INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER
Press Statement
TERESA GUTIERREZ, Co-Director, International Action Center
Tens of thousands of people will demonstrate in Washington DC on September 29th and September 30th.
We called the demonstration on Saturday, September 29 to surround the White House and then march to the headquarters of the IMF and World Bank, where the corporate and banking elite are holding their annual meetings.
George Bush’s administration represents the face of globalization and, as everyone knows, the U.S. government is the driving force, the real power, behind the IMF and the World Bank.
Globalization is a misunderstood word. At issue is the system of global corporate capitalism. This system is not about the so-called “free market.” It is a system where working and poor people in the cities and countryside do all the work and a tiny part of the world’s population obtains the benefits from that work. It is a system of exploitation. In the United States, one percent of the population owns forty percent of the wealth. These are the modern day robber barrens who plunder not only their own country but the peoples throughout the Third World. The IMF and World Bank and the Bush administration do not represent the people. They represent this class of exploiters.
The policies of the International Monetary Fund force millions into deeper poverty around the world. Many of the affected people immigrate to the United States for lack of any other options, and face a struggle against the historical repression of the U.S. government against immigrant workers. There are struggles for basic human rights such as a decent minimum wage, as well as legal rights. We are marching for immigrant rights, including full amnesty for undocumented workers.
Bush is carrying out globalization inside the United States to maximize profit for oil companies, mining companies and defense contractors. He is attempting to destroy environmental protections and trade union rights, privatize social security, privatize social service programs and destroy public education while spending tens of billions to militarize outer space in the name of the so-called National Missile Defense. At the same time, the Bush program represents the program of the ultra-right. It is a program of racism, destroying affirmative action while expanding the racist death penalty, part of the intensifying campaign against death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal; assaulting women’s right to control their own bodies, the right to choose; signaling the anti-gay bigots that the White House is “with them.”
We are coming to Washington DC because the mobilization of the people, not just one demonstration but the creation of a new grassroots mass movement, is the only method to defend working and poor people form the assaults carried out by Bush and the banking and corporate elites.
The police are attempting to create obstacles, create a climate of fear, destroy the First Amendment, demonize demonstrators as “violent” while they spend tens of millions of dollars to carry out violence against our movement.
This movement is not going away. It will not be deterred. It is spreading to all continents and we are here today to let the whole world know that in spite of police repression our movement will prevail on September 29th and September 30th.
issued 8/13/01
INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER
Press Statement
BRIAN BECKER, Co-Director, International Action Center
September 29th and September 30th, 2001, are shaping up as an epic battle for free speech. Make no mistake about it—the police in this city, in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Bush administration, are attempting to suspend basic civil liberties.
The decision by the IMF and World Bank, in cooperation with the police and the U.S. government, to consolidate their week-long meeting to two days must be understood for what it really means.
There are two fundamental elements to the decision:
(1) It is a recognition by the banking and corporate elites that wherever they and George Bush go--whether it’s in Quebec, in Gothenburg, Sweden, in Genoa, Italy--hundreds of thousands of people come into the streets. They come into the streets because the leaders of corporate capitalism are waging a war against poor people, a war against working people, as they do everything in their power to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
(2) The police of Washington DC, in coordination with federal law enforcement authorities, are attempting to create a huge exclusion zone in Washington DC on September 29th and 30th. This is an attempt to shred the First Amendment right to assemble, to demonstrate, to redress grievances. We are here to announce that we will challenge this exclusion zone, both in court and in the streets.
Where are we right now? The police after weeks of demonizing demonstrators, defaming them and trying to create a climate of fear, have now used their own false statements as the public rationale for excluding demonstrators from their right to protest within eyesight and earshot of the targets of their protest. This is part of a pattern, whereby the police demonize and criminalize demonstrators and then carry out premeditated violent assaults on our movement with tear gas, pepper spray, preventive detention arrests, rubber bullets and now live ammunition. Three demonstrators were shot in Sweden, Carlo Gulianni was murdered by police assassins in Genoa, and I might add hundreds of people were critically wounded by elite Italian police units, who were trained by the Los Angeles Police Department. These police carried out a fascist-like assault on demonstrators while they were asleep, sitting at computer terminals and working in their offices. Carlo Gulianni was not the first victim of police terror. Anti-globalization demonstrators have been killed in Brazil, Bolivia, Papau New Guinea and elsewhere.
It is our contention here today that the police decision to create an exclusion zone is a brazen attempt to replicate the Genoa-style police state, but this time in Washington DC. It is useful to remember that even at the height of the Vietnam War, large sections of Washington DC were never declared off-limits to demonstrators.
We are here to tell DC Police Chief Charles Ramsey, Attorney General Ashcroft and George Bush that it is illegal and unconstitutional to turn the streets of Washington DC into the private property of IMF and World Bank delegates.
The police in this city have used violence against demonstrators in April 2000 and since--they carried out mass preventive detention arrests, they raided the offices of organizers, they used police provocateurs and spies to try to break up the movement, they engaged in summary punishment of prisoners from the demonstrations. In short, the police have been the perpetrators of violence while attempting to paint their victims as the criminals. They have used this time-tested trick to turn reality upside down.
We will not accept the police relegating the demonstrators to a token presence. They have no right to limit the tens of thousands and perhaps more who will march because they want change. We will not accept “protest pits.” Police authorities have no right to determine where free speech can be exercised and in what numbers. So doing only makes a mockery out of the essence of the first amendment.
We will march on September 29th. We have that right! We will surround the White House to protest the policies of George Bush. We have that right! We will march to the headquarters of the IMF and World Bank. We have that right!
We ask all people of conscience to stand with us in the struggle for global justice, in opposition to the right-wing Bush agenda and in solidarity with our basic constitutional rights.
Issued 8/13/01
International Action Center
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