Why I am Going to Miami

As a student of globalization and development issues, I have been following the progress (or lack of it) as trade talks between the U.S. and Latin America have moved from Montreal to Seattle to Cancun. It has been nine years since the U.S. and Latin countries proposed the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and since then the parties have been unable to agree on the terms for a hemisphere-wide trade accord. In a nutshell, FTAA would extend the free trade provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the rest of Latin America. The objective would be to create a hemispheric trade block that would reduce or eliminate barriers to investment and goods between the participating countries, and create a counterweight to the European Economic Community. The U.S. also sees a free trade block as an incentive for Latin America to continue to move away from state-run economies and to accelerate free market reforms. Latin American nations themselves are promoting the fair trade agreement as a way to gain access to the U.S. market and invite more investment dollars into their own economies.

The U.S. position on free trade is similar to the positions of the EU countries: we want free access to other markets, while retaining protectionist barriers for our own favored industry groups. The FTAA talks have foundered primarily because of the lack of commitment by the U.S. to drop tariffs and subsidies that protect its own producers. As an example, President Bush signed the 2002 Farm Bill just prior to the talks in Cancun. There seemed to be an agreement between the U.S. and Europe that the U.S. would accept the EU’s export subsidies and the EU would accept the 2002 Farm Bill. Brazil responded by calling together a group of developing nations, called the Group of 20, to demand stronger commitments to free trade from developed countries. No progress was made at the Cancun meeting, and as the trade ministers headed for another summit in Miami in November 2003, the issues of steel and textile tariffs and farm subsidies remained “off the table.” As the summit drew near, and the specter of a new wave of street demonstrations loomed, I thought I would take the time to visit Miami and hear for myself what the opposition groups present had to say about the FTAA.

The intellectual opposition to free trade comes from a number of groups, some of whom have heartfelt arguments and concerns. Groups attending the Miami conference charge that opening borders to free trade promotes investors’ rights at the expense of the environment, “worker’s livelihoods, and human rights.” (Green Party flyer, “Fair Trade not Free Trade.”) Others, particularly Latin American academics, are simply socialists who have a profound mistrust of the private sector. They feel that private enterprise inherently works contrary to social goals, since private enterprise works for profit. Only the government can protect society from the predation of the rich. This mirrors the zero-sum mentality of leftist parties in the U.S., which see any gain for investors and business people (de-personalized as “capital” or “multinational corporations”) as a loss for working people and the poor. As I expected, the anti-FTAA literature at the Miami protest portrayed free trade as a contest between international corporations and the poor.

Behind the concern with the poor and the environment, there is a shadow argument concerned solely with protection of American jobs and salary levels. Labor, farm, and protected industry groups in the U.S. are less ideological than they are self-interested, and their political clout explains why the U.S. talks “free trade,” but practices protectionism. Much of the money and political pressure against the FTAA is promoted by organized labor. The same groups that opposed NAFTA now oppose the FTAA on the same grounds, and cite NAFTA as a disaster for working people and the environment. In order to gain moral force, they frame their opposition as a concern over “a race to the bottom.” Whether or not that is true is the subject for another essay, but the point I want to make here is that labor and farm groups have a self-interested agenda that belies their stated concerns for Latin America’s poor.

The disagreement over free trade is at its core a disagreement over limiting the role of the state and expanding the scope of the private sector in Latin America. The movement toward a hemispheric free trade area is an initiative to expand the role of the private sector in managing resources, operating businesses, investing across national boundaries, and gaining the freedom to contract for labor and goods with minimal government interference. Opposition groups oppose this process on moral grounds, citing the effect it will have on the poor and on the environment. If that is, in fact, the basis of the opposition to free trade, then this argument should – in theory – be resolved by a study of whether trade actually hurts or helps the poor. If the opposition is instead ideologically opposed to free enterprise, or using environmental issues as a “cover” for protectionism, then the conversation may not be resolvable at all. This was my impression on the eve of my trip, and I was interested to see if the anti-globalization forces were, in essence, protectionist and socialist.

I have been looking for someone to articulate the anti-globalization position since the demonstrations in Quebec in 2001. At my invitation, Graham Russell with Rights Action wrote an article for the Café Mundo web site in April of 2001 titled, “Why I am Going to Quebec.” It is posted in our Bookshelf section under “Articles.” His objections are principally that trade actually worsens poverty and repression in Latin America. (I can’t do his argument justice because I don’t really buy it, but you can read it for yourself.) Where does one go for a comprehensive position statement from globalization protestors? Looking for it in the press coverage of the demonstrations is truly futile exercise. News coverage of the globalization protests doesn’t tell one much about the positions of the opposition. It just portrays the intensity of their opposition.

In fairness to the press, the anti-globalization groups have a variety of positions, and the people in the streets are really making no effort to articulate their positions, other than in slogans and emotional appeals. The one comment I remember about the position of the demonstrators in Quebec came from an NBC reporter who said there were about 20,000 people demonstrating in Quebec, and when he started interviewing them he got 20,000 different reasons for why they were there. In fairness, I suppose it’s hard to initiate a scholarly debate in the street. On the other hand, if it’s a debate that you want, what are you doing in the street? When you are a minority, you gain leverage through your willingness to break the rules.

With the FTAA summit in Miami approaching, I wanted to go there myself to see who showed up and what they had to say. This is what I found.

My wife and I caught an early flight to Ft. Lauderdale on November 19th, rented a car, and drove into downtown Miami around noon. I was surprised at how dirty and generally run-down the areas around downtown Miami looked. There is a distinctive Carribean/Latin influence that comes through in the architecture, the accents, the Spanish radio stations, and the food. It is also evident in the concertina wire looped around the tops of fences, the gritty neighborhoods, the state of disrepair of buildings, and the security guards conspicuously posted in public parking lots. Our first hotel was a two-story concrete block building painted bright pink. Directly across the street was a fast food restaurant called Pollo Tropical. I say “first” because we could only stand it for one night, and moved to the slightly more upscale Days Inn close to downtown.

This was a chain hotel, mind you, and there was a security shack at the entrance to the parking lot with a guard on duty 24 hours. The staff in the hotel’s restaurant was Latino, presumably Cuban, and they had the TV tuned to the local station, which had almost continuous coverage of the demonstrations. The first afternoon of the street protests, we watched from the restaurant, eating pork chops with rice and fried plantains.  On our second visit to the restaurant, they inexplicably refused to serve us at all! (That, after I tipped generously the first time.)

We unpacked and joined up with some friends from Bureaucrash (www.bureaucrash.com) who had come to the demonstrations to “counter-protest.”  We all walked down to the Bayfront Park Amphitheater where the Citizens trade Campaign was holding a “Gala for Global Justice.” We knew we were close when we passed police cars, parked in tandem on the side streets. We walked past barricades and then a long line of police in full riot gear, standing at parade rest along the sidewalk. I affected an air of casual indifference, although I admit they made me nervous. I learned later that the police presence included a number of sheriff departments and some National Guard assets as well as what looked like the entire Miami Dade police force. Since the trade meeting was a U.S. government-sponsored event, the feds paid for the police presence.

As we approached the Amphitheater, a news team with a camera asked me for a short interview. I told them I hadn’t come to protest. Was I a tourist? “No,” I was there to watch and perhaps do an interview. Was I intimidated by the police presence? “No,” I said somewhat truthfully. “I didn’t come to throw rocks, so I don’t expect to have any confrontation with the police.” The next day the confrontations between protestors and police would begin in earnest, and I would make good on my statement by laying low in the hotel’s restaurant and watching the action on the local news channel.

The city of Miami accommodated the protesters by providing security (police), port-o-potties, press coverage, the use of Bayfront Park and the Amphitheater. The event organizers provided a space for opposition groups to set up stalls, stalls for food vendors, a sound system, and yet more security. Waiting in the crowd outside the amphitheater was like waiting in line for a rock concert. People in t-shirts with various slogans mingled in the crowd, while others passed the word back from the front of the line: “ No movie cameras. No knives. No bottles.” Some people were in line; others stood around smoking and talking. We shuffled forward; were briefly inspected and allowed inside.

The Gala for Global Justice was no spontaneous affair. The scene inside the amphitheater was more like a music festival than a protest. There were bands playing inside the shell, mostly doing blues and protest folk tunes in the style of Woody Guthrie. There was a large contingent of U.S. Steelworkers strolling around the grounds, clad in signature blue t-shirts. A lot of logistics went into planning the stage, the bands, the speakers, and the agenda. I wondered if the union presence was a tip-off about the source of the money and organizational skills behind this. At information booths set up all along the perimeter of the amphitheater there were representatives from various groups handing out literature and engaging the passers-by in conversation. Vendors were selling food, drinks and t-shirts. Next to the hot dog stand was a vendor selling arepas – corn cakes filled with cheese.

Our friends from Bureaucrash didn’t actually do any counter-protesting at the rally. It’s hard to counter-protest when the other side isn’t behaving like protestors. Instead they did some interviews with the video camera they snuck through security, and debated with bystanders. As we walked toward the stalls set up by the anti-trade groups, we passed a young woman selling t-shirts that said, “If Crime Doesn’t Pay, Why are Corporations So Rich?” I was going to ask how much money she made on each shirt, and suggest the contradiction of profiteering on a symbol of protest against profits… but that kind of thing doesn’t do much to change people’s minds. It just pisses them off. I doubt that she would have jumped up, exclaimed “I’m living a lie!” and sold the rest of her t-shirts at cost. That would, however, have been consistent with her politics.

Assembled around the walkway were perhaps a dozen of the more respectable opposition groups, including the AFL-CIO, the Alliance for Responsible Trade, Oxfam America, United Steelworkers of America, Doctors Without Borders, D3E (a Latin indigenous rights organization), the National Wildlife Federation, and Global Exchange. Having the opposition groups so neatly assembled in one area was an opportunity to meet them firsthand, and hear for myself what they had to say about FTAA.  I went by each stall, picking up literature and talking with the people behind the counter. Thus my first insight into the protest movement was that it was really a protest coalition, and one that included some strange bedfellows. There was Doctors Without Borders in a booth not far from the Teamsters. There was the Communist Party USA in a booth amidst a crowd of blue-shirted steelworkers. There was a booth handing out literature about how global trade perpetuates gender bias, and another that warned about private corporations taking control of our water.

I debated for a while with the water people. They were in the grip of some weird paranoia that private corporations were going to seize control of public water. Actually, more and more municipalities – both in the U.S. and abroad – are contracting out public services, including water treatment. There is a part of the FTAA that allows private enterprise to contract for public services as a condition of the trade pact. This is a deliberate attempt to free municipalities and consumers from the inefficiencies and political subsidies enjoyed by state-owned companies and their unions. I suspected that the water people’s alarming rhetoric about private “control” of natural resources was a straw argument. Their real concern is to preserve the power of public employees’ unions and job security of public employees.

There were some other groups that reminded me of the reporter’s remark about twenty thousand different people with twenty thousand different reasons. One the International Gender and Trade Network is concerned about “gender impacts” of free trade. A group called United For Peace and Justice was passing out an inflammatory flyer titled, “Resist the Empire!” The Communist Party USA sponsored a seminar to “discuss the path to radical transformation of the hemisphere.” (Communist Party USA, “Socialist Vision of the Americas”) Global Exchange was promoting fair trade coffee cooperatives, which would market their coffee in the U.S. with a “fair trade” certification. It costs more than unfair trade coffee – about $10 a pound at Global Exchange’s website (http://store.globalexchange.org/peace.html). While much of anti-FTAA energies are directed at artificially raising the price of commodities like coffee through tariffs, the novelty of Global Exchange’s approach is that the “tariff” for free trade coffee is voluntarily paid by the consumer. I can’t argue with that.

I approached the people at each of the booths. “So, why is Oxfam against free trade?” was my opener, and then I would let them tell me why they are in favor of “fair trade” and not “free trade.” The reasons were varied, but there were some common themes. To summarize them: free trade implies corporate “control” of water and food (a euphemism for privatizing public services), exploitation of workers in developing countries, environmental damage, and subversion of host governments’ authority to regulate labor standards and to subsidize small farmers. This might serve as a core group of arguments against the FTAA. I actually am going to the trouble to compile the arguments presented in the literature and the seminars at the protest. Look for this on the Bookshelf as “Free Trade Versus Fair Trade.” I plan to have the article done soon.

I had expected the protest movement within the U.S. to be focused on those rules that place Latin America at a disadvantage – specifically protectionist policies. What I found when I spoke with labor groups was exactly the opposite. Arguments for “fair trade” assume that the inequality between developed and developing countries requires the hand of host-country governments to equalize the relationship. This dovetails with a position in favor of tariffs and subsidies. On these points the intellectual left finds common cause with the American labor movement.

The “fair trade” movement has a heavy labor contingent whose goals are entirely protectionist. They were a visible presence at the FTAA protest, but they also operate behind the scenes. Public Citizen, for example, sponsored some of the seminars at the doubletree Hotel, and is a front organization for the AFL-CIO. The Citizens Trade Campaign, which sponsored the Gala for Global Justice and some of the seminars, describes itself as a national coalition of “environmental, labor, consumer, family farm, and religious” groups. CTC lists among its members the United Steelworkers of America, the National Family Farm Coalition, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the textile workers’ union. The CTC carries on a lobbying effort in Washington and credits itself with helping to defeat initiatives for Fast Track trade negotiating authority.

The Teamster’s union had guy working at their booth who had been a public affairs liaison for the union for years. His name was Ed. He was refreshingly candid about his opposition to FTAA. It’s about protecting the jobs of American workers. “We’ve got to keep these jobs in America,” he said, referring to our disappearing manufacturing sector. “We’re in favor of trade, but only if it’s on a level playing field.” I agreed with him that the playing field was not level. On the other hand, even if we could achieve some parity in the regulatory climate, we would not achieve parity in wages. You can’t get Brazilian employers to match a $7.50 an hour minimum wage, let along the $25 an hour starting wage made by Teamsters union members. Ed agreed, but correctly pointed out that the EU made acceptance of some labor standards a condition of admitting Spain and Greece to the European Economic Community. He had me there.

Actually, incorporating some universal labor and environmental standards into the FTAA would defuse some of the criticism about exploitation. It confounds me that free-traders are so adamant against any kind of labor or environmental standards being included in free trade agreements. Basic guarantees of workplace safety, sanitation, rights to organize, and even minimum wage could be incorporated and still preserve the cost advantages of developing countries. For that very reason, I doubt that American labor groups would drop their opposition to the FTAA even if environmental and workplace regulations were incorporated. Many anti-trade groups already state that incorporating such standards in the agreement would not go far enough.

We left the amphitheater and wandered through a local mall, cordoned off by barricade fences and more police in riot gear. Our first stop was the Hard Rock Cafe, where our friends from Bureaucrash observed a group of Steelworkers buying t-shirts. Taking out their video camera, they followed behind these customers, turning over the labels on the merchandise displayed along the racks as they passed. Label after label said, “Made in Mexico,” or “Made in China.” Here was footage of U.S. Steelworkers behaving the way any other tourists behave: dining out and shopping in gift shops. They were now caught on film buying inexpensive, imported goods that undoubtedly cost some U.S. textile worker his job! We went outside and had a good chuckle about the inconsistencies of being against “globalization” in a world where it had already become a fact of life.

Thursday was the day that the scheduled called for a march to the Intercontinental Hotel to protest against the FTAA in front of the venue where the trade ministers were actually meeting. Billed as a “Coalition March and Rally for Global Justice,” it was sponsored by “a broad coalition of organizations.” The contact person, however, was Elizabeth Drake of the AFL-CIO.

Not surprisingly, the police cordoned off the street and refused to let the protesters move from Bayfront Park Amphitheater toward downtown. We had planned to go to Bayfront Park to listen to speakers present "alternatives to neoliberal trade policies," as printed on the agenda. Instead we sat in our restaurant at the Day's Inn and watched coverage of the demonstration on the local Spanish language channel. The reporter said that the entrance to the Amphitheater had been closed off, so I felt that there was no longer any point in going downtown. All the action was in the street, where a line of demonstrators confronted a line of police in riot gear.

There were supposed to be thousands of people at the Miami protest, but there were only a few hundred at the rally in Bayfront Park on Wednesday night. There were probably less than a hundred at the seminars after the street protests three days later. I attended those seminars. I also watched live television coverage of the protests, and doubt if the number of people in the street was more than a thousand. I don’t know where the press gets their head-count.

The demonstrators were using a sort of passive-aggressive tactic with the police. They would just push against the police line, and the police would use their batons, held horizontally, to push them back. The demonstrators would line up and push against the police line, and the police would push them back. One guy stood in front of the police line and would just fall forward into them. The cops would push him back. He would stand there for a moment, and then fall forward again. The news camera was so close, I could clearly see his face, and he seemed to by crying.

The situation deteriorated as time went by. Apparently the cops approached a group of people standing around by the Amphitheater entrance and tear-gassed them without provocation. One news reporter was gassed, and gave a report later in front of the cameras. This was the first of some on-the-scene interviews with a number of protesters in the street, all of whom complained bitterly about the conduct of the cops. They accused the Miami police of "militarizing" the demonstration - a phrase that I found a little dramatic. Further reports from both sides in the confrontation show how two very different views of the same event can coexist in the media. Both sides reported incidents that they had seen or been personally involved in, but like blind men touching different parts of an elephant, they all described a different animal.

One AFL-CIO spokesman reported that the police had tear gassed a group of people who were peacefully demonstrating, and who had not charged the police line. The police responded that they recognized the AFL-CIO's right to be in the street, and said they were responding to "thugs" among the demonstrators who were throwing rocks, fruit and garbage at the police. Conflicting stories would persist through Saturday, when things quieted down. Most people arrested in the streets were booked, held briefly, and then released over the next three days.

If I can summarize my view of the elephant from a two days' worth of TV footage and my own observations, it would be this: the police responded aggressively to the actions by the demonstrators, but it was the demonstrators who provoked the confrontations. I walked across the police lines coming and going to the amphitheater on Wednesday evening, and no one bothered me. When the police directed me, or someone in my group, to move off the sidewalk, we complied. When they directed us to walk in a certain direction, we did what they told us. I am sure that if I had argued or pushed against one of the cops that I would have found myself in plastic handcuffs as well. I simply chose not to put myself in that position.

If no one had pushed against the police lines, or thrown fruit or rocks at the cops, the police would have remained standing in their positions. If no one had dragged trash and palettes into the street and set them on fire, taken down the barricades or climbed the metal fences, then the tear-gassing and arrests would not have occurred. The physical conflict was a result of the demonstrators refusing to accept the limitations on their movement imposed by the police presence. It was the demonstrators, and not the cops, who initiated physical contact. That said, I know of at least one incident where the police over-reached their moral authority, and physically abused people who were simply standing on the sidewalk.

On Saturday a TV crew caught a disturbing event outside of the jail where the protesters were being held. A group gathered outside of the jail, apparently awaiting the release of some friends, when a group of cops in riot gear rousted them from the street. As they herded them down the street, another group of police approached from the other direction, trapping the demonstrators between the two groups. The cops converged on them, hit a few people with batons, and put everyone in plastic handcuffs. This was the only real incident of police aggression that I witnessed, but in this case the demonstrators were clearly entrapped. They had moved when rousted from the sidewalk, and found they had nowhere to go. The trap looked deliberate.

An interesting comment from the press was that the actions of the anarchists among the crowd created a distraction from the legal - and more moderate - protest by labor and human rights groups. In fact, watching the media coverage gave the impression that the people in the street wearing bandanas and throwing tear gas canisters back at the police line were representative of the anti-trade protest movement. They were not. They represented the passionate, militant fringe of the protest movement. I'll bet you a hundred bucks that Ed and the rest of the Teamsters were doing what I was doing on Thursday - watching the demonstration from their hotels. The Doubletree Hotel was the Teamster hotel, and we actually saw a large van that looked a little like an assault vehicle parked outside the Doubletree Hotel on Saturday. The words "Teamster Strike Force Command Center" were stenciled on the side. The only actions I saw the “strike force” engaged in were 1) strolling around the Amphitheater, 2) shopping for t-shirts, and 3) an exchange of words with the cops outside a bar in the Bayfront shopping center.

We went to the Doubletree Hotel on Saturday for a second chance to learn more about the positions of the anti-trade groups. Having seen the emotional intensity of the protestors, I was still curious to find out what inspired such a passionate reaction to the FTAA. We spent about half the day in seminars, including a rather interesting session conducted by college professors from Latin America. Speakers from Latin America speak with a sense of authority, and are perceived as being from the front lines. I won't go into the details of their arguments here, but let it suffice to say that academics in Latin America are even less friendly toward private enterprise than are academics in the U.S..

We left the seminar Saturday afternoon, and headed for the freeway where we became ensnarled in traffic. We spent hours on the freeway en route to the airport in Ft. Lauderdale, and I had time to think about what I had heard and seen during the previous three days. I learned that the TV coverage of these demonstrations almost certainly exaggerates the numbers of protesters in the streets. If the press gets their numbers from the AFL-CIO, then they are counting union members (the “strike force”) who are basically on vacation as part of the “protest” movement. I also learned that there is another protest movement behind the scenes, conducted by well-funded and well-organized groups such as Oxfam America, the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, and a number of environmental and indigenous-rights groups. They were represented in Miami by some good people – people who have a moral conscience and who articulate their positions in terms of the interests of Latin American workers. Meeting them made me realize that the anti-trade movement is not irrational or wholly self-interested.

That implies that disagreement over free trade is a disagreement over matters of fact – specifically the impact of trade on the people of Latin America. Perhaps through dialog we can come to some consensus on this point. We can draw on the lessons of 10 years experience with NAFTA, and the lessons of decades of socialist and statist economic policies before that. I would like to invite NAFTA and FTAA opponents to join the debate over free trade here on this web site.