Bad Things Happening in Miami
from a Sonoma County Peace Activist:
Things here in Miami are very bad. For those of you that do not know, I have been in Miami for the last two weeks organizing for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) meetings. I have been working at the welcome center for all the anti-FTAA activists, and the police here have been excruciatingly brutal. I myself was beaten and suffered a head injury on Thursday without reason, but others are much worse.
There are many people in jail that have been beaten and pepper sprayed at close range. The people of color from our mobilization have been specifically targeted and attacked. The people of color have been put in cells without bathroom facilities and had their shoes and other clothes that would keep them warm taken away, and they are hosed down with cold water every two hours with high powered water hoses. During the night one Hispanic male and an African American male were taken from the group and the Hispanic was beaten and pepper sprayed withing inches of his face for two hours then returned to the cell. He was beaten so badly that his skin split open. Another person of color had a head injury from the police before being taken to jail and was refused care and they beat him again and he is hemorrhaging from the brain and in intensive care now. This is only a slight case of what is going on with the police and the jails here in Miami.
Two trans-gendered people have been sexually assaulted in jail, as well as reports of one woman being forced to give oral sex to an officer. Female protesters were separated and held by four officers who then cut off their clothes when taken to jail. Again this is only a slight bit of what is going on here. For more information on what has been going on check outhttp://WWW.FTAAIMC.ORG
I am appealing to ALL OF YOU to call Miami, call your representatives, send money for bail and anything else that you can think of doing to help out. Check out the http://www.StopFTAA.org website for where to send money and who to contact. The police state here in Miami is terrible and I am on the brink of breaking down. PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD about what is going on here in Miami. This is TYPICAL of the police and jail here. We need help and support. I am sending this out because I do not know what else to do. The message is not getting out in the corporate press, so please write letters to your local papers and other news agencies to DEMAND coverage and accountablity. I am not in jail so I am going to be working here until my flight back home on Monday, but if anyone has the means to get here, help and reinforcements would be greatly appreciated.
This is not supposed to happen in this country, and if I was not already ashamed to be american, this would make me so. Please help out in the name of humanity...
Stephen
===== "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
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I also read an article by a Miami Times journalist who got busted, caught up with FTAA protesters, and wrote an incredible report. Hard to believe this is America. Here's the url for her report:http://miaminewtimes.com/issues/2003-11-27/feature.html/1/index.html
************** httpp://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1127-02.htm i read a bunch of reports and saw a bunch of terrifying photos. one tenth of the 87 BILLION funding just approved for Iraq included 8.6 million $ to arm Miami police against protesters for the FTAA summit in MIami.
http://WWW.FTAAIMC.ORG/en/2003/11/2588.shtml this is a page with links to photos and articles that are so disturbing. images you relate to Nazi behavior, certainly not America. what a wake up call.
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