BETWEEN THE LINES: IMF-World Bank Protesters Planning Class Action Lawsuit

By Scott Harris, AlterNet. Posted May 4, 2000.

During a week of actions in mid-April opposing the policies of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington D.C. more than 1,300 activists and innocent bystanders were arrested by police.

Although many demonstrators came to Washington willing to risk arrest for participation in non-violent civil disobedience, over 600 were detained by police on April 15th while conducting a peaceful protest march. Even before activists took to the streets, police and fire officials had closed down the protest organizer's headquarters on the pretext of fire code violations, drawing condemnation as a pre-emptive strike in violation of constitutionally guaranteed free speech rights. During a blockade of the IMF/World Bank annual spring meeting police used tear gas, pepper spray and wielded yard-long nightsticks against demonstrators, causing serious injury to some.

While in custody, approximately 150 demonstrators practiced "jail solidarity" whereby prisoners withheld their names and refused cooperation with authorities. After several days this tactic proved successful when most detainees were released with reduced charges of "jay walking" and a nominal $5 fine. Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Mark Goldstone, an attorney with the National Lawyers' Guild and co-legal coordinator with the Mobilization for Global Justice, who examines the constitutionality of police mass arrests and pre-emptive strikes against demonstrators.

Mark Goldstone: As everybody I think knows, the demonstration was planned to shut down the IMF and World Bank meetings which were scheduled for Sunday, April 16 and Monday, April 17. The police feared a repeat of the so-called violence that took place in Seattle, which from the demonstrators' standpoint was largely police-led violence and a police riot.

The police made a number of pre-emptive strikes against the demonstrators and many people were arrested. More people were arrested before April 16 than were arrested either April 16 or subsequent (to the actual days of the planned protests).

One particularly heinous incident occurred when the police, along with the fire chief claimed that there was a fire code violation in a convergence space at Florida and 14th Avenue. That was the headquarters space of the protesters where they had been gathering for about a week or so before the demonstration. The interesting and ironic thing about the so-called fire code violations was it disrupted the ability of the demonstrators to organize, number one, which is true -- but also disrupted the ability of the activists to get nonviolence training, and their medical supplies and get access to their medical supplies and their First Amendment materials, meaning leaflets and things that were to be handed out on the streets.

So what the police did by raiding the convergence space and closing it down the day before the actual demonstration actions on trumped up charges that there was a fire code violation is they forced about 1,000 people into the streets. What we termed "A16" actually occurred on "A15" when we had about a thousand people kicked out of their convergence space in this ridiculous pretextual raid and people had nowhere to go, so they went to the streets and many of them got arrested.

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