Quiet Start To Economic Forum
(CBS) Police were bracing for the worst when the World Economic Forum arrived Thursday. But by midday, several dozen of its officers were reaching for a latte in the Starbuck's on Park Avenue.
Organized protest, not anarchy, was the standard as the international forum - a feared magnet for violent protest - opened quietly at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Demonstrators plugged their causes two blocks away without incident or arrest.
A dozen members of the environmental group Friends of the Earth were outnumbered by police, the media and workers peering down from Park Avenue offices when they launched their morning demonstration.
Nearby, several hundred members of Falun Gong - the religious group banned in China - sported matching yellow scarves as they joined in mass exercises to raise awareness of its cause.
The incredible police presence of some 4,000 officers — more than one for each of those attending the Forum — and all of the resources at their disposal is not in response to the protesters' plans for street theater or even civil disobedience, reports CBS News Correspondent Lou Miliano. It's to avert the running street battles and rioting that erupted in Genoa and Seattle, sparked by small groups bent on violence.
Protest leaders predicted more of the same. "I completely expect the mobilization to be peaceful," said Mike Dolan of the Public Citizens Global Trade Watch.
At the Starbuck's coffee shop on Park Avenue, police officers lined up to escape a cold January drizzle with a hot drink. Rioters at Seattle's World Trade Organization meeting in 1999 targeted the national chain; in contrast, this Starbuck's was the safest store in the city.
By noon, police reported their first arrests - five women charged with trespassing and reckless endangerment in lower Manhattan for climbing to a building rooftop and unfurling a banner that read, "Bush and big biz agree that people with AIDS drop dead."
All five were members of the New York chapter of ACT UP, a gay rights group. The protest was staged to coincide with the arrival of some 3,000 of the world's corporate and political leaders for the five-day forum, said ACT UP spokeswoman Sarinya Srisakul.
Police also reported a handful of vandalism incidents at several chain businesses around Manhattan, with one arrest. Ry Fyan, 23, a Californian, was arrested for defacing the front door of a Starbuck's in lower Manhattan, police said.
A Chase Manhattan bank branch and a Gap clothing store were also hit by vandals, although police did not link the incidents to the forum. Chain stores have been targeted in the past by demonstrators upset by large international companies pursuing worldwide markets at the expense of local businesses.
To prevent any major disruptions, police officers were deployed across midtown Manhattan, with traffic banned from a "frozen zone" along the East Side. Cars parked there were towed, and concrete barricades were set up around the ritzy Waldorf.
The forum was moved from the quiet Swiss ski resort of Davos, its home for 31 years, as a show of solidarity with New York after Sept. 11. It will return to Switzerland next year.
The cost of security was expected to climb into the millions of dollars, negating some of the positive economic impact brought by the forum.
Although many of the protesters were angered by the forum's exclusion of certain groups, this year's meeting will include labor, environmental and human rights group representatives.
"There are numbers of people in there who need to hear a different point of view," said Andrew Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union and an attendee. "They should not be there unfettered."