The straight goods on the IMF/World Bank protests

Dispatch from a Canadian on the scene

By: Holly Dressel

  Washington, D.C. - Starting last Friday, hundreds of Canadians hit the streets of Washington to protest the policies of the World Bank and the IMF. Busloads of college students and plain citizens had made their way from Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and even the far west in order to march with the other estimated 40,000 parading against these two institutions.
  At a packed 14 hour-long teach-in featuring luminaries like Vandana Shiva, William Grieder, ex-World Bank economist Herman Daly, and Ralph Nader on Friday, Canadians like Maude Barlow, Tony Clarke and Steve Staples were given standing ovations. "Thank god for Canadians," said Greider, a renowned journalist and philosopher now heading up The Nation, following a fiery speech by Tony Clarke.
 

Water is being seen increasingly as a "cash crop" for countries forced against the wall by IMF demands for repayment of loans

  In the days following, both young and old Canadians were seen marching and chanting with kids with purple hair and ten-foot-high puppets, or facing down the police when locked-down groups at intersections were menaced with gas and clubs. Amanda McConnell, co-author with David Suzuki of The Sacred Balance and long-time writer for The Nature of Things, innocently marching with a group that appeared to have full police cooperation, was swept up in the mass arrest on Saturday and held in jail for two days in what she calls "appalling conditions," in chains and without food or water. That arrest was part of a police offensive against the Convergence Center the activists had set up to store gear, make puppets and plan strategy, which McConnell was wandering near when she joined the non-violent protest.
  When they raided the Center, the police seized gear used in traditional lock-downs - concrete sleeves, kerchiefs as protection against gas and so on, as well as puppets, food, bicycles and personal belongings. Much of the media reported on the police finding a Molotov Cocktail, which consisted of a two-litre plastic soft drink bottle with a clean rag in it. The protesters, who were almost touchingly non-violent, say the bottle had water in it and was constructed so people lying down in blockades and locked to each other could drink water by sucking on the rag. This find was downplayed in subsequent reports, in which the police said the only reason for the raid was to enforce fire-safety codes and to protect the protesters from fire violations. They did return most of the gear, including the puppets, before Sunday's parade.
 

Police clash with protestors near Treasury Building, 04/16/00. From www.corpwatch.org.

  One point continuously made during the teach-in is that countries are often enticed into these loans in the name of development and progress, but the payments of interest to the international financial giants is so onerous that once in debt, they can only get out by destroying much of their social structure. For example, Maude Barlow's message at the teach-in was a plea for governments to disallow the privatization of water, which is being done increasingly as a "cash crop" for countries forced against the wall by IMF demands for repayment of loans.
  A Bolivian peasant, Oscar Oliveras, had been flown in for the event. The World Bank refused a loan to the country for a water co-op, but the multinational water corporation Bectel was able to arrange a scheme to privatize the water supply, with the blessings of a government trying to meet its IMF loan repayments. When water costs rose to one-fifth of an average family's wages, Oliveras' small village resisted the takeover. A national revolt from all classes has now resulted in Bectel being kicked out of the country, only days ago. Barlow, almost in tears, said, "I cannot overstate the crisis in the world's water supply because of this economic system… Something has to remain a public trust. We cannot allow such things to be privatized."
  The march, mostly young but well-scattered with gray beards, children and one very old lady in a wheel chair, was estimated at 30,000 on Sunday, not counting the "flying squads" and other groups locking down, defying police and trying to prevent or disrupt the meetings. Labour was not out in force as in Seattle, but there was nonetheless a noticeable number of steelworkers, electrical workers and other AFL-CIO members, whose executive had added its official endorsement to the event.
 

Once IMF delegates got to the meetings, they were demoralized and defensive, and some highly-placed critics are seizing the opportunity to suggest deep reforms

  Washington responded by closing off a square mile of downtown, several subway stops and some roads and bridges, massing its police, helicopters and getting the National Guard on standby. The police relied heavily on physical intimidation: arrests and clubs rather than tear gas and pepper spray. There were several serious injuries in which students sitting at an intersection with no traffic were clubbed without warning; an attack on a Korean journalist left blood in the street.
  Delegates to the IMF had to meet at 4 a.m. to be led through the many tunnels connecting hotels and government buildings under the city into unmarked mini-vans so they could be smuggled into their meetings. Sunday's New York Times reported that once they got there, they were demoralized and defensive, and some highly-placed critics like Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers are seizing the opportunity to suggest deep reforms. Joseph Stiglitz, the former chief economist at the World Bank, wrote in the New Republic that the protesters "will say the IMF's economic 'remedies' often make things worse - turning slow-downs into recessions and recessions into depressions - and they'll have a point." When he says that the fund "undermines the democratic process by imposing policies" in return for its emergency cash, he was echoing the criticisms voiced at the teach-in and in posters carried by the kids: "IMF: Imperialists Masquerading as Friends."
  Perhaps the most interesting thing about this protest is the complexity of the issues and the sophistication of the protesters, who have to find the string connecting a big, supposedly benevolent institution like the World Bank to environmental and social devastation from Bolivia to Chad, Rwanda, Canada and Yugoslavia. It's a tangled web, but the protesters were saying they now realize they do have some power to help make a change. Amanda McConnell, recovering from her ordeal in Toronto, says, "I've been radicalized. Tell the kids that getting arrested and seeing how this system treats you is worth it. It just makes you want to change things."

Holly Dressel is a Montreal-based freelance writer/researcher and co-author with David Suzuki of From Naked Ape to Super Species.

[ Front Page ]