If you noticed some familiar faces on the news this weekend, I wouldnÕt be so surprised. SAGE members were pictured on the front page of the New York Times website being forced up against a wall and arrested. A group of SLU students made their way down to DC on Thursday, preparing for protests against the World Bank and IMF (International Monetary Fund) meetings that would be taking place this past weekend. Well, you might say, this is America, if they were simply going to DC to protest, then what were they arrested for? After all, we still do technically have freedom of speech, assembly, and expression.
The story goes a little something like this. As they made their way down the street, police dressed in riot gear corralled them into a small area, forced them against the side of a building and handcuffed the marchers. The protestors were not breaking laws, destructing property, or harming anyone. They were only walking in a small group. They were put on a bus with other demonstrators and taken to a police training academy, where they were held in a gym or on the bus, handcuffed with one wrist to their opposite foot, escorted to the bathroom, and given nothing but baloney sandwiches for the remainder of their detainment. On the bus, people overheard the police discussing what to write for the charges, and they decided to Òjust leave it blank for now.Ó
The tactics of the police state were simple: arrest everyone on Friday, instill fear in the rest of the protestors, and not have to use forceful violence on Saturday when there will be tens of thousands of people marching in the streets. They arrested about 650 people that day, including some who just happened to be riding their bike to work or walking to school at the same time. SAGE (SLU Activists for Global Equity) members were held for anywhere from 14 to 32 hours, and were not allowed to leave until paying a bail of $50 each and signing a form saying they agreed to their false charges, dropping their right to challenge the illegal arrests in court. It turns out that the police decided to charge them with Òfailure to obeyÓ but wouldnÕt disclose what exactly was disobeyed.
Why would this sort of repression be necessary; what would compel the state to react forcefully and unlawfully to remove a few protestors from the street? Simply enough, they, as agents of the state, are obliged to defend the corporate elite in their agenda for the global economy. The World Bank and IMF cannot afford to let the America public know what truly goes on in their organization. It is no coincidence that you donÕt even know who your World Bank representative is, let alone be given the right to vote for that representative. It is no coincidence that voting power in these institutions is distributed according to how much money your country gives (i.e. the U.S. gives 18% of the money and gets about 18% of the vote). Their power rests in their secretive nature and in the fact that the American public views protestors as dirty uneducated hippies who just want to dance in the street.
So rather than know that protestors are being arrested for the democracy of the global economy, the corporate media would have us think that protestors are stupid. Nations in the global South are slipping further and further into poverty every day because of the policies of the World Bank and IMF, and in order to hide that, the U.S. is forced to use violent repression. Good system.
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