Two weekends ago the city was marked with several protests, some that erupted into violent actions. My parents were in town visiting and we were up for some DC shopping and dining in Georgetown. Forgetting that a friend of mine had told me about the protest a month before, we headed down to Georgetown for dinner and were surprised to find most of the shops boarded up, cops all over the place, and soon after we arrived the street blocked off to traffic, all because of a protest against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. After walking a little ways down M Street and finding most of the stores boarded up, we decided to find somewhere else for dinner. We missed most of the action, but I heard later that it erupted into a somewhat violent protest, a few storefront windows vandalized and a woman injured by a brick. I later learned that the protest was staged in Georgetown not only because of its vicinity to the IMF and World Bank, but because of the wealth concentrated there. It was an anti-capitalist protest as well as a protest against the World Bank and the IMF. I was interested to see what kind of coverage the event would have and was surprised to find not only the normal mainstream coverage, but also a large amount of alternative media coverage. The blogosphere was filled with response to the event. Many of the posts were however strongly opinionated with phrases such as " LEFTY PROTESTERS IN GEORGETOWN STICK IT TO THE MAN by hitting a woman with a brick: and "Leftwingnuts Make Voices Heard By Hitting Lady With a Brick".
I checked out http://tailrank.com/3402876/Woman-Hit-With-Brick-in-Bloody-DC-IMF-Protest and found a whole website dedicated to tracking the "hottest news in the blogosphere" and filled with a sampling of blogs dedicated to the Georgetown protest.
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It's weird that the IMF is in DC now because in one of my Lit. classes we have to read all of these short stories, and one was a satirical commentary about the IMF's involvement with underdeveloped countries. This particular story was written by a woman from South America.
The story pretty much said that the IMF, for lack of a better word, sucks, and that nothing is improving.
Anyway, it was just a weird coincidence that we read that story about a week ago, and this protest occurred recently.
I'm not really quite sure how I feel about the IMF, mainly because I don't know a whole lot about it..But my feeling is, as a better off country it's kind of our duty and obligation to help others. Apparently, we haven't and still are not doing a very good job of that.
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