[mgj-discuss] Fw: Amazing Salon.com Article

[Dan Beeton]

> Please forward:
>
> This article is now on the front page of
> Salon.com. It accurately descrbes the massive
> illegal police operation in Miami during the
> protests against the FTAA and the continued loss
> of our civil liberties and first amendment
> rights.
>
> If enough people visit the link below, the
> article will get posted to the Associated Press
> newswire where it will be available for
> publication to thousands of news outlets.
>
>
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/12/16/miami_police/?ref=http://www.sa
lon.com/src/ads/powells/salon4.html
> ___________________________________
>
> "This is not America"
> In Miami, police unleashed unprecedented fury on
> demonstrators -- most of them seniors and union
> members. Is this how Bush's war on terror will
> be fought at home?
>
> Editor's Note: This is the first installment of
> "Lost Liberties," a series of stories that will
> be published in the months ahead exploring the
> erosion of civil rights and personal freedom in
> the United States since the terrorist attacks of
> Sept. 11, 2001.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
> By Michelle Goldberg
>
> Dec. 16, 2003 | 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.
>
> "There is a pattern developing cross-country
> with regards to the interaction between police
> and protesters," says Lida Rodriguez-Taseff,
> president of the Miami chapter of the American
> Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "That pattern
> sadly involves the police viewing protesters as
> terrorists and treating protest situations as
> crisis situations akin to war or combat."
>
> 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.
>
> According to Lt. Bill Schwartz, spokesman for
> the Miami Police Department, law enforcement
> officials traveled to Miami from Georgia and New
> York to learn tactics to deal with upcoming
> protests in their cities. In June, President
> Bush will host the G-8 summit -- which brings
> together the leaders of Britain, Canada, France,
> Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia -- on Georgia's
> Sea Island. Then, on Aug. 30, the Republican
> convention begins in New York, bringing tens of
> thousands of protesters and "the highest levels
> of security this city has ever seen," as a New
> York police spokesman told the Village Voice.
>
> Upon his return from Miami on Thursday, Nov. 20,
> Bill Hitchens, director of Georgia's Department
> of Homeland Security, told the Atlanta
> Journal-Constitution: "I certainly think this is
> a precursor for what we could see" at the G-8
> summit. Speaking of the Miami police, he said,
> "We need to do much the same as they did."
>
> Meanwhile, John Timoney, the Miami police chief
> known for calling demonstrators "punks" and
> "knuckleheads," is handling security for the
> Democratic National Convention in Boston.
> Timoney is already infamous among activists for
> his handling of the 2000 Republican convention
> in Philadelphia, where protesters complained of
> indiscriminate arrests and police violence.
>
> How did such a small demonstration became such a
> bloody melee? And how did so many law-abiding
> people suddenly find themselves in a place that
> didn't look anything like the America they
> thought they knew?
>
> "I no longer consider Dade county to be part of
> the United States," says Bentley Killmon, a
> 71-year-old retiree who was held handcuffed for
> 11 hours after he was swept up by the police as
> he wandered around downtown looking for his bus
> home.
>
> 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.
>
> "In situations where the police don't like the
> protesters' message, they definitely treat
> protesters as the enemy," says Rodriguez-Taseff.
>
> "Essentially what happened," she adds, "is that
> the police went from being the neutral protector
> of liberty and property and safety, which is
> what their job is supposed to be, to being the
> enforcer of a political goal of the political
> and business communities."
>
> 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.)
>
> 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.
>
> Anger and fear about anarchists had been
> building up in the city all autumn. Al Crespo, a
> 61-year-old Miami photojournalist who
> specializes in covering demonstrations -- he
> recently published a book of photographs called
> "Protest in the Land of Plenty" -- says he first
> realized something was awry when his 87-year-old
> mother called him in hysterics weeks before
> activists began arriving in Miami.
>
> "I'm Cuban, and my mother listens to a lot of
> these Cuban radio stations," he says. "She knows
> what I do, and she called me up one day in a
> real panic, with the belief that I was going to
> be killed on the streets of Miami. She was
> hearing that it was communists coming, and these
> people were going to blow up the city."
>
> Meanwhile, the police were preparing to face off
> against a violent enemy. Asst. Chief Fernandez's
> PowerPoint presentation listed three groups of
> protesters headed to Miami: "The Green Group
> (non violent, union based)"; "The Yellow Group
> (mostly non violent, fringe elements)" and "The
> Red Group (anti-government,
> anti-establishment)." The slides also identified
> the lime-green baseball caps donned by the legal
> observers who accompany most major protests.
> According to Rodriguez-Taseff, when the slide
> appeared, Fernandez said, "These are their
> lawyers. They're there to antagonize police."
>
> Marc Steier, a New Jersey lawyer who works for
> the National Lawyers Guild -- a kind of radical
> ACLU -- arrived in Miami in mid-November to open
> a temporary office for Miami Activist Defense, a
> legal collective formed to represent
> demonstrators. He and a colleague were setting
> up their computers on Nov. 15 when they got
> their first phone call: Police, a woman activist
> reported, were hassling a kid walking down the
> street.
>
> Just then, Steier says, a volunteer named Henry
> whom he knew from previous protests arrived, and
> Steier dispatched him to the scene with a
> camera, a tape recorder and a lime green hat.
> When Henry arrived, cops on bicycles were
> questioning a kid dressed all in black. He
> turned out to be a local goth who knew nothing
> of the FTAA.
>
> Then the police crossed the street to where
> three men, part of a pagan group in town for the
> demonstrations, were watching. They were friends
> of the woman who called Steier's office, and one
> of them was holding her backpack while she used
> the phone down the street.
>
> "There was nothing about them that would give a
> casual observer any indication that they were
> anything but tourists," says Steier, who later
> interviewed all of them after they were released
> from jail.
>
> The police asked one man for I.D., which he gave
> them, and then demanded to search the backpack
> he was holding. He refused to consent, because
> it didn't belong to him. At that point, a police
> vehicle pulled up. According to Steier, the
> uncooperative pagan was arrested and put in the
> patrol car, and his backpack was dumped out on
> the police car's hood.
>
> "The second male sees what's going down, and he
> starts to be a little more compliant," says
> Steier. The cops, Steier said, asked for "your
> name, where you're from, how you got down to
> Miami, whether you're an anarchist, whether
> you're here to cause trouble and break things."
> Finally, the second pagan asked if he was free
> to go. "'Actually, you're under arrest,' said
> the police."
>
> The police proceeded to arrest the third man and
> the woman when she returned from the phone. All
> were charged with obstructing a sidewalk.
>
> Throughout it all, Henry had been on his
> cellphone with Steier. Suddenly, he lost
> contact: Henry had been arrested, too -- charged
> with obstruction of justice.
>
> Between the 15th and the 20th, the day of the
> major protest, Miami Activist Defense received
> dozens of reports of people being arbitrarily
> detained, searched, photographed and questioned
> about their backgrounds and their connections to
> anarchism.
>
> The most authoritative first-person story about
> such random seizures came from Celeste Fraser
> Delgado, a reporter for Miami New Times, who was
> arrested Thursday evening on Miami Avenue as she
> walked toward the protest's welcome center with
> a group of protesters she was profiling.
>
> "Throughout the day I'd witnessed police provoke
> protesters," she wrote. "I'd seen young people
> cuffed and lined up along the street, but I
> thought they must have done something bad to be
> detained. Surely the police would see that we
> were doing nothing wrong and let us go. Surely
> they would recognize my role as a working member
> of the press."
>
> Instead, Delgado's hands were cuffed behind her
> back. Her pleas to the police to check her
> credentials were ignored, though they took her
> black leather backpack with her press pass and
> notebook inside. She was told they would be
> returned to her. Instead, they were dumped out
> and left on the street.
>
> She knows that, because John de Leon, an ACLU
> lawyer, happened to be in the area after her
> arrest. He was on the phone with
> Rodriguez-Taseff when he noticed that the street
> was littered with backpacks, cellphones and
> wallets. He was collecting the protesters'
> things when he found Delgado's press
> credentials.
>
> Delgado was released Friday afternoon, after the
> charges against her were dropped. Of the more
> than 90 arrests made at the protests on
> Thursday, the Miami prosecutors threw out 20 due
> to lack of evidence. Rodriguez-Taseff says it's
> "unheard of" for so many cases to be dismissed
> as groundless.
>
> The total number of arrests in Miami wasn't
> particularly large -- according to Lt. Schwartz,
> 231 people were taken in on FTAA-related charges
> the week of the summit, compared to 631 arrested
> at the Seattle anti-globalization protests in
> 1999. Then again, there were nearly five times
> as many protesters in Seattle as there were in
> Miami. There was also rampant vandalism during
> the 1999 demonstrations, and almost none during
> the FTAA. Indeed, since the protests, Miami
> officials have crowed about the lack of damage
> done to their city. That leaves the arrests
> looking like some sort of extralegal
> "preventive" or "preemptive" action.
>
> It was Thursday afternoon that madness broke
> loose in Miami. There had been a scuffle that
> morning between demonstrators and police near
> the fence police had erected around the
> Intercontinental Hotel, and the city had been
> locked down since around 10 a.m. But things
> didn't get really bad until about 4 p.m., when a
> few hundred people left the officially
> sanctioned union march to confront the police
> lined up along Biscayne Boulevard.
>
> It's not clear what made the police charge
> forward, rhythmically beating their big wooden
> clubs against their shields. Predictably, many
> protesters say there was no provocation, but Lt.
> Schwartz maintains that the police were pelted
> with "rocks, feces in plastic bags and bottles
> of urine." Three officers were admitted to a
> nearby hospital for injuries sustained during
> the protests, and the Miami Police Department
> reports that a total of 18 were injured.
>
> Al Crespo, the photojournalist, admits that some
> protesters "acted out," but says that, in
> covering over 100 protests over the last six
> years, he's never seen a police reaction as
> ferocious and disproportionate as what he saw in
> Miami.
>
> "There's a real parallel between these kind of
> events and the events in major American cities
> after championship football and basketball
> games," he says. "A large number of people come
> out in the streets, and there's always young
> people who, for whatever reason, just have a
> need to get in a cop's face. Whether you're
> rooting for the Chicago Bulls or you're in Miami
> supposedly protesting against free trade, these
> kind of events always attract people who have a
> real need to act out some internal psychodrama,
> and oftentimes that's what sets something off."
>
> Once the police were set off, though, it's hard
> to justify what they did based on protester
> provocation. Several hundred policemen, armed
> with the latest crowd-control weaponry, were
> arrayed against a sparse lot of scraggly kids on
> the broad boulevard. Instead of batons, the
> police carried wooden sticks the length of
> baseball bats, and as they marched forward, they
> swung them at whoever couldn't get out of the
> way in time. Video taken at the scene shows a
> boy in shorts being knocked down, and when his
> friends try to pick him up, they're beaten back
> with the wooden sticks.
>
> At one point, a young man kneels down a few feet
> in front of the phalanx, his hands in prayer
> position. Five or six police charge him with
> their shields, then shoot rubber bullets at him
> as he runs away.
>
> That, says Crespo, is what was most unusual: the
> police firing on people as they retreated.
>
> Before Miami, one of the more violent protests
> Crespo had seen was at the 2000 Democratic
> convention in Los Angeles. "What happened in Los
> Angeles, which had not happened in any other
> city up until then, is that the police came out,
> took a position and just opened up fire. It
> looked like reenactment of a Civil War battle,"
> he says.
>
> "In Miami they did that, but then they proceeded
> to march down the street and chase these people,
> chase them for blocks," he said. "These were
> people trying to get away, and they kept
> marching and shooting."
>
> Witnesses say that all protesters were targeted,
> not just those that were causing trouble.
>
> 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."
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> Seventy-one-year-old Bentley Killmon was unaware
> that Miami was becoming a war zone when he
> boarded a bus Thursday morning. Killmon's father
> was a police officer, and he didn't bear any
> grudge against cops. "I respected the badge
> until that morning," he says.
>
> A former flight navigator and engineer for Pan
> Am who retired after 36 years on the job,
> Killmon opposes the FTAA because he believes
> globalization creates a "race to the bottom" as
> industries move to find cheap labor, decimating
> the livelihoods of workers left behind. "I was
> protesting what has happened to the middle class
> and to the poor," he says.
>
> Killmon, who lives about 100 miles north of
> Miami, was on one of 24 buses chartered by the
> Florida Alliance of Retired Americans. The
> group's state organizer, 34-year-old Larry
> Winawer, was responsible for getting Killmon and
> another 1,100 or so retirees to the protest and
> home again, and he'd arrived in Miami Wednesday
> night.
>
> Right away, it felt wrong. "As you're heading
> down Biscayne Boulevard" -- the street where the
> union march took place on Thursday, and where
> police faced off with protesters -- "you see
> swarms of police in riot gear," Winawer says.
> "There were armored personnel vehicles,
> helicopters hovering at very low altitude with
> searchlights sweeping the area. Right away it
> felt like you were not in America but in some
> type of occupied city."
>
> Winawer didn't sleep much that night, and was up
> on Thursday at 4 a.m. to make sure that all ran
> smoothly with the seniors he was responsible
> for.
>
> The day's official activities were centered
> around the Bayfront amphitheater. From 10 to
> 11:30 a.m., there was a seniors breakfast and
> rally scheduled, with speakers talking about the
> effects of the FTAA on American retirees and
> families. The official union rally and march
> began at noon, also at the amphitheater.
>
> Winawer had negotiated with police beforehand to
> allow his buses to drop the seniors off near the
> escalators leading to the auditorium. Two early
> buses got through, but by 10 a.m., chaos had
> begun to engulf downtown Miami, and the area
> around the amphitheater had been shut down. Thus
> the buses had to drop their passengers off as
> much as a mile away. A few buses didn't make it
> into the city at all -- the police told them to
> turn around and go home.
>
> A mile "may not seem like much," says Winawer,
> "but we had people who were 85, 90 years old."
> Then, he says, as they made their way to their
> rally, lines of police officers would detain
> them without telling them why.
>
> Of the 1,100 seniors on his buses, Winawer says
> about 600 made it to their event.
>
> When the rally was over, Winawer had to see the
> seniors back to their vehicles, which were all
> parked far away. Killmon was in the last group
> of people he escorted, but when they arrived,
> his bus had already left. So they headed toward
> the Holiday Inn, where Winawer was staying.
>
> Winawer was wearing a bright orange vest and an
> Alliance for Retired Americans T-shirt, and had
> staff credentials around his neck. Yet several
> times, he and Killmon were turned back by police
> lines, and finally told to walk west along
> downtown Miami's railroad tracks. There were
> about 10 other people going the same way.
>
> "All of a sudden, heading east is a line of
> police in riot gear," says Winawer. "There were
> at least 50 -- they had guns drawn and were
> yelling at people to get down."
>
> He still sounds incredulous as he recalls it.
> "He's a 71-year-old man and I'm wearing my
> orange vest and credentials. I said, 'He's a
> retiree and I'm trying to help him get to his
> bus.' We each had three or four guns on us
> telling us to get down, facedown in the dirt.
> Ben didn't get down fast enough and he got a
> knee in his back."
>
> Hands cuffed behind them, they were put on a bus
> and left for three hours, then driven to a
> parking garage where FTAA prisoners were being
> held in wire pens. "I've worked with livestock
> before, and these were like stock pens," said
> Killmon.
>
> In the pen with him, says Killmon, was a
> steelworker named Rick who had a bad shoulder,
> the result of an injury he'd sustained falling
> off a roof. "His hands being handcuffed behind
> his back was extremely painful," Killmon says.
> "He kept asking to be released so he could bring
> his hands around in front of him, and they would
> not do it. The pain got to the point that he
> lost control of his bowels and urinary tract."
>
> "He'd asked at least two dozen different
> officers for help," says Winawer.
>
> After another three hours, they were taken to
> Miami's TGK jail, where they were processed and
> put in holding cells. It was after 3 a.m. before
> either was allowed to make phone calls. Killmon
> says he went at least seven hours without a sip
> of water.
>
> On Friday, the charges against Killmon were
> dropped. Winawer was charged with disobeying a
> police officer. They weren't released until
> early evening.
>
> Both were in handcuffs for between 11 and 12
> hours. Three weeks later, Winawer's hands were
> still bruised and partly numb. Killmon says he's
> fine as long as he doesn't try to lift his left
> arm higher than his shoulder.
>
> "I believe in social justice issues, but I'm not
> a screaming radical," says Winawer. Since Miami,
> he says, "some people have asked, 'How do you
> feel about law enforcement?' I feel fine about
> law enforcement. What happened to us was not
> anything resembling law enforcement. I respect
> the job that police have to do, but I have no
> respect for the job that they did."
>
> Both Winawer and Killmon are planning to join
> civil suits against the city.
>
> "Ben and I are living proof that civil rights
> are being erased in this country," Winawer says,
> still sounding astonished.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> While Winawer and Killmon were in prison,
> another confrontation was unfolding outside.
>
> Crespo, expecting it, was there with his camera.
> "Just like there's a morning and an afternoon,
> there's always a jail solidarity, so we went to
> the jail," he says. With him was a local public
> television crew who were doing a segment on him
> and his work.
>
> "The protesters had gathered at the parking lot
> of the state attorney's office," he says, two
> blocks from the jail. "They're just kids. There
> was nothing mean-spirited about them. Their
> friends are locked up and they wanted to show
> solidarity."
>
> There were between 150 and 200 people there, and
> Brenna Bell, a 28-year-old attorney from Oregon,
> acted as a go-between with the police. At first,
> she said, the commander seemed reasonable, but
> within 20 minutes, he told her that everyone had
> to disperse.
>
> "At that time, most everyone started leaving the
> area," says Bell. "I stayed behind watching to
> make sure that everyone left OK. I never heard
> the police give the order to disperse that they
> threatened to give, but people started walking."
>
> Yet as people left, she says, a huge line of
> riot police -- as many as 300 -- followed them.
> Then, about three blocks from the protest, seven
> or eight people sat down and announced they
> weren't going anywhere. They were arrested, and
> 50 or 60 people stopped to watch. Then she and
> others started walking east, flanked on two
> sides by police.
>
> At that point, the police finally issued an
> order to disperse, but at the same time, they
> started closing in. Video from the scene shows
> people chanting, "We are dispersing. We are
> dispersing." But the police wouldn't let them.
> "That's when I knew it was going to be bad,"
> says Bell. The police rushed in, shooting pepper
> spray and rubber bullets. "It was utter chaos,"
> she says. She was sprayed and shot in the back
> of the leg, and sent off to jail. She wasn't
> released until 2 a.m. on Sunday.
>
> Still, it could have been worse: "I talked to a
> couple of women who were strip-searched by male
> officers," she says. "It's such a powerless
> situation."
>
> One of those women was Ana Nogueira, a producer
> for the radio show "Democracy Now!" Nogueira was
> rounded up at the same protest as Bell. Like
> Celeste Fraser Delgado, she kept telling the
> arresting officers that she was a journalist.
>
> One cop was hesitant, she says, but then another
> told him, "She's not with us." He meant she
> wasn't embedded.
>
> At the jail, "When I got out of the patrol
> wagon, I repeated that I was a journalist and
> that I was wrongly arrested. I asked, 'What do I
> do?' The officer told me to shut the fuck up."
>
> Her clothes reeked of pepper spray, so the
> police made her stand under a huge cold-water
> outdoor shower.
>
> Then she was taken into a tent with one female
> officer and one male officer. The back of the
> tent was open, and other male officers could see
> in. "They told me to take off all my clothes and
> put them in a trash can, and that I was not
> going to get them back." She asked the male
> officer to leave first, but all he would do was
> turn around. Then, when she was naked, he turned
> back to face her.
>
> "Then they put me in prison garb, and that's
> when I was taken and processed," she says. "I
> was one of the lucky ones. I know other
> independent videographers who didn't get their
> cameras back."
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> While stories about the FTAA protests
> proliferate, the Miami police are showing no
> signs of remorse. In their view, even peaceful
> protesters had it coming for cavorting with
> anarchists.
>
> "Peaceful protesters in some cases made friends
> with the devil, knowing full well they were
> anarchists," says Lt. Schwartz. "If someone
> says, 'I came down to protest peacefully but
> yes, I'm aware there are anarchists in my group
> and I welcomed them in,' they're certainly
> putting themselves in an awkward position. If
> anarchists are starting to cause problems and
> throw things at cops, just because I'm a
> peaceful protester, but I'm standing right next
> to this anarchist, that I couldn't be subject to
> police enforcement, I think that's naive.
>
> "You'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to
> see what was going on in the street, the
> confrontation between anarchists and police," he
> says. "If you chose to stay in the midst of that
> and then felt your First Amendment right was
> hurt, you're not being honest with yourself."
>
> Schwartz's comments just compound Winawer's
> outrage. "All his statements begin with 'if,'"
> he says. "And I might agree with him if those
> things happened. But there are no ifs here.
> There's reality. And the reality is that I and
> Ben Killmon were nowhere near any other
> individual, period. We were arrested for doing
> nothing except walking where the police told us
> to walk in an effort to find his bus.
>
> "I've never been in trouble with the law before,
> and I have no ax to grind with the police, but
> this was just wrong," Winawer says. "And the
> bombast, it adds insult to injury. It's one
> thing to have done it. It's another thing to put
> your head in the sand and deny that it ever
> happened."
>
>
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
> About the writer
> Michelle Goldberg is a staff writer for Salon
>
>
>
>
>
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