I wasn’t there myself, so I can’t testify from personal observation, but there are a lot of accounts floating around of vastly excessive police behavior during the recent FTAA meetings. The city’s power structure — never known for its enlightenment — is just tickled pink that no one was killed and nothing tangible was damaged. The intangible cost to our freedom is not something most of them seem very concerned about.
You can get a good flavor of what’s going on — and what (in the sense of an independent investigation) is unlikely to happen — by reading these columns from the Miami Herald. Thank goodness for the columnists: other than this AP news story, AFL-CIO asks for probe of police conduct, the news coverage has been largely supine . Hurry, these may only be online for a few days:
Several people, including police officials, kept referring to the protesters as ”out of towners.” They said the police correctly decided to ”prioritize” the rights of local business owners over the rights of out-of-town protesters.I was surprised to hear it articulated so plainly from police officers. I said I didn’t realize they could choose who was deserving of rights and who wasn’t. Shouldn’t the Constitution apply to everyone? Isn’t there some middle ground between the lawlessness that overran Seattle in 1999 and the police state that engulfed Miami last month?
…
Last month the police decided ”out of towners” could have their rights violated.
Who’s next? Poor folks in Wynwood? Overtown? Liberty City?
Exactly.
The “Council for Excellence in Government” which appears from its website to be an extremely anti-consumer business group, but which doesn’t publish its membership list online, may have found a set of regulations that it likes: Homeland Security. One hopes this has nothing to do with the large budget and new contracting opportunities this provides for the corporate partners many of whom are in the information processing and collecting business.
The Council is doing a roadshow about Homeland Security, featuring Secretary Tom Ridge, and its second stop is in Miami next week. It’s open to the public, as long as you sign up in advance, and show up 30 minutes early “for security purposes”. And I get to submit a question — but only in advance.
We are leading this initiative in coordination with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other strategic partners to examine Americans’ attitudes about homeland security, identify critical areas of concern, and recommend practical steps for shaping effective policies and procedures in the future.The purpose of the Miami town hall meeting is to listen to you and your neighbors, to hear your specific homeland security concerns and discuss how together we can work to strengthen our nation’s coordinated response in the event of future terrorist threats or other national emergencies. The event is sponsored by IBM.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge will kick-off the event, and television journalist/former CNN anchor Frank Sesno will moderate an engaging and interactive discussion with experts from the Miami area. We encourage you to attend this town hall meeting to share your perspective on how citizens, government, businesses, and the community-at-large can join forces to make our nation safe and secure.
I think I’ll go. The pre-registration form has a place for submitting a question — I’d appreciate suggestions from readers of this blog. (I’ve also written in to learn more about the working group on privacy and security. It will be interesting to see how they respond.)
Update: so much for good intentions. Turned out I had a schedule conflict with something I had to do in the law school so I couldn’t make it in time. And the web site said that they wouldn’t seat latecomers for “security” reasons, so I didn’t even try to turn up late.