APRIL 16 QUOTES LEGAL OBSERVER KATYA KOMISARUK: The police are trying to intimidate and conduct preemptive strikes to disrupt the organization. DC ACTIVIST JOHN STEINBACH [who has witnessed more protests and arrests than most DC cops]: The police are driving down attendance at the permitted -- the legal -- rally perhaps. The risks of real violence are escalating and its all on the shoulders of the cops. DC POLICE OFFICER TO METRO BUS DRIVER FERRYING WB/IMF DELEGATES CONCERNING PROTESTERS (According to Rev. Douglas Hunt of Witness for Peace]: Back over them if you have to. PRINT SHOPS CLOSE AFTER POLICE PRESSURE TROY SKEELS, INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER: As we are attempting to go to press with the "Blind Spot," IMC's print publication due to hit the streets tomorrow, we are confronting a serious technical difficulty: Citing "riot activity" the Kinkos print shops in the area are either closed already or thinking about it. I learned about this turn of events this afternoon as I and some people I was trading literature with were asked to leave a Kinkos near the White House. The employee at the Kinkos we were at was polite as he asked us to leave, but explained that our presence was putting his shop in danger of being closed. Continuing our discussion on the sidewalk, I learned that other Kinkos had already been closed at police direction. Philip, from Oberlin College, Ohio, sporting a box of freshly printed pamphlets told me that he had left one Kinkos (24th and K street) that closed after police came in and harassed people printing up pro-demonstration, or simply anti-IMF literature. There was of course, no riot activity in sight. At least three Kinkos have already closed. It remains unclear how long the other popular "24 hour" printing outlets will remain open. INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER: mailto:http://www.indymedia.org/ SWEEP ARRESTS WITHOUT WARNINGS AP: [Chief]Ramsey said authorities would get the protesters loaded, transported and processed at two locations in the city. How long they remain in custody would depend, in part, on how cooperative they are, he said. 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 protester 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. NEW YORK TIMES: Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said later that the crowd had refused a police order to disperse. Reporters who had observed the march had not heard any such order. WASHINGTON POST: Protesters and even tourists who witnessed the event said not only did police fail to order people to disperse but they also prevented those who wanted to leave from doing so. DEPUTY CHIEF TERRANCE GAINER [after his officers had arrested and held for six hours a Washington Post photographer]: To the extent we arrested a person that shouldn't been, I apologize. APRIL 15 11:47 PM JASON VEST, IN THESE TIMES NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: "The fire department's rationale [for closing demonstration HQ] is about as convincing as Idi Amin's claim that Archbishop Luwum had died in a car crash after Amin had in fact shot Luwum in the head," said Hussein Ibish, communications director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, who, despite his absence from the scene, nonetheless expresses solidarity with the Mobilization. Indeed, the pretext was so ridiculous that even all the cops didn't buy it. One police officer, when asked about the impending threats to safety personal and public posed by the building of paper-mache puppet-making materials, looked vaguely chagrined and rolled his eyes. Kalee Kreider, an environmental activist who lives several blocks away, seemed amused that alleged fire code violations would suddenly draw so many police officers to this marginal neighborhood known for moderate drug traffic and unsolved homicides. Jenny Salan, a DC citizen who lives several blocks from the Convergence Center and was not planning on taking part in the Sunday demonstration, said she was so disgusted by the selectiveness of the Florida Avenue action that she's throwing her lot in with the protesters. "I know my own building isn't up to fire code-when the cops came in after we'd had a burglary, they said that to the owner, and we never saw the fire marshal," she said. "They could go right into any building any day right around here and find fire code violations," echoed National Lawyers Guild member Jim Drew, who said that in his 30 years of practicing law in DC, such a raid is unprecedented. However, veteran activist John Stauber of Madison, Wisconsin, said he wasn't exactly surprised. "This was a pre-emptive, decapitating strike," he said, grudgingly praising the authorities for their tactical prowess. JASON VEST mailto:mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] NEIGHBORHOOD REAX SCOTT POMEROY IN A NEIGHBORHOOD ONLINE NEWSLETTER: The protestors have been using the Manhattan Laundry Building as a staging headquarters where people go to find housing, training, and where to go next. While there they have assisted the Booker T. Washington Charter School programs. They aided in cleaning and gutting a local abandoned building. They are patronizing our local businesses. Why are we treating them as criminals when they aren't committing crimes? I understand the need to protect the city from the possibility of property damage, similar to what happened in Seattle. That is why I and local officials have been actively meeting with and integrating the protestors into participating locally and assisting the residents at a grass roots level. Trying to educate ourselves about one another's missions and how to help each other. Because of the police action today we now have thousands of people wandering aimlessly around the streets, who are now wet, cold and upset. > I am pleased to see that the police are going to be enforcing the fire code violations in the city now. I expect to see them tonight on U Street inside one of the clubs that routinely packs in crowds that far exceed their maximum occupancies. Can you picture 60 officers marching in and ordering everyone out of one of these clubs. > HERBERT SAMPLE, A SHAW RESIDENT: It is bemusing and agonizing at the same time to see a police force that can't seem to get its act together to stop crime, that is understaffed and underequipped, that takes its time when DC citizens call, can nonetheless roll out in force to stop training sessions designed to teach protesters how to do so legally and nonviolently. Where are all these cops the rest of the year when we need them? KEY NUMBERS DC Mayor Anthony Williams email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel: +1.202.727.1620 fax: +1.202.727.0505 DC Police Chief Ramsey tel: +1.202.727.4218 fax: +1.202.727.9524 Deputy Police Chief Gainer tel: +1.202.727.4363 fax: +1.202.727.9729 DC Police E-Mail mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 2:57PM GILLIAN ANDREWS & JOHN TARLETON, INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER: DC police and fire department officials shut down the convergence center at 1328 Florida Ave. this morning. Plainclothes fire officials entered the center around 8:30 on a preliminary investigation, just as protesters were finishing breakfast and preparing for nonviolence training. Protesters escorted the officials in as required by law. Eyewitnesses said it appeared that officials did not know of fire hazards before they entered the building. Officers from the city's police Emergency Response Team followed soon after. When they were asked if they had a search warrant, they did not respond. Patricia Whitewater, an organizer with Mobilization for Global Justice, was inside the convergence center when the authorities arrived. She suggested that police presence was prearranged, not simply a response to the fire department's request for aid. "It was clearly a coordinated action," she said. Peter Lumsdaine of the California-based Resource Center for Nonviolence was inside the building helping to prepare an agenda for the afternoon's spokescouncil. He said the fire marshal made no attempt to work with organizers. . . Crowds of late-arriving activists who gathered outside the building were pushed back to the corner of fourteenth and Florida by a wall of police. They quietly milled around in the intersection, failing to live up to their violent reputation. Some asked police for their names and missing badge numbers. Refugees from the Convergence Center slowly straggled out of the building, allowed to take only what they could carry in their hands. Many puppets were left behind. The Seeds of Peace bus was impounded with much of the kitchen equipment still inside. Thirty to forty bicycles assembled from scrounged-up parts were confiscated for lack of registration, according to William Thomas, a peace activist who had helped to gather the parts. The protesters weren't the only ones banned from crossing the police line. Legal observers were stopped from re-entering the block. Press corps members from the Canadian press, Harper's Magazine, and other publications were denied access to the press conference which was held behind police lines. One Canadian reporter planted herself in front of the police lines and began to chant, "I am the press! I am the press!" Other reporters picked up the cry. Police lines only parted for the local ABC affiliate, Associated Press, and other journalists with government-issued press passes. DC Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance Gainer alleged that the raid was a response to complaints about the building. Gainer said that the fire marshal alleged that stairways and exits in the building were blocked and that the electrical system of the building was jerry-rigged. Gainer also said that a plastic bottle with a rag in it was spotted, and that the bomb squad was being brought in. As of press time, the fire department was still continuing its inspection. . . Nadine Bloch, one of the key organizers of the mobilization, announced at 10:30 a.m. that the convergence was relocating to the Wilson Center at 15th St. and Irving. She urged people not to be distracted. "This isn't much, compared to repression around the world," she said. "These guys are clearly trying to throw us off. We have a lot of work to do." Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange arrived soon after the protesters had been forced into the street. She expressed a feeling of betrayal, saying the cops were working against their agreement to cooperate to let protesters exercise their First Amendment rights. "There was no good legal reason to close this down," she said. "They're escalating the tensions, which they said they wouldn't do. I think the police [made] a really dumb move, because it changes the whole tone of things." The Midnight Special Legal Collective was trying to open up negotiations with the police. As of 11 a.m., there was still no word about whether the puppets had been released from custody. POLICE RAID, CLOSE DEMONSTRATION HQ Although a well-known tactic in more authoritarian states, the DC police have closed down for what we believe to be the first time in history the headquarters of a major Washington demonstration. This extraordinary and highly provocative act came after fire officials of the local colonial government declared the building on Florida Avenue to be unsafe. Yesterday, the police also raided a home and seized equipment to be used in demonstrations. The unprecedented action by the government of the atypically silent Mayor Anthony Williams is likely to increase substantially tensions between the police and the activists. One might even call it an incendiary act. It remains unclear, however, whether the police are deliberately trying to provoke the demonstrators. Historical note: The DC government long operated out of a building at 14th & Pennsylvania known to be a fire hazard. It did not move until alternative accommodations were found. Police headquarters probably wouldn't pass fire inspection either. Jay Sand, DC coordinator of the Independent Media Center, was attending a meeting when firemen interrupted and brought in police to clear people from the building. Reports from media teams inside the center claim that the firemen were wearing ATF badges. Firemen said that if IMF/World Bank critics didn't immediately evacuate, they would be forced to call police. Police were in fact standing by. Sand said, at the time of a phone call to the IMC at 9:20 AM on Saturday, that police were barricading activists inside the alleged fire trap. IMC sources noted that the police were not wearing identification of any kind. INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER: http://www.indymedia.org/ WOLFENSOHN GREETED Twenty demonstrators greeted World Bank president James Wolfensohn at his home and gave him a letter of protest. There were no arrests. POLICE OFFICIAL ATTENDS NADER RALLY Assistant DC police chief Terry Gainer was an unexpected visitor at a kick-off fund raiser for the Ralph Nader campaign at Luna Grill on Connecticut Avenue, just five blocks from the World Bank. Luna is located near the tip of a flat-iron building at the triangular corner of 18th & Connecticut. The overflow crowd spilled out onto both streets. Gainer, prowling the city in a squad car, got out and gently pointed out to Nader and owner Andy Shallal various city laws about sidewalks, including drinking on them and blocking them. After being assured by Shallal that drinkers would be kept on the patio, crime-fighter Gainer left the scene. SHIT HAPPENS BLOOMBERG NEWS: A block from the White House, several dozen protesters demonstrated against the Pentagon's missile defense program. They chanted, passed out leaflets and carried signs. Farther down the avenue, the pile of manure remained for more than an hour before workers loaded it onto a truck and drove it away - with a police escort. Driving a rented dump truck festooned with signs "World Bank: Meat Stinks," a man dressed in a cow costume dumped the manure in front of the World Bank. The truck pulled over to the shoulder of the avenue, which remains open to traffic, and dumped the load just outside security barricades surrounding the bank. Police quickly removed the signs from the truck and arrested the driver and his passenger. The event drew a crowd of passers-by, the smell notwithstanding. The demonstration was staged by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, in protest against animal research in developing countries. AP: Some 300 tubes and other equipment were seized from two protester vehicles Wednesday night after they were driven from the Maryland suburbs to the District of Columbia. Ramsey readily admitted that his officers knew from intelligence operations that the devices were coming. From the protester side, the tubes - dubbed "lock boxes" or "sleeping dragons" - represent a new way to keep police from easily breaking human chain blockades. Used in protests last December against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, one demonstrator inserts an arm on each side and uses a clip to keep the hand inside. The tube is then wrapped in chicken wire, covered with tar and overlaid with duct tape. The tape is designed to hide the material underneath, which in turn is designed to foil any attempt to saw through the tube. * * * * * * * * * * THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW 1312 18th St NW (5th Floor) Washington DC 20036 202-835-0770 Fax: 202-835-0779 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Editor: Sam Smith Macdonald Stainsby ----- Check out the Tao ten point program: http://new.tao.ca "The only truly humanitarian war would be one against underdevelopment, hunger and disease." - Fidel Castro
