Copyright 2000 Journal Sentinel Inc.
Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel
April 16, 2000 Sunday EARLY EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 17A
LENGTH: 619 words
HEADLINE:
Protests of World Bank, WTO bring together seemingly disparate interests;
Organized labor, environment and religion all represented in capital
BYLINE: MATTHEW SCHOFIELD Knight Ridder News Service
BODY:
Washington -- She's wearing a nose ring and
toting large containers of tofu and lentils through a crowd of autoworkers on
Congress' front lawn.
" People!" she shouts. "If you want to eat, could
someone please give me a hand?"
The workers, however, ignore her and
make a beeline for the nearest hot dog cart.
Not far away, Megan Lepley
is wearing a cardboard turtle costume, standing among 15,000 Auto Workers,
Teamsters and Steelworkers. They are wearing satin jackets, cheering Jimmy Hoffa
Jr., and booing China. They want American jobs to stay in America. They want
free trade to be fair.
Lepley wants people not to forget that as trade
restrictions are eased, innocent sea turtles die.
"It's interesting,
isn't it?" the central Pennsylvania resident says. "Usually we'd be at each
other's throats. But here, for once, we agree."
Same words, same
enemies, same goals. Different worlds.
A lot of that has been going on
as the nation's capital hosts a dozen protest groups staging events to protest
institutions and policies few people besides the demonstrators know or care
about: the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the
International Monetary Fund, permanent normal trade relations
with China.
If this sounds somewhat familiar, it should. The Battle in
Seattle, where thousands of protesters shut down planned talks of the WTO, was
only four months ago. That week of protests will probably best be remembered for
black-clad anarchists who smashed windows in downtown shops. As a Time magazine
article noted, "The thing about anarchy is, it has a way of getting out of
hand."
Of course, not all the protesters are anarchists. In fact, score
cards listing the groups would be helpful -- even for participants. The issues
alone are an odd assortment: jobs and human rights, bank loans and sovereignty,
world hunger and fishing nets, AIDS and old forests.
Then there are the
methods. Practitioners of magic plan to transform the world through incantations
(really). Labor leaders note that getting out to vote might be a better idea.
In one part of town, a group of 20 prepared themselves to be arrested
for non-violent protest. Elsewhere, a group of 50 walked the Stations of the
Cross through Capitol Hill, praying for debt relief for poor nations.
Michelle Miller, a suburban Washington D.C. , professional, joins the
prayer walk. She is wearing a conservative red sweater and an olive raincoat, an
image that fits her job administering Catholic Church youth programs around the
country. She'd hardly call herself an activist.
"It's a chance to walk
with Christ, and I like to do that every chance I get," she says. "We have to
remember that we're Christians before we're Americans."
Another prayer
walker, retired Northern California middle school teacher Harold Carl-stad,
celebrated his 75th birthday by announcing, in a grandfatherly voice, "If I need
to, I just might get arrested for civil disobedience today."
Over the
last 20 years, Carlstad says, he's been arrested about 175 times, usually for
protesting foreign policy issues or nuclear weapons. Carlstad would say he's an
activist.
He boycotts Starbucks and Nestle, Shell Oil and The Gap. The
reasons, he says, are fairly simple: Big business and big government are evil.
They combine to kill people and destroy the environment.
At a rally of
5,000 Teamsters, John Keller isn't so sure about such things. Keller, a
33-year-old big rig driver from South Philadelphia, says the protests, to him,
are about being able to afford to keep his kids in Catholic schools.
True, he's walked a lot of protest lines; in fact, he once stayed on
strike for 22 days. But he doesn't call himself an activist. He's just a
Teamster.
LOAD-DATE: May 16, 2000
