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BY MEGO LIEN

In print | Published December 4, 2003

The Miami police were thorough when they searched Evan Greer ’07 and Alec Armstrong ’07. They cut pant legs, ripped kneepads and “tested” for cups with a couple punches to the groin.

Finally satisfied, they charged Greer and Armstrong with possession of burglary tools, unlawful assembly and resisting arrest without violence. Armstrong was also charged with obstruction of justice through disguise. They hauled the students to Dade County Jail.

“This isn’t Seattle,” they said. “Motherfucking faggots.”

Greer and Armstrong spent three days in jail the week of Nov. 20 when they joined over 10,000 people in Miami to protest the negotiations of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Emily Wistar ’06, Harris Kornstein ’06, Kathy Meals ’04 and Rachel Ackoff ’07 attended the event as a separate group.

That weekend, over 250 people were arrested and more than 100 injured by police brutality, according to the Independent Media Center Web site.

“It was horrifying,” Greer said. “We got down [to Miami] Wednesday night, and there were already helicopters and armored vehicles sweeping the streets. You couldn’t tell if it was Iraq or Miami.”

Leaving Swarthmore in a Honda Civic “with two seats and a futon in the back,” Greer and Armstrong arrived in Miami on Wednesday, Nov. 17. After attending a spokescounsel planning meeting, they spent the night at the Sierra Club in Fort Lauderdale, intending to drive to the protest the next day.

Thursday morning, the Miami police had blocked traffic, so Greer and Armstrong parked two miles from the protest and started walking through the deserted streets. At 10:30 a.m., they came upon a police staging area.

“We didn’t look sketchy,” Greer said. “But they stopped us and asked us to open our bags.”

Inside, the police found rope with carabiners, as well as some wire cutters — “tools, not weapons,” Greer said. “We wanted to be prepared for the protest.”

The items gave the police reason to charge Greer and Armstrong with attempted burglary. The report notes that they also suspected the students of carrying concealed weapons under their shirts, but Armstrong said that they did not have anything under their shirts.

“They needed something to write down for probable cause,” Armstrong said of the concealed weapons report.

Before even reaching the protest, Greer and Armstrong were arrested and headed for the police station in a paddy wagon.

“[The police] just wanted people off the street,” Greer said. “They had no qualms about searching us. They didn’t care about our constitutional rights.”

Pictures taken in the streets showed police using tear gas, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and batons against people. IMC accounts described the extent of the violence in Miami, claiming that detained protesters suffered “excessive brutality, sexual assault and torture” at the hands of the police, particularly minorities and transgendered prisoners.

“There is an element of guilt,” Greer said. “We were treated well, as heterosexual white males.”

In jail, he and Armstrong were placed with other white protesters, while others were contained elsewhere.

Armstrong said that, during the entire time he and Greer spent in the jailhouse, he “never, at any stage of the process, knew what was going on” regarding police procedure and never got to speak with an attorney.

They also staged a hunger strike for vegetarian and vegan food. “That was our only success,” Greer said.

Finally, through the efforts of Katharine Sydenham ‘07 and Anna Torres ’07, who were responsible for legal support at Swarthmore, Greer and Armstrong’s parents were able to bail their sons out of jail. At the preliminary hearing, the judge threw out the students’ felony charges, but Greer and Armstrong still face $1,000 charges for attempted burglary. The hearing is set for Dec. 11 in Miami.

FTAA negotiations began after the launch of the North America Free Trade Agreement in 1994 with the goal to expand NAFTA from North America to every country in Central America, South America and the Caribbean, except Cuba. FTAA’s Ministerial Declaration states that, through its efforts, “barriers to trade and investment will be progressively eliminated” in order to “maximize market openness” in 34 countries. Negotiations are expected to be completed by 2005.

“Free trade creates more opportunities, more prosperity for people in the world,” Ahmed Kabani told The Miami Herald. On Nov. 20, Kabani staged a one-man rally for the FTAA, wielding signs that read “Peace Prevail on Earth.”

Drowning out Kabani’s efforts were the legions of activists who have reacted to the FTAA with angry disapproval. Greer, a self-labeled anti-authoritarianist, called the FTAA “an attempt by the richest members of society to exploit people in the name of free trade,” using words like “anti-democratic” and “frightening” to describe “the expansion of global capitalism.”

“The movement got its ass kicked,” Greer said, but “it wasn’t a complete failure.” The FTAA settlement at the end of the Miami summit was “watered down” and “didn’t really say much,” Greer said.

However, Greer believes that in light of the obstructive brutality they faced in Miami, activists will “require new tactics” to fight the causes they care about.

“There is no democracy in this country,” Greer said. “So we need to fight for it — in the streets, at the grassroots level.”

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