DC City Paper's "Best Protest" awards 2002

[Bricker]

From the Washington DC City Paper. Idiocy reigned supreme amongst many of the IMF/World Bank protesting crowd, it seems. This isn’t news to me, but the City Paper did a bit on what their reporters saw and heard that really topped the idiocy scales. Among the greatest bits was a would-be street blocker arrested at 9:30 Friday morning and released just after midnight, commenting on her jail conditions:

None of us were allowed to go outside and smoke and stuff like that. We fucking did go crazy. It was terrible.

The planned “quarantine” of the World Bank, in which protestors would block the building exits to prevent delegates from leaving, fizzled due to lack of turnout. Spokespeople for “Mobilization for Global Justice” claimed that they actually succeeded in a blockade:

The real point was the imagery goal – sending the message, projecting the image.

and

[The delegates] were quarantined with ideas… we had a total victory

And my favorite, form the link above:

[The plan was]… Protesters would lay down their bodies to prevent the World Bank and IMF delegates from leaving their downtown meetings. Jamie Moorby, 19, from Canton, N.Y., rushed to the intersection of 20th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW expecting to lock arms and legs with his fellow activists in a human barricade. He found only three or four fellow protesters. All Moorby could do was watch delegates leaving in their motorcades, as random protesters saluted with their middle fingers. “If we’re going to accomplish anything here, we need massive numbers,” Moorby said. “This is pretty frustrating.”… Police Lt. Jeffrey Herold informed the protesters that it was getting late, that every other access route was clear, that the barricade wouldn’t stop anyone from leaving the meetings. He added that they would not be arresting them.

“You can sit here all night,” Herold said.

Several organizers soon huddled. An organizer asked, “How long can we sit here before we can declare victory? Five minutes? Ten minutes? A half-hour?”

Twenty minutes later, the human barricade cut off its duct tape and disbanded.

“Does anyone have a cigarette?” a barricade member asked.

I can’t help but think that if some capitalists had done the planning for this protest thing, it might have been more effectively executed…

• Rick

[Olentzero]

Gotta love how Saturday’s and Sunday’s protests didn’t get the same kind of media play that Friday did…

[Jonathan_Chance]

Yeah. Pretty much as effective as I’d expect.

[SaxFace]

What about Friday’s all night candlelight vigil that no one attended? Oh, yeah, they were all drinking beer in Adam’s Morgan.

I nearly fell off my chair when I saw the people holding up signs that said, “Welcome Rich White Kidds”. Priceless.

[Enderw24]

Bricker, I’m sorry but I think there was a mixup somewhere in cyberspace. From those quotes you gave above I can only assume you were trying to send us to an Onion article. Right? Right???

[Captain_Amazing]

*Originally posted by Olentzero *
**Gotta love how Saturday’s and Sunday’s protests didn’t get the same kind of media play that Friday did… **

It’s a matter of expectations. There was a lot of hype made about the Friday protests. Groups were talking about direct action, disrupting traffic, and “shutting the city down”, so, all this controversy, happening on a workday when people would be trying to get into the city. Saturday and Sunday were just protests, and not remarkably big ones, and everybody protests in DC. Also, international finance isn’t really exciting to most people, so when it comes to IMF/World Bank protests, it’s the protests themselves and the potential disruption that interests (and annoys) people.