(This text accompanies photos in Media Gallery "WEF PROTESTS IN NEW YORK CITY")

Scores of Baltimore activists were among the 15,000 protesting the meetings of the World Economic Forum in New York City February 1-4.

Saturday February 2, the march organized by Another World is Possible, the Anti-Capitalist Convergence, Reclaim the Streets, and the National Student Mobilization worked its way from Central Park to near the Waldorf-Astoria at 46th and Lexington Streets where the police essentially prevented further movement by protesters by 'gating' an exit from the street enabling police video cameras to capture images.

Large puppets led the beginning of the march, while the Radical Rockettes, leading the Reclaim the Streets section, danced and sang "New York, New York" with social justice lyrics. Anarcho-communists (NEFAC) proclaimed "We are not afraid of ruins. The WEF may ruin its own world. We carry a new world in our hearts!"; the Wobblies (IWW) "No Bosses, No Borders!"; the Student Liberation Action Movement (SLAM) "Education is a right. No cuts to TAP. No tuition hike for immigrants!"

Anarchists, communists, socialists, anti-racists, feminists, g/l/b/t, greens, and trade unionists were there to protest the progenitor of the World Trade Organization--the WEF, variously portrayed as agent of the "Evil Empire", of "Pacitalism" gobbling up regions and whole continents "working for no one" except global capital. While protesters symbolically reclaimed democracy by taking to the streets to show that "Another world is possible. We won't be intimated," the march was led and followed by the police (NYPD). Even as the chants "Whose Streets? Our Streets" reverberated loudly off the skyscraper of Citigroup and the glass windows of Starbucks, the march was lined on the left by motor-cycle cops, on the right by foot cops protecting the windows of corporate USA.

Sunday February 3, the Anti-Capitalist Convergence announced a "brisk walked through the neighborhood" in the East Village, while animal and environmental rights activists took to the streets in the Upper East Side. About 160 were arrested that day, including four Independent Media Center reporters. In the East Village, police tackled bicyclists on 2nd Avenue creating chaos in the street. The ACC "snake" march was often on the sidewalk, a legal activity. Many of those arrested were, in fact, on the sidewalk. One was Laura Wise, an Ohio State University student, who told reporters present at the processing of 34 arrested at 2nd and 13th, "I do not consent to this unlawful search. I was on the sidewalk; they profiled me."