hunted in
amory starr
“…a sweep”, came the call, but i didn’t know what it
really meant. it was just another cop word whispered
by another paranoid activist. there were three
landlines and twelve cell phones ringing and our internal nextels
were beeping and buzzing. i was supposed to
“coordinate incoming information” for Miami Activist Defense, the legal
collective set up to provide support activists protesting the ftaa meetings.* over the next hours i
learned that a sweep means a fifteen-block-wide wall of vaderesque
police shoulder-to-shoulder moving north, doing violence to every person in
their path. the
callers were all breathing hard. i
realized that most of my closest friends were being hunted through the streets
of
the MAD phones had already been ringing
fairly constantly for days with reports of detentions, illegal searches,
bizarre arrests of medics and legal observers, persistent and intrusive surveillance
and invasion of activist spaces, including media and medical spaces. in a
chilling echo of the iraq war (for which part of the
budget was routed to miami), the media invited to
“embed” with the police were required to wear gas masks and helmets, but young
activists with gas masks in their backpacks were portrayed as violent thugs. in the detentions and searches of backpacks during the week,
the police were apparently seeking materials for their press conferences, and
they did find piles of gas masks (nevermind that
they’re legal in this city). but we now have piles of their bullets.
it's very hard to claim that protesters were
intending violence when half of all backpacks in the entire city had been searched. nevermind
that the detentions had no probable cause and the searches were illegal, the
police and public now knows with great certainty that protesters, even the
grubbiest, angriest, and most vegetarian of them, who were subject to the most
profiling and, in many cases, multiple stops
and searches during the week, were not found to be carrying a single weapon! probably the most upstanding collection of youngsters in
the thursday
morning direct action had been a predictable series of clever, but puny,
actions focused on the fence surrounding the ftaa
meetings in the inter-continental hotel. the
in the next four hours MAD received hundreds
of calls bringing overwhelming, terrifying information from our legal
observers, friends, and activists in the street. they
told us who they had just seen beaten to the ground, dragged into an unmarked
car, or brutally arrested, that they were running, that they were being
pursued, and that they didn’t know where they could go to be safe. the lawyers and police liaisons working with our team were
all at locations surrounded by armies of riot police and could not be reached
on their cell phones. we knew that the activists’
“convergence center” was surrounded by an army. we put
out the word to people to take off dark clothes and get inside anywhere they
could. and we told our legal observers to take off
their distinctive hats as they were, apparently, at particular risk.
‘hunting’ is really the right word to describe what happened.
on november 23, the
the police stated that these measures were
necessary to control protesters intending violence. as
wednesday’s press release from MAD stated, the
vicious, unnecessary, and vindictive targeting of activists had no justification
and did not follow any pattern based on profile. there
is no evidence of violent behavior justifying the police response. a soft plastic fence was torn down and a few cardboard fires
were set. there were no broken windows. the well-publicized “padded bloc” (based on the European
tactic of Tute Bianchi) never even appeared in the
streets; so even the most militant (while avowedly non-violent) element of the
protest could not be blamed for the response. apparently
the only probable cause needed by the police was the media’s uninformed but
insistent pairing of the words ‘anarchist’ and ‘violent’.
in response to resounding non-provocation,
we have confirmed reports that police used a wide variety of weapons: rubber
bullets, plastic bullets, beanbags, a new weapon containing metal pellets which
explode on contact and leave shrapnel in the body, tear gas, pepper spray, and tasers. the medics confirmed that
rubber bullets were directly shot into the face, resulting in at least five
head wounds. medics report dozens of serious injuries.
MAD confirms receipt of police misconduct reports documenting ten beatings and
seven incidents of detainees being held at gunpoint. two
activists are still in hospital, one with brain damage and the other awaiting
surgery to remove fragmented metal projectiles from his face.
justified on the grounds that the afl-cio refused to exclude non-members, they were
restricted entry to and egress from their permitted rally area, agreements for
bus access were revoked, the march route was changed after it had begun, and
union members and afl retirees were brutally
arrested. other groups were also denied use of
permits. unitarians
attempting to attend an educational workshop at a methodist
church on thursday were barred entry by dozens of
riot police and bomb squad personnel from several agencies (local, federal,
ATF, and others unspecified) and the event was cancelled.
{pull quote} the presumption was that if you were in the
street or on the sidewalk in the downtown area of
activists, once defined as criminals, were then hunted and terrorized by local, state,
and federal agencies unbound from the rule of constitutional law. currently in the legal office we are cataloguing lists of violations of the first,
fourth, fifth, sixth, and eighth amendments. early in
the week, somebody joked that “all the even-numbered amendments had been
suspended in
the wholesale criminalization of activists
included the targeting of clearly
marked safety personnel, indicating that “homeland defense” is not concerned
with public health and safety. medics were denied
access to areas where people were injured and shot at while treating people. legal observers were targeted for beatings and violent
arrests. union marshals, lawyers, and police liaisons
were arrested. snatch squads showcase
hemispheric free trade in political
repression as these are terror tactics taught at the School of the
still in shock from thursday,
activists did the classic thing and held a press conference and vigil outside
the courthouse/jail on friday. police
initially informed 200 activists that they could demonstrate in an adjacent
parking lot. after the activists held an excellent
street spokescouncil, police issued a 3-minute
dispersal order. as people were trying to disperse,
and to the amazement of courthouse staff, the 680 riot cops on the scene
surrounded, pepper sprayed, and arrested about 70 people, including a retired
once in custody, the terror tactics continued.
processing of arrestees was slow and inaccurate.
paperwork was lost, access to counsel and phone calls was denied, public
defenders were frustrated by constantly changing procedures in jails and
courts, excessive bails were set (such as five thousand dollars for the
misdemeanor “resisting arrest without violence”), and there were extreme delays
in bond release (up to 12 hours). those arrested on friday afternoon, charged with “unlawful assembly”,
“failure to disperse”, and “resisting without violence”, were held on average
$1500 bail, denied food and water for 8-16 hours, and some were strip-searched
(and several of the strip searches were done by or in front of the opposite
gender).
signed
jail outtake reports document five cases of denial of medical care in custody,
30 cases of serious handcuff abuse (keeping people in handcuffs for thirteen
hours with cuffs so tight that their hands turned purple), 4 cases of sexual
assault, ten death threats, six other threats of bodily harm, ten reports of
people beaten or pepper sprayed while cuffed or sprayed directly in the face, one
report of a person forced to sign a confession not written by the defendant,
and arrestees threatened with federal charges and federal detention for not
revealing their national origin (not a crime).
many of us have pushed ourselves beyond
exhaustion in our efforts to simultaneously express our dissent, care for one
another, and address misunderstandings and tensions in the interest of future
solidarity. for several days, there was no time to
discuss having been hunted, jailed, and beaten, because there was too much work
to do. we just pushed on, leaving ourselves for later.
one of the dedicated young street medics, Jordan
Fader, died saturday morning of viral meningitis, his
immune system weakened by exposure to chemical weapons in the streets and his
valiant efforts to care for others in a context of police violence.
welcome to “homeland security”.
* i am not a spokesperson for and
none of this document may be taken as representing Miami Activist Defense
(MAD).
this text may be reproduced in whole or in
part only by permission of the author. contact
starr@chapman.edu.
to donate to the Miami Activist Defense legal support fund,
please go to www.stopftaa.org/legal.
please note that the “legal support fund” for which
United for Peace & Justice has been soliciting is not connected with any
actual legal support work that we know of.
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