Hundreds of police in riot gear braced for a crescendo of dawn-to-dark protest in Miami today in a heavily guarded city center that has taken on the surreal look of a community awaiting a siege.
About 1,000 free trade opponents massed for a demonstration this morning, with some conflicts and pushing between them and police. Some of the protesters wore bandannas across their bottom half of their faces or surgical masks. Others carried gas masks.
``There's an expectation that something will happen. We'll see,'' Miami Police Chief John Timoney told WTVJ-TV as marchers gathered. ``We've got plenty of police officers out there.''
More than 10,000 protesters were expected to join an AFL-CIO march through downtown Thursday in opposition to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would unite 34 countries into the world's largest free-trade zone.
Union organizers pledged that the march will be peaceful and designated about 800 parade marshals to help keep the peace and point out any violent agitators to authorities.
Still, police have escalated operations in anticipation of the march, remembering violent demonstrations that marred similar free trade meetings, including five days of riots during a 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.
Parts of downtown Miami resembled a police state. Checkpoints with armed officers blocked pedestrians without proper credentials on several streets. Squad cars were on almost every block. Troopers searched vehicles before they could move on.
Officers in riot gear were stationed throughout downtown as others patrolled on bicycles, in cruisers and on foot. The Coast Guard cruised Biscayne Bay, next to downtown.
And under their watch, business owners shuttered facades in fear of vandalism related to protests.
``Everybody is scaring us. They say there's going to be trouble,'' said Sami Virani, who was placing plywood in the window of his shop Watch Time. ``It's worst than a hurricane.''
In preparing for the weeklong Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting, police have long suspected that if trouble were to erupt, today is the day, with the trade ministers of the 34 participating nations finally in town.
The tension in an edgy Miami only increased Wednesday afternoon when police announced what they said was disturbing evidence that at least some of the thousands of people in town to protest the trade talks were planning violence.
After arresting seven people in an abandoned mansion, police took news reporters on a tour of the historic home on Biscayne Bay near Northeast 71st Street to show potential weapons, including chains, tire irons, a wrench, shards of glass and two red canisters of flammable liquid.
Also in the house, built in 1929 and once occupied by the pioneer Burdine family of department store fame, were walkie-talkies, a gas mask, a bolt cutter and several bicycle tire tubes that police said could be used as "wrist rockets" to fling objects into crowds.
"They seem hard-core," Miami Police Chief John Timoney said of the six men and one woman in their 20s, who were charged with burglary. "We're expecting a whole variety of things, but we're prepared."
Despite the arrests, organizers of several groups working out of a rented warehouse on Miami Avenue insisted they were committed to nonviolence as they went over plans to protest the trade negotiations going on under near lockdown security in downtown hotels.
"We think the police repression is going to be intense," said protester Rocky Pyskoty, 25, from Chicago. "But hopefully all will go smoothly."
Also hoping for calm was AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who stopped by the protesters' welcome center Wednesday to show union support for the people from all over the country who have come to oppose the trade pact.
"We have been working with the police, and we have every expectation of a peaceful rally and march," he said.
Two hours before the unionists gather, several thousand members of the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans are scheduled to rally.
Early on, authorities estimated the number of potential protesters would number between 20,000 and 100,000.
But although there are scores of young out-of-towners walking the streets in the vicinity of the warehouse, police may have scaled back earlier expectations.
"The 100,000 [figure] is ludicrous," said Timoney. "Probably up to 35,000 people. But we'll see."
Whatever the number, local police with backup from some 40 other state, federal and municipal departments seemed to be taking no chances that Miami would witness anything like the bloody street fighting and property destruction that erupted during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.
As the trade conference entered a fourth day, squads of flak-jacketed SWAT teams, tank-like armored personnel carriers and even water cannons were massed in staging areas around near-deserted downtown bank buildings, under freeway overpasses and behind fenced-in checkpoints, ready to roll at the first hint of unruliness.
With the top ministers of the participating nations now in town, some protesters have vowed to show their opposition to the proposed trade agreement by attacking the symbols of corporate power they accuse of profiting at the expense of the working poor and the environment.
The first protest is planned to begin at 7 a.m. when a coalition of anti-trade-pact groups stages what organizer Doyle Canning calls a direct action "solidarity shout-out" and puppet show outside the Miami-Dade County government center.
Ordinarily, thousands of county employees would be arriving for work at the downtown high-rise, but it is unclear how many people will show up as usual on a day that authorities say arrives with a high likelihood of violence.
City and county officials urged nonessential employees to take the rest of the week off.
Absenteeism could be even higher today after the discovery of the anarchist materials that police made an effort to publicize. Reporters were notified by e-mail Wednesday afternoon of the arrests, and authorities conducted tours for dozens of reporters through the once-elegant home in one of Miami's oldest neighborhoods.
Reporters were shown a small supply of canned food and ginseng pills, and several items of clothing, including a gray sweater bearing a patch with the inscription: "We are all political prisoners. Austin Anarchist Black Cross."
After being tipped to the break-in by neighbors who saw people going in and out of the house carrying boxes, police wasted no time in seizing on the find to back up their claims that they needed the massive show of force that has been marshaled to deal with protest.
"We are prepared for the worst," said Miami Police Lt. William Schwartz. "This shows us our intelligence has been accurate."
Although the visible number of protesters appears to be much lower than expected, and although few of them profess violence, Schwartz said the discovery shows that anarchists may be poised for action in others parts of Miami-Dade County.
"Clearly if this exists [here], it exists elsewhere," he said.
Also arrested Wednesday was a 26-year-old man who threw what initially appeared to be a stick of dynamite at a Florida Highway Patrol trooper in downtown Miami.
Police later determined the tube was not an explosive. Jan C. Orillac of Miami was charged with aggravated assault with intent to commit a felony.
At the warehouse on Miami Avenue at Northeast 23rd Street that some anti-trade groups have turned into a protester welcome center and 1960s-style commune, there was little sign Wednesday of plans more sinister than expressing some passionately held views on the dark side of globalization. Instead, some protesters seemed intent on grabbing a tofu sandwich and perhaps scoring a shower for the first time in a week.
But as the major day of protest neared, there was some fear on the protesters' side as well.
"I have had experience with Timoney before," said Adam Eidinger, 30, referring to the hard line that Miami's top cop took against street demonstrations when he commanded Philadelphia police. "We're not naďve."
Around the warehouse, new arrivals joined a bustling mini-city of enthusiastic activists, many of them the children of people who marched against the Vietnam War. They put the finishing touches on oversized puppet heads, painted anti-FTAA signs, and prepared a wheeled effigy of the Statue of Liberty, lynched on a wooden scaffold, for a 20-block journey downtown.
"We understand that FTAA is not just about free trade," said Canning, 23, from Burlington, Vt. "It is about corporate power, democracy itself. We want to express our vision of a better world."
Miami has been the scene of many protests, including some that have exploded into riots. The most searing was the 1980 racial unrest that followed the acquittal of police officers accused of the fatal beating of a black man. Almost 20 people were killed in the days of mayhem that followed.
More often, street protest in Miami in recent years has involved Cuban exile politics. Musicians and theater groups from the communist island, a 1990 visit from South African leader Nelson Mandela, and in 2000 the impassioned drama over the young Cuban refugee Elián González all drew tens of thousands of people to the street to shout and sing.
The differences between those more typical Miami demonstrations and the street theater taking place this week are stark. Most of those marching down Biscayne Boulevard are from out of town. There are no Cuban flags being waved. And no one is talking about Fidel Castro, a surefire catalyst for unrest in South Florida. The Cuban leader represents the only nation in the region not to be invited to take part in the FTAA.
Staff Writers Sandra Hernandez, Madeline Baró Diaz, Edgar Sandoval, Ann W. O'Neill, Robert Nolin, Christy McKerney, Taimy Alvarez and Milton D. Carrero Galarza contributed to this report.
Diana Marrero can be reached at dmarrero@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5005.
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