Front Page > Issues > 2004 > January

Portland activists assess Miami protests

Activists discuss what worked and what didn't at latest protest

From the perspective of the anti-corporate globalization movement in the United States, the Miami summit on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) that took place Nov. 20-21, was a mixed bag. It was the scene of both harsh police repression and unexpected alliances leaving many activists with ambivalent feelings of frustration and hope. Over 100 Portlanders traveled across the country to see the events first hand.

The Talks

The FTAA negotiations have been underway since 1994, iniated by then President George Bush I. The proposed agreement would incorporate every country in the Western Hemisphere, with the exception of Cuba, in a free trade zone, lowering trade barriers to give industries from each country access to the markets of the others. Proponents of the plan say that the increased trade will stimulate economic growth across the Americas. But labor groups and environmentalists fear that the increased mobility of multi-national corporations (MNCs) under the agreement will weaken their bargaining power; and Latin Americans fear that the agreement will further increase the United States’ power over their governments.

Of all the Latin American countries, Brazil has been the strongest opponent of the United States’ agenda for the agreement. The two countries have been at odds over U.S. subsidies to agriculture, Brazil’s use of generic prescription drugs, government procurement (the right of governments to favor their domestic industries in making purchases), and several other issues. In the end, with both countries refusing to budge, the Miami talks resulted in an “FTAA-lite,” which dropped all of the most controversial items. All that is left in the watered-down agreement is the issue of tariffs on manufactured goods, which is to be negotiated in 2004.

Not having gotten the terms it wanted out of the Miami summit, the U.S. immediately began negotiating individual free trade agreements with some of the smaller Latin American countries, including Colombia and Chile.

The Police

While Brazil and the U.S. were wrangling inside the convention centers, the Miami police were pioneering a new model for dealing with domestic dissent. The so-called Miami Model involves the heavy use of force by riot police and mass arrests that were not only directed at traditionally targeted groups such as anarchists, transgendered people, and people of color; but also against what the public perceives as “good” protesters, such as union members and the elderly.

“If you were in Miami and you were downtown, you were a target,” said Brenna Bell, a Portland attorney with the Miami Activist Defense group. “A lot of people in Miami had been in the streets before, but no one had felt this level of fear before.”

In the end, there were 282 confirmed arrests, with 60 protesters facing felony charges. The first arrest took place a week before the summit or the protests began, when the Miami police picked up three people who were walking down the sidewalk with backpacks. According to police chief John Timoney, this was intended to “set the tone” for the week’s events.

Another innovation under the Miami Model was the use of undercover “snatch squads,” groups of plainclothes officers who mingled with the crowd to arrest people without warning. Reporters with the corporate news sources were kept behind police lines, decked out in full riot gear, like embedded journalists in a war zone, while independent journalists, and particularly indymedia reporters, were frequently arrested, or had their video cameras, film, and notepads seized.

Even the permitted labor march did not escape harassment, as the police turned away several busses full of retired union members from the Alliance of Retired Americans who were trying to travel to the march.

On the protesters’ side, the only concrete instances of violence or property destruction were a quickly aborted attempt to take down the fence surrounding the convention center downtown with grappling hooks, and a number of riot police who were pelted with paintballs. The protesters also tried, without success, to block some intersections downtown. This, in any case, would have been a largely symbolic gesture, as all the businesses downtown were already closed at the time.

The federal government gave the city of Miami $8.5 million for “anti-terrorism” security at the talks, as part of an $87 billion appropriations bill for the rebuilding of Iraq.

The Unions

One unexpected but welcome development for the movement was the mutual respect and support between the labor unions and the direct action-oriented groups. In Miami, for the first time, union leaders (including John Sweeney, president of the national AFL-CIO, and Fred Frost, president of the South Florida AFL-CIO) sat down with anarchists and direct action organizers to hash out several agreements. They agreed that the two groups would respect each other’s space and tactics: the permitted labor march would be open to everyone, the two groups would not criticize each other publicly, and no direct actions or “break-off” marches would start from the labor march.

At several points, the unions were on hand to protect the direct action groups. After the activists’ attempt to pull down the fence on Thursday, police had managed to corner most of the protesters, effectively preventing them from dispersing, and were pelting them with tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets, while beating the retreating crowd systematically with wooden clubs. Union members returning from the labor march arrived at this point and parted ways to allow the protesters to hide in their midst; meanwhile, a labor rally being held in a nearby auditorium opened its doors to anarchists fleeing the police.

“At this point, we had two people [in our affinity group] who couldn’t really walk,” said Portland activist Red Red, who was present as part of the Anarchist People of Color (APOC) contingent. “So we had to basically carry them...I spent the rest of the day in the Wellness Center, watching people come in with head wounds.”

Since the protests, John Sweeney and Leo Gerard, the president of the steelworkers’ union, have both sent letters to Congress demanding an investigation into police violence in Miami.

Community Outreach

While the police had spent months prior to the protests doing their best to convince the local community that the FTAA protesters were coming to rape and pillage, the protest organizers were working to reach out to local people. The protest convergence center, which housed a temporary indymedia space, Food Not Bombs, and the medical and legal teams, was located in a very poor, primarily Haitian neighborhood. Protest organizers spent weeks before the summit canvassing the surrounding area to reassure people that their homes and property would be respected. They worked with local residents to plant a permaculture garden in an abandoned lot nearby. Local high school and elementary school classes visited the convergence center and used the internet on the indymedia computers.
In return, Red Red said, at one point people living in a poor neighborhood north of downtown brought protesters into their homes to hide them from the police.

The Problems

All the Portlanders who returned from Miami agreed that while the labor/direct action alliance and the steps taken toward community outreach were positive developments, Miami also revealed some deep problems in the movement, and not all of these could be blamed on the police.

Racial tension again reared its ugly head within the movement in Miami. The APOC group in Miami, going under the name Autonomia, had decided that its primary focus would be on protecting people of color from the police, and particularly on looking out for undocumented workers, who were a large presence at the protests. After the protests, several of these undocumented workers were missing.

utonomia tried repeatedly to get answers from the legal team and others in the convergence space about where these people might be, or how to find them. After having their concerns repeatedly ignored or brushed off, the APOC group walked out of the final meeting in the convergence center in protest.

“There was no dialogue either before or after we walked out,” Red Red said. “No one tried to talk to us. That was a real disappointment and an eye opener.”

Several returning activists also raised concerns about the effectiveness of the sorts of tactics being used at anti-globalization protests. Most agreed that there was no use in confrontation for confrontation’s sake; and no real value in sweeping into a town, bringing down hordes of riot police on themselves and the local people, and then simply leaving the locals to cope with the damage after the summits were over.

Activist Jennifer Whitney said one of the strengths of these mass protests is that they give people a chance to network and to build spaces like the convergence center, like community gardens, as models of the world they would like to live in.

On the other hand, she said, “Tearing down a fence is a powerful gesture, but it’s often very symbolic. If we had succeeded in bringing the fence down, then what...What is our goal, really, in going to these summits?”

While different people had their own opinions about the value of initiating confrontations with the police, everyone agreed that the sort of community outreach the activists in Miami were doing was a step in the right direction. If the anti-corporate globalization movement is going to represent itself as speaking for the oppressed, it needs to go beyond rhetoric to have a real dialogue with the people who are suffering the most from the effects of unbridled capitalism. That includes reaching out to people in Portland, not just in whichever city the next trade summit is held. Problems of poverty, unemployment, police violence, lack of funding for schools and health care are as present here as in Miami, and they desperately need to be addressed; and in a climate of increasing repression, activists may find that bonds with the community will help save their own hides some day.

Abby Sewell is a Portland Alliance intern and a student at Reed College.