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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 13, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------New Jersey rally hits IMF, World Bank
By Gery Armsby
Florham Park, N.J.
Some 250 protesters gathered around the Hamilton Park Conference Center in Florham Park, N.J., April 1 to denounce World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings held there. This was a closing rally of three days of actions planned by a New Jersey coalition as a precursor to the convergence scheduled in Washington April 9 through April 17 to shut down the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
On the morning of March 30, activists Lisa Kuhn, 19, and Judith Kapova of the Direct Action Network, posing as IMF delegates, fooled hundreds of cops and scaled the fire escape stairs of the conference center.
When the two reached the roof, they unfurled a massive banner for all to see as delegates arrived for the plenary session of the conference. As the forty-foot banner slamming "Corporate Colonialism" was draped over the side of the conference center, local and federal law enforcement stood helplessly below. Both Kuhn and Kapova were later arrested.
The agenda of the IMF/World Bank conference was to "examine managing financial and corporate distress in the new financial system" according to the World Bank's web site posting about the meetings.
Speeches at the April 1 rally, held in a nearby parking lot, highlighted the human and environmental distress caused by policies of the IMF and World Bank and repeatedly called for a cancellation of the debts of poor countries. Speakers included labor unionists, HIV/AIDS activists, singers, poets, clergy and environmentalists.
Lisa Kuhn, who returned to the Saturday demonstration after being released from police custody, told Workers World "It's really great. We're exposing the IMF and World Bank. They're just there to protect the ones who already control too much wealth and power."
A group of youth demonstrators faced off with the cops near the close of the rally as they tried to surge past police lines toward the conference center. They drummed and whistled and cheered, chanting "More world--less bank!" and "Cancel the debt now!"
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