FTAA: Anarchist People of Color Bloc Call to Action

Submitted by Reverend Chuck0:

APOC Bloc Call to Action

From November 19 to the 21, the FTAA ministerial in Miami will bring
together the transnational elite, who will seek to expand free trade
policies to all of the Western hemisphere except Cuba. This means that half
of the world will be regulated by a free market zone lacking in public
health, environmental, and labor protections, while full power is given to
privatization and to corporations. At the same time, the FTAA ministerial
will bring together people fighting for global justice, at a convergence
touted to be the largest of its kind on this continent since ’99 WTO
meetings in Seattle.

Those of us coming out of the Anarchist People of Color (APOC) Conference
in Detroit this October are calling for an APOC Bloc to converge in Miami
in resistance to the FTAA this November. We are opposed to all forms of
free trade, capitalism, racism, classism, patriarchy, homophobia,
hierarchy, and domination. Our ancestors and living relatives emerge from a
history written by imperialists and colonialists. It is time for us to
reclaim our history and our heritage, and to take a direct stand against
the very institutions which allow our brothers and sisters around the world
to continue to be oppressed today.

It is important for us to take the initiative, without white leadership, to
resist the FTAA and what it represents. In doing this we join the powerful
resistance that is growing across the “Third World,” especially in Latin
America. We are going to Miami to express and extend our peoples' global
resistance to capitalism and its globalization. We stand with people across
the hemisphere reclaiming control over their lives from governments,
capitalists, landlords, and patriarchs. By joining them in revolution, we
will make the Americas not an area of "free" trade and exploitation, but
continents of human liberation.

Miami is not only being prepared as a new capitalist capital of a re-
colonized Latin America, but also a living example of the workings of the
globalization advanced by the elites who will meet in November. Beyond the
sun and waves are fields of underpaid workers, ghettos and jails of the
poor, detention centers for excluded migrants, and offices of those who
negotiate the sale of their own countries. There too is resistance:
sometimes patient building, sometimes defiant survival, sometimes explosive
rage. We will join with this resistance symbolically and practically. In
particular, we will participate in the farmworker-led march on Miami
November 16 to 18, and be present at events hosted by the local coalition
Root Cause (see http://www.therootcause.org).

As APOC, some of us are undocumented or legal immigrants, and as a result
face different realities in the face of direct action, such as the threat
of deportation and the increased threat of police brutality. To address the
safety and legal status concerns of people of color, the APOC who were at
October’s Chicago consulta propose that the APOC Bloc stay together within
a larger non-APOC Bloc, such as the Black Bloc or the Padded Bloc, as well
as clustering together within mass direct actions. Within this larger
framework of solidarity, the APOC Bloc will distinguish itself with brown
armbands, banners, and other visuals. We hope to increase the comfort of
people of color in doing direct action by creating a safer zone for APOC to
take part in militant direct action.

We will be having the first APOC gathering in Miami on November 18 at a
place to be announced. Further meetings will be announced in Miami.