Tasty's Vacation/Police Brutality at FTAA

[tasty]

I was recently in Miami for the FTAA protest and in Fort Benning, Georgia for the School of the Americas protest. I had a lot of fun, but was also scared at a lot of the things our government did in response to the protesters in Miami.

Here are the pictures I took Tasty's FTAA/SOA Pictures

Some of the pictures are just of us at the ocean or partying at Emory University with my Atlanta friends (I'm sure you'll find a few of them pretty amusing; I have no shame)

Here is a summary of the events by Tom Hayden:

UPDATE. MIAMI. 10:30 EST, Thursday  An ugly and bloodier ending to the Miami FTAA meeting was averted by a sudden decision tonight to end the closed official events one day early. FTAA co-chairs from the US and Brazil both described the summit as a step forward though it was widely understood that the agreement was far less than the American business community and the White House originally hoped for.




At 5:30 pm, besieged protestors at the convergence center, threatened by the spectre of mass arrests, put out a televised appeal for public solidarity. At virtually the same moment, word came from within the FTAA meeting that an agreement had been reached. At 6:45, the agreement was announced at a press conference of all the trade ministers, and shortly afterwards the police encirclement of the convergence center seemed to be lifted.




"They finished early because there was nothing to be gained from another day of bad publicity from the streets, and there was nothing to negotiate beyond an agreement to keep negotiating in the future," said Washington-based trade expert Mark Weisbrot. A perplexed Wall Street Journal reporter asked FTAA officials whether "after nine years you've agreed to keep moving forward but with lesser goals than before." Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim, carefully choosing a word in English said only that the agreement was "enabling."




Enabling what? The beginning of "NAFTA on steroids" for the whole hemisphere, as global justice advocates fear? Or the further retreat of the Bush Administration from its pretensions to empire as American public opinion begins to swing against unilateralism in trade and war. That is the big question the global justice movement now confronts.








Earlier in the day




MIAMI  ?  Protestors seemed to skirmish with heavily armored Miami police outside the Riande Hotel Thursday morning, but nothing is at it seems this week. These "anarchists" were undercover police officers whose mission was to provoke a confrontation.




The crowd predictably panicked, television cameras moved in, the police lines parted, and I watched through a nearby hotel window as two undercover officers disguised as "anarchists," thinking they were invisible, hugged each other. They excitedly pulled tasers and other weapons out of their camouflage cargo pants, and slipped away in an unmarked police van.




On the other side of the impenetrable police barricade, a young woman with a video camera was bent over, vomiting from pepper spray. The nonviolent revolutionary Starhawk stood blinded for 10 minutes as friends washed her eyes. Others knelt paralyzed on the street.




A few hours later, hundreds of peaceful protestors  ?  and a few shocked reporters  ?  sitting quietly in Bayfront Park on Biscayne Boulevard were sprayed like unwanted pests by officers who described themselves as Robo-Cops.




So began a day that could be explained as a planned overreaction by the City of Miami, the Governor of Florida and his supportive brother in the White House. Within a few hours, the massive police force was firing pepper gas and rubber bullets at 120 miles an hour against a small crowd of surrounded resisters who could have been easily contained.




"Jeb Bush would love to see a riot over FTAA," lamented Fred Morris, Florida director of the National Council of Churches, when I interviewed him the day before. It seemed a little paranoid at the moment, but Rev. Morris spoke from experience. "They've been bringing in riot units from all over Florida to patrol streets when nothing was going on. My wife and I were stopped twice by police this week and they were very hostile. I can handle that, but somebody younger and more impatient might get shovy."




We were standing on a downtown street corner where the local ACLU, Catholic activists and Unitarians held a press conference condemning First Amendment abuses. Under a newly adopted ordinance, groups of seven or more people are forbidden to stop on a sidewalk for longer than 29 minutes without a permit. The Miami City Council decided not to criminalize puppets but banned materials such as stilts "more than three quarters inch in its thickest dimension" and "containers of any kind."




Hundreds of downtown businessmen, hearing that "Seattle-type anarchists" were descending on Miami, lost hundreds of thousands of dollars by closing their doors for the past week. The few who remained open  ?  camera stores, small shops, taco stands  ?  did brisk business without a single incident of property damage (as of 6:00 p.m. Thursday).




A few days ago, police shattered a parked car at Florida State University when they noticed a "suspicious container" that turned out to be gray paint for a photo gallery.




Next, the entire downtown was shut down by hundreds of officers in response to the arrival of a nonviolent march by 200 farm worker supporters from Ft. Lauderdale, 34 miles away.




Then on Wednesday, police uncovered a nest of alleged "anarchists" in an abandoned Miami mansion, and led television crews to a cache of weapons including newly minted chain and bright new gasoline cans. The evidence smelled, and not of gasoline, but not a single reporter questioned the incident. The anarchist stash was not exactly weapons of mass destruction, but enough to justify the police buildup on the eve of the protests.




With $8.5 million provided from the taxpayer funds meant for Iraq, the Miami police have splurged on "non-lethal" weapons, including CS-gas sprays. Gleaming new desert-colored armored personnel carriers and bright green water-cannon trucks backed the police presence on the streets.




Newscasters embedded Iraq-style among the police provided a complementary narrative rationalizing the show of force. For example, when a young white woman holding her fingers in a V-sign was shot point blank with a rubber bullet, the local ABC commentator said without the slightest evidence, "She took a rubber bullet in the stomach, she must have done something. You wanna play, you gotta pay."




A local NBC commentator seemed to speak for official Miami when she proudly declared that, despite a few incidents, Miami "was nothing like Seattle in 1999."




No authority or pundit questioned why the protestor turnout was less than 15,000 after months of official "intelligence" warning that 20,000 to 100,000 might blight the city's blissful reputation. Here in Miami, the AFL-CIO turnout was perhaps 5,000, including steelworkers wearing T-shirts declaring "FTAA Sucks."




Two hundred forty trade unionists wearing "Wellstone Lives" T-shirts journeyed all the way from Minnesota. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney attacked the FTAA fiercely and paid a visit to the protestors' convergence center. But a comparison with Seattle four years ago, where 50,000 trade unionists marched, was never planned or considered realistic by the protest coalition.




It may be hard for most Americans to believe this was all a hoax, and of course the Miami events are not over yet. But the telling comparison that should be made is not with Seattle 1999, but with the anti-WTO protests in Cancun, Mexico, just two months ago. There a Mexican police force with a long record of human rights abuses protected the WTO Ministerial with no offensive force, no gassing, no beatings and virtually no arrests. Protestors outside the fences in Cancun were far more aggressive than in Miami today. It was the first significant de-escalation of state violence in the history of anti-globalization protests. Miami and U.S. police officials were there as observers, but chose not to repeat the non-violent peacekeeping example of Cancun.




Miami Mayor Manny Diaz called the police presence "a model for homeland defense." Two weeks ago, Miami chief John Timoney was quoted as saying his strategy would be "a failure" if tear gas was used. Tonight he actually claimed on CBS that the demonstrators and not the police used the tear gas. Anyway, he continued, it was not tear gas but "pepper spray with a capsule formula."


As to protests scheduled for Friday, "if they engage in lawful activity, we're gonna arrest them." He didn't notice the misstatement  ?  if indeed it was one.

Have fun checking out the police state

[Mr.Mellow]

Hmm. For some reason I doubt that the police would purposely start a confrontation. Sounds to me like propoganda, but everyone's entitled to their own opinions. What was the protest about, anyways? I know people were protesting some trade agreement, but I'm not entirely sure why.

[Jeb]

I believe the protest was over a price hike in sanitary napkins.

Your pictures have inspired me tasty, I also am now actively pursuing a career in law enforcement as it will satisfy my primitive ergs to beat hell out of protesters, legally.

I also await a long drawn out post from bucc to address many of the problems i have with this, but don't have the time to write about. Until then i will make fun  

-jeb

ps. nice job on accomplishing nothing
pss. and i am now ashamed to call myself a democrat

also (no psss)
congrats on not holding a beer bottle wrong this time, however something needs to be said about this...

- REMOVED -

that picture after a series of photos from a protest doesn't do anything but reenforce stereotypes.


*****
5th edit,
nevermind on the holding beer wrong comment,

- REMOVED -

also, your hand is damn close to being over your head while dancing and we all know what that means


mauti, if your gonna remove my pictures, you should remove tasties link, which is where they came from...

[Cutter]

this post should have bee titled : stupid smelly hippy kids that had gone on record as saying "were gonna fuck miami up!" "this town is ours now" "were gonna make seattle look like nothing". ....this was the plan of a few hundred kids, many of whom (205) are still sitting in a miami jail. and rightfully so.
tasty you should be ashamed of yourself. you shoulda told me you were comin down. i've had the last two weeks off from work for renovations. and i saw live from many angles, everything that happened. there were organized protesters that had gotten permits....and then there were the punks that had just wanted to start shit. they pushed the cops to the limit and they got what they deserved. kids heres a little lesson for you that i learned a while ago...when a cop tells you to do something, you better fucking do it fast. i personally hate fucking cops, but i would have to say that really wish i was one last wednesday. what's next tasty? gonna go spit on some soldiers getting back from iraq?
and let me know the next time you come to miami...i have something for you

[tasty]

Cutter, this was not the plan of a few hundred kids. It was sponsored by hundreds of completely legitimate organizations, including the Sierra Club, the AFL-CIO (and the unions under it), United Church of Christ and several other chruches and religious organizations, the Green Party USA, and a number of other groups that are listed here. I was there on the front lines of the protest for the entire day, and spend the night watching the media coverage. Were you there at the actual protest? If not, I have a hard time believing you know the extent of what went on judging from most of the news coverage I saw Thursday night. There were extremist elements among the protesters (there always are at any protest) but they were a tiny majority of the actual number of people at the protest. As usual, the news went to all lengths to portray all the protesters as radical anarchists whose only mission is to cause damage. I know several of the people who were jailed and have heard the stories of those released, and most of them did not deserve to be there. At the end of the day, the police were arresting people indiscriminately and for no reason? fewer than 5% of the charges given to protesters arrested in Miami have stuck so far. We didn't push the cops to the limit; they were ready to jump on anyone for the most miniscule of reasons. Only once was I ordered to disperse by a policeman, which was kind of funny because when they actually told protesters to disperse (what happened to free assembly anyway ) they were blocking all available intersections with police lines and allowing no one to leave. What the city of Miami did on Thursday was disgusting, and I hope Timoney loses his job for it. Florida is a beautiful state but last Thursday was anything but. Before condemning me (and making ridiculous statements about spitting on soldiers), I suggest you do some further reading on what actually happened.

[Cutter]

i mentioned that there were legitimate groups with permits and there were also people calling themselves anarchists. which group were you in? tasty i didn't watch the news coverage on thursday night as you did. because i watched everything happen live as it started. there were cameras everywhere, on the ground, in many helicopters, on the roofs of most of the downtown buildings.
now as i saw it live from every angle including the very first gatherings and confrontations and you couldn't possibly have while you were walking in the street, let me tell ya a couple facts.
first i fucking hate police and have had many unfortunate run-ins with "the law" in my younger days. having lived in philadelphia, atlantic city, las vegas, san diego, and now in miami, i can honestly tell you that miami cops are the coolest you'll ever have to deal with. tasty the miami police aren't amatuers. and were not going to let happened in seattle happen here.  they were well prepared for what some protesters had warned would happen to miami. it was very clear who these kids were.
at 9:30 am on thursday a few of these kids tossed a couple of rocks at police (saw it happen live) so the police made their line and began moving a group of people out of the downtown area on to biscaynne blvd. the police marched at a slow pace and made it loud and clear that the street was to be cleared. there was a nice size cushion there too, until some einsteins thought that if they locked hands and yelled and spit on the cops that the cops would not keep marching and just let them be. the cops on the front lines held their billy clubs out in front of them horizontally and the little einsteins tried to take the sticks out of the cops hands (which any other time of the year in any city may get you shot and charged with battery on a law officer). and now comes the fun part...after about a minute of playin tug of war with the cops, rocks and paint were thrown on the police. once again this is not recommended in any city. after the paint was thrown the police let the gas fly. oh did i mention the kids that were shooting wrist rockets and sling shots that at the cops? smart...very smart!
that cooled down until around 3:30 pm when kids went around tearing down the orange plastic fence and setting it on fire in the middle of the street. was that you in that picture holdin the fence? then they tried to take down the black steel fence which resulted in more teargas.
seriously tasty why would you go to a protest when you know that there is going to be a seriously heavy police force thats expecting trouble. thats like going to a gwar concert wearing a white tuxedo. you know it's gonna get messy. and that's ok. but don't cry when you come out of the pit with a broken nose and a tux that you can't return.

[Cutter]

a side note ... FTAA '95
                       NAFTA '94
                       WTO '95

                       Clinton '93-'01  

[Ross Koepke (lazy)]

Tasty, thanks for the pics. It's very interesting seeing it from the ground level, instead of cameras in the air. Obviously I can't form any sort of judgement based on them, because I couldn't really see what may have provoked the police.

[BFG]

wow. you folks really know how to kick up a party i think i'll try to avoid meeting american police for as long as possible

[Cutter]

just don't throw rocks at, spit on, or throw paint on the police and you should have no problem.

[tasty]

I don't understand your reflexive support for the Miami PD. You said earlier that since we knew about the massive police buildup that we should have just stayed home. That police buildup is the exact reason I felt compelled to come--it was a disgusting attempt to intimidate protesters into not coming and silencing the voice of dissent outside of Bush's precious economic treaty. I don't think that the 8.5 million in federal funds given to the city of Miami was appropriately allocated. For the number of people actually there, they spent about 1,000 per protester. I mean it's flattering that my presence is worth 1,000, but I didn't do anything to provoke police while I was there. Also, why do you think they had it in Miami? Could it be because it's the farthest city to drive to from most geographical points in the United States?

Seeing the police there brought a lot of questions. Behind the front lines of police with batons, tazers, teargas, and beanbag guns, there were lines of police with submachine guns and handguns. This makes one wonder: if the more extremist elements did actually get through the fence and disrupt the ministerial meetings like they did in Seattle, would the police have opened fire? Although there were extremist elements in the crowd, you can be assured that if the police weren't there to constantly intimidate us with force or push us back to areas far, far away from the actual meetings that violence against police probably would not have happened. Also, consider the role of undercover police in the crowd -- the Miami PD reported having up to 200 undercover cops dressed as protesters in the crowd. The police in Miami made concerted efforts to egg protesters on into committing violence. Very few would, yet the whole crowd is still demonized for it.

The worst offenses against civil liberties happened after the protests. When shit got heavy and people began to disperse, the police started caravanning around town in squad cars and indiscriminately arresting large groups of people. Most people (over 90%) were released within 48 hours and never charged with anything. The police violated many rules of procedure when they made these arrests. For one thing, they didn't take people's stuff with them when they arrested them to return to them afterwards--they just left it laying in the street. Most people arrested were never given a reason for their arrest, and the one's that were released were kept in cuffs for the entire time they were arrested, even after they were put in jail cells. There are even worse reports from some of the protesters that were not released. Anarchists (who by ideology will never state their name or nationality to a member of the state) were tortured for their identities. One of the tactics reportedly used by the police department was to put people in cages and spray pepper spray into the cage until they got answers. These are not things that should happen in a wealthy, civilized country like the United States. The intimidation and lawlessness demonstrated by the Miami PD is in my opinion indefensible, and hopefully will become increasingly more public as more is written and the court cases go through. If you want to read more, I suggest FTAA Independent Media Center.

[Cutter]

first tasty the police force was not there to intimidate protesters. they were there to stop a possible seattle type situation. the problem in seattle was a very undersized and unprepared police force. and mb coming from where you live miami is far, but take a look at the globe tasty, miami happens to be right in the middle of "the americas".
and do you really believe that if there were no police there protecting miami that  nothing would happen? cause nobody here does. and i bet those anarchists would agree with me too.
another thing...stop blaming bush everytime your hair gets messed up tasty. look it up, it was slick willy in office when NAFTA, FTAA, and the WTO were started up.
and really, who in the hell (besides you) would ever believe that the miami police are torturing people to get their names? come on man, wake up! pepper spraying people while in custody happens only if a fight breaks out. i spent a year in county son. not proud of it. but i can tell you with a laugh that what you're trying to say is bs.
another thing, this mr. hayden was off on his reports too. there  WERE businesses that had damage done by protesters. their front windows broken out by protesters. i know of two businesses that this happened to. most every other business closed down and boarded up from wednesday to saturday.
i told ya tasty i hate cops more than you could ever imagine. however in this situation, i strongly support their actions and their conduct last week. as does the ENTIRE community. their were some mistakes made, like leaving peoples belongings on the streer after arrests. arresting some of the afl-cio and media people mixed up in the crowd at the very end on thursday.
mb it's my experience with the police, or your inexperience with them. but incase you've never been told this, the police can hold any person with-out charging them for a period of time. every county is different. usually it's around 30 days. in the county that i spent a year it was 90 days. the people who did not deserved to be in jail were released with-in 24 hours. that's not so bad in a huge system like this tasty. i was greatly inconvienced that week as was the entire city. nobody was allowed into the downtown area. and remember, those police were ther to protect the meetings and the city. the afl-cio had a permit to protest on thursday from 2-4, any protesters other than that could have been locked up if the police chose to do so. so consider yourself lucky. and god dammit next time you come down you better fucking tell me, i coulda had you hooked up nice.

[Mr.Mellow]

Yeah, Cutter is right, especially about businesses getting damaged. And besides, you can't try to shut down a city and expect the city government to sit by and let it happen. Those protests probably cost the city millions of dollars. I'm not talking about just police spending, either. I'm sure a lot of local businesses were hurt by it, and it inconvenienced a good portion of people. Also, you still haven't filled us in why exactly people were protesting.
Also, I'm sure the police armed with submachine guns and pistols weren't there for the protestors. With such a large amount of people, there's always a chance of terrorism. The demonstration was all over the news, worldwide from what I hear. If I was a terrorist, that'd seem like a pretty good target to me...
Now, as for the undercover police. They aren't used to provoke clashes between the demonstrators and the police. That's complete bullshit. Don't believe everything you read, you're smarter than that. There are undercover officers at EVERY public demonstration. They're there to gauge the crowd, walk around, keep an eye out for troublemakers, and make sure no one is planning anything irrational like setting cars on fire, breaking into businesses, etc. As Cutter was saying, there are bonafide demonstrators and there are vandals and anarchists. The undercover police are there to make sure the vandals and anarchists don't turn the demonstration into a riot.

[|MP|Buccaneer]

Tasty, don't ask what happened to free assembly, because what happened in Miami wasn't it.  And don't forget that it's "lawful assembly".

Even looking at your pictures, without any other sources, I'm on the side of the police.  You guys took over streets, "occupied intersections", threw paint at cops, pulled down a fence, and started fires.  I look at the cops there, in your pictures, and they look restrained.  

The protesters there broke the law, plain and simple.  Look how many protesters were there with the old highwayman bandana look going.  They knew they were going to push it past the law.  You should feel lucky that the cops were armed with tasers and beanbag guns, because they didn't have to be.

I'm all for the cops shutting down the non-peaceful protests.  Because if that was your idea of a peaceful protest, you are the one that need a reality check.

Want to protest in a lawful assembly, nice and peaceful like, I'm all for it.  

One last thing, no civil liberties were actually abused by holding people with no charge overnight.  Those laws have been on the books forever.  The cops usually have 48 hours (more on weekends) that they can hold you for without charge.  I found that out the hard way when I was 22 and drunk, and decided to emphasize my works by using my index finger to poke a cop in the badge.  I was right in my logic, but oh so wrong in my communication of it.  I was very politely handcuffed and again, very politely put in a car and taken to the cleanest jail I've ever been in.  I was released 14 hours later (after blowing a 0.0 on the breathalyzer) with no charges (they couldn't charge me with battery, I was right on my logic and it all would have been thrown out as entrapment).  They were even nice enough to give me a ride back to my car, which they didn't have to do.

The lesson is, it doesn't matter if you are right, or think you are right, the cops have the law saying they can hold you just because they want to.  We give them this right, like it or not.  As much as a liberty zealot as I am, I know that our legal civil liberties are not 100%.

[|MP|Buccaneer]

I have to ask, why did this get pinned up top?

[PsYcO aSsAsSiN]

Beats me

[Jeb]

i made brain pin and lock it after my post...
but he pussed out and unlocked it.

[Brain]

i didn't unlock it...