WASHINGTON, APRIL 16: A rented truck festooned with angry messages dumps a load of manure in front of the World Bank. Dressed in a cow costume, the driver is protesting animal research in developing countries.A man clad in only a grass skirt sprints down the main street in thetrendy Georgetown area yelling slogans. He is protesting againstThird World sweatshop labour employed by western apparel makers.Three women dressed in oversized red costumes and carrying red flagsare standing at a street corner loudly reading excerpts from The Communist Manifesto.Welcome to Washington D.C, which has turned this weekend into ProtestCity. A bewildering coalition of forces are gathered here in strengthto protest against what they say is the unbridled growth of freemarket capitalism, represented, in their view, by the World Bank andthe International Monetary Fund.Finance ministers and money managers from across the world are herefor the annual Spring meeting of the Fund-Bank. The protesters areplotting to disrupt the meetings to make their point. The police isplotting to foil the protestors to prevent a repeat of Seattle, whereroughly the same crowd wrecked the WTO meeting and called worldattention to a variety of concerns.At the time of writing, downtown Washington is in turmoil. The citypolice, which has spent millions of dollars in new crowd controlequipment and intelligence gathering, has arrested hundreds ofdemonstrators and cordoned off city blocks surrounding the Bank-Fundmeetings.But the protestors keep regrouping, energised by new groups tricklingin. A cat and mouse game is on with the city's formidable securityforces keeping an eye on the ground developments with overheadchoppers. Ministers and officials were escorted in for the Fundmeetings that a spokesman said began without hitch at 8am.So far, the demonstrations have been largely peaceful, but there havebeen reports of use of tear gas by the police in some areas.Like in Seattle, the demonstrators comprise an array of forcesrepresenting a wide variety of causes. Spiky-haired hipsters, IvyLeague preppies, dread-locked desperadoes, angst-drivenenvironmentalists, good-time students have all joined hands toprotest a swathe of concerns: capitalism, free trade, militaryindustrial complex, ivory trade, sweat shops, star wars programme,Tibet, bioengineering, you-name-it.There are plenty of Indian students and Indian activists in theprotest crowd. Ironically, Indians also constitute the biggest workforce in the Bank-Fund after the Americans.The demonstrators range from activists who have devoted a life timeto a particular cause to wannabe anarchists just discovering BobDylan and the Civil Rights protests. Most seem driven by nothing morethan naive idealism and a vague sense of disquiet about the waysociety is going.``IMF and World Bank policies serve the interests of rich countries atthe expense of the poorest people in the world. We are here to drawattention to the increasing inequality in the world because of suchpolicies,'' said Shakti Bhatt, a sophomore from Florida's EckhardtCollege who drove 16 hours with her freshman schoolmate Mary Ellen totake part in the demonstrations.Thousands of protestors who filed into this orderly city weresheltered in church basements and YMCAs. Organisations that led theSeattle protests, such as the Direct Action Network and RuckusSociety issued directives for civil disobedience.While police donned new helmets, shin guards, bulletproof vests andother assorted riot gear that made them looks like space cadets, theprotesters were no less prepared. Some of them had gas masks, wetrags, and arm pipes to prevent being handcuffed.In between, downtown outlets of what the protestors see as symbols ofcorporate villainy - stores like Sarbucks and The Gap - downedshutters.On organisation calling itself The Midnight Special Law Collectiveoffered 24-hour legal advice, while many protestors scrawled a legalhotline number on their bodies in case they got arrested.They needed it. By mid-afternoon some 1,000 protesters were coolingtheir heels in the clink waiting to call the hotline.
