World Bank/IMF Night March, April, 2005, Bethy
From MemoryArchive
Who: Bethy What: World Bank/ IMF Night March, April, 2005 When: April 2005 Where: Washington, D.C.
We had spent the previous week dumpstering and gathering food to feed to the protesters at Dupont circle. We spent all Saturday morning cooking the food, of which the fried plantains were most definitely the best part. Since we were cooking, we didn’t get to go to the protest march; instead we brought the food down to the Circle for the events going on there after the march ended. Luckily it was a beautiful day; the line for food stretched all the way around the fountain. Even the people at the end of the line who just got the leftovers and some bread were continuously thanked us for cooking. That is what I love about a lot of the activist community.
Later that night a group of us headed to the Riot Folk! show at Café Mawonaj. Over a hundred people slowly crowded into the small community restaurant space. Being the dorks that we are, or maybe it was at my insistence, we were sitting right up by where evan, tom, ryan, and mark were singing from. Of course that’s the best spot for singing along, with the downside of getting spit on by tom a few times. And of course there’s the line in ryan and tom’s song that goes, “by the time we get to [not bombs], we’ll have this song to play.” And there sat Nicole, viiktoriya, dave and I in our food not bombs shirts grinning from ear to ear and a little embarrassed. Dorks, like I said. Hell, I could not even take off my food not bombs hoodie because I had my food not bombs t-shirt underneath.
I remember looking around at my friends during the songs. We were all so content just being together, connecting with each other without saying anything. Furthermore, I felt connected with every other person in that room; we all were fighting for something and knew we couldn’t stop doing so, even it we weren’t quite sure what exactly the thing we were fighting for was. The energy was electric. It sounds corny, but it was. Half way through the show, the dancing started. A hundred or so kids just shaking their booties and raising their fists. It made me think of the quote from Emma Goldman, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.”
After the show, it was time for the march. Unpermitted of course. I was a little nervous because this would be the first march of this kind I had participated in. We had our affinity group though. We linked arms and marched, dances, sang, chanted and reclaimed the streets. We stayed off the streets until we were out of the ungentrified part of town and then hit the streets once we approached Chinatown. It was empowering and invigorating. Cops started following us and telling us to get off the streets. No. All of a sudden I smelled vinegar and that’s when I started to get scared. If someone had out their vinegar bandana, they were expecting pepper spray. But we kept our cool and Dave continuously kept coming back checking on us and it was reassuring to have him there, knowing he had done this before and that he had our backs if something were to happen.
Maybe it did not achieve anything, but we could not just do nothing. And nothing will change over night, and maybe it won’t even change at all, but you can still try to slow the machine down. Nothing violent happened and the march ended when we reached [circle]. Some things have changed since then, but this will always be one of the memories I hold onto of my friends and I. And one things for sure: there is nowhere else I would have rather been that night.
