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The Miami demonstration against "free" trade (in support of its opposite, _Fair_ trade) on November 17-21 in 2003 was attacked by John F. Timony and "Timoney and (Miami Mayor Manny) Diaz suspended the constitution to achieve their version of 'homeland defense,'" said Brenna Bell, a lawyer with a group called Miami Activist Defense. Timony became an instant crowd-control hero among American fascists and was hired to manage other cities during events like the National Democratic and Republican conventions, and the G-20 in Pittsburgh.
Mayor Diaz said that the massive Miami police operation to avoid a repeat of the riots that marred a 1999 World Trade Organization meeting was a model for post-Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. defense against domestic attack.
John Sweeney, former president of the U.S. labor federation AFL-CIO (now Mr. Trumka), which represents around 13 million trade union members, said that the crushing of dissent in Miami enabled him to understand, "that the protesters' basic right to have their voices heard was severely restricted, and that all Americans' civil liberties" are threatened by such police actions as we have recently witnessed.
It is as if our professional killers (Marines, Blackwater mercenaries, and returning soldiers) who were hired to manage Iraq, Afghanistan, torture in black sites, etc. have come back home to staff police forces led by such people as Mr. Timony. Fearful authorities (such as the mayor in the movie "Battle in Seattle") plan strategy long in advance of such gatherings as G-20. The plan is to put experienced-with-killing troops in battle gear on the streets to squirt spray, lob tear-gas bombs, and shoot rubber bullets and sound cannons at ordinary citizens. The experience these men have with killing the enemy easily enables them to map onto their fellow citizens the demeaning, dehumanizing label of "enemy." They think they're being nice for not using live ammunition.
In order to combat this fascist take-over of America, we who object must convince the individual policemen who brutally throw people onto the pavement, etc. that we are in fact fellow citizens--on the same side--and that the enemy is a chimera, a phantom created by Mr. Bush and other fearful authority figures to push unity and coherence onto our society. Being different, being a protester, being politically opposed to whatever issue is an opportunity for us all to exercise our traditional rights as citizen.
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