On Saturday, Nov. 22, a few dozen police 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.

Armed with millions of dollars of new equipment and inflamed by weeks of warnings about anarchists out to destroy their city, police in Miami donned riot gear, assembled by the thousand, put the city on lockdown and unleashed an arsenal of crowd control weaponry on overwhelmingly peaceful gatherings.

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. Afterward, many observers said the same thing: "This is not America." Civil libertarians, though, worry that -- in an era when legitimate homeland security fears have begun to edge over into hysterical paranoia about "anarchists" -- it might offer a glimpse of where America's response to protest is headed.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/12/16/miami_police/index.html

While police violence against protestors has always been a problem, whats described in this article is a huge escalation.
At previous demonstrations, people were attacked and arrested for things like asking the cops if they could leave the protest pen, wearing mask, putting up stickers, having signs with wooden posts, using sound amplification(megaphones, etc,) blockign streets(or being in the street when the police decided they shouldn't), etc... but most non-violent protestors who did what the police said and avoiced contact with them, and weren't dressed too strangely were ok. What this article describes is a situation where the police showed up, took aim and fired into the crowd and then chased the protestors when they retreated, continuing to pelt them with "crowd control weapons"
Given that this was an act of violence designed to frighten proponents of a certain political view, does it not constitute terrorism?

I've always wondered--in Seattle, they lied to the people, lied to the Fed, and blamed the mess squarely on those least responsible. But there is a lesson to be had there.

Look at the American sheeple. I mean people. They're drooling, tube-fed swine. Yes, that's a vicious assessment I admit, but every once in a while I need to reinforce the notion that compared to the America I was taught about when I was a child, my disgust knows no boundaries. Sodom and Gommorah have nothing on this country. God was so moved by Lot's sacrifice of his daughters that the Lord saved him from destruction.

Pretty twisted, eh? A man throws his daughters out to be gang raped in order to save a stranger from being sodomized on the grounds that sodomy is just that abhorrent to God, and this is worth God's special affection?

God must love America like He never loved Anything.Hey wage slave where's your profit share?
They got ya down they're gonna keep you there
Freeze your mind, metamorphose
Cocaine karma in the heroin zone
Multinational life is cheap
Soldiers, workers, maggots meat
Get on up, protest riot
Are you collateral damage or a legitimate target? (Primal Scream, "Rise (http://www.theprimalscream.com/lyrics/evilheat-lyrics.html)")It's very simple. It's the Seattle trick (a common trick, really) escalated to a new height of sleight. The police will provoke the protesters until someone does something stupid. On the corpse of that one or two police officers a new era of iron-fisted jack-booting will move to stifle civil disobedience and begin the final phase of the transition from free speech to "You have the right to say How high? when I tell you to jump; if you give up this right to say How high? when I tell you to jump, you will be shot."

If Anarchists ever bother to read anything these days, it it time to officially check in with those who came before us (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/) on the simple grounds that some of them would spit at the protesters as well as the repression. With the world awake and aware of trade issues like Emma Goldman (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/Goldmanarchive.html) could only dream of, would she hail the senseless and juvenile provocateurism by black-masked anarchists of Seattle's World Trade Experience? Would she sense "blood" and call for restraint among Anarchists? "Play chess, play chess. They are near to breaking, and soon the pawns will flee the board."

"They" are coming for "our" voices, and "they" will lash "us" with the rope, all the while hoping we choose instead to hang ourselves with it.

The rules are clear, no matter how unfair.

"They" didn't win in Miami. "We," the People, still have our voices.

I only wonder when I'll lose my temper enough to actually do anything about it. I have my clearance from my co-parent to go and get myself arrested if I need to; the only rules are no getting killed and no pulling a long sentence for anything big. I might play that card if (A) Bush wins 2004, and (B) there is any legitimate hint of impropriety. (I'm only at all upset about 2000 because nobody seems to care about the largely-Democratic voters whose registrations were improperly cancelled.) But that all isn't important right now.

Think of it this way ... all those patriotic, gun-owning, responsible Americans who are ready to defend their rights against an aggressive government ... someone ought to look George W. Bush in the eye and say, "Me and what army? Do you really want the answer to that?"

Let "Them" take away "The Voice." I tells ya, the din that replaces that cacophony will be enough to make Buddha weep. If "They" take away "The Voice," there will be blood in the streets.

But "We" need to make "Them" come to "Us" and demand sacrificial lambs.

And "We" need to be prepared to give over.

"They" will break, eventually. If history teaches anything in this case, it's that People are closer than they've ever before been to truly controlling their own destinies, both individual and collective.

Remember, people didn't take kindly to the Philadelphia police chief being beaten with his own bicycle by a mob, no matter how much they might have thought the SoB deserved it.

The lambs must come from the People. When innocent blood runs in the streets, the Institutions will have conceded the fact that the war is afoot. Make "Them" start the revolution institutionally; it's the only way the process will have enough momentum from the outset.

The body count before the police were decimated will be a very important number when that day comes. I don't know how many people have to be tacked to the wall before "The People" can officially strike back, but I will renounce my commitments against violence all over the ass of whatever masked-bandit revolutionary f@cks it up. The Institutions are as weak as they can get. Why else are "They" rushing to a new trade paradigm, party over, oops! out of time?

Originally posted by jps
Given that this was an act of violence designed to frighten proponents of a certain political view, does it not constitute terrorism? You are confusing cause and effect.

The police were clearly out of hand. However, while you seem to believe that they performed as they did to push a political agenda, they were simply over-zealous in the performance of their duty - that being the preservation of safety and order.

That their actions happen to stand in alliance or opposition to a political agenda is incidental.

Originally posted by Stokes Pennwalt
You are confusing cause and effect.

The police were clearly out of hand. However, while you seem to believe that they performed as they did to push a political agenda, they were simply over-zealous in the performance of their duty - that being the preservation of safety and order.

That their actions happen to stand in alliance or opposition to a political agenda is incidental.
Did you read the article?

The tensions in Miami began well before the first protester arrived. Unlike other American cities that have hosted large protests, Miami had a clear stake in the demonstration's central issue: It is competing with Panama City, Cancun and other cities to become home to the FTAA's secretariat. Thus, when Western Hemisphere trade ministers gathered at Miami's Intercontinental for the November trade talks, police had to show they could handle the kind of anti-globalization activists who have often trashed cities hosting economic summits.

On Sept. 5, Lida Rodriguez-Taseff of the ACLU attended a briefing that the police held for local business leaders at the Intercontinental Hotel. Rodriguez-Taseff was shocked that Asst. Police Chief Frank Fernandez's PowerPoint presentation openly endorsed the controversial trade agreement, telling the audience that it would bring 89,000 new jobs to the area and add $13.5 billion annually to Florida's Gross State Product.

The week of the protests, John Timoney, the Miami chief of police, socialized with the trade ministers and publicly taunted demonstrators. On Wednesday, Nov. 19, the day before the main protest march, Miami Herald reporter Oscar Corral followed Timoney onto a boat taking ministers to Miami's Vizcaya park. After the ride, Timoney said, "If they [anarchists] don't do anything by tomorrow night, pardon the expression, but they look like pussies." (Or, "p-----," as the Herald reported it.)

Amnesty International has now weighed in on this, saying that the police may have violated the UN's universal declaration on human rights.

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/12/19/1834700

FTAA Protests: Amnesty Says Miami Police May Have Broken UN Laws

Friday, December 19, 2003
Reuters


MIAMI - Police in Miami may have violated various international laws and covenants on civil rights and use of force when they crushed protests against a free trade meeting last month, rights group Amnesty International said.

In a letter to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, dated Dec. 16 and made public on Thursday, the human rights watchdog repeated a call for an independent inquiry into police actions that led to more than 200 arrests and dozens of injuries.

"Concerns include reports of the indiscriminate and inappropriate use of nonlethal weapons on nonviolent protesters resulting in scores of injuries, the obstruction of those providing medical treatment, multiple and random arrests ... and the denial of the right to freedom of expression and association," Americas program director Susan Lee wrote.

Amnesty said preliminary investigations suggested police violated the United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, among other covenants.

Miami was shut down for the Nov. 17 to Nov. 21 Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting, at which little progress was made toward creating the world's biggest free trade zone.

Phalanxes of riot police, backed by helicopters and armored cars, chased protesters through the city center after the main opposition rally on Nov. 20 by firing volleys of rubber bullets, pepper spray and tear gas.

While a few protesters threw rocks, the great majority of the 15,000 unionists, environmentalists, retirees, small farmers, anarchists and civil rights activists who took part in the Nov. 20 march against the FTAA were peaceful.

Amnesty said many were shot with rubber bullets while running away from police. Volunteer medics appear to have been targeted while helping the injured.

Miami Police Chief John Timoney has promised an internal review of police tactics, and has won the firm backing of city officials for the "restraint" shown by officers in preventing a repeat of the 1999 world trade riots in Seattle.

Critics say a police review is far from adequate.

A fledgling Citizens Investigative Panel, set up after a series of police corruption scandals, also plans hearings. "

Copyright © 2003 Reuters Ltd

Originally posted by jps
Did you read the article? How does what you quoted indicate police complicity?

the great majority of the 15,000 unionists, environmentalists, retirees, small farmers,

this is middle america. the cops work on their behalf
in miami, middle america was assaulted. not freaky ass hippies. there will be fallout. old biddies running for their lives!:D

Originally posted by Stokes Pennwalt
How does what you quoted indicate police complicity?
The quote indicates that the police did not simply go overboard in performing their job, but in fact had a political agenda which motivated them to violently and indiscriminately attack peaceful protesters who had broken no laws.

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30699

• Driscoll, Amy. "Judge: I saw police commit felonies." Miami Herald, December 20, 2003. See http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/7538538.htm
A judge presiding over the cases of free trade protesters said in court that he saw ''no less than 20 felonies committed by police officers'' during the November demonstrations, adding to a chorus of complaints about police conduct.

Judge Richard Margolius, 60, made the remarks in open court last week, saying he was taken aback by what he witnessed while attending the protests.

''Pretty disgraceful what I saw with my own eyes. And I have always supported the police during my entire career,'' he said, according to a court transcript. "This was a real eye-opener. A disgrace for the community.''

In the transcript, he also said he may have to remove himself from any additional cases involving arrests made during the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit.

''I probably would have been arrested myself if it had not been for a police officer who recognized me,'' said the judge, who wears his hair in a graying ponytail.File this under "O," for "Ouch." Pretty rough day if a police department can move a judge to this.

Originally posted by tiassa

File this under "O," for "Ouch." Pretty rough day if a police department can move a judge to this.

Sadly, it seems he's made the decision to recuse himself. Is it just me, or is it only liberal judges who recuse themselves from political cases on which they have strong opinions? Frankly, given how flagrant the police abuse was, anyone who doesn't have a problem with it is very likely biased against the protesters, but you won't see anyone recusing themself for saying they think that the police chasing innocent law-abiding citizens down the street while firing rubber bullets at them is justified given those particular citizens political views.