...I came to Miami with eight students from Harvard University, where I have been teaching a study group on social movements this semester. They carried with them questionnaires to sample the opinions of this new generation of protestors, and received a first-hand education in police suppression today.

...Global Exchange co-founder Medea Benjamin and others were pulled over Thursday night by a dozen officers who pointed guns at them. The Sierra Club's Washington D.C. advocate, Dan Seligman, also described officers holding a weapon to his head and that of another colleague. Mark Rand, coordinator of a group of foundation funders, displayed a large bluish bruise on his back leg from a rubber bullet.

...A minute later, I learned that Democracy Now's Ana Nogueira – and her camera – had been enveloped and arrested too. It was another experiment in the "Miami model." What I remembered of this imperial aggressiveness at the ballot box from November 2000 now seemed to be repeating itself on the streets.

...Police subsequently informed the larger world that a mob of menacing protestors had disobeyed orders to dissolve an unlawful assembly and were treated accordingly.

In truth they may have radicalized the next generation of America's future leaders.

posted by Cyndy | link | | |