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Whole World Watching: As Miami prepares to host the hemisphere's trade ministers, free-trade protesters get ready for action

BY CELESTE FRASER DELGADO

Miami's business community has high hopes for achieving hemispheric grandeur and reaping an economic windfall worth billions of dollars if all goes well at a meeting to be held here this November. Known as a ministerial, the meeting will bring together trade ministers from 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere (all but Cuba) to hammer out final details of a new international association called the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a common market made up of 800 million consumers. Local business leaders are hoping the trade ministers not only will agree on the treaty that will create a common market beginning in 2005, but that they will choose Miami over rival cities Puebla, Mexico; Panama City, Panama; and Atlanta as the FTAA's permanent headquarters or secretariat.

"Twenty years ago we auto-named ourselves the Gateway of the Americas," notes Jorge Arrizurieta, executive director of Florida FTAA, a statewide nonprofit group courting the headquarters. "Landing this most coveted prize is the best reaffirmation of our brand we'll ever get." Arrizurieta cites a recent study by Enterprise Florida, a public/private economic-development agency, that claims hosting the secretariat will bring the Sunshine State 89,000 jobs and $13.5 billion yearly. That heady prediction sends Arrizurieta into a paroxysm of analogies: The secretariat will do more for Miami, he says, than the Kennedy Space Center did for Cocoa Beach. It'll be almost as big as Disney is for Orlando. It'll be as significant as hosting the United Nations is for New York City.

But there are people already planning to spoil the party. The Miami ministerial will be haunted by the specter of violent anti-globalization protests around the world, especially the riots during the World Trade Organization talks in Seattle in 1999 that led to 600 arrests and left three million dollars in property damage. At the most recent FTAA ministerial, held in Quebec City in April 2001, police resorted to tear gas to control an estimated 50,000 uninvited guests. For the upcoming meeting in Miami, a group that calls itself the "Anti-FTAA Organizing Troupe" recently advertised a weekend gathering in Kentucky to plan "creative militant action." The anarchist Website infoshop.com is organizing rides to the Miami conclave under the slogan: "Nothing ever burns down by itself -- every fire needs a little help."

Even nonviolent activists can sound a little fiery when it comes to the FTAA. Last month at the Wyndham Resort Hotel in Miami Beach, AFL-CIO organizing director Stewart Acuff rallied more than 1000 activist leaders assembled at the national meeting of the labor coalition Jobs with Justice. "History tells us that in times like these, warriors emerge," the veteran rabble-rouser said to thunderous applause. "Warriors like all of us who say that when you try to jam the FTAA down our throats, we'll meet you in the streets of Miami!"

Only problem is, the trade ministers won't be in the streets of Miami. They'll be far from any fracas, inside a heavily guarded "security perimeter" surrounding the ministerial's central meeting locale, downtown's Hotel Inter-Continental. City of Miami police will not disclose exactly what area the security perimeter will cover, but deputy chief Frank Fernandez says the demonstration area -- where protests will be permitted -- must be within "sight and sound" of the venue; in this case, a stretch of Biscayne Boulevard running roughly from NE Third Street south to Flagler Street.

Police officials began preparing for the ministerial this past January, researching other demonstrations and sending officers around the nation for firsthand experience. The city is counting on cooperation from almost every other police department in the county, as well as from the Broward Sheriff's Office and a host of state and federal agencies, from the Florida Marine Patrol to the FBI. Fernandez says the Seattle experience provided valuable lessons on how to handle anti-globalization protests, especially on "ways of handling passive and aggressive crowds at the same time." And how is that? "Very carefully," he says coyly.

Would a violent protest blow Miami's chances of landing the permanent secretariat? Not necessarily. "Everybody knows there's this movement out there that is anti-global, and some of it is anarchist and violent," says Luis Lauredo, executive director of Miami FTAA, the local group organizing the meeting. "There is a new sophistication about handling it. People will be allowed to demonstrate in the street, but those who cause violence will be subject to discipline."

In fact, if the anarchists make anyone nervous, it's the activists committed to nonviolent protest. "We're trying to have some initial conversations with people who might be doing direct action so they'll think about doing it in a fun and creative way that won't alienate the city," says Anna Fink of the local immigrants' rights group Unite for Dignity.

"The press likes to invoke Seattle," scolds Cathy Feingold, campaign coordinator for the international affairs department of the AFL-CIO. "What gets lost in the discussion is that there are a lot of people out there who have reasons to oppose the FTAA and they want to express their opposition in a peaceful way. We often get labeled anti-globalizers, but what we want to do is offer our own alternatives. What we're opposed to is the current FTAA proposal that favors corporate rights over workers' rights and provides no protection for the environment."

Rather than riot in the streets, both the AFL-CIO and Unite for Dignity have joined a broad coalition of labor, citizens' rights, and grassroots groups called the Hemispheric Social Alliance to present alternative models for free trade. Last month, while in town for the Jobs with Justice meeting, Feingold and leaders from six other organizations met to coordinate protest plans with City of Miami officials and members of the county's Community Relations Board. Those plans include teach-ins, Miami "reality tours," a parade and carnival at Bayfront Park, as well as a "Worker's Forum" and a "People's Gala."

Until this year, there'd been no official way for citizen groups to meet with the ministers. Business executives, on the other hand, have been invited to submit proposals to the trade representatives following an official gathering called the Americas Business Forum, held prior to earlier ministerials. Everyone else, peaceful or not, has been left out on the street.

This year the United States' trade representative will host a "separate but equal" official forum to give "civil society" -- ordinary folks worried about how free trade might affect their jobs, the environment, their civil rights, or their health -- access to the trade ministers, negotiators, and their staffs. "We're establishing an unprecedented forum called the Americas Trade and Sustainable Development Forum, open to anybody who chooses to register," says Robin Rosenberg, deputy director of the North-South Center at the University of Miami. "This is an historic opportunity. A lot of these ministers have never been exposed to [alternative models for free trade], and they're certainly not going to go out into the street to see what's going on. We're giving people who want to protest an opportunity to get off the streets and be heard. Then if they want, they can go back out on the streets again."