, the protesters were enthusiastic.
Amir Heiearian drove 15 hours from Milwaukee to spend three hours in Washington.
“Every time I turn on the TV I couldn’t take it,” he said of the unrest in the Middle East. “You have an ache in your heart.”
Don Jackson drove from Arizona to participate. “I am here to stand in support of my Muslim and Palestinian brothers,” Jackson said.
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