EI_Sparks
12-18-03, 12:32 PM
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/12/16/miami_police/story.jpg
From salon.com (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/12/16/miami_police/index_np.html):
Dec. 16, 2003 | On Saturday, Nov. 22, a few dozen policemen on bicycles rode by the warehouse that activists protesting Miami's Free Trade of the Americas summit were using as a welcome center. The big protest had taken place on Thursday, Nov. 20, and most demonstrators had already dispersed. Some were in jail, others were nursing their injuries. But the cops wanted to deliver a final message to those still around. "Bye! Don't come back here!" shouted one. A pudgy officer gave the finger to an activist with a video camera. "Put that on your Web site," he said. "Fuck you."
It was the end of two days of what many observers called unprecedented police vindictiveness and violence toward activists. Certainly, complaints about the police have become a standard ritual after each major globalization protest. But what happened in Miami, say protesters, lawyers, journalists and union leaders, was anything but routine.
Videos taken at the scene show protesters being beaten with wooden clubs, shocked with Taser guns, shot in the back with rubber bullets and beanbags, and pepper-sprayed in the face. Retirees were held handcuffed and refused water for hours. Medics and legal observers, arrested in large numbers, say they were targeted. A female journalist, arrested during a mass roundup, was made to strip in front of a male policeman. A woman's entire breast turned purple-black after she was shot there, point-blank, with a rubber bullet.
Protesters descended on Miami because they object to plans to create a free trade zone stretching from Alaska to Argentina, which they say will hurt poor workers, put downward pressure on wages and weaken environmental regulations. Police in Miami were determined not to permit a repeat of the chaos that has marked other trade summits worldwide. They were bolstered by an $8.5 million appropriation that President Bush tacked onto the $87 billion Iraq reconstruction bill to pay for FTAA security.
As a result, they fielded about 2,500 battle-ready police to face off against around 10,000 demonstrators, most of them union members and retirees. City officials have since congratulated themselves on the small amount of property damage in Miami. But protesters say that in making sure no Starbucks windows were shattered, police trampled their constitutional rights.
The scale of civil liberties abuses in Miami is just starting to reverberate outside the city and the activist community that flocked there. On Tuesday, Dec. 16, the AFL-CIO and the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans are holding a public hearing in Miami on "police repression of FTAA protesters." The ACLU has received 134 reports of protester injuries, including 19 confirmed head injuries, and plans to file at least three and possibly as many as 12 lawsuits against the city.
The United Steelworkers of America is calling for a congressional investigation into how police turned Miami into "a massive police state." Amnesty International and the Sierra Club are also demanding government probes. The Sierra Club issued an open letter to President Bush saying, "The fundamental constitutional rights of all Americans are in jeopardy if the intimidating tactics used by the Miami police become the model for dealing with future public demonstrations."
And they could become exactly that. Miami Mayor Manny Diaz called the cops' performance "a model for homeland security." Officials from across the country, including members of the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, showed up to observe how Miami handled the demonstrators.
Taking a page from the Iraq war's media strategists, Timoney had reporters covering the demonstrations "embed" with the police. Reporting for the Guardian newspaper, journalist and "No Logo" author Naomi Klein wrote, "As in Iraq, most reporters embraced their role as pseudo soldiers with zeal, suiting up in combat helmets and flak jackets." Several reporters who didn't embed were hauled off to jail in mass roundups during the protests.
When the violence started and the air grew thick with tear gas, Stewart Acuff, the AFL-CIO's organizing director, organized a line of union peacekeepers to take everyone who wanted to avoid a confrontation with police up a hill toward the amphitheater where the march had begun.
"We had hundreds of people we were trying to move up near the amphitheater. There were seniors, unions members, young people, environmentalists. Every one of them made a conscious decision not to be in the stuff happening in the street." But the police followed them. "The cops came up the hill, tear-gassed us and shot people with rubber bullets. They pepper-sprayed a senior citizen in his 70s who was sitting in a chair completely away from any kind of problem, without provocation."
It was, says Acuff, "a police riot."
"They had trained for six months and they were prepared for a fight and they wanted a fight," he says. "They were hopped up and wanted to go."
The ACLU is still working to tabulate all the injuries caused on Thursday and on Friday morning, when violence again broke out at a jail solidarity rally for those arrested on Thursday. (At that event, Crespo photographed a family being forced onto their bellies by a riot cop as they exited a nearby cancer center.)
Thirteen protesters were admitted to a local hospital, but many more sought treatment from the medics working at the protest. In an e-mail, Dr. Ron Rosen, a veteran street medic, reports, "On Nov. 20, I treated numerous patients including several with head wounds caused by pepper balls and rubber bullets, and several with wounds to the areas over the spleen, liver and kidneys also caused by rubber bullets and baton blows."
Yup, Bush's methods for protecting you lot from Osama Bin Laden sure are working really well.
Heck, if things keep going this way, OBL will simply retire from terrorism - because Bush will be doing his job for him.
From salon.com (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/12/16/miami_police/index_np.html):
Dec. 16, 2003 | On Saturday, Nov. 22, a few dozen policemen on bicycles rode by the warehouse that activists protesting Miami's Free Trade of the Americas summit were using as a welcome center. The big protest had taken place on Thursday, Nov. 20, and most demonstrators had already dispersed. Some were in jail, others were nursing their injuries. But the cops wanted to deliver a final message to those still around. "Bye! Don't come back here!" shouted one. A pudgy officer gave the finger to an activist with a video camera. "Put that on your Web site," he said. "Fuck you."
It was the end of two days of what many observers called unprecedented police vindictiveness and violence toward activists. Certainly, complaints about the police have become a standard ritual after each major globalization protest. But what happened in Miami, say protesters, lawyers, journalists and union leaders, was anything but routine.
Videos taken at the scene show protesters being beaten with wooden clubs, shocked with Taser guns, shot in the back with rubber bullets and beanbags, and pepper-sprayed in the face. Retirees were held handcuffed and refused water for hours. Medics and legal observers, arrested in large numbers, say they were targeted. A female journalist, arrested during a mass roundup, was made to strip in front of a male policeman. A woman's entire breast turned purple-black after she was shot there, point-blank, with a rubber bullet.
Protesters descended on Miami because they object to plans to create a free trade zone stretching from Alaska to Argentina, which they say will hurt poor workers, put downward pressure on wages and weaken environmental regulations. Police in Miami were determined not to permit a repeat of the chaos that has marked other trade summits worldwide. They were bolstered by an $8.5 million appropriation that President Bush tacked onto the $87 billion Iraq reconstruction bill to pay for FTAA security.
As a result, they fielded about 2,500 battle-ready police to face off against around 10,000 demonstrators, most of them union members and retirees. City officials have since congratulated themselves on the small amount of property damage in Miami. But protesters say that in making sure no Starbucks windows were shattered, police trampled their constitutional rights.
The scale of civil liberties abuses in Miami is just starting to reverberate outside the city and the activist community that flocked there. On Tuesday, Dec. 16, the AFL-CIO and the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans are holding a public hearing in Miami on "police repression of FTAA protesters." The ACLU has received 134 reports of protester injuries, including 19 confirmed head injuries, and plans to file at least three and possibly as many as 12 lawsuits against the city.
The United Steelworkers of America is calling for a congressional investigation into how police turned Miami into "a massive police state." Amnesty International and the Sierra Club are also demanding government probes. The Sierra Club issued an open letter to President Bush saying, "The fundamental constitutional rights of all Americans are in jeopardy if the intimidating tactics used by the Miami police become the model for dealing with future public demonstrations."
And they could become exactly that. Miami Mayor Manny Diaz called the cops' performance "a model for homeland security." Officials from across the country, including members of the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, showed up to observe how Miami handled the demonstrators.
Taking a page from the Iraq war's media strategists, Timoney had reporters covering the demonstrations "embed" with the police. Reporting for the Guardian newspaper, journalist and "No Logo" author Naomi Klein wrote, "As in Iraq, most reporters embraced their role as pseudo soldiers with zeal, suiting up in combat helmets and flak jackets." Several reporters who didn't embed were hauled off to jail in mass roundups during the protests.
When the violence started and the air grew thick with tear gas, Stewart Acuff, the AFL-CIO's organizing director, organized a line of union peacekeepers to take everyone who wanted to avoid a confrontation with police up a hill toward the amphitheater where the march had begun.
"We had hundreds of people we were trying to move up near the amphitheater. There were seniors, unions members, young people, environmentalists. Every one of them made a conscious decision not to be in the stuff happening in the street." But the police followed them. "The cops came up the hill, tear-gassed us and shot people with rubber bullets. They pepper-sprayed a senior citizen in his 70s who was sitting in a chair completely away from any kind of problem, without provocation."
It was, says Acuff, "a police riot."
"They had trained for six months and they were prepared for a fight and they wanted a fight," he says. "They were hopped up and wanted to go."
The ACLU is still working to tabulate all the injuries caused on Thursday and on Friday morning, when violence again broke out at a jail solidarity rally for those arrested on Thursday. (At that event, Crespo photographed a family being forced onto their bellies by a riot cop as they exited a nearby cancer center.)
Thirteen protesters were admitted to a local hospital, but many more sought treatment from the medics working at the protest. In an e-mail, Dr. Ron Rosen, a veteran street medic, reports, "On Nov. 20, I treated numerous patients including several with head wounds caused by pepper balls and rubber bullets, and several with wounds to the areas over the spleen, liver and kidneys also caused by rubber bullets and baton blows."
Yup, Bush's methods for protecting you lot from Osama Bin Laden sure are working really well.
Heck, if things keep going this way, OBL will simply retire from terrorism - because Bush will be doing his job for him.