Thursday, 20 Nov 2003

MIAMI, Fla.

This is the day of marches, rallies, and concerts in Miami during the Free Trade Area of the Americas negotiations. I’m tempted to begin with a description of the police overreaction, which continued today. But I’ll start instead on a positive note.

The activities began gently last night with a gala concert and rally at the Miami Bayfront Amphitheater. It was a welcome respite for me from the advocacy, the press work, the workshops — country, rap, rock, hip-hop, salsa, Billy Bragg, all mixed with messages of social justice.

Today was the major march and rally against the FTAA, with more than 10,000 people marching through the abandoned streets of Miami. The energy was upbeat, with the now usual mix of labor unions (from Teamsters to service workers), puppeteers and drummers, and activists from around the world.

But, for me, at a visceral level, today’s story is about the police. I went to bed last night thinking that I had been unfair in my diary entry yesterday, that I had not mentioned the number of encounters with police officers the past couple of days that had been positive. Many of the police are simply doing their jobs in the best way they can, following orders but not acting out of bounds, and often being deliberately polite.

All that’s true. But on an institutional level, the police force here has gone far over the top, creating what many activists visiting here from some Latin American countries saw as far too close for comfort to the repression they’ve experienced at home.

The police leader here is Police Chief John Timoney, who was also the chief in Philadelphia during the 2000 Republican convention. His strategy, both in Philadelphia and here, has been one of applying overwhelming force.

When marchers began to enter the amphitheater this morning, more than 300 police in riot gear stood guard in phalanxes, together with several armored amphibious vehicles and half a dozen helicopters overhead. The police presence was intended to — and did — create an atmosphere of intimidation. At most times, the number of police girded for riots nearly outnumbered the marchers on any given block around the major rally site. But there was also an air of (disturbing) absurdity — Steelworker union members faced down by police ready for battle with rioters?

I was at a small Amnesty International event at the Torch of Friendship just before the major rally began. As the Amnesty leaders began to set up equipment (with a permit in hand), a line of 50 police in riot gear marched down the street and stood directly in front of the stage area and literature tables.

A captain then barked that it was potentially unsafe to keep the literature tables where they were, and a half dozen police then went to stand near the microphone. At one point, as the captain moved to talk with one of the Amnesty leaders, he removed his gun from his holster. I think that the police were hardly aware of the irony of their using these intimidation tactics with Amnesty, one of the world’s leading human-rights and free-speech organizations.

Later, I stepped across a small piece of ground away from the rally, and when I turned to come back about two minutes later, I discovered that a line of police in riot gear had gathered and that I was no longer allowed entry.

There were several small “skirmishes” today between the police and a very small number of protesters. This afternoon, some protesters apparently threw water bottles at police and set a couple of fires in the street. In response, police officers fired rubber bullets and used long batons, plastic shields, concussion grenades, and stun guns (this is confirmed by local TV). Some protesters fled to an office where I was writing this diary to avoid the police phalanxes that were marching down Miami’s 3rd St.

A part of me thinks I should be abstaining from writing so much about the police. In the run-up to the FTAA negotiations here, it has been difficult to get media attention in Miami (particularly the electronic media) for stories other than those about protests and potential violence. But here I am simply reinforcing the media’s obsession. Moreover, I’m a trade-policy expert, not a civil-liberties advocate.

But something disturbed me deeply here. Over the past several trade summits I’ve attended — Seattle, Quebec City, Cancun — I have not seen the kind of massive and aggressive use of police force that I’ve seen here. There was no clear threat here for which the police force on the streets would have been proportional. I am left to conclude, pessimistically, that the Miami police department’s approach is one designed to scare off public protest and free speech itself.

The FTAA was, at least in part, supposed to be about enabling democracy to grow in Latin America. Instead, it seems to have brought repressive government here to the U.S.