The goal, according to the Mobilization for Global Justice, an umbrella group, was two days of nonviolent demonstrations by as many as 10,000 mostly youthful protesters summoned to Washington by hundreds of separate organizations that included labor, radical environmentalists, gay and lesbian activists, anarchists and a hodgepodge of old- and new-left groups. But officials feared a replay of last year’s violent demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, which led to about 500 arrests and millions in property damage. “I think we’re going to make a lot of arrests, and I think we’re going to have a lot of problems,” said D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey. By late last week, police said, they already had made 600 arrests.

With some protesters openly referring to plans for “Seattle II: The Sequel,” D.C. police carried out a series of pre-emptive strikes last week. Cops raided a house in northwest Washington that was being used as a headquarters and staging area by protest organizers. They also seized a carload of “lock boxes,” homemade devices designed to impede bolt-cutters when demonstrators chained themselves together. On Saturday police cited violations of the city’s fire code in shutting down an old warehouse that was being used to prepare equip-ment and train demonstrators for street protests. About 300 would-be demonstrators were in the building at the time; all were ordered out and several were arrested. “We’re simply concerned about their safety,” Ramsey said blandly. Police also said a Molotov cocktail was seized in the raid, although a protester said “it must have been planted.”

Still to come were two days of legally approved rallies and a publicly announced period of civil disobedience aimed at blocking Monday-morning traffic in downtown Washington. Ramsey promised to use tear gas if he had to, and the protest’s organizers seemed to take him at his word. Activists like John Sellers, director of the Berkeley, Calif.-based Ruckus Society, vowed to continue to “do our best work” to dramatize the protests, even though organizers recognized that in Washington they were playing against “the varsity.” To Sellers, the whole idea was to create a “David-and- Goliath image” that would dominate the nightly news. But it was important, he said, to keep the demonstrations nonviolent–a goal that everyone in the nervous city would support.