NEW YORK — Anti-globalization activists said Monday that largely peaceful protests during the World Economic Forum showed their movement isn't bent on violent confrontation with the establishment.
Still, with just 7,000 demonstrators turning out Saturday for the only big rallies during the forum, some activists wondered if sensitivities about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a heavy police presence blunted their message that unbridled capitalism is hurting the globe's poor.
Anxious to avoid rioting that has dogged international economic meetings in recent years, police barricaded the area around the forum site at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel and assigned 4,000 officers to security duty. City leaders warned they would not tolerate any trouble.
With so much attention focused on security ahead of the forum, many activists said the police and media created an atmosphere of fear that kept some protesters away.
Simon Greer, a program director for Jobs with Justice, a national workers rights coalition, said more mainstream groups like his decided against joining demonstrations here. He said they wanted to be associated more with firefighters and police officers and feared being linked with possibly violent protests.
Activists said many supporters of their causes chose to go to unobtrusive teach-ins and stay away from activities on the streets.
Others said some activists went to the World Social Forum, an anti-globalization conference held simultaneously in Porto Alegre, Brazil, that attracted 40,000 people.
"That's where the movement was mobilizing" efforts to find "alternatives to the flawed and failed free trade model," said Michael Doland, deputy director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, a group founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader.
The activists in New York tried to create a colorful, festive mood, with some dressed as the Statue of Liberty and others carrying giant puppets. Slogans on placards were mostly subdued, such as "People not Profits."
"We said from the beginning that we were going to have a positive message and weren't going to be confrontational," said Eric Laursen, an activist with the umbrella group Another World is Possible. "We're not the sort of uncivilized beasts we're made out to be some of the time."