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Boise protest only one of thousands
Archive
On Sept. 26 there was a global phenomenon that affected everyone. This was the worldwide protest against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. What happened in Boise was nothing compared to the rest of the world.
We gathered in the park across from the Capitol shortly after 5 p.m. After awhile we realized that our message would better be heard if we took to the streets. We blocked some traffic, we handed out some literature (admittedly not nearly enough), we sang, we chanted, we talked to strangers and police. We sat down on the intersections of Front and 6th Streets, blocking traffic to Broadway Ave. and tried to unblock people’s perceptions.
The police brought out the riot gear, pepper spray, armygreen protective vests, helmets, and shields and they brought out the best in us. We responded with louder voices and NO VIOLENCE WHATSOEVER: we retaliated with peace.
Onlookers watched as several armored and armed police tackled single persons and wrestled him/her to the ground. The violence of the police (from Boise, Meridian, Garden City, and Ada County) proved our point for us.
The IMF was meeting in Prague, in the Czech Republic, to decide the future of the world economic system, with essentially no input from the majority of the people that system affects. Protesters from all over the world went to Prague and their local capitols to speak out against the IMF. People in Boise marched on the Capitol.
The IMF was supposedly originally designed to aid developing third world nations, and those nations crippled by World War II. The Fund gives loans to developing nations in times of crisis. Most people would view this as a beautiful attempt to aid those nations, but the beauty is only skin deep.
The loans offered by the fund are dispersed among the richest and most powerful in a nation. The masses of these nations never reap the benefits. Multinational corporations move their manufacturing bases to these areas, with little regard for the environment and thousands of people are made subject to conditions illegal in more advanced economies. These include substandard wages in countries where the minimum wage is already too low, extremely long workdays, lack of benefits, ecosystems being ravaged, indigenous farmers driven out of business by large fruit growing multinationals.
The news media portrayed us as uninformed college kids, and angry, potentially violent youth. We may have been angry, but I guarantee we were the least violent people in the area. Many of my friends questioned our actions but people in Challis now know what the IMF is. Many people have told me that the cops were just doing their jobs. We were just doing our jobs.
I feel that the information we were dealing with speaks for itself.
Visit these web sites if you would like to learn more:
www.idahomediaproject.org
www.indymedia.org
www.imf.org for the real scoop