Washington | Monday
A FINAL day of protests was planned in Washington on Monday with demonstrators saying they would underscore their anti-globalisation message via rallies and picketing designed to disrupt the flow of traffic in the city.
For four successive days, thousands of protestors have held demonstrations across the city over a number of issues including US Middle East policy, the drug war in Colombia, and Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.
On Sunday, police on horseback, motorbike, bicycle and on foot surrounded groups of protestors flashing placards and chanting anti globalisation slogans.
By mid-morning, several thousand had gathered on the capital’s rectangular stretch of grass known as the Mall.
On the street, some groups marched shouting debt relief slogans while others, stolidly wearing all-black including black bandanas across their faces, carried banners denouncing ”corporate rule”.
Secret service joined police to keep control of the demonstrators and there were few scuffles.
Several hundred protesters, hemmed in by police, rallied outside meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, but police restricted the rally to a triangular park across from the headquarters of the two bodies, where policymakers were gathered.
”I’ve watched IMF and World Bank policies crush rural economies from the Rio Grande to the other end of Chile,” said Cliff Bradley of Missoula, Montana.
”It has to be obvious to senior IMF and World Bank officials that these policies don’t work.”
Some demonstrators taunted police by rocking metal barricades hemming them in, while chanting slogans.
The Mobilization for Global Justice, one of the groups organizing the rally here, renewed its call to open all World Bank and IMF meetings to be open to the media and public.
They further called for the financial institutions to cancel all impoverished country debt owed to them; for a halt to what they called ”socially and environmentally destructive projects” such as oil, gas, and mining activities, as well as dams that include forced relocation of people.
Washington police said they were working with the US Capitol Police, US Park Police, the uniformed division of the US Secret Service, and other federal agencies.
Terrance Gainer, the assistant police chief in the District of Columbia, estimated the number of protesters Saturday for several rallies at 35 000 to 50 000. – Sapa-AFP