BREAKING THE BANK: Mobilization for Global Justice, May 2000
(77 min.)
Transcribed by Darrell G. Moen
Caption insert: In April 2000 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank met in Washington D.C. Tens of thousands of activists came together to protest for global justice.
Cesar Alvarez (Oberlin College student): This demonstration - it's so much about so many different issues and so many people have been able to rally around it. That's why I think in a lot a ways it's so incredible and that's why I hope it will be effective.
Jodi Dodd (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom): For this day, at this time, this intersection is ours.
Anita Wheeler (Young Communist League): I'm here to demonstrate against the IMF and the World Bank for the injustices they've done to people all over the world, and for the injustices they've done to the people here in the U.S.
Tina Wheeler (Baltimore, Maryland): I am protesting against the IMF. It is not right, it is unchristian.
Brad Janzen (University of Oklahoma student): We're not about property destruction; we're not about hurting people or violence and stuff. We're just about non-violent resistance to the corporate aggression that they're trying to push on us.
Irene Tung (Brown University student): In a large meeting yesterday at the convergence spot, we coordinated with representatives from thousands of other groups as to what strategically would be our position, and we came and we took control of this [intersection].
Unidentified participant: She just talked to the police and communicated to them that this is a non-violent protest, and they said that they're not going to do anything to us anytime soon and they understand that this is a non-violent protest.
Pratap Chatterjee (journalist): The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were set up shortly after the Second World War, and the initial idea was to solve the problems of reconstructing Europe after the war and eventually the idea was broadened to have them provide help for countries in the Third World to develop and become industrialized and get rid of poverty.
Anuradha Tuttal (Policy Director, Food First): The World Bank is a development agency. The World Bank was supposed to provide loans to developing countries, i.e. countries that were just getting their independence from the colonizers. They were supposed to provide those loans to assist those countries in their development projects. The International Monetary Fund was set up, not as a development agency, but its job was to establish monetary financial stability.
Randy Hayes (President, Rainforest Action Network): Once the economies were rebuilt in Europe and in Japan, then it (World Bank) looked to this "poverty elimination" mission. Well, bullshit. Let's call it what it is. It's a false policy. It's not really what their mission is all about. Their mission is about economic development for the betterment of the rich.
Stan Andrews (former World Bank consultant): Back in 1982, I was asked to do consultancy as a member of a team. When I went over and saw, at that time in 1982, how they could take hundreds of millions of dollars and basically throw it down a rat hole in terms of helping poor people, [I was shocked]. The only beneficiaries that I saw from that project were American and [other] multinational firms.
Pratap Chatterjee (journalist): It is a "for-profit" bank and it has been very successful in making profits. It makes a billion dollars plus a year in profits.
Anuradha Mittal (Policy Director, Food First): We have to look at what some of us are calling the "Unholy Trinity" of the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Pratap Chatterjee (journalist): The WTO opens the barriers for trade, the World Bank provides the finance for these development projects, and as a result of the fact that everybody is competing against each other, the prices drop and the IMF steps in to provide short-term finance. And the only way they do that is by cutting the money that governments spend on health services, education, nutrition, and [other social services].
Trevor Ngwane (Town Councilman, Soweto, South Africa): The World Bank and the IMF are recommending the privatization of water and electricity, and running local government basic social services along for-profit, commercial lines. This has led to job losses and the increase in the price of these basic services.
Gisella Herrera (UCSB student): The IMF and the World Bank are undemocratic. They don't allow the people in Third World countries to democratically participate in making decisions. They impose these structural adjustment programs that pretty much abolish social benefits.
Caption insert: Structural Adjustment Programs: Devalue currency; reduce social spending; privatize utilities and services; remove subsidies and price controls.
Dr. Ana Leung (Health Alliance for Democracy, Philippines): Always, when the IMF makes loans, there's the structural adjustment program. And part of that is, you have to cut down on health services and social services in general. So, concretely in health services we only have 2% of the national budget compared to 30% to 50% of the budget for paying back the debt [to the IMF]. So, there goes the budget! Concretely, that means that for every Filipino there's only one cent per day in the budget [for health services], so what can you get for one cent?!?
Pratap Chatterjee (journalist): The World Bank makes more money than it pays out. Therefore, for all the money it puts out, it gets more money back into its coffers. There's also net outflow of natural resources such as timber, gold, oil, copper, and also agricultural products, which are exported as the expense of depleting the soils and degrading the environments of Third World countries.
Anuradha Mittal (Policy Director, Food First): Because of World Bank policies, because of IMF structural adjustment programs, as the local currencies are devalued, there is no market for American [or other foreign] products. It is going to hit the U.S. [as well as other developed countries]. Secondly, because the wages are being driven down in other countries, the jobs are moving overseas.
Oronto Douglas (Deputy Director, Environmental Rights Action, Nigeria): Because of the policies which have not helped my people [but hurt them], policies which have destroyed our forests, policies that have encouraged the building of dams, the canalization of rivers, policies which encourage the impoverishment of our people and have led to the wiping out of our middle class, policies which are creating social injustice on a mass scale, policies which are encouraging anti-democracy to emerge; it is those policies that we have come to protest peacefully and non-violently so that the world can be a better place for us all.
Unidentified participant: Here in we have the lowest incomes, the highest infant mortality rates in the United States, right here in Washington D.C., and that is indirectly the consequence of the policies of the IMF, and the World Bank. They do no good, they're harmful.
Unidentified participant: My name is David. I live on the streets of Washington D.C. I'm homeless.
[Interviewer]: What's it like to live in D.C., the cradle of democracy in the United States?
[David]: It sucks! It sucks because there are no resources [for people like me]. There's nothing for the homeless in D.C. There's nothing for poor people in D.C. It's a fallacy, a fake out. All these beautiful buildings are not for poor people. They're for the rich. And the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. That's where we are - sleeping on the streets, waking up hungry, no place to bathe, that's it.
Unidentified participant: African Americans specifically really need to recognize how this is affecting us. I know people in this community are feeling intruded upon and asking why are they [protesters] coming into our community where we live and disrupting things and causing this huge police presence. This is just a preface to what is really going to go down if we allow the IMF/World Bank to persist in continuing what they're doing.
Unidentified participant: What's the "contract on America" about? What's "welfare reform" about? You know, that's our own form of structural adjustment that we need to be fighting against in our own country.
Unidentified participant: We're talking about all this stuff that they're doing in other countries, but this country is messing up first. If we don't fix this country, then we don't get anything fixed. You know, we can come down here and march all day long, but if we don't talk about the atrocities in this country - since this country is a "trendsetter" - then we've got problems.
Unidentified participant: You know, we have to look beyond the drug dealers in our communities, we have to look higher than the police officers on the street. What is motivating us? There's an agenda here. And we, as people of color, have to look beyond our own noses and recognize that we're not an island in these communities in the United States. These types of things [poverty, malnutrition, unemployment, social injustice] are affecting people all around the world. We're having SAPs (structural adjustment programs) imposed on our minority communities all across the United States. It's unbelievable what they're doing to our own people, and we need to recognize that and combat it.
Unidentified participant: We're having a standoff with the police. We're trying to push the barricade back a little bit further. As you know, the delegates are meeting in there, and we want them to stop meeting because we believe that they are instituting policies, which are oppressing millions and millions of people.
Unidentified participant: We're fighting for justice and we have "truth" on our side. And the only recourse the police have is to use repressive tactics to try and stop us. And that only turns against them later, you know, because we're totally open about what we're doing and why we're doing it. Because we know that we are doing is right.
Unidentified participant: The reports we're getting are that it's been really successful, that we've secured a perimeter completely around the World Bank and IMF buildings.
Unidentified participant: This is where all the activist groups and affinity groups from all over the country and all over the world, there's a lot of people here from many different countries, come in and coordinate their efforts into one large action so that no one is working blind - everyone has a plan and can interact.
Unidentified participant: We ask people if they can follow our four guidelines, which are: no violence; no weapons, no drugs, and no destruction.
Unidentified participant: We're going to give you a scenario: demonstrators who are just trying to do their business at the convergence center and police officers who are refusing to allow back in to do what you have to do in the convergence center. And we want you to try to use your non-violent responses to those police and see how you can discuss it [the situation with them]. After we do this, we're going to break and talk about what was successful and what was not.
Unidentified participant: I'm a medic and I'm just supporting those people in the line. Somebody has to help them, so everybody has a job.
Unidentified participant: The only way to make change, I think, is to be on the streets.
Randy Hayes (President, Rainforest Action Network): I'm talking about people power. I'm not talking about the environmental movement in the sense of environmental organizations or the human rights movement in the sense of human rights organizations. We need hundreds of thousands of people turning out for these demonstrations. We need the kind of show of force that it took to end the Vietnam War.
Unidentified participant: Historically, labor unions always took direct action. Before there was the National Labor Relations Act, that's all we had so we had to do sit downs, shut downs, whatever. And I actually see some movement in the AFL-CIO towards being a little more militant and doing direct actions. Of course, on the waterfront that's basically what we rely on [to have our demands met].
Unidentified participant: This is what democracy looks like. This is what democracy feels like. Because there's a whole bunch of people here today that are all working on consensus. We're all working together to try to change something that we don't believe is right.
[chanting]: Hey hey! Ho ho! The IMF has got to go!
Unidentified participant: The important thing for me has not just been the actions, which have been crucial in shutting things down, but it's been the way we've been doing it. It's unlike anything I've ever seen. It's the most collective form of decision-making I've ever encountered.
Unidentified participant: There is no organizing structure. Everyone is equal. We make all decisions by consensus which means that we all agree or the decision isn't made.
Unidentified participant: It's organized by most sectors of civil society: the Direct Action Network, the labor unions, students, people of faith, people from all walks of life, and people from many countries on all continents around the world. They're all with us here, right now.
Unidentified participant: That to me is what building a movement is all about. It's not just about shutting something down, it's what we're creating in the process.
Unidentified participant: It's really about a way of making people look and see and talk about it, and take some motion towards taking it seriously.
Unidentified participant: This entire thing is a really good model for democracy because they've put on so much education for us and they've put on so many trainings and workshops, and people who didn't really know what they were doing came down and learned a lot. We've learned how to be non-violent, and we've learned legal training, and we've learned how to put this on without anybody getting hurt and get our message across - that's really what's most important. It's the perfect model - to educate people to make change.
Unidentified participant: This morning, the Mobilization for Global Justice warehouse location where we've been building giant and beautiful puppet images of both the future we'd like to have and the repression of the World Bank and IMF has been raided by the police.
Unidentified police officer: We had actually been getting, from what I understand from our inspectors, citizens complaints about the activity in the building all week long.
Deborah Thomas (Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner):We, the immediate neighborhood that they're in, is not complaining and have no problems [with them], so where's all the confusion coming from? I'm not getting any answers, either.
Unidentified participant: Why did they wait until we have several thousand people arriving in town the day before the event, when we've been going for a week?
Vandana Shiva (scientist and author): The police just enter without a search warrant, locks up the place with all the possessions, the handful of possessions the young people have traveled with across this country. None of them have loads of money to feed themselves; the food here is the community kitchen and they're being denied the access to feeding themselves.
Unidentified participant: This is one of the controversial peppers that were brought out from the kitchen area. The police raided the convergence center earlier today claiming that we possessed chemicals that could possibly be used to make pepper spray. And to be quite truthfully honest, this looks like a harmless pepper to me.
Vandana Shiva (scientist and author): Many of them have their clothes left inside. They're standing in the cold rain and are wet. And medicine, there was a woman crying in the other community hall because she needs the medication that's locked up here. And they [the police] release a few puppets to make a little joke of this?
Antonia Juhasz (American Lands Alliance): Somebody's very scared of our big puppets. And they should be, because our big puppets spread the message of coming together, of peace, of joy, of solidarity, of how you can come together in a protest and have it be a beautiful thing. So they should be scared of our puppets.
Asia Russell (ACT UP -Philadelphia): We're in front of the IMF, a good distance from it - blocked from it. AIDS activists are here today locking down to a giant image of the glutton IMF. In Latin American and in sub-Saharan Africa, two regions of the globe where the IMF structural adjustment programs and crippling debt burden are actually killing people with HIV, we are calling on the Clinton administration, on the U.S. government, to use its voice (as the largest stakeholder in the IMF) to call for unconditional debt relief to save the lives of people in poverty living with HIV who are being killed by the policies of the IMF.
John Bell (ACT UP - Philadelphia): As a recovering drug addict and alcoholic myself, I'm also HIV positive. When I came to Philadelphia I was 144 pounds and had lost the will to live. I went through a religious experience that allowed me to be okay, and when I came through that experience, there was ACT UP. I've been only doing one thing since 1997. I've been learning the tactics of activism, of civil disobedience, of getting involved and taking it back to the community I come from.
Thamon Pierce (One Day at a Time): We go around and we go to all the recovery houses. We do teach-in presentations to let people know what is going on with the IMF.
Unidentified participant: Most of all, we don't want the fun to overshadow the importance of this event. Millions of people around the world are dieing for pennies. Because of pennies! And I don't think that should happen. I myself suffer from AIDS. I'm fortunate to have contracted AIDS here in America where I have access to the medication. But what about the people who don't?
[Caption insert]: AIDS is the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa. 70% of people with AIDS today live in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1999 alone, 2.2 million Africans died of AIDS.
Unidentified participant: I would like for everyone to look around you and imagine that every one in five of you are HIV positive. Now imagine that you have no access to treatment. Then you will die.
Monica Moorehead (Organizer, International Action Center): This is what's very worrisome because what happened on Saturday was an example of how a police state functions and reacts. And we're talking about organized police terror. Well, the International Action Center called a rally and march in front of the Department of Justice several weeks back to protest the prison-industrial complex and show our solidarity with all the other actions that were taking place in D.C. targeting the role of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. We didn't apply for a march permit because you don't have to apply for a march permit if you're going to be walking on the sidewalk.
Charles Ramsey (D.C. Police Chief): We asked them to please get up on the sidewalk and they refused and tried to take the street, and we took action.
Peter Mhyre (Independent Media Center): I turned around and saw the police fan out behind us and then trap and blockade us on both ends.
Monica Moorehead (Organizer, International Action Center): We knew right then and there that the negotiations were over, that they had planned this all along, probably the orders came right from the top - including the mayor.
Anthony A. Williams (Mayor, Washington D.C.): Well, I think it was certainly legal, certainly proper, certainly preventative and proactive.
Vanessa (student/protester): But the strategy was to decrease us on the streets by far, and to get rid of the strong leadership that was at that protest.
Brandy Weir (student, UC Santa Barbara): We got corralled up like animals. They didn't tell us that they were going to arrest us. They gave us no option to leave.
Belinda Lafosse (Miami Workers' Center): We sat there. We stood there. We didn't move. We didn't make trouble. But they still went on and arrested everybody - [more than] 600 people got arrested.
Anthony A. Williams (Mayor, Washington D.C.): I think whenever you're dealing with a situation like this, you're going to be up on the boundary line in terms of constitutional rights.
Belinda Lafosse (Miami Workers' Center): They didn't tell us anything. They didn't charge us with anything. They just told us $50 to get out. That was it.
Monica Moorehead (Organizer, International Action Center): We just felt that it was extortion. Besides the sensory deprivation, the torture, and the dehumanization process.
Unidentified participant: And everyone's sitting there with their wrists tied to their ankles. If you wanted to move around and make a phone call, you have to like hop across the room on one leg. It was the most humiliating, dehumanizing experience I've ever had in my entire life.
Michael Madden (attorney): We found out that they [police] were telling people, giving them legal advice in fact, and saying that if they did not post and forfeit, that they would be held there until Monday or Tuesday. They said that they had tents out back and that people would be sleeping out in the rain. And it just wasn't true.
Charles Ramsey (D.C. Police Chief): There was no injury to anyone. Everyone's been treated in a very respectful manner.
Monica Moorehead (Organizer, International Action Center): They put you in these plastic handcuffs and the pain is just excruciating. It really is. In fact, the majority of people were put on school buses all night long - anywhere from between six hours and 12 hours.
Unidentified participant: I'd been handcuffed from 6pm to until I was un-cuffed at 7:00 this morning.
Monica Moorehead (Organizer, International Action Center): The 678 people who were arrested were political prisoners. Yes, absolutely. Those arrests were based on our political beliefs.
Unidentified participant: We don't want to just shut down the IMF and the World Bank, we want to shut down government in general. We believe that capitalism can't be reformed. We're out here today to show support for people who are locked down, to help them out, to support them in the streets. We're staying mobile so the police can't clamp down on us.
Unidentified participant: I think people see, you know, people dressed in black with their faces covered - there's that scary image of them. But if you took two minutes to talk with any one of those people, you would realize that they are intelligent and they care about what's going on or else they wouldn't put themselves on the line.
Unidentified participant: The police try to be very divisive, and say that there is a fringe militant group that doesn't represent everyone's interests. Right now, the Mobilization for Global Justice and all the people who came to Washington to protest have come up with a consensus to make a lot of space for different tactics and different politics. I know we can all work together, and the coalitions that we form are going to change this world.
Unidentified participant: I think there's a lot of people who see the "Black Walk" [anarchists] as their safety net in a lot of ways. At the protest I saw some negative reactions, but I also saw some reactions like, "Oh, there're here. Now we know what to do. Now we know how to set up our barricade." These are kids who aren't afraid to actually drag dumpsters into the street and make them part of the human barricade. They're not afraid to move cars into the street. They're not afraid to stand there and push at the police line.
[chanting: "No justice, no peace!"]
[chanting: "The people united, will never be defeated!"]
Unidentified participant: The police were a lot more prepared here than they were in Seattle [during the protests against the World Trade Organization].
Unidentified participant: Everyone is too divided to go back down there. As long as we keep getting our asses kicked because there's so many [police] beating us. They have people trapped over there and held down.
Unidentified bystander: They're environmentalists, they're people who are concerned about Third World debt, you know, they aren't part of corporate America, that's all. I'm certainly much older than you guys are, but man, this is really something.
Unidentified participant: We can see by the police repression in this city today that it's coming closer to home. So to resist the IMF and the World Bank is not just about liberating the Third World, not just to fight for human rights and the environment elsewhere, it's making this country safer for its citizens.
Cesar Alvarez (Oberlin College student): Well, it's exciting. We're actively stopping people from getting in there, and forcing not only the media but the delegates who are actually having to deal with us, to read our signs and deal with what we're saying.
Pat Thomas (Service Employees International Union): I'm really energized by seeing so many young people come out and be committed to a cause, whatever it might be. And it very might shares the cause that we in organized labor are committed to.
Zack de la Rocha (Rage Against the Machine): I think people are waking up to the idea that their so-called democracy has been taken over by institutions like the IMF.
[chanting: "Hey, howya doin'? Sorry you can't get through. Leave you name and number, and we'll get back to you."]
Brad Janzen (University of Oklahoma student): It's been very democratic, sometimes even painfully so because we're really working it out. We basically came to a consensus that to really hold a blockade was to hold it completely [without exceptions]. It would be too easy for delegates to come in with press passes.
[mainstream media babble]
Unidentified cameraman: We're channel 7, the ABC affiliate here. I think that content is driven by sponsorship. I think that you won't find much labor news in the news. That's because it doesn't serve the interests of the people who pay for the news shows.
Debra: For the most part, what they've been doing is just portraying us as just a bunch of kids who are just looking for fun on the weekend and not really thinking about the political circumstances of what's going on or anything. For the most part, what they've been doing is just portraying the protesters and the protest, but they haven't had anything about structural adjustment policies, anything about non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are corporate-based and are doing all this stuff that we're fighting against.
Demond Burks: The only thing I see in the media is ignorant, rioting kids. From a racial standpoint, that's all you see with Black kids - ignorant, rioting Black kids.
John Stassi [quoting from a newspaper article]: When asked about it, Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said, "Witnesses may have been fooled by demonstrators dressed as police and wielding batons."
Susan Sarandon (actress and activist): I think the media have been unfair. I think they've been patronizing and uneducated and making it seem as if there's no reason why all these people should be here together, as if the fragmentation is in some way a sign of weakness. In fact, [the protesters] they are incredibly well informed and know what they're doing and are very well organized. But they [media] start off calling them rioters and then go downhill from there.
Unidentified participant: I wish the media would try and stay more objective, but you know it's not going to happen. It's the media for Christ's sake.
Tom Sherwood (National NBC correspondent): Broken glass is always more exciting video than people sitting and talking about "beyond Seattle." And that's the true nature of the media business.
[Caption insert: About 90% of prime-time TV is owned by 8 corporations: CBS; Disney; General Electric; News Corporation (Fox); Sony; Time Warner; Universal; Viacom]
Go on to Part II
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