International Action Center
Press Statement
Larry Holmes, Co-Director, International Action Center
Issued: 8/20/01
The International Action Center initiated the demonstration against both the Bush Administration’s right wing, racist policies, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, because they represent the interests of the corporate and banking elite. We called for a demonstration to surround the White House on September 29 and then march to the IMF and World Bank. This demonstration has won the support of thousands of people from all over the country--working people, poor people, young people.
In response, the police have carried out a systematic campaign to demonize the demonstrators and to try to generate a virtual hysteria against the people coming to Washington DC—and I might add the thousands who will join them from Washington DC. Every day, the police are using even more incendiary language than they used the day before, and now have announced that they will erect miles of 9-foot-high fencing surrounded by thousands of heavily armed police to make the streets of DC the private domain of the IMF and World Bank delegates and the officials in the Bush administration.
Make no mistake about it, this is not the first time this has happened in history. For instance, next week will be the 38th anniversary of the August 1963, civil rights march led by Dr. Martin Luther King and others. I have a suggestion to all of those who are here from the mass media: Do a little bit of research, go back and look at how the establishment, the powers that be, the media, and most importantly the segregationists who were stonewalling on the passage of a Civil Rights Act—look and see how the coverage of the 1963 march was before the march, in the weeks leading up to the march.
The establishment was scared to death. Why? Because for the first time tens of thousands of angry, frustrated African American people—who had been deprived of civil rights and were living in forced segregation--and their allies, were planning a march on Washington. There was a hysteria organized by the forces of reaction and racism and directed against those who came to demonstrate.
It seems absurd now. Looking back now we can see that those who were coming to redress grievances in Washington DC, to demand that another world be possible, had been the victims of lynchings, police violence, KKK terror--yet it was they who were demonized.
There is a new civil rights movement sweeping the world. It’s part of the old struggle against racism, but it’s the civil right that we demand for all people on all continents--that they have clean drinking water, that they have the right to food and shelter, that the vast natural resources of their country not be pillaged and looted for the benefit of the Western banking establishment.
And we’re continuing the old civil rights movement right here at home, against the face of corporate globalization. That’s why we’re linking our protests to the policies of the Bush administration. We will say no to lynch law justice that now comes in the disguise of the death penalty, we’ll say no to the expansion of the Prison-Industrial Complex, we will demand jobs and education for our youth not prisons, we will demand health care for the 50 million who are uninsured. We want DC General Hospital open, and we want facilities that serve poor people elsewhere in Washington DC to have expanded resources rather than have the money go to Star Wars. We will say no to Plan Colombia and the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas).
On September 29th and September 30th, we’ll say no to the IMF, to the World Bank, to Bush, and now we ask the millions around the country who agree with us to join us in Washington DC to say yes to free speech. Our lawsuit today is a clear signal that we will never, never surrender our right to free speech, to organize and to protest.
International Action CenterPress Statement
Brian Becker, Co-Director, International Action Center
Issued: 8/20/01
We are filing this lawsuit today to enjoin the Washington DC police and other law enforcement officials from carrying out their plans to shred the First Amendment Right to assemble, to march, to demonstrate, to rally. We must have the right to rally and march, not in small numbers in some police-determined location, not in a “protest pit,” but to rally and march in the largest possible numbers.
The police in this city have declared that they are modeling themselves on the experiences that they observed in Genoa, Italy, Quebec, and elsewhere. It is our contention that what the police are attempting to do is to replicate the vicious police state that was set up in Genoa that led to the cold-blooded murder of Carlo Giuliani shot in point blank range in the head by Italian police. These same police and special elite units, some trained by officials of the Los Angeles Police Department, carried out a reign of terror against the IndyMedia center, against the Genoa Social Forum offices, against protesters sleeping in their beds.
In Quebec, the police fired more than 4,000 rounds of tear gas and used rubber bullets. In Gothenburg, Sweden, the police used live ammunition to shoot three demonstrators. Other demonstrators have been killed in Papau New Guinea, in Bolivia and in Brazil. Thousands of trade unionists and students have been given long jail sentences in South Korea for standing up to the IMF and World Bank. In each and every case, the victims of police repression and brutality have been demonized as the criminals.
The police are violating our rights when they function as the armed protectors of the IMF, the World Bank and the right-wing Bush administration. It is illegal to turn vast parts of Washington DC into the private property of the IMF and World Bank delegates.
Let’s be clear. The reasons we have applied for permits as long ago as last February is because we wanted the people who agree with us--and we believe that is the majority of the people--we want them to be able to come and express their opinion, and do it in a lawful, orderly, disciplined and spirited demonstration. The police are trying to deny us these rights. But we are confident that we will prevail.
In city after city, heads of state and the financial aristocrats who represent corporate capitalism meet in secluded palaces or locked off areas surrounded by thousands and thousands of heavily-armed police, high fencing and barricades. It is the dictatorship of the rich that is enforced against the working people and the young people when they come out to demand trade union rights, environmental rights, women’s right to choose, lesbian and gay rights, when they stand up against Pentagon militarism and the militarization of outer space.
We will assert our rights in the courts. That’s the purpose of this lawsuit. We will assert our rights in the streets because the ultimate recourse of those who are abused by the powers that be is to take to the streets. If you don’t own an oil company; if you don’t own a bank; if you don’t own a mine; if you’re not part of that one (1) percent of the population that owns forty (40) percent of the wealth; if you believe in justice for the people of Africa, Latin American, Asia and the Middle East who are dying unnecessarily because their countries are being looted by the IMF and World Bank; and very importantly now if you believe in free speech, if you believe in the First Amendment, we urge you to get involved with the demonstrations on September 29 and 30.
Join us! - Become an organizer, find other organizers in your area, download leaflets from our website and hand them out, get the word out in other ways, organize transportation to Washington DC.
And on September 29 and 30, bring your community to join the thousands people who are coming from unions, women’s organizations, anti-war organizations, environmental groups, immigrant rights organizations, lesbian and gay organizations and more, who will be in the streets of Washington DC.
International Action Center
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