Posted on 1-2-2002

All Quiet On The Western Front?
By Sherri Day (NY Times)

Under cloudy skies and light rainfall, the World Economic Forum began today
(January 31, 2002) in New York City and through midafternoon was noticeably
absent of violent activity from protesters who had previously sought to
disrupt similar events elsewhere.

In anticipation of violent protesters, or perhaps to visibly discourage
them, the New York City Police
Department has assigned 4,000 police officers to cover the event. The
police have also established a pedestrian-only traffic corridor along some
streets on the East Side of Manhattan. So throughout much of today, the
police were everywhere - on horseback, manning barricades and seeking
shelter from the rain under awnings.

The conference, which is expected to attract about 2,500 of the world's
elite to New York City over the next four days, is being held at the
Waldorf-Astoria in midtown Manhattan. It is the first time in its 31 years
that the meeting has not been held in Davos, Switzerland. Police officials
have made clear to protesters that they would have zero tolerance for any
violations of the law. (Zero Tolerance of police violence was the response
from those on the street - Ed) By midmorning, the police had arrested five
women from ACT-UP, a coalition of AIDS activists, who were accused of using
a fire escape to climb onto the roof of a building at 124 Watts Street in
lower Manhattan and unfurling a banner that read, "Bush & big biz agree
that people with AIDS drop dead." They were charged with criminal
trespassing and reckless endangerment, the police said. Law enforcement
officials also responded to several other incidents today, although they
said the incidents were not necessarily related to the conference.

This morning, a 23-year-old California man was arrested after the front
door of a Starbucks coffee shop in lower Manhattan was defaced, the police
said. Someone also set fire to a trash can outside a Chase Manhattan Bank
on the Upper West Side, the police said. The fire scorched the bank's
windows, but no arrests were made. On Wednesday night, the police responded
to an incident at a Gap clothing store in Herald Square in which six of the
store's windows had been scratched. No one was arrested. Today, the
substantial police presence competed in number only with scores of
journalists and television trucks that lined Park Avenue from 51st Street
to 54th Street. Demonstrators were few.

Ted Florea, 25, of Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, stood at Starbucks at the
corner of Park Avenue and 48th Street
asking people, "Do you have time for Greenpeace?" Those who walked by,
mostly journalists or police officers, said they did not. Mr. Florea, who
works for the Fund for Public Interest Research in Manhattan, said he and a
few colleagues had come to see if they could find new supporters for
Greenpeace. "We wanted to be somewhere where people were interacting," he
said, adding that the group had signed up more than 13,000 new members in
the New York area since June through such direct appeals. "But
unfortunately because of the weather or because it's the first day, no one
is interacting," he said. "People are coming to check it out and then
leaving."

Earlier in the day, two groups held separate, peaceful protests. Members of
Falun Gong, the spiritual group banned in China, performed exercises near
48th Street and Park Avenue to bring attention to practitioners who have
been killed or persecuted. "Our point is not to protest," said Peter
Recknagel, 30, who lives in Germany. "The government of China is using
their economic psychological power to crush any human rights issue. This is
not a demonstration. It is an appeal. We're not against this conference,
we're inviting them for constructive talk."

About 12 members of Friends of the Earth, an environmental group, also
gathered near the Waldorf-Astoria to express their discontent with the
World Economic Forum.

Late this afternoon, the Central Labor Council, is expected to draw at
least 400 protesters to a demonstration at the Gap store on Fifth Avenue
and 54th Street. The group will be speaking out against labor conditions in
sweatshops.