Solidarity With the Oppressed
Three Bowdoin College students, Bryony HEise, Rebecca Bogdanovich and Alissa Cordner, went to Miami in November to protest the Free Trade ARea of the Americas negotiations. They wrote the following letter to the Bowdoin student body
Dear Bowdoin,
Greetings from the military zone of Miami, Florida. A woman sitting behind us as we draft this letter to you is talking about all the "white kids, protesters who just come here and go back to their regular, privileged lives. The rest of us can't." Nothing could be more true, if anything, this experience has made us realize that we must use our position of privilege to fight for and with the oppressed communities around the world ‹ from Mexican campesinos to the black people of Miami ‹ who are denied a voice and would be the most negatively affected by the proposed FTAA.
We can only imagine what kind of distorted images of this gathering are being portrayed where you are. But the protests were really about the unified action of a diverse coalition of groups, ranging from farmers from Ecuador to the AFL-CIO. Yesterday was filled with hours of presentations, inspirational speeches, music, and a two-mile march of tens of thousands of demonstrators. During the last two days in Miami we've had the opportunity to interact with groups coming from many different positions ‹ a delegation from the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker education and social justice group, steel workers and other union organizers, and a core group of "radical" protestors, organizing their direct actions.
We are sure you have seen violence on tv between protesters and the police, but we want to express our clear opinion that neither's position was clear-cut. We saw the police in extremely human moments (taking photos of each other in full riot gear with disposable cameras), but we have also witnessed extreme acts of violence and abuse of authority on their part (shooting protestors in the chest and head with "rubber" bullets). As for the protestors, the vast majority only wanted to be a voice and a presence, as a symbol of their role in a democratic nation and their passionate beliefs about human and environmental rights. There were violent clashes between these two groups of people (involving tear gas, pepper spray, paint balls filled with pepper spray, rubber bullets, wooden night sticks, and concussion grenades). The police felt their position and their space threatened, and responded with brutal and disproportionate force, but a small, unorganized group of individuals also acted with violence, setting fires and throwing smoke bombs and water bottles at the police.
Separated by an "unbreakable" black fence from the actions on the streets, in a board room in the Intercontinental Hotel, the trade ministers of the 34 nations of the FTAA came to an early decision. According to today's Miami Herald they agreed last night on a watered-down framework for free trade in the Western Hemisphere. As our friend David Abdulah, a union representative from Trinidad, told us, "Everybody's happy and nobody's happy." This framework, nicknamed "FTAA lite," allows each country to adopt or reject certain provisions of the FTAA. Although countries now have more flexibility within the trade agreement, human rights and environmental considerations were still left out of the picture. At this time, there are no specific deadlines.
In solidarity,
Becky, Bryony, and Alissa
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