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The images presented to PlaNet when the International Monetary Fund and World Bank hold their annual joint meetings are not ones of men in suits making key decisions for entire nations. The latest images are now of young people playing drums and waving banners, often lost in smoke and tear gas fired from riot police. This week as the meetings got underway in Prague's former Communist-era Palace of Culture, a police and army guard set out to ensure the security of the ³castle² as activists have dubbed it. Around 8000 activists are on the streets of the capital of the Czech republic to disrupt the meetings, taking inspiration from the actions in Seattle and Washington DC. On Sunday the Undercurrents video crew arrived at the Independent Media Center to find police illegally insisting on checking the passports of everyone who arrived. When the Undercurrents reporters refused to give any details and attempted to enter the police dragged Martin while another grabbed his lens. The independent media responded by putting a dozen cameras in the face of the officers and forcing them to leave. Ya Basta! an Italian network of very together activists hijacked a train to take them to Prague. 1,200, strong they led one of the three parts of the demonstration. Protesters sorted themselves into three groups with blue, pink and yellow colour's for ease of identification and cordination. Flags in the three colours led the march off in opposite directions both to surround the castle and also confuse the police. At the police barricade on the road bridge opposite the conference center, banners in various languages declared the protests illegal and that force would be used to disperse people. A stand off was the result with the Ya Basta! leading the yellow group trying to push past the police line. Activists succeeded in taking two police batons as souvenirs. Having made their was round to the other side of the center the Pink group, consisting of mainly British activists, moved in. With a sound track from a Samba band and activist folk band 'Seize the Day', activists got busy with fence cutting. One fence cutter said ³ I am doing this to stop people being hurt if the police try to force us into the side.² Meanwhile the downed fence was dragged off to become part of the activistıs barricades. Police refused to talk despite various musicians trying to open a dialogue. A diminutive middle aged Indian woman from the Narmada dam campaign stood nose to nose with the line of armed & armored police in gasmasks. The pink group moved past the military tanks, hundreds of armored police, and dozens of army personnel and found a side street blocked only by a thin line of uniformed police. Masked up black clad activists grabbed a metal barrier and ran at the line and a battle ensued with both sides getting stuck in. Sticks and rocks were thrown as police responded with deafening loud firecrackers, smoke grenades, and water cannons. One masked up young man grabbed cameras screaming at the press, both independent and mainstream, to stop filming. Meanwhile the samba band and other activists blockaded the streets forcing a number of delegate's cars off the road. One Mercedes had its windows smashed and after making a run for it the suited middle aged male occupants had an undignified clamber over the police barricades to escape. City center McDonalds restaurants lost a few windows while taxi drivers complained that activists were targeting them for carrying delegates to and from their hotels. The British group got a call on their mobile from a woman named Estelle. She has a broken arm and head injuries and is hiding in a hospital from the police. Radio and television news is reporting that 25 police officers have been injured. Delegates have been told that they can not leave the conference center as they are surrounded but later reports said that they are being evacuated on trains. Spirits, Tensions Run High The activist coalition organizing week-long protests at the World Bank/IMF meeting is running its operation from a donated office incongruously located in Prague's old city, or Stare Mesto-now an upscale, tourist district. The Christian Dior Perfume shop across from the protest headquarters has boarded up its plate glass windows in anticipation of Tuesday's planned demonstrations, but Ferragamo shoes and Hermes of Paris are open for business. On the street, well-heeled tourists are reaping the benefits of globalization. They pass by activists gathered from around the world to protest globalization's injustices without even a second glance. Meanwhile, outside the center of town, the activist coalition called the Initiative Against Economic Globalization (INPEG) is training hundreds of people in civil disobedience at the Convergence Center. The Center, a converted warehouse space located under Prague's Libensky Bridge, serves as an information and strategy clearinghouse for the protesters. A "spokes council" made up of representatives of dozens of groups makes decisions by consensus for this international ad-hoc coalition that has never worked together before. They have an elaborate system of hand signals to indicate their views as they discuss the details of the protests. Given the logistical obstacles, things seem to be running remarkably smoothly. Still, tensions are running high. The Congress Center, where the World Bank/IMF annual meeting is taking place, is ringed by police who are under orders to let in only official delegates and observers. Prague residents have been instructed to avoid the area of scheduled protests. Officials warn against violence by demonstrators and have denied them a permit to march. INPEG has repeatedly vowed to stay nonviolent in their efforts to blockade the meeting. They are also making puppets, costumes, banners and gathering musical instruments for their parade. While Prague has not been the scene of international demonstrations in recent memory, and neither side knows quite what to expect, Czech officials appear to be taking a hard line--learned in part from their counterparts in the West who have learned their lessons the hard way in Seattle and elsewhere. So far, more than 200 activists have been denied entry into the Czech Republic. Part of the city center has already been closed off. And demonstrators are preparing for the use of tear gas and pepper spray by police. What's Wrong with the World Bank, Anyway? Many activists have campaigned against World Bank and IMF policies for more than fifteen years. Well before the WTO was created and globalization came under increasing public scrutiny, critics had singled out these Bretton Woods Institutions, created in the aftermath of the Second World War, as promoting an unjust and unsustainable world economy. For years, these human rights and environmental activists have fought (and sometimes halted) destructive World Bank projects such as the Polonoreste Project in Brazil and the Narmada dam project in India. Yet today, despite some progress, the list of potentially disastrous projects is still long. Here in Prague activists denounce dams in Guatemala and China, gold mines in Kyrgyzstan, oil pipelines in Chad, Cameroon and Hungary and a proposed offshore natural gas pipeline in Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ghana, to name just a handful. Critics say it is oil giants like Chevron and Exxon/Mobil, power companies like Enron, and often-corrupt government officials who continue to reap the benefits of Bank investments, not citizens in the countries where it operates. Instead communities continue to be displaced and the environment threatened, they charge. In addition to such specific lending projects, critics maintain that the World Bank and IMF have a profoundly negative impact on social, environmental and economic conditions in many countries. The scenario goes like this: the World Bank loans poor countries money and the IMF conditions those loans on "structural adjustment programs." In other words, the IMF tells governments to cut spending by gutting health care, education, transportation, environment and other public programs, while opening up their markets to foreign investors. Countries sink deeper into unemployment, poverty and more debt, trying to pay off their loans. It's not that the debtor nations or even Bank officials don't know this, it's just that the World Bank and IMF are often quite simply the only loan shark in the global village. Policy vs. Protesters vs. ProDebtors Given the magnitude and multiplicity of problems created by the World Bank and IMF, there are familiar yet unsettling tensions among globalization foes when it comes to how to address these issues. The tensions can be seen in the differences between the direct action protesters and policy-oriented groups that lobby Bank officials and their own governments to gain incremental change. This friction has resulted in two parallel sets of public conferences. Behind the scenes efforts by long time activists to bridge the gap have proven only partially successful. Some activists characterize meetings that have been taking place between non-governmental organizations and World Bank and IMF officials as a sell-out, while the non-governmental organizations are concerned that militant street demonstrations will undermine their ability to lobby Bank officials. However, many of the activists dialoguing with the Bank say they plan to be in the streets on September 26th. Meanwhile, World Bank prodebtors appear to be exploiting the divisions. On the one hand, they are painting the avowedly non-violent protesters as violent and unreasonable, and on the other they are limiting NGO access to the meetings, sending policy advocates scrambling for accreditation. What's more, according to some participants, Bank officials are implementing a sophisticated strategy of appropriating the issues raised by their critics. "My impression is that the Bank is setting up new procedures to show that it is doing something, but it's a facade," said Budapest-based Jozsef Feiler, of the CEE Bankwatch Network. Feiler, whose group met with World Bank President James Wolfensohn this week, observes that "the World Bank has developed its public relations, but its projects have changed very little." He pessimistically predicts that the World Bank/IMF is so wedded to free market policies, that it will take a worldwide economic crisis to get them to rethink their development strategy. Voices from the South Wolfensohn has accused the Bank's critics-both the policy wonks and the protesters-as being part of the "Berkeley mafia." He has said that he is working to meet the needs of the poor in developing countries like Chad, not his critics in the affluent North. But along with the hundreds of Europeans and Americans flooding into Prague are a handful of activists who were able to make it here from the Southern Hemisphere. They represent groups resisting IMF/World Bank policies on the ground. These activists are attending workshops and visiting the Convergence Center to tell their stories and organize support for their movements. For example, earlier this month in Brazil, the Catholic bishops, trade unions, peasant organizations and other opposition groups held a referendum on government austerity measures prescribed by the IMF. An overwhelming number of the 5 million Brazilians polled favored breaking with the IMF, halting debt payments and using the money that is currently used to pay off the debt for rehabilitating social welfare programs. "These institutions are responsible for destroying our economy," explains Rogerio Mauro of the Landless Peasant Movement, one of the poll's sponsors. "We want to fight this hypocritical globalization of capital and instead globalize our struggle to determine the future of our own country." Mauro, a farmer from Parana, a stronghold of the Landless Movement, added that President Henrique Fernando Cardoso's popularity was at an all time low since he imposed IMF austerity measures in response to the country's two year- old economic crisis. Other Southern activists, meanwhile, have been meeting with Bank officials. "At least we made our points clear face to face," notes Noble Wadzah, Program Coordinator of Friends of the Earth Ghana. Although he met with Bank officials, Wadzah believes that they will not be moved by reason alone. "The protests will give us the opportunity to back up our demands and show our seriousness," he explained. "That," he hopes, "should be enough to wake the World Bank from its slumber.". . .nd to poverty. These foot-soldiers are mobilisi
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