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Cops 1, protesters 0
The P.R. savvy Washington police force scores a major victory at the World Bank/IMF protests.
By Jake Tapper
[04/18/00]

From Miami streets to the Web
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[04/18/00]

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His paranoia about inflation helped send world markets into free fall last week.
By Ian Williams
[04/17/00]

Unlikely jailbirds
Being in the wrong place at the wrong time gets a duo arrested -- and admired.
By Daryl Lindsey
[04/17/00]

Screw the kids!
Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and the Democratic Party want your vote if you care about children and education, but have done nothing to deserve it.
By David Horowitz
[04/17/00]

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We scurry through the lobby and pile into a cab, racing off to the Ellipse, which sprawls between the Washington Monument and the White House, where the union leader, who has led the charge to halt the expansion of trade with China, is to give a speech before an audience of 10,000 students and union members on the perils of globalization.

Becker is a man with a mission, and he wastes no time with small talk. Our taxi zooms toward the demonstration, following Constitution Avenue and passing the Vietnam War Memorial, which recalls another era of protest and civil disobedience. We arrive at the Ellipse just shy of 10 a.m., an hour before the rally is scheduled to begin. The grassy field is quickly filling as protesters, speakers and the famed puppets start to pour in. I see one woman breast-feeding her baby. Another is wearing a clever "Slavery" baseball cap, with the "v" replaced by the Nike swoosh logo.

Becker, dressed in a red, long-sleeved Steelworkers T-shirt and jeans, is an athletic man, who barely displays any outward signs of his 71 years besides his short mane of gray hair. His voice is eerily reminiscent of James Stewart and, as his handler has told me repeatedly, he owns two Harley-Davidson motorcycles. He comes off as part "Mr. Smith goes to Washington" and a little bit "Easy Rider."

Sunday he wandered confidently through the crowd. Occasionally someone we pass raises a hand in salute, identifying him or herself as a member of the Steelworkers. Becker is happy to see them, but he also seems a little nervous that union turnout won't be as high as he'd hoped. Helicopters buzz constantly overhead and riot-gear equipped police surround the perimeter of the park. Becker seems genuinely excited to be here, to be a part of the growing fight against globalization that has brought together strange bedfellows from the unions, environmentalists and the student movement.

The globalization protest movement got an important boost in Seattle last November when it joined forces with labor, with its deep pockets and mobilized membership, in battling the World Trade Organizations and other stalking horses for global capitalism. The resulting "blue-green" alliance has a cousin in the "green-red" alliances of Europe, especially Germany, where labor, social democrats and environmentalists have assembled a brittle ruling coalition.

For all the pretense that the Washington meetings would be a sequel to Seattle, they couldn't be. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank are conducting prosaic semi-annual meetings with a small decision-making agenda, nothing like the quadrennial ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization that protesters effectively shut down in Seattle.

Besides, Washington has had weeks to prepare for the protests, to learn from the mistakes of Seattle and is better prepared to enforce order, as it has shown with its preemptive arrests and street closings this week. It feels more like a venue for a second date between these groups than a place where a tangible impact can be made. And the fact that Elián González and the Dow carnage are still leading the news is telling of the impact of these protests.

But there is something more important occurring here -- there seems to be a generational shift happening between labor and the students. Every steelworker I speak to seems inspired by the interaction with the students, almost as if it's reawakening the spirit of protest in each of them. There's an esprit de corps between protesters and the labor supporters in the staging areas. One man approaches Becker backstage and tells him, "What you're doing for these kids is great."

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