Old radicals and new crossed paths in Chicago Thursday at the Bankers Association for Finance Trade's annual conference.
In the cold evening outside the Hotel Continental, two attendees out of the 200 from the conference stopped to talk with a few dozen black-clad protestors beating on empty buckets and carrying signs and vampire puppets.
The demonstrators had no official leader, but Jose Martin, a self-appointed spokesman, said they were a loose collection of members from groups such as the Chicagoland Anarchist Network and the Chicago Coalition Against War and Racism.
"Most of us are anticapitalist," Mr. Martin said.
A flier from the protestors cast the conference as one where "the bankers will discuss ways of making money off war and terrorism."
The protestors pelted Gerald Rama, a senior vice president of Pittsburgh's PNC Bank, and John Hanson, the chairman and chief executive of FCIA Management Co. Inc. of New York, with questions about the Trade Bank of Iraq, globalization, and the disappearance of family farms.
Mr. Rama referred to his days as a member of the Students for Democratic Society, a radical group known for destroying college students' records to keep them from getting drafted into the war in Vietnam, and told the protestors they were misinformed about BAFT.
"I was an SDS radical in 1969, and you guys are doing this badly," Mr. Rama said. "I think you guys have an absolute right to protest, but I will challenge you to get the facts."
He said that BAFT, an affiliate of the American Bankers Association, is not political and does not set policy or control the actions of the government. It is a trade organization that provides a forum for the discussion of international finance and keeps bankers abreast of developments that could affect their decisions to finance international deals.
The din from the buckets made conversation almost impossible, so Mr. Rama invited two protestors inside to discuss the conference. But the hotel said it didn't want any protestors to come in.
BAFT spokeswoman Laura Fisher said the protest "added a little color to conference, but it wasn't disruptive at all. Both the bankers and the protestors were on their best behaviors."
Whether Mr. Rama behaved himself back in the '60s is another matter. As he was leaving he was asked if he had blown anything up in his days with the SDS, and said, "I can't really tell you that."
