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Visiting Washington today? You're in for a treat.

Name your cause -- the environment, corporate corruption, world poverty, globalization, Big Business, WorldCom, racism, sexism or homelessness -- and there's a protest just for you.

The same folks who earlier brought you tear gas festivals in Seattle, Quebec City, Genoa and elsewhere are back in Washington, D.C., this week for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

That, at least, is the pretext. The rationale is a little tougher to discern.

Once, there seemed to be a point to all these demonstrations. Not everyone agreed that globalization and free trade were the cause of so much ill, but at least there was a coherent theme. And, few would deny that the 1999 demonstrations in Seattle provoked some healthy debate.

But successor events have become a catch-all for universal gripes and dissent. The organizers would have us believe that all the weighty problems on this planet are somehow tied to the work of the World Bank and the IMF in some kind of dark global conspiracy.

The highlight of five days of festivities is expected to be today's People's Strike. It's planned as a day of "non-compliance and resistance" to "shut down the city" and "stop business as usual" by blocking key roads and intersections, according to organizers.

"No longer should one's survival and access to human needs be determined by one's economic means," Andrew Willis, 19, a student at American University in Washington and one of the event's organizers, said, trying to explain the point of it all to reporters.

It's a noble goal, but maybe a tad naive. A year at American University, a private college in leafy Northwest Washington, will set you back $23,068 (U.S.) a year for tuition and another $11,500 annually for room, board and books, according to the school's Web site. Let's hope Mr. Willis already has substantial "economic means" or he'll be a slave to the capitalist system for years to come.

One anarchist group is promoting the idea of a "scavenger hunt" on its Web site, offering points for such acts as smashing the window of a McDonald's restaurant, occupying a corporate office or puncturing the tire of a police cruiser.

You wouldn't want to miss Saturday either. The Mobilization for Global Justice is planning to encircle the IMF and the World Bank buildings to "keep corporate greed from leaking out." The two lenders of last resort to the world's poorer nations are conveniently located across the street from one another, so stanching the greed shouldn't be a problem.

If even a tiny fraction of the corporate greed in the world was housed there, the protest just might have some punch. But it takes a considerable leap of anti-capitalist rhetoric to connect the World Bank or the IMF to WorldCom, Jack Welch's corporate jet and $6,000 shower curtains.

Organizers are hopeful this week's protests will reinvigorate the anti-globalization movement, which has showed signs of running out of steam since last year's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

Already, their Web sites are filled with wistful accounts of earlier triumphs. "Three days that shook the Bank and exposed the Fund," one account reads.

Police are bracing for as many as 20,000 protesters. But event organizers acknowledge that law enforcement officers may outnumber them on the streets. Organizers may even outnumber their followers.

Enthusiasm for this brand of defiance has waned since Sept. 11. Police have warned that they won't tolerate anything that might threaten security. The omnipresent threat of terrorism has also dampened the zeal of many would-be activists.

This just might be the last drumbeat of the anti-globalization movement.

And that's a waste of dissent. There are a lot of causes students might want to be passionate about these days -- the threat of war in Iraq, the millions of Americans without health care, or global warming. But the IMF -- an amorphous institution controlled by wealthy donor countries such as the United States -- isn't deserving of top billing.

Another potential target -- George W. Bush -- won't even be at home. He's headed to his ranch in Crawford, Tex., for the weekend.
bmckenna@globeandmail.ca