By Judy Ancel
anything in italics is a comment of mine: This is a fairly thorough general description of what happened in Miami, and I witnessed the majority of what this writer describes, thus can corroborate it.
The first amendment to the US Constitution died on the streets of Miami November 18-21 from massive repression and a slavish media. Perhaps you caught a glimpse of the police in the sparse media coverage. Perhaps you heard Mayor Manny Diaz congratulating them for saving Miami from the hoards of union retirees and young protestors bent on bringing own the Free Trade Area of the Americas. You probably didn't catch Police Chief John Timoney respond to the charge that officers had kept 18 busloads of union retirees from entering the city by saying, "These are outsiders coming in to terrorize and vandalize our city." Summing it all up, AFL-CIO chief economist Thea Lee told a press conference on Friday the 21st "The Miami Police Department disgraced itself with an outrageous use of force."
Unless you listen to Democracy Now (KKFI 90.1FM 10pm weeknights) or go to the Indymedia websites, you most certainly didn�t see the photos or hear the testimony about the repression, the tasers used to shock medics, the peaceful protestors and media people shot with rubber bullets and pepper sprayed, or the Steelworker woman dragged to the ground by cops in black Ninja turtle uniforms who then held a rifle to her head.
Our group of about twenty from Kansas City and Lawrence - union members, students, members of the Fair Trade Coalition went to Miami to join the protests during the Trade Ministerial of 34 countries to negotiate the FTAA. The Steelworkers had done a stellar job in educating and mobilizing people through their March to Miami which ended in a conference for 2000 Rapid Response coordinators from every local timed to coincide with the protests in Miami.
We knew we wouldn�t be welcomed. Despite the presence of thousands of union members at the rally on November 20th, not one public official came to greet us. Instead, Miami passed a two week special ordinance aimed at repression. It defined a demonstration as virtually any two people on the street, prohibited bean bags, water balloons, and sticks to hold up signs wider than one-fourth inch. They also suspended the right to a speedy trial.
$8.5 million of the $87 billion in Iraq reconstruction money (your tax dollars) was sent to Miami to pay for the most elaborate mobilization of police repression since the labor wars earlier in the 20th century. For weeks, Miami officials terrorized downtown businesses with the specter of business-hating anarchist youth busting windows in their zeal to bring down the FTAA. Most boarded up and shut down in fear.
They brought in 2,500 self-described "Robocops" from all over the state and outfitted them in the latest gear. Singer Billy Bragg quipped at the labor-sponsored People�s Gala concert the night before the big march, that their gadgets looked like they'd all come from the Sharper Image. The fashion was black knee pads and bulletproof vests over brown uniforms, accessorized with Darth Vader style helmets, gas masks, billyclubs longer than baseball bats, rifles and taser guns. They were like walking tanks. They brought with them armored personnel carriers and street sweeper sized water cannons. Crowd estimates ranged from 7000 (the Police Chief) to 25,000 (the AFL-CIO). That made the ratio of cops to protesters between 1:2.8 to 1:10.
Protestors: the legit and the illegit...Since the negotiations for the FTAA, like all other trade and investment agreements, totally shut out citizen input or petition, and since there is never any question of actual dialogue with our government representatives, there�s a lively debate going on among anti-globalization forces about how best to be heard. There�s no unanimity. Anti-globalization rallies at global summits have developed a tradition of both peaceful rallies and marches and mostly non-violent direct action aimed at shutting them down. The unions very publicly organized and invited allies from other sectors and countries to join, and all scheduled teach-ins, debates, and forums. More confrontational groups rather quietly planned to try to tear down the fences constructed to block public access to government officials.
The strategy of the Miami government was to split the rally-ers and marchers from the direct action people, and they did it quite effectively, calling the former �legal� protesters and the latter "illegal,� asserting that the massive police force was to protect the right of the �legals�: to protest while demonizing the latter. The labor leaders negotiated a deal with the cops and got permits. They also made an agreement with the direct action folks move and schedule their protests away from the rally and march. A representative from a direct action group publicly announce this agreement at the People�s Gala and invited union people to participate.
In the end the police reneged on the deal and gassed union members and kids equally, dispersing them all after holding the retirees hostage for several hours. The only real result of the unions' attempt to be the "good" protestors was that it enabled the police to demonize the others and be even more brutal toward anyone who even looked young.
By Thursday, now called N20, Miami was thoroughly militarized. Our group of Kansas City people started out early from our hotel which was over a mile north of the rally site. We planned to take the free train downtown, but it was shut down. So we walked. Many streets and freeway exits were blocked. We passed at least six road blocks, each manned by dozens of ninja cops.
The Militarization of Miami...The rally site was an armed camp. To get into the amphitheater for the labor rally you had to wait in a long line for over an hour. A line of police blocked the porta-potties even keeping numerous retirees from using them. A tank stood ominously behind the armed Ninjas who lined the sidewalk shoulder-to-shoulder. We watched in horror as a bunch of them jumped into action to drag some people out of line and beat them to the ground for no apparent reason. The crowd chanted �Shame! Shame!� Note: I witnessed this as well, we cried �SHAME!�
Most people couldn�t even get into the rally to hear presidents of the AFL-CIO, the Steelworkers, Machinists, UNITE, SEIU, Professional and Technical Workers, leaders from the Sierra Club and the National Family Farm Coalition, the Hemispheric Social Alliance, a woman from Nicaragua who politely asked us to replace our President in the next elections, a rabbi who talked about we must bring more than the values of greed and profit to the world. Meanwhile at least four police helicopters droned above us creating an atmosphere of siege.
The march was huge, dense, colorful, and spirited. There was a giant earth ball, bouncing above us, radical cheerleaders, the grim reaper bobbing along. Groups from Mexico, Central and South America, indigenous peoples, youth organizations and banners of every color and design. The only people watching, however, were fellow protestors and the legions of cops, at the ready, strung along the sidewalks or bunched together in courtyards, and the infernal helicopters. The citizens who might have been expected to come to watch were totally absent, scared out or kept out by the state of siege. The media, too was sparse, preferring to wait for the expected confrontations, disinterested in a peaceful march.
After the march, people flopped down on the grass to rest and eat sack lunches left in large boxes for us by rally elves. Many of the labor people went back into the amphitheater to hear more speeches and music. Meanwhile the police massed at either end of Biscayne Blvd. with the greatest force between us and the towering Intercontinental Hotel, site of the Ministerial, a half mile away. Then, a group of young people with drums started marching toward the police line. Almost everyone followed including lots of people in union shirts. By then, it seemed, everyone wanted to express their overwhelming anger at the absurdity of their massive force, their brutality, and their interference with our rights. We all massed in the street facing the cops in a long line and began chanting �Our streets! Our streets.�
Provocateurs...Suddenly some started lobbing things at the cops. According one member of our group who was well-positioned to see, the projectiles came from several men dressed in black bloc uniform. This evidently was the signal for the police to begin to shoot off teargas, pepper spray balls, club some, and begin slowly marching forward using the clubs to push the crowd. Lots of tear gas was shot off, but unfortunately for the cops, the wind was blowing toward them and away from the protestors. As pandemonium followed, our observer noticed that the men who had started throwing things, gradually melded into the police ranks and disappeared. This was corroborated by several others and at least one photo. Read: these were police PLANTS to give them an excuse & to make the protesters look like they started it.
As they pushed northward toward the other police line a couple of blocks away, the crowd was forced into the side streets where they were chased by police, gassed and pepper sprayed. Some were harassed as they tried to leave the area; some were beaten. Those caught near the entrance to the amphitheater tried to get in for protection. One of our group was told by security that if she wasn't a Steelworker she couldn't get in. The thousands of retirees inside were trapped for hours until the police withdrew. Our group which had picked up a group of Mexican guests, especially fearful of arrest, fled to the Holiday Inn, the only sanctuary between police lines, and watched the rest on TV in the bar with a group of Canadians and Mexicans. The Mexicans told us that the cops were much more restrained in Cancun and didn't beat anyone.
Note: What this writer missed is that the police continued to divide and conquer, pushing down the streets in solid blocks and spraying gas and projectiles the whole way despite the obvious retreat of the crowds and desire to escape the sitation. This includes pepper spraying the wellness center (a field �hospital�) as they marched by - this was a space blocks and blocks away from any expected action, where people were being treated for all manner of injuries. People looking to escape the protests in need of medical (and surely psychological) care were re-contaminated with pepper spray as they sat in the care center, not threatening anyone or thing in any possible misconstrued conception of a way.
That day over a hundred protesters were treated for injuries and twelve were hospitalized. It was reported that military tanks patrolled downtown Miami that night. By Friday most people were leaving town. A group went to the jail to have a peaceful vigil to protest the arrest of 165, and 50 more were arrested. According to the Citizens Trade Campaign, police surrounded the protestors ordering them to disperse. As they did, police opened fire and blocked the streets preventing many from leaving. The cops also left arrestees Ids, credit cards and glasses dumped in the street to be run over or stolen. In jail some reported sexual assault, being hosed down with cold water, and beatings. One woman said she was strip searched by four male police officers. Two prisoners were hospitalized immediately after being released.
FTAA Lite - A Victory for Our Side...So what of the Ministerial Meeting? It ended a day early declaring victory, but if you read between the lines, that wasn�t the case. Stung by the collapse of the WTO negotiations in Cancun in September, US trade representative Robert Zoellick was not about to have these negotiations break down, so he switched tactics, scaling way back on the U.S. agenda - a carbon copy of NAFTA. After the Brazilians, with support from Venezuela and Argentina, refused to negotiate on agriculture, intellectual property and government contracts, Zoellick switched to what people called �FTAA-Lite,� a framework agreement with a lot of blank chapters. Thea Lee characterized it as "a desperate attempt by Bob Zoellick to save face." They say they�ll try to fill in some of the blanks by next Fall, but it's clear they won't get an FTAA by 2005.
What has really emerged though is not �FTAA-Lite;� it�s �FTAA-Buffet.� The US announced at the same time as the FTAA meeting that it will begin negotiations on bilateral trade agreements with six Latin American nations. It�s still unclear whether the Bush administration, with their faithful cohorts the Canadians, have abandoned regional trade agreements for bilateral ones or whether they hope that by pitting the Latin American countries against each other for trade preferences, they will eventually be able to patch together their FTAA agenda.
As we left Miami to return to KC, we were all greatly disturbed by what we�d witnessed: the virtual military occupation of the poorest city in America stamping out the right of peaceful protest, just as the right to vote was stamped out in the last Presidential elections; the absolute failure of the mainstream media to report it or even report accurately on the trade negotiations. I wondered where I�d been. Was this America? I�d met and heard of people who had been stopped by police, tasered, thrown to the ground and threatened simply for being there, and I wondered how it would have been different if I�d been protesting in some military dictatorship.
Our unions are to be congratulated for organizing and sponsoring so much of this mobilization, but I think we must all seriously think about how little of our message got out. It's urgent that we develop new alliances and new strategies to save our right to free speech and assembly, for they are as basic to the right to organize as they are to the preservation of democratic government.
