WASHINGTON -- Thousands of marchers failed to stop world finance leaders from meeting Sunday but paraded through the capital in a show of celebration and anger that provoked one ugly episode -- a surging crowd met by a stinging cloud of irritants fired by police.
Festive street theater with giant puppets coexisted with pushy confrontations between police and protesters agitating about the plight of the poor and the "decadence" of the rich.At one point, police in riot gear and on motorcycles charged into a crowd that had surged toward the police line. Police used pepper spray and what they said were smoke bombs to drive back the protesters, who were convinced they'd been tear-gassed.
"Coughing, burning, numbness around the mouth, eyes watering, skin irritated," said John Hamilton, one of the victims. "It was clearly a chemical irritant."
But unlike the protests that overwhelmed police and smashed windows in rainy Seattle at trade meetings late last year, the weekend demonstrations were largely nonviolent -- and the sun beamed on them Sunday.
"I've seen a whole lot less property damage than after a Bulls game in Chicago," said Han Shan, a protest organizer from the San Francisco-based group Ruckus.
Police in America's security-savvy capital accomplished their No. 1 objective for Sunday, sending buses under the cover of early morning darkness to pick up world
finance ministers at their hotels -- and using circuitous routes and U-turns to get them to work.
But some VIPs were stranded: The finance ministers of France, Brazil and Thailand were thwarted by the crowds and sat at the Watergate Hotel five hours after the meetings started, wondering what to do. They eventually made it to the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund.
"I think there is a great misunderstanding," French Finance Minister Laurent Fabius said.
Police, who estimated as many as 10,000 protesters were on the streets, blocked off about a 50-block area of downtown but let demonstrators largely have their way outside the security zone.
Shan credited police with being relatively restrained, if suffocating in the size of their force. "Overall, they maintained their composure quite a bit," he said. "They have brutalized a few people without provocation."
The atmosphere was less tense than on Saturday, when police raided and closed the protest headquarters during the day and arrested more than 600 people in the evening.
Fewer than 20 were arrested Sunday, said Terry Gainer, executive assistant police chief. He said two police officers were hospitalized, one with back pain and another from heat exhaustion.
In a day that began with a drizzle but turned nice, the protesters chanted, beat on plastic buckets and wore big papier-mache puppet heads cast in the likeness of the leaders they hold in contempt.
It was all meant to disrupt the World Bank and IMF meetings being held Sunday and Monday.
But the anger sprang from a bazaar of causes, everything from human rights atrocities in Ethiopia to the "prison industrial complex" and biotechnology in food.
"Keep your genes out of our beans," said one T-shirt.
"In all your decadence people die," said a sign.
Protesters were united in accusing the World Bank and IMF of burdening poor countries with crushing debt payments, unsafe food, environmental destruction and sweatshops. They said the institutions let wealthy countries set an agenda that "saps the poor to fatten the rich," as Jobs with Justice put it.
Responded Michael Moore, director general of the World Trade Organization: "Blaming the World Bank for poverty is a bit like blaming the Red Cross for starting World Wars I and II."
Moore, an observer at these meetings, had witnessed far more destructive behavior in Seattle late last year, when bands of demonstrators trashed property and tens of thousands of marchers overwhelmed police.
While protesters linked arms to block intersections near the World Bank and IMF buildings, they mainly succeeded in keeping out people such as private security guard Robert Covington, of Forestville, Md. "This is ridiculous," he said. "All I want to do is go to work."
A group of demonstrators, some holding sections of chain link fence, charged toward motorcycle police and an anti-riot squad dressed all in black.
Police counterattacked with clubs and six to nine volleys of irritants, according to Associated Press radio reporter Ross Simpson, who was both clubbed and sprayed.
Stunned demonstrators were dragged away by their friends and taken to medical teams standing by with jugs of water to flush eyes.
Protesters thought they were tear-gassed but Police Chief Charles Ramsey said "smoke dragons" were used, canisters containing less severe irritants.