Eye Witness Report from the Miami FTAA police riots:
"There is a clear relationship between the advancement of the free trade agenda
and increased militarization."
Hi folks,
I just got back from Miami and thought I'd share some early reflections. To
help those in jail please go to www.stopftaa.org.
Brendan O'Neill
ACERCA
www.asej.org
PS. check out the article on fbi and anti-war movement at www.commondreams.org
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Protesting “Free” Trade in a Police State:
Reflections from the Street of Miami
There is an assumption on behalf of many Americans that somehow free trade,
freedom and democracy are one in the same. In other words, the assumption is
that global capitalism and global democracy are two processes that complement
and promote one another. This assumption is taught in our nations’ foremost
universities and constantly put forth by our leaders and media. However, the
streets of Miami on Thursday, November 20th tell a very different story, as do
events unfolding all over the world today.
If free trade is democracy why did the trade and finance ministers from all
over the world need to meet behind massive steal fences in order to negotiate
the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)? If free trade is freedom why was
$8.5 million taken from the $87 billion Iraq war budget and channeled into
Miami to arm police forces with taser guns, helicopters, and cranes from which
the police could stand above the crowd and shoot tear gas and concussion
grenades at protestors who stood beneath them? If free trade is democracy why
did at least 4 individuals who had filmed police brutality on the streets of
Miami on November 20, have their video cameras stolen and later returned to
them at police stations with no film. If free trade is democracy why did one
Miami officer remark, “you can beat the rap, but not the ride,” suggesting that
protestors may be able to contest charges in court but they can’t stop the
police from taking them there? If free trade is democracy then why did I see,
with my own eyes, 30 undercover police officers emerge from behind a police
blockade in costumes that ranged from a stereotypical “anarchist” protestor to
a hippy who donned backpacks and t-shirts that said “stop the FTAA” and then
entered a permitted labor march on Thursday, November 20th?
The goal of the Miami police forces was to STOP protest through physical force,
intimidation and harassment.
Free trade is not democracy. Free trade is not freedom. It is this conviction,
amongst others, that led protestors into the streets of Miami on November 20th,
having traveled from the entire hemisphere, to protest the FTAA.
Why then, are millions of taxpayers’ dollars used to turn cities like Miami
into militarized zones every time there is a major gathering of Global justice
activists, labor union members, faith-based organizations, and
environmentalists who are working for true and participatory democracy, good
jobs, health care, clean air and water? I believe that these diverse groups
and organizations have something to say that poses a threat to the underlying
logic, assumption and legitimacy that keeps a tiny and wealthy global minority
in a position of power over a massive global majority: free trade = freedom =
democracy. I also believe that how these organizations test this myth is
particularly threatening to its legitimacy. If challenges to the global
minority were only made every four years at the voting booths that would be
O.K. with the global minority. Furthermore, if those challenging the global
minority were only to do so with phone calls and letter writing campaigns that
would also be O.K. However, when protestors take to the streets to demand and
create changes, as they did in Miami, they are testing the comfort level of
those who have designed a political-economic system that severely limits and
conditions the ways in which ordinary people can participate.
Protests around the world against the free trade agenda, like the protests held
in Miami, and against war, like the protests against the School of the Americas
in Ft. Benning, are challenging the free trade = democracy = freedom equation
and in so doing challenging the well-being and future of those who benefit most
from its continued campaign for legitimacy.
The global free trade agenda slashes public spending on health care, education
and basic services such as water, and provides increased freedom and mobility
and decreased accountability to capital and corporations while at the same time
public budgets are increased for military and police operations. However, only
“experts”, like the trade and finance ministers at the FTAA meetings and
multinational corporations are allowed to make and influence these decisions
that have such devastating and far reaching impacts on the world’s peoples and
ecology.
There is a clear relationship between the advancement of the free trade agenda
and increased militarization. We can see the Bush Administrations’ commitment
to this model by channeling the $8.5 million to Miami in order to militarize
the streets on Thursday with the goal of stopping protest and dissent against
the FTAA. However, we can also see an adherence to this policy at the
international level when the U.S. government, after “freeing” Iraq with a
military occupation, immediately announced its plans for a new free trade
agreement with the Middle East and called in the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund (IMF) to rebuild the country by the guiding principals of “free
trade”.
This relationship between global capitalism and global militarism is the two
pronged formula driving the advancement of the global “free” trade agenda and
it is a private-public sector partnership to maintain global inequality and
injustice couched in the rhetoric of democracy. If people in local communities,
the world over, were to participate and have say in their own economic lives,
as those who took to the streets of Miami were attempting to do, there would be
no FTAA. In its stead new space would be opened up for the creative
cultivation of socially and ecologically just alternatives to free trade
informed by the needs of the global majority and within the natural limitations
of the earth’s ecology rather than being dictated by a small and grotesquely
wealthy global minority as it is now. However, Miami is the most recent
example of the direction of democracy in the U.S. as police forces, taking
orders and money from the Bush oiligarchy, did everything they possibly could
to stop the global majority from creatively weaving a world of healthy,
peaceful and diverse communities.
As more protestors experience the first-hand brutal power and wrath of police
forces at home, as many of us did in the streets of Miami, we learn the meaning
of solidarity by briefly experiencing a glimpse of the daily violence of
institutionalized racism, colonialism, economic exploitation, and the U.S.
military. However, we must also learn from our experiences of the brutality of
the power of the police state and look for new strategies and tactics not
losing sight of our goal to stop both the free trade and military agenda.
Those who steer the free trade agenda would love to meet in peace in order to
silently plot the course for the global economy. Thus, it is our
responsibility to continue to disrupt and prevent these meetings yet we must
also look for new and creative means and pressure points to do so remembering
that the police and corporate media are working to stop and delegitimize our
efforts. Additionally, we must consider making stronger commitments to disrupt
the every day “success” of the global minority’s free trade and military agenda
in our local communities in order to pry open new space to cultivate locally-
based healthy and just alternatives to global capitalism and militarism.
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In order to support hundreds of jailed ftaa protestors in miami go to
www.stopftaa.org
Brendan O'Neill
ACERCA Program Coordinator
ASEJ collective
www.asej.org |
