A Weekend Spent Protesting With the World

Author: Chris Shields

For me, April 20 has never really held any high level of meaning. This year I decided to do something. The weekend of April 20 proved to be one of the most dynamic and active weekends that Washington, D.C., has seen in years. From across the country and around the world activists representing myriad causes convened on the District for one weekend of activism, direct action and education.

"So what are you protesting?" I asked as I arrived at Adirondack Circle.

"IMF/World Bank," a protestor responded while sitting on the wall. As we talked for a few minutes about the upcoming weekend, and why I hadn't bothered to go to any of the pre-departure meetings, others started to arrive. By 4 p.m. there were 24 of us, an eclectic bunch. Half of the group was newly arrived bubbly Febs, a townie with her kid and his friend (who looked about as happy as I would've been if my mother dragged me on a nine hour car ride for something I didn't care about) and a handful of us who consider ourselves regulars to such protests.

The talk quickly turned to whether or not the Washington, D.C., police had granted a permit for the march against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that many of us would be partaking in the following morning. We then discussed horror stories of past D.C. protests as well as the violence that erupted last April 20 while many of us were in Quebec protesting the Free Trade of the America's Agreement. I looked over at the luxury that the crew team was accommodated in with their bus while I climbed into the back seat of one of two College vans. The lack of legroom forced me to align my legs diagonally since they didn't fit straight, and so my nine hour ordeal commenced. Sometime Saturday morning we arrived at the house where we were going to spend the night. I crawled into my sleeping bag and tried to catch some sleep to the tunes of numerous snores.

Early the next morning we all got up and started to pack for that day's activities. Automatically I packed up all the first aid supplies and my gas mask, which I would typically expect to use at a protest of this scale. As those of us that have attended other protests this size started to pack our gas masks and our riot helmets, the Febs stopped being so bubbly. A glance at the paper had a quote from the police commissioner bragging about his baton being the same one that he had used during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. In addition to the report that 40 arrests had been made the day before, this didn't help the situation.

When we arrived downtown, people began to split up in order to attend different events: IMF/World Bank protests, Columbia teach-ins, protest the Israeli occupation of Palestine and protests against the U.S. war on "terrorism."

In an attempt at diplomacy, I tried to talk to the row of police guarding the IMF building, hopefully they would take pity on me when the violence started. Officer Malcolm assured me that he hoped the protests remained peaceful, as did a few other officers. Officer Bruce just looked like he wanted to assault me then and there.

Suddenly I turned around. It was probably about 11:30 a.m. and all I could see were Palestinian flags coming towards me. The pro-Palestinian march had started earlier and was meeting up with the IMF protest to march through the city and onto the Capitol. We started walking.

Alongside 80-year-old women dressed in traditional headcoverings were black masked anarchists. Alongside militant Palestinian teenagers was a group marching behind the banner "nerds for peace." Little girls no more than five walked alongside their parents carrying miniature Palestinian flags as Orthodex Jews walked hand in hand with Palestinians carrying signs which read "Jew's for peace" and "Jews against the occupation." A dozen Middlebury College students found themselves in the middle of this melee. Words cannot really describe the emotions that I felt at that moment. Here we were, thousands of us marching peacefully and in solidarity through the streets of our nation's capital in an eclectic show of support for peace on both sides. It gave me hope.

The march continued through the city under the constant supervision of police snipers on rooftops and numerous police helicopters beaming video back to their central command. Last year in Quebec they used their helicopters to blow tear gas at us, so this was an incredible change of pace.

As we continued to march there were certainly numerous pockets of extremism within the larger crowd, such as little girls being carried on stretchers with fake blood to symbolize victims of Israeli killings and chants calling for Sharon's death. These elements of the march certainly gave me the impression of a Hamas rally straight out of Ramallah. But fortunately enough, this was by far the minority. The protest wound its way in front of the Capitol and convened on the Mall with members of the anti-war protests in front of a series of stages with speakers and music. I looked around, and I looked behind me. I have never seen so many people before in my life. For those of you that know Washington, D.C., imagine the mall covered in people for as far as you can see. The surrounding streets became clogged with marchers, flags and chants as the police coolly looked on.