Protesters in D.C. Fail to Halt Finance Meetings

Thousands of protesters swarmed into downtown Washington before dawn Sunday and engaged in tense and occasionally violent confrontations with riot-clad police in a daylong outpouring of anger against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

But activists did not achieve their goal of shutting down the meetings of the international lending institutions, which were heavily guarded by police. Instead, as the financial policy sessions went forward, several thousand protesters linked arms and paralyzed more than a dozen nearby intersections, chanting slogans and pounding drums just a few feet from police lines.

Demonstrators ridiculed and shoved some delegates and employees who missed the buses that the institutions had reserved to whisk them along secured routes to the IMF headquarters, site of the first of two days of meetings of the organizations’ policymaking bodies.

Activists argue that the IMF and World Bank pretend to help poor nations but actually do the bidding of the rich. Though the institutions’ spring meetings are considered routine, protesters have hoped to shut them down as they did a global trade summit in Seattle in December.

Sunday’s session produced a communique by the IMF’s policymaking committee that pledged to shift the agency’s emphasis from short-term emergency loans for countries with deteriorating currency values to medium-term loans designed to prevent such emergencies.

The World Bank’s policymaking panel is scheduled to meet today. The bank’s principal role is to provide low-interest loans to finance economic development projects in the world’s poorest countries.

With more protests planned today, the U.S. government announced late Sunday that only emergency workers should report to work today in a large area surrounding the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings.

Police and protesters suffered minor injuries from hurled stones, pepper spray and heat exhaustion. A vehicle owned by a local television station--apparently mistaken for an unmarked police car--stood abandoned, with two windows smashed and the word “pig” scrawled on its flattened tires.

“We’re interrupting business as usual because that’s what we need to do to get the attention of the IMF delegates,” said Asia Russell, 23, of Act-Up Philadelphia, which emphasizes AIDS activism. Nearby, protesters paraded down the street with a larger-than-life piggy bank beneath a banner that declared: “IMF/World Bank Start Shakin’. Today’s Pig is Tomorrow’s Bacon.”

In one melee, activists knocked down a police barricade near the Treasury Department. Startled police pushed back with their batons and doused some of the protesters with pepper spray. As the crowd dispersed, some tossed bottles at police and hurled garbage cans and newspaper racks into the intersection.

At one point or another, activists occupied about 20 intersections around the IMF and World Bank buildings.

“It was a victory party in the streets to celebrate the messages protesters are giving to the World Bank and IMF: Enough is enough,” said Greg O’Loughlin, a spokesman for the Mobilization for Global Justice.

Police officials, satisfied that the financial meetings had been able to proceed as scheduled, said they made about 20 arrests Sunday. That stood in stark contrast to the 637 arrests the previous evening, when law enforcement officials shut down an entire march on the grounds that protesters lacked a permit.

On Sunday, police chose to turn away from protester-occupied intersections and find alternate routes for the delegates’ buses. In other cases, they charged straight at the protesters, stopping at the last second and then using vehicles to push the activists backward.

All the while, protesters paraded in the streets, their giant puppets of President Clinton, World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn and a Trojan Horse marked “IMF” giving Washington’s streets something of the feel of New York’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Women in red dresses danced and waved banners. There were jugglers, bands and people darting around on bicycles.

By afternoon, when some of the demonstrators had abandoned their intersections and migrated to a legal rally near the Washington Monument, Washington Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey described the fitful day as “tense but pretty much at a de-escalated state.”

Although the IMF succeeded in conducting its sessions on Sunday, the finance ministers of Brazil, France, Portugal and Thailand missed the escorted buses and were blocked from attending part of the deliberations. French Minister Laurent Fabius opted for his official limousine, was turned back by the demonstrators and spent six hours waiting at a hotel.

Inside the meetings, U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers sought to send a comforting signal in the wake of Friday’s stock market plunge. He urged investors to focus on “the real economy, which continues to expand.” He also pledged to keep inflation under control and urged Japan and Europe to play a larger role in fueling growth of the global economy.

The IMF’s acting managing director, Stanley Fischer, vowed that the fund would press forward with its business despite the protests. “We will meet, we will get through this,” he told reporters. “We have an important agenda, including [debt relief], which is about how to help the poorest countries. We need to discuss that.”

Yet for all the effort to make Sunday a day of business as usual, officials were hardly immune from concerns about the protests, or unaware of the contrast between their meetings and nearby scenes of street theater, singing and disruption.

“We got into the building,” said Colombian Finance Minister Camilo Restrepo. “The question is whether we will be able to get out.”

Demonstrators included black-clothed anarchists, drum-beating advocates for an independent Tibet and a well-scrubbed group under signs identifying them as the “Democratic Socialists of Philadelphia.”

One group of marchers was headed by a large banner and a troupe of giant puppets, including a beaming yellow sun, 8 feet in diameter, labeled “Liberation,” and three oversized white-maned heads labeled “IMF,” “World Bank” and “Bill Clinton, Corporate Puppet.”

One intersection near IMF headquarters was blocked by protesters forming a human chain. The protesters had laid eight pieces of pipe from a nearby construction site across the roadway. Police watched carefully but did not advance.

“Nobody arrested, nobody injured, no property damaged, no officer assaulted--so far so good,” said Capt. Mario Patrizio. “If they stay here all night, we’ll stay here all night.”

After the mass arrests Saturday, protesters Sunday deliberately worked in smaller, mobile groups, shutting down some intersections temporarily and then moving elsewhere with little notice. They were led by yellow-jacketed organizers who barked instructions, military style, into bullhorns, vigilant against being penned in by police.

“Attention everybody: We need people at Pennsylvania and 19th!” declared one young woman as more than a dozen protesters scurried to reinforce the nearby intersection. Nearby, another organizer sought to rally his allies: “You guys going to line up or what?”

“They knew exactly what they were doing,” Chief Ramsey said later. “We’ve never seen anything as organized as this.”

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Times staff writers Doyle McManus, Paul Richter, Mary Williams Walsh and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.

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* STRINGS ATTACHED

Donor nations increasingly are asking for results. A22

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* SPLIT REACTION

Delegates were divided in their opinions about protests. A23