MIAMI -- Cruise ships are fleeing the Port of Miami. The School Board is evacuating its headquarters. The federal courthouses are shutting down and state court judges are clearing their dockets for a potential crush of arrested protesters.
Miami -- long bedeviled by hurricanes and civil disturbances -- is bracing for a storm unlike any this city has seen.
Trade ministers from the Western Hemisphere's 34 democratic nations -- all but Cuba -- will gather in downtown Miami on Nov. 19-21 to iron out the rules for uniting the 800 million people from Alaska to Argentina into the largest free-trade zone in the world. Their closed-door sessions at the Intercontinental Hotel overlooking Biscayne Bay will be preceded by two days of meetings with business and corporate leaders, bringing an estimated 1,000 delegates downtown.
Free-trade opponents hope, however, to upstage the negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, with street protests expected to draw anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 demonstrators. They run the gamut from trade unionists fearful of losing jobs, to environmentalists concerned about lax regulations overseas to social-justice advocates worried about exploiting the poor.
Barred from the negotiating table, they count their strength in numbers and are trumpeting the call to "Stop the FTAA in Miami" on scores of Internet sites.
"We need to have a show of force," said Marie Skoczylas, 26, project coordinator of the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, which is bringing in about 300 people by bus. "Supposedly we live in a democracy, right? So to have our say, we need a show of force of people who disagree with what's being done without our input."
'Battle in Seattle'
Police, armed with a controversial ordinance curtailing what protesters can carry, expect most demonstrators to be peaceful and law-abiding. Still, they figure about 2 percent will converge on Miami with mayhem in mind, creating the kind of made-for-TV images of flaming trash bins, broken storefronts and police in riot gear that the so-called "battle in Seattle" has burned into the national consciousness.
Fueled by the growing movement against corporate-led globalization, protesters disrupted the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting held in Seattle, a watershed event that caught police off guard and raised the bar for future protests.
By the time order was restored, 200 National Guard troops were patrolling the streets, more than 600 people were in jail and businesses were left with $3 million in broken windows and ruined equipment and merchandise. Most of the targets were familiar icons of capitalism: Niketown, Old Navy, McDonald's and Starbucks.
Such images, which Miami police are sharing with downtown merchants, have convinced many businesses to shut down or relocate for the week.
Among them is Carnival Cruise Lines. Taking what Carnival spokesman Tim Gallagher calls "a prudent approach," the company is moving five ships, scheduled to make 15 departures, from Miami's port, just adjacent to downtown, to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. Two other cruise lines are following suit, but with fewer ships.
The School Board is relocating four schools in the downtown area to other facilities and shuttering its headquarters for at least two days.
Citing "the interest of public safety," Chief U.S. District Judge William Zloch also suspended operations at Miami's three federal courthouses. Ditto for Miami-Dade's circuit courts, which canceled all jury trials.
Courts set to close
Court spokeswoman Nan Markowitz said judges thought better of summoning potential jurors into unfamiliar territory "when we're unsure what will be going on." But, she acknowledged a convenient side benefit: Should the jails swell with protesters, there will be plenty of jurists available to conduct timely bond hearings.
But avoiding a repeat of the trouble in Seattle is uppermost on the minds of Miami's civic and business leaders. For a city that touts itself as the "Gateway to the Americas," there's much at stake. With the backing of Gov. Jeb Bush, Miami is among eight cities vying for FTAA's permanent headquarters.
Slated for completion in January 2005, the FTAA accord would expand the North American Free Trade Agreement among the United States, Mexico and Canada to the rest of the hemisphere, easing tariffs and eliminating trade barriers across Latin America, the Caribbean and North America.
The headquarters would employ about 200 people and draw visitors from across the Americas. But more important to Miami, it would elevate the city's prestige on the international stage, much as Brussels' stature has grown as the hub of the European Union.
"Viewed from London or Moscow, Miami is basically inconsequential. The thing that put it on the map was Miami Vice," said Tom Cash, a security analyst who as the former agent in charge of Miami's Drug Enforcement Administration knows a bit about the city's vices.
"They need a global identity, and the FTAA is a good opportunity to do that," he said.
Miami has the edge
Jorge Arrizurieta, executive director of Florida FTAA, thinks Miami has a competitive edge on its rivals. He notes that, with the exception of Mexico, Florida already is the largest trading partner with every nation in the proposed FTAA zone, and home to immigrants from all of them.
The city also has the distinct advantage of hosting next week's ministerial meeting, which, if all goes well, could seal Miami's sales pitch.
"It's fair to say that everybody who's competing for this would love to showcase who they are," Arrizurieta said. "None of this guarantees it, but doing a good job is important."
For police, doing a good job means keeping order in a state of predictable chaos and high anxiety.
Commuting is a guaranteed nightmare. To accommodate protesters and secure the hotels where dignitaries and other delegates will meet, police are closing many downtown streets and two stops of the Metromover, part of Miami's elevated-train system.
Large security zone
Much to the dismay of civil libertarians and free-speech advocates, a large security zone will keep protesters almost six blocks away from the audience they most want to reach: the 34 ministers hobnobbing at the Intercontinental. So, too, will nearly 5,000 feet of barricades the city is leasing from a Tennessee company for more than $119,000.
"This is the new weapon against protesters," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, president of the Miami chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. "We no longer have to beat them with sticks. We simply relegate them to an area where they cannot be heard."
Police are taking many of their cues from Seattle's Police Department, where the chief resigned in the wake of his city's fiasco. Today, Clark Kimerer, Seattle police deputy chief of operations, candidly admits the city was unprepared for the tactics that protesters used in Seattle.
"This had layers we had not seen before," Kimerer said. "They had communications systems, spotters, walkie-talkies, high-ground observation points. They were moving tactically and flanking police and conventioneers."
Miami police Chief John Timoney said his force and reinforcements from neighboring jurisdictions are prepared to handle whatever comes.
"We're going to be fine," he said. "People should calm down. You're in good hands. Chill out."
He expects the bulk of the protesters to be "AFL-CIO types" with legitimate grievances because "their jobs are at stake." The union has a parade permit for Nov. 20 and expects 25,000 marchers. At least 10 busloads of retirees and unionists from Central Florida are expected to participate.
A second group, he said, will be passive resisters who are basically nonviolent but subject to arrest because they'll try to impede traffic or block access to businesses. He's familiar with many of their tactics, but so, too, would anyone be who surfs the Internet.
It's no secret, for example, that many in the Pittsburgh contingent plan to form "padded blocs," self-contained groups of people who pad their bodies and arm themselves with shields to move through phalanxes of police. Sometimes, they employ kiddie pools and inner tubes as padding and garbage-can lids as shields.
In a call to action posted on its Web site, the Pittsburgh Organizing Group makes its intentions clear: "We envision a total shutdown of the meetings through the combination of diverse tactics."
The third and smallest group, Timoney said, contains the "so-called anarchists who are hell-bent on assaulting police officers, destroying property and tearing down barricades."
New ordinance likely
Somewhere in the mix falls a group of young idealists who have been consigned to a land of limbo by the city's newest ordinance.
Up for likely passage just four days before the world spotlight shines on Miami, the proposed law bans glass bottles, water balloons and squirt guns and limits the size of one of the most basic parade and protest staples, wooden sticks.
That puts Melodie Malfa in a quandary. A member of the Lake Worth Global Justice Group, Malfa, 26, and other artists have spent the past month producing giant puppet heads and placards, both mounted on wooden sticks, so fellow protesters can trumpet the group's anti-FTAA message.
Under the new ordinance, she suspects most of the props would be illegal, but on the eve of the summit, she refuses to be silenced.
"Corporations have huge PR departments and can afford commercials. We don't have any money. This is our PR campaign," Malfa said. "To tell us how we can say our message is indicative of the very trade meeting we oppose. It's done in secret, and it restricts our democracy by putting decision-making at the corporate level."
Maya Bell can be reached at mbell@orlandosentinel.com or 305-810-5003.
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