Protest Next Weekend in Washington, D.C. Against the World Bank and IMF

Scenario thus far: (More events and actions such as teach-ins and concerts will be added as more details are ironed out.)

April 15th: Noon at the Group of 7 (G-7) Finance Ministers Meeting, Location TBA
Issue a stop work order and post a sign condemning the World Bank and IMF as structurally unsound. Come out and join the inspection team in some spirited street theater as they deliver the notice to the G-7, the group of wealthiest nations who control the World Bank and IMF.

April 16th: Gathered at the World Bank and IMF 18th and H Streets NW, Noon.
Time to dismantle the institutions to make way for the construction of a better world! Come out and take part in the dismantling (symbolically of course) of the World Bank and IMF! Along with the theme of this year come with the symbols and equipment (traffic cones, hard hats, card board props like wrecking balls and dump trucks…..) of construction. Have fun with the theme and be creative!

March from the World Bank and IMF to Dupont Circle for more music and “Construction Zones” representing the things that make a sound and just world: Peace and true security, environmental justice and community.

April 17th: Breaking ground on a better world!
Join in on some great community projects to support not only building a better world but a better Washington DC!



The April 16, 2005 meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank will represent the five year anniversary of the first major demonstrations against these institutions in the United States. Again we will gather in the streets of D.C. on A16 to show that our resistance to these institutions and their greed only grows stronger. A16 will once more be the day we show that our dreams for a better world are not only possible, but under construction at this moment, in all corners of the globe- and the IMF and World Bank, with all their efforts to demolish these dreams and actions, can never stop us.

Instead of building the world that they have promised, the World Bank and IMF have plunged it into a global crisis that is now more urgent than ever. The number of people in abject poverty worldwide is at an all-time high, and more and more people lack access to water, healthcare, education and other basic services. The world is headed for environmental disaster, while World Bank fossil fuel projects account for half of world carbon dioxide emissions. The global AIDS epidemic is spreading - 7,000 people in Africa die of AIDS every day. And now it is quickly reaching crisis proportions in the Caribbean, India, Thailand, and Eastern Europe. According to the United Nations, 30,000 people worldwide die every day as a direct consequence of IMF and World Bank-imposed cuts in social services.

Over the 60 years of their existence, the IMF and World Bank have shown themselves to be utterly arrogant institutions which completely ignore people's voices worldwide and systematically enrich multinational corporate interests at the expense of nature and of the rest of humanity. It's time to demolish these institutions and build a better world.

Each day people around the world people are coming together to construct a better, more just world. Not only are they demonstrating in the streets, but they are actively reclaiming their communities. In South Africa, citizens too poor to afford the privatized water have dismantled water meters and learned plumbing to connect homes to water services. In Argentina unemployed workers are taking over the factories they used to work in and running them as a collectives. Facing the devastating effects of World Bank and IMF Structural Adjustment Policies, people throughout the Global South are working everyday to take back their rights to water, health, land, a clean environment, and self-determination. Five years after thousands of activists came to Washington DC in the first mass show in the U.S. of dissent and solidarity with the global struggle against the World Bank and IMF, the Mobilization for Global Justice is calling for people to come to Washington DC April 15-17th, 2005 to protest the institutions during their semi-annual spring meetings and to celebrate the other, more just world that is under construction due to the daily resistance of millions of people worldwide!

OUR DEMANDS OF THE WORLD BANK AND IMF:
Open all World Bank and IMF meetings to the media and the public.
Cancel all impoverished country debt to the World Bank and IMF, using the institutions' own resources.
End all World Bank and IMF policies that hinder people's access to food, clean water, shelter, health care, education, and right to organize. (Such "structural adjustment" policies include user fees, privatization, and so-called economic austerity programs).
Stop all World Bank support for socially and environmentally destructive projects such as oil, gas, and mining activities, and all support for projects such as dams that include forced relocation of people.

- globalizethis.org

 

Thanks for fucking up our metro and traffic. Protesting is one thing. But those IMF protests go to far.

 

We are talking about fighting economic slavery. IMF keeps devloping nation in debts by putting in reform conditions that allow multinations to suck all the wealth out of the country.

 

I dont know much about the IMF, but isnt it possible for impoverished countries to take loans from other institutions. The US borrowed 150 million from Europe in the 1790's, from about 50 diffrent banks. Why cant nations just do that?

(this is more of a question than a rebuke)