Bulletin from Miami

To: Retort
From: RE in Miami

The Capital of Violence and the Violence of Capital
Writers Bloc

We've already won. The City of Miami, Department of Homeland 
Security, and an array of private dicks and corporate media boosters 
have successfully accomplished what the movement aims to achieve at 
each anti-capitalist convergence - the total shutdown of the host 
city.

Because of this victory, the carnival has begun, and as the late 
afternoon sun arcs down into the west and a cool evening Caribbean 
breeze blows across Biscayne Bay onto the Florida mainland, 300 
anti-globalization activists march on downtown Miami. The march, 
sponsored by Root Cause, a coalition of southeastern grassroots 
organizations, approaches the city center. Miamians along the route 
emerge from their corporate cubicles and apartment complexes to view 
the ranks of the FTAA Unwelcoming Committee. Rather than witnessing 
the violence and nihilism promised by state and local law 
enforcement, the curious spectators are lured out of their isolation 
by pulsating rhythms, puppets, and people in the street.

Embedded in the Intercontinental Hotel, protected behind a seven 
foot-high barrier, US trade representative Robert Zoellick is 
desperately scrambling to retrieve the "Washington Consensus" at the 
5th ministerial of the Free Trade Area of the Americas conference.

The expectations for the talks are spectacularly low. Zoellick is 
surely suffering from insomnia with the recent memory of southern 
hemispheric nations walking out of the Cancun WTO talks and the 
realization that there is no hope of substantive discussion of 
expanded "free trade" in Miami.

Back at the fence, the Root Cause march reaches the other side of 
this fence - the culmination point of the protesters 34-mile journey 
that began in Fort Lauderdale three days prior. Downtown Miami is a 
militarized area. Protesters and civilians are subjected to bag 
checks, random detentions and harassment. The whole of Miami is a 
state sanctioned free fire zone on dissent paid for by a portion of 
the $87 billion Iraqi reconstruction bill. To be present in downtown 
Miami protesting the FTAA is to be an enemy combatant within the 
heartland of global empire.

Ideologically, "free trade" is a system of domination that maintains 
its innocence by out-sourcing the enforcement of its "theory". The 
captains of industry and masters of finance don't like to dirty their 
hands with the actual material consequences of their policies. 
Whether it is the displacement of tens of millions of farmers in the 
global south, the criminalization and incarceration of downsized 
redundant workers, or the dispossession of indigenous people so their 
lands can be more "efficiently" used, capital traditionally maintains 
"plausible deniability" when confronted with the logical 
implementation of its theoretical prescriptions.

The legacy of Seattle, Prague, Quebec City and the rest is that the 
undemocratic and coercive nature of the "free market" has been well 
and truly outed. As with the war against Iraq, the gap between our 
leaders' words and deeds is so great that everyone in Miami, from the 
homeless to small business owners, can see it.

The Root Cause marchers, however, shout this connection against the 
hollow towers of finance. They mingle before the massive enforcement 
team of capital - laughing, dancing, living defiantly and celebrating 
triumphantly under the gaze of hundreds of police behind barricades 
and trade reps housed in the nearby Intercontinental. To the 
delegates of the 34 countries invited to join the market paradise the 
real politik is clear. They find themselves in a 5-star fortress of 
capital exiled from the people of their host country. They must ask 
themselves: If even the Americans, who benefit most from the FTAA, 
need a paramilitary army - 10,000 strong - to meet, how will these 
policies play in Ecuador, Peru and Brazil?

The answer can be found in the street of La Paz, Buenos Aires, and 
today Miami. Whatever happens this week, the "invisible hand" of the 
market has been once again revealed to be an iron fist. And the 
people of this hemisphere will continue to defy this system, whatever 
it calls itself.