protest friday

[revaluation]

As a reminder, it is the stated goal of the protestors to make this Friday " shut down the city day." Listed below is a summary of Chief Ramsey's comments. Please take care as you travel in to work.

Police Chief Ramsey Protest Briefing Comments:

* There are 5,000 - 30,000 ppl. expected for the protest
* The protests will take place on Sept. 27, 28, and 29.
* The IMF Fall meeting is the largest meeting.
* Friday, Sept. 27 is labeled "shut down city day" because they are supposed to disrupt traffic throughout the entire city, not just downtown.
* There will be 1500 extra cops brought in that day from DC and surrounding areas.
* The high alert areas are between 12th and 24th St. and Constitution to K St., NW.
* Previous targets have been GAP, Old Navy, Citibank, Starbucks, etc.
* The protesters have secured park permits for many parks in the NW area.
* There are two websites that explicitly state what planned protest will look like:

www.abolishthebank.org
www.indymedia.org


Precautions:
* Do not drive on Friday
* Do not schedule deliveries for Friday
* Remove trash and other items from outside so protesters do not use them to vandalize property. This is especially important for businesses that are located near the IMF building.

[lizard23]

What is being protested?

[cookiegirl]

It's the semi-annual IMF/World Bank protests. Been happening for years now. . . below is from the "U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice"

What is the World Bank?


Created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, The World Bank Group is comprised of five agencies that make loans or guarantee credit to its 177 member countries. In addition to financing projects such as roads, power plants and schools, the Bank also makes loans to restructure a country's economic system by funding structural adjustment programs (SAPs). The Bank manages a loan portfolio totaling US$200 billion and last year loaned a record US$28.9 billion to over 80 countries.


What is the IMF?


Also created at the Bretton Woods Conference, the mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to supply member states with money to help them overcome short-term balance-of-payments difficulties. Such money is only made available, however, after the recipients have agreed to policy reforms in their economies-- in short, to implement a structural adjustment program.


Is structural adjustment working?


No. Structural adjustment has exacerbated poverty in most countries where it has been applied, contributing to the suffering of millions and causing widespread environmental degradation. And since the 1980s, adjustment has helped create a net outflow of wealth from the developing world, which has paid out five times as much capital to the industrialized countries of the North as it has received.

I know there are a lot of qualified people at the World Bank and IMF who are experts in economics and other fields. If structural adjustment doesn't work, then why are they promoting it?


The wealthy Northern countries which control the World Bank and IMF dictate the agendas of these institutions, and their interests are best served by defending the status quo. Furthermore, the Bank's staff is currently dominated by economists who have spent their careers defending the validity of neoclassical economics, the foundation of the World Bank model of development. This orthodox view holds sacred the efficiency of free markets and private producers and the benefits of international trade and competition. Given the lack of accountability to outside parties, there is little incentive for the Bank and IMF to alter the design of structural adjustment, even when faced with mounting evidence attesting to the failure of these programs.

I hear a lot about the debt crisis in the Third World and know that many of the loans are owed to commercial banks and Northern governments. People say that some or all of this debt should be canceled to give developing countries a chance to recover economically. Shouldn't they pay?


Much of this debt dates back to 1970s, when it was lent irresponsibly by commercial banks and borrowed recklessly by foreign governments, most of which were not popularly elected and which no longer hold power. The advent of the debt crisis, which occurred in the early 1980s due to a worldwide collapse in the prices of commodities that developing countries export (e.g., coffee, cocoa) and to rising oil prices and interest rates, forced these countries into a position where they were unable to make payments. Yet there's no such thing as bankruptcy protection for a country, regardless of the circumstances. When the U.S. department store Macy's filed for bankruptcy under chapter 11 in January 1992, it received instant protection from creditors and working capital to keep open. At the same time, when Russia told the West that it could not meet government had to wait for more than a year before the IMF provided financial help.

What is relationship the between debt and structural adjustment?


Since the 1980s the debt situation has steadily worsened, so that now the total debt of the developing world equals about one-half their combined GNP and nearly twice their total annual export earnings. Because of this crushing debt-service burden, foreign governments have virtually no bargaining power when negotiating a structural adjustment program and must accept any conditions imposed by the World Bank and the IMF. And SAPs themselves, by orienting economies toward generating foreign exchange, are designed to ensure that debtor countries continue to make debt payments, further enriching Northern creditors at the expense of domestic programs in the South.

How's the World Bank's record on responsible lending?


In 1992, an internal World bank review found that more than a third of all Bank loans did not meet the institution's own lending criteria and warned that the Bank had been overtaken by a dangerous "culture of approval." Bank officials, in other words, felt heavy pressure to push through new loans even when presented with overwhelming evidence that the project in question was ill advised.

Who makes decisions at the World Bank and IMF?


Decisions at the World Bank and IMF are made by a vote of the Board of Executive Directors, which represents member countries. Unlike the United Nations, where each member nation has an equal vote, voting power at the World Bank and IMF is determined by the level of a nation's financial contribution. Therefore, the United States has roughly 17% of the vote, with the seven largest industrialized countries (G-7) holding a total of 45%. Because of the scale of its contribution, the United States has always had a dominant voice and has at all times exercised an effective veto. At the same time, developing countries have relatively little power within the institution, which, through the programs and policies they decide to finance, have tremendous impact throughout local economies and societies. Furthermore, the President of the World Bank is by tradition an American, and the IMF President is a European.


How is it that U.S. business and other companies benefit from the lending programs at the World Bank?


Development projects undertaken with World Bank financing typically include money to pay for materials and consulting services provided by Northern countries. U.S. Treasury Department officials calculate that for every U.S.$1 the United States contributes to international development banks, U.S. exporters win more than U.S.$2 in bank-financed procurement contracts.

Why is this bad?

Given this self-interest, the Bank tends to finance bigger, more expensive projects--which almost always require the materials and technical expertise of Northern contractors--and ignores smaller-scale, locally appropriate alternatives. The mission of the World Bank to alleviate poverty, not provide business for U.S. contractors.

[zaguero]

[vicman]

good thing i dont work in dc...it might suck at night when trying to get to VIP club though

[zaguero]

Originally posted by vicman
good thing i dont work in dc...it might suck at night when trying to get to VIP club though

[nautilus60]

I almost got arrested once during the IMF protests for having my girlfriend over in my dorm room (at GW). Appareantly i wasnt allowed to have visitors at that time...

[revaluation]

boo IMF, whatever, who cares, just get out of my lane!!! You wanna bring it to my attention? Email it to me. But there's no reason to act like a f*ckhead and disrupt an entire city who prolly doesn't give a crap about starving kids in Rwanda bc they got a couple of kids barely makin' it themselves.

[cookiegirl]

^ werd.

a bunch of kids from my college always went to these things b/c it was the "cool" thing to do at our backwoods counter-culture school. half of them had no idea why they were there, the full extent of the very complicated issues they were dealing with, or the very small effect they really had on world politics. they usually just managed to get themselves arrested for a night and then had to call mommy/daddy to bail 'em out.

bah.

[tinybutterfli]

Originally posted by vicman
good thing i dont work in dc...it might suck at night when trying to get to VIP club though

My office is not very far from the IMF & the World Bank so my boss told me I don't have to come into work on Friday! Woo hoo! Anyhow, there's already crazies out in the street here... um more than usual.

When I was walking to my office there was a man standing on the corner of K & 18th yelling "I'm here because you asked me to give a speech!" He wasn't talking to anyone in particular and he kept shouting the same thing over & over

There's also a lot of cops on bikes riding up & down 18th Street. Our building will be "locked" down tomorrow and you will need your security badge to get in.

Craziness!

[malanee]

The Urban Institute is soooo liberal - they are allowing us to take annual leave tomorrow if we don't want to come in.

Hmmm, I wonder if the b-to cart will be there...

[vicman]

Originally posted by malanee
The Urban Institute is soooo liberal - they are allowing us to take annual leave tomorrow if we don't want to come in.

Hmmm, I wonder if the b-to cart will be there...

i dunno about the burrito cart..demonstrators might consider it an evil tool of imperialistic domination by the first world to countries of the third world and an instrument that makes a mockery of the native culture from where the burriti comes from, henceforth they would pillage it until it had no more burritos left

[tinybutterfli]

Originally posted by vicman


i dunno about the burrito cart..demonstrators might consider it an evil tool of imperialistic domination by the first world to countries of the third world and an instrument that makes a mockery of the native culture from where the burriti comes from, henceforth they would pillage it until it had no more burritos left

wow you used a lot of big words in that post! i'm impressed.... sorta Now, lay off the pipe foo'!

Malanee - I doubt the burrito cart will be there, he's been gone most Fridays recently.

[crank47]

Originally posted by tinybutterfli

Malanee - I doubt the burrito cart will be there, he's been gone most Fridays recently.

When we were there Monday he said he wasn't sure the cart would be there this Friday due to the protests, but may do delivery only or something like that. He gave us a number to call, but I don't have it with me. I think the protesters would be all for it seeing the b-tos are vegan and you wouldn't be supporting any of those crappy capitalistic chains like McChipote.

[funkyfreshdc]

Originally posted by crank47
McChipote.

mmmmmmmmmm.....chipotle.......