"Democracy" in Miami

Forwarded with Compliments of Government of the USA in Exile (GUSAE): 
Free Americans Proclaiming Total Emancipation and Working Towards 
Democracy.

www.globalresearch.ca
Centre for Research on Globalisation
Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation
The FTAA Protests:

This Is What Democracy Looks Like in Miami

by Al Crespo

www.globalresearch.ca   1 December 2003
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CRE311A.html
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Al Crespo, the Miami photojournalist, whose award-winning book, 
Protest In The Land Of Plenty, chronicles the protest movement from 
1997-2001, wrote the following journal over the last 10 days.

This 20,000-word journal chronicles the protests from the beginning 
of the 3-day march by Root Cause on Sunday, November 16th, through 
the last arrests of protesters engaged in a Jail Solidarity Rally on 
Friday, November 21st , and provides his observations and impressions 
of what occurred in Miami during last week's FTAA protests, both from 
the point of view of a working photojournalist on the street, as well 
as from his ability to provide a contextual perspective to these 
events based on his extensive experience in having attended and 
photographed over 100 previous protests.

The journal provides a first-hand view of what happened on the 
streets as police engaged in illegal and questionable behavior as 
well as clashing with protesters, and offers short essays on a number 
of specific events that occurred during the week. He also provides an 
essay raising questions about the future of anarchists and the Black 
Bloc at these kinds of protests, and raises additional questions 
regarding police behavior and practices that will no doubt be raised 
again should the growing requests for a Congressional investigation 
lead to such an undertaking. He closes with an essay addressed to 
FTAA protesters raising some questions about their tactics and goals.

This journal is being provided, not as any kind of definitive version 
of the events of last week, but rather as a way to stimulate 
discussion and debate about this event, and about larger questions 
concerning the direction of future protests in this country. With the 
recent revelations that the FBI has begun to investigate and review 
the actions of protesters and question the practices of protest 
leaders, it is time that those who would choose - or have it chosen 
for them - the process of going into the streets to affect public 
policy, look with a critical eye to all that has transpired in recent 
years, and discuss openly and frankly the methods by which the goals 
that they seek to accomplish can be achieved and not be undermined by 
those who would use some of the tactics of current protest actions 
against the efforts of those seeking to improve the state of our 
world, and our country.

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THE FTAA PROTESTS - THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE IN MIAMI

"Freedom is a beautiful thing, I would first say, and aren't you 
lucky to be in a country that encourages people to speak their mind. 
And I value going to a country where people are free to say anything 
they want to say."
- President George Bush, responding to interviewer David Frost's 
question about the protestors expected to greet his presence in 
London last week.

"F.B.I. Scrutinizes Antiwar Rallies"
New York Times headline, November 23, 2003

(Chief) Timoney said it was the union's insistence on opening the 
rally and march to non-union demonstrators intent on violence that 
triggered a series of events resulting in police-protester clashes 
and traffic jams.

"The Miami Police Department and its law enforcement partners, in 
training for the FTAA, placed primary emphasis on avoiding the use of 
force," (a letter sent to the media on Tuesday).  "This goal was 
impossible to achieve due to the violent actions of unaffiliated 
protesters using labor events and membership as cover,"
-- Miami Herald, November 26, 2003

SUNDAY: FEAR AND LOATHING IN FORT LAUDERDALE - SORRY ABOUT THAT, HUNTER

The good thing about most protest marches is that they never start on 
time, so even though I was a half-hour late, the protesters who had 
gathered in a little park in Fort Lauderdale were still milling 
around.

The crowd, numbering a little over 150, was largely made up of young 
people, with a sprinkling of middle-aged folks, and a noticeable 
number of Mexican and Central American farm workers, some with their 
small children. Everyone seemed to have been provided with a bright 
yellow tee shirt from the group Root Cause: Global Justice From The 
Grassroots.

They were a cheerful bunch as they started out, winding through 
neighborhood streets as they made their way to US-1 for the turn 
southward toward Miami. And it's a good thing that they turned south. 
Friday afternoon, leaders of the march were served with an injunction 
from the City of Pompano, forbidding them from bringing the march 
through their city. To understand how insanely stupid this useless 
injunction was, you have to understand that the City of Pompano is 
NORTH of Fort Lauderdale. It's like Canada getting an injunction to 
stop Americans from marching through Canada on their way to Mexico. 
But, when you've got a bunch of dim-witted politicians who felt the 
need to make a political statement even if it's a stupid one, what 
can you expect? At least you know if you ever go to Pompano that the 
city fathers are not only capable of useless political pandering, but 
they obviously don't know the difference between north and south 
either.

Of course it's been that kind of idiocy that has colored so many 
actions by governmental and civic leaders throughout south Florida 
for weeks now. The average citizen doesn't seem to be doing much 
better either as a result of all of this fabricated nonsense and fear 
mongering.

After tagging along with the marchers for a while in the morning I 
went to a coffee shop further south on US-1 to download my images 
into my laptop so that I could send them off to my photo agency in 
New York.

No sooner had I entered the shop that it became evident that the 
topic de jour as people lined up to get their coffee was the protest 
march. One woman came in asking if the protesters had done any damage 
yet. Others generally groused, or half joked about the protesters 
attacking the coffee shop - it was a Starbucks after all.

And then, the protesters passed by chanting as they walked. Those 
inside, including the employees I'm sure, had a few anxiety-filled 
moments, perhaps fearing that this brightly tee-shirt crowd 
peacefully walking by might turn, and in rage, try to clamor through 
the doors to storm the counter and break up the cappuccino machine.

But, it was soon over, and as the chants faded, I heard one customer 
say, "Oh, it was only some farm workers," in the kind of snarky 
disdain, that for the zillionth time in my life made me wish I had a 
magic wand that would have let me transport her stupid, arrogant ass 
into the middle of a tomato field somewhere so that she could get an 
up close and personal experience of what "only" being a farm worker 
meant.

In my car, heading towards Miami awhile later, I talked with a close 
friend who has a daughter in the high school in Hollywood, about 15 
miles north of downtown Miami. He told me that her school was going 
into lockdown for the week for fear that with nothing better to do, 
protesters might decide to come north to Hollywood and invade the 
school and like revolutionary versions of dope pushers, lure the 
unsoiled little darlings inside into a life of anarchism and 
depravity.

But what can you expect when those who are expected to have common 
sense, turn out to have cow shit for brains. Another friend, with 
another child in the Coral Gables High School - about 5 miles west of 
downtown Miami, wrote me last week, with this lament:

"I have just heard from my Coral Gables High School student son that 
they will close the school for the week as there will be 
demonstrations and rioting at the Biltmore Hotel.... This makes total 
sense to us... NOT!! Yes, let the kids out so they can go join up in 
a politically motivated civil scare...We are pissed."

Another friend, with a child in another high school even further away 
from downtown Miami went to a PTA meeting 2 weeks ago to be told by 
the principal that "Five percent of these protesters coming to Miami 
are professional troublemakers, and their prime source of recruits is 
in the high schools and colleges."

Lost amid all of this fear mongering is the notion that perhaps high 
schools might seize the opportunity to use this situation to explore 
such topics as the first Amendment, free speech and the rights of 
protest. You know, things that are part of our Constitution and Bill 
Of Rights. But you can't do that if you close down the school, or if 
you're prepared to barricade the doors to fight off illusionary 
attacks by "professional troublemakers."

And of course, as we enter the days of protest, it all becomes a 
self-fulfilling prophecy. Shop keepers beginning to board up windows 
like they would for a hurricane. Police are blanketing the streets, 
while people in cars gawk as they look for those pesky protesters 
they've heard about on TV. At the same time millions of dollars of 
protester-resistant fencing is going up all over downtown Miami, 
while crews prepare TV satellite trucks to beam the expected "Fray By 
The Bay," to the world.

But, like little Orphan Annie used to sing, there's always a 
tomorrow, and tomorrow the promise is that some protesters will be 
taking their clothes off in front of a Gap store on trendy South 
Beach, as the marchers continue marching towards Miami, and the 
serious business of protest begins.

MONDAY MORNING

Miami, on a beautiful cerulean blue sky Monday morning looks like 
it's preparing for a big ambush. TV camera crews are walking around 
sorting out sight lines and angles, Cops on bicycles are riding 
around getting used to working in bike formation, and on occasion 
figuring out how they can ride through buildings as a way to go 
quickly from one street to another. Other cops, mostly Highway 
Patrol, are stationed on almost every corner of the city looking like 
sentries ready to relay an early warning signal at the first sign of 
approaching protesters. A few stores have boarded up for the week, 
but for the most part the streets and the stores are eerily quiet. 
Everyone's just kind of waiting.

As for the protesters - or the Indians if you want to go with the 
analogy of a western town preparing for an Indian attack - no 
disrespect to the Indians, so don't write me saying I must be racist 
to even suggest such a thing - well, they pretty much figured out 
what they were going to do a while back. Now it's just a matter of 
waiting for everyone to show up and doing it.

At the moment it looks like most of the protesters, if they've 
arrived, are trying to stay off of the streets for fear they might be 
arrested before anything starts. They have ample reason to be 
fearful. Today I photographed a platoon of bicycle cops who had 
encircled a mini-van in a parking lot on NE 2nd Street and 1st 
Avenue. Later in the afternoon I attended a press conference in front 
of the Miami City Hall called by a number of protest groups to voice 
their complaints about police harassment, but more of that later. As 
I promised you yesterday, today was the day of the big nude-in in 
front of the GAP store on Collins Avenue in South Beach.

WE INTERRUPT THIS FLOW FOR A NEWS FLASH

While writing this I got a call from a fellow photographer whom I'd 
given some suggestions to regarding preparations for going out into 
the streets this week. The one thing I suggested was getting a 
tear-gas mask, especially since the City Commission, had in their 
wisdom seen the light and decided that everyone should be allowed to 
have one if things go south. Well, my friend just told me that when 
they went to a store to buy one, they were told that the police had 
been in and told the owner not to sell any gas masks to anyone who 
"looked like a protester."

So I guess that's the way things are becoming in this city. You pass 
a law saying you can have something, and then the police go around 
and tell the storeowners not to sell it to you. Makes sense to me, 
after all, this is Miami. Now back to the flow of tonight's journal.

THE GAPATISTIAS ARE COMING, GRAB YOUR CAMERA

The promise of protesters taking their clothes off on South Beach 
this afternoon served as a clarion call for anyone with a camera to 
quit what they were doing, and head for the beach. Scheduled for 2 
PM, when I arrived at 1 PM, a dozen of Miami's leading press 
photographers had already gathered in the shade across the street, 
grousing as all still photographers tend to do at these kinds of 
events as they watched the TV guys getting in position. TV guys 
always get in the way, and since most of them are hefty - you got to 
have some heft to lug a Betacam around all day - we always find 
ourselves in some sort of pushing match in order to get a decent shot.

We weren't there long before the helicopter showed up. Not just any 
helicopter, but a dark brown military helicopter, which proceeded to 
circle and circle and circle. Make a note all you conspiracy buffs, 
the black helicopters are now brown, and one of the still guys with a 
long lens was sure that there was a guy in some sort of uniform 
behind some sort of gun mount. Only in the movies can a 400mm-lens 
act like a 2000-mm lens, so I take his word on what he could see with 
his 400.

As the appointed hour crept near, so did we, joined by even more 
photographers, TV cameramen and women, people who weren't 
photographers, but who had cameras, a smattering of model types, 
people from all the stores in the area, plenty of Miami Beach's 
finest, and within this scrum of bodies numbering probably 200, five 
protesters who found themselves penned in against a GAP window when 
one of the young women held up a hand-lettered sign that said "Hemp 
Is Better Than Cotton."

Everybody went to motor drive. When the young woman made a V sign, 
the cameras sounded like machine guns. She stood, she posed, she 
answered a few questions about why hemp was better than cotton, and 
then her 4 friends joined her in a group hug, and they proceeded to 
sit down on the sidewalk and started eating a healthy vegetarian 
lunch. Protesters do that a lot - eat healthy vegetarian lunches, 
unlike porkers like me who head for a Wendy's when I feel like eating 
upscale.

Of course, our interest immediately shifted to the sound of a drum, 
and a handful of people carrying banners who had somehow managed to 
come marching from the direction of the beach.

This was the main attraction. Led by a young man named Martin Lemke 
who operated like the master of ceremonies, a series of speakers 
proceeded to rake the GAP company, and the Fisher family who are the 
largest stakeholders in the company that owns GAP, Banana Republic 
and Old Navy, over the coals for their foreign labor practices, the 
clear-cutting of old-growth forest property that they own in Northern 
California, and generally for being lousy corporate citizens.

Of course, all this was done in the mid-afternoon sun, and after 
about the third speaker some of the photographers and reporters were 
beginning to lose interest. I too, started getting restless, so I 
decided to explore the photo opportunities of the crowd that had 
gathered behind all of the photographers and camera people, and came 
across a scene which confirmed my worst fears about the power of 
South Beach to corrupt even the most stalwart.

There in the shade by the GAP's front door were a couple young people 
- kids to me, since I don't think any of them could have been over 18 
- trying to look fierce by wearing black and white bandanas as masks. 
The anarchists had finally invaded South Beach. As I stood there, 
another photographer - not a press photographer - walked up and told 
the three, "Strike a pose."

And they did!

The horror of it all! They hadn't been on South Beach a hot minute 
and already they were acting like models. Looking fierce, flexing 
biceps about as big as my wrist, they proceeded to act just as sultry 
and menacing as any other wannabe model who was told to look tough.

South Beach, your mojo is awesome.

And then it was over, and I moseyed back to hear the speakers, 
waiting like everyone else for them to take their clothes off. But, 
these were pros, and they had an audience they knew would disappear 
as soon as they took their clothes off, so they milked it by 
announcing that they were going to sing a few songs before they took 
their clothes off.

Out of somewhere came lime green copies of a Sing Along with the 
GAPATISTAS, song flyer.

So, to let you share in the moment, here's one of the songs that they 
sang. You to can sing along as you read this:

IT'S A SWEATSHOP AFTER ALL (sung to "It's A Small World After All")

It's a world of profit, a world of greed. It's a world of children 
sewing seams. Workers strife, and we don't care. We exploit 
everywhere. It's a sweatshop after all.

CHORUS: It's a sweatshop after all. Chop down trees and build a mall. 
Corporate profits never fail. It's a corporate world.

They don't care one bit if their workers cry. They don't care a 
smidge even if some die. Dead workers take no pay. There's more born 
every day. It's a sweatshop after all.

CHORUS: It's a sweatshop after all. Chop down trees and build a mall. 
Corporate profits never fail. It's a corporate world.

For this exploitation we will not pay. Work a 9-to-5 each and every 
day. Our responsibility is to all humanity...(pause) There's enough 
on earth for all.

CHORUS: No more sweatshops anywhere. Show the world that people care. 
The world is here for us to share. It's a small, small, world.

Finally, the moment we'd all come for arrived. They were going to 
strip. But, just as everyone started getting their fingers on the 
button, one of the folks announced that they were only going to strip 
to their underwear because the Miami Beach Police had told them that 
if they stripped down to skin, they'd get arrested.

An hour in the hot sun for photographs of people in their underwear? 
Hell, if we'd all walked down the block to the beach we could have 
taken photos of all the Europeans lounging on beach chairs, topless 
and G stringed.

The pictures were taken, but with less enthusiasm than we would all 
have had an hour before. I took my pictures and headed for Miami City 
Hall, where serious business was going on.

YOU MAY BEAT THE RAP, BUT YOU CAN'T BEAT THE RIDE

This catchy little phrase is what protesters are saying the cops are 
beginning to say to them, as in, you might not get convicted of 
anything, but we're going to arrest you and lock you up anyhow.

The press conference outside of City Hall was a far different affair 
than what had transpired on the beach. Instead of a couple hundred 
photographers and TV folk, there were maybe 20 total.

The speakers included John de Leon, who's working for the ACLU; Max 
Rameau, of the Miami Workers Center; Lisa Fithian of United for Peace 
and Justice; Henry Harris, a member of the Legal Observer Team who 
have committed to being out in the streets to monitor the situation, 
and several other folks whose names I didn't get.

The thrust of their charges was serious. Miami Police have been 
targeting and harassing protesters, including, but not limited to, 
the cases that have been reported in the Herald. Harris was the legal 
observer cited in a recent Herald story as having been arrested along 
with the protesters who were reported to have been arrested for 
"blocking the sidewalk."

What's interesting about Harris is that he was more or less the 
moderator for the protest groups when they met two weeks ago with 
representatives of the city, the police and the community relations 
board to discuss what could be termed as the rules of engagement by 
the police and the protesters.

At that time, the police Major who was the spokesman for the police 
department was very clear that legal observers would not be targeted 
or arrested, and here two weeks later, Harris, who was among the most 
prominent speakers at that meeting, gets arrested while acting as a 
legal observer.

The protesters fear massive, preemptive arrests starting perhaps as 
early as tomorrow, in an effort by police to both disrupt the 
protesters, and to try and head off any massive acts of civil 
disobedience. There was more regarding the concerns that these 
individuals expressed, some of it dealing with speculation which can 
wait till tomorrow or the next day when we'll have a very clear 
picture of what's happening on the streets.

SO WHERE'S THE MAYOR????

I've come to like Manny Diaz, the Mayor of Miami. After years of this 
city being in the grip of nutcases like Joe Carollo and Xavier 
Suarez, it was nice to see a competent adult working in an 
orchestrated way to try and make a difference.