Shutting Down the Streets: Political Violence and Social Control in the Global Era

4 Policing Alterglobalization Dissent

  62 4 Policing Alterglobalization Dissent By all reports, it’s a day to wear diapers. We don’t. 3 a.m. Washington, D.C. April 2001. Spring joint meeting of the IMF and World Bank. It’s very complicated loading the vans. Our unarrestable jail support team are the only ones carrying their driver’s licenses, so they have to drive. But one is a very nervous driver. And the energy in the van on the way to our dawn position after an all-night meeting, no coffee, and two hours of sleep is haphazard and frantic. B and I have the map and we’re in the lead van, but squeezed in the rearmost seat, which, with the nervous noise, is actually out of the driver’s earshot. This is the first action after Seattle. We know it will be different. Word on the street yesterday was that they’re going to arrest everyone in sight. No point carrying signs and banners, water, cameras, or backpacks. We’ll lose everything, so just go with necessities in your pockets. I’m relieved that since we’re not anticipating tear gas, I don’t have a stinky vinegar-soaked kerchief draining out of a ziplock into my jeans. Our legal support is well prepared. We’re ready. But tension is high in the vans because everyone is worried that we won’t get our moment in the street before getting scooped. We drove two thousand miles to be here. We want to be present, to manifest our rage and dreams by standing in the street for at least a few minutes before the police ritual enfolds all the meaning. As we drive through the deserted streets, excessively alert people shriek at every shadow. Phantasmatic police come at us at every intersection. B and I are trying to navigate from the floor of the van, where the flashlight won’t be Policing Alterglobalization Dissent  63 seen from outside. Periodically, someone yells “duck”, bodies crash down on us, and flashlight and map are disoriented . We have to start over figuring out where we are on the map. Finally, we breathe relief. We’re on a wide road with a straight shot at our destination. Someone shrieks. “Cop car! Turn right. ” Our driver responds meekly, “But it’s a bridge. ” “Doesn’t matter. Get us out of here!” We peek out the window, then get back down to the map. Shit, now we’re in Maryland. We have to turn around and go back. Our driver nears collapse. Everyone is shouting at her. “Don’t make any illegal turns!” She finally maneuvers us through a Marriott Hotel valet zone and back across the bridge. Now we’re within about a mile, on another straightaway. “Stop screaming at the driver!” The energy calms. She can do it. It’s just a little further. Then, ahead of us, two cruisers, parked on opposite sides of the wide boulevard. Doom. We’re so near the zone now, 24 kids in two vans. They’ll snatch us for sure and we go straight to jail. “Turn!” “Pull in here!” “Everybody out!” “Behind the dumpster !” Suddenly the two ex-marines in our group have taken command. “Get the vans out of here.” “Go! Go!” They send the drivers away. Great, now we’re behind a dumpster in an alley a mile from the location where people are waiting for us, the vans are gone, AND we’ll have to cross the street with the cruisers to get there. The marines organize us two by two and release us at one-hundred-foot intervals. They take the front. S and I take the rear. We have the group’s one cell phone, so we can report arrests to legal. We watch the pair in front of us make it across the boulevard and into the darkness on the other side. Our turn. We’re so obvious. I’m shaking hard as we cross that street. We make it to the other side, and I look back at the cruisers just as a cop comes out of a store, moving gingerly toward his car carrying a six-pack of coffees and a big box of donuts. 64  Policing Alterglobalization Dissent In this chapter and the next, we work to expand the conceptualization of protest policing. We begin with a brief review of the literature. In the...