Princetonian Jailed: An Interview with Chris Thomas

By Danilo Mandic '07

November 19 - 21, 2003: tens of thousands gathered in Miami to protest the ministerial meetings of the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit. This was by far the largest protest of the kind since the infamous demonstrations in Seattle. What the protesters in Miami encountered as they assembled outside the gates to the building housing the FTAA talks was nothing short of a police riot. Thousands were beaten and tear-gassed, hundreds were arrested.  Chris Thomas '07 was among those at the protest.

DM: First of all, for those of us who aren't informed about what was going on, tell us, in your own words, what the protests in Miami last week were about and why you felt you had to go there.

CT: Well, last week, trade ministers from 34 countries in the western hemishpere - from North, Central and South America - met in Miami to negotiate the FTAA, which is the Free Trade Area of the Americas. When NAFTA was established in 1994, this was kind of set out as a part of that to be negotiated and they’ve been working on it since then. It's basically an expansion of NAFTA. Except that there is a lot more power involved, and on a much broader scale – to all of Central and South America. Essentially what it does is eliminate government restrictions on trade and opens this free market to something like 800 million consumers that live in these countries. It also extends it to the countries in the Caribbean. So, all of the Western hemisphere, except Cuba, of course, (chuckles). Although they don't have everything figured out yet, it has the possibility of being just disastrous for the economies of these countries, for human rights, for environmental regulations, for education even. It basically leads to a lot of privatized stuff. It's supposed to be bringing good to a lot of these countries and increasing equality, but as we've seen from NAFTA, this good has been of very small scope comparatively. Otherwise, it has been disastrous. There are varying opinions on this, but by the very standards of the economists who supported NAFTA before it was established in '94, which predicted 170 000 new jobs per year here in the United States for the first two years. Based on the very same formulas that they used, there has actually been a loss of 100 000 jobs. Another effect that it has is that it affects unions in America, so that when we are trying to fight corporate executives, they go “well, all right, if you’re gonna go on strike, we are going to shut this factory down and move to Mexico.” Thanks to NAFTA, we are now left with an impossibility. I mean, it makes it a lot harder for unions in America to negotiate. So what’s happening is basically a race to the bottom as far as wage labor and manufacturing go. In the United States, obviously, manufacturing has been declining under these policies. Because of the standards of living here, it is convenient to move to a country that is economically much worse off, where there is a lot of poverty, a lot of inequality and where people will work for a lot less money. This doesn’t mean that the corporations will charge less for the product, I mean; they will charge the same price to make more profit and lower working conditions. Now, there are different scenarios, but a company can sue a government (this has already happened, actually, in Canada) if it feels that the environmental regulations are hindering its profit. I don’t know the details, but…

DM: O.K. So that’s a pretty good, general overview. So you felt to had to take a – what was it? – ten hour plus drive down to Miami?

CT: It was a twenty seven hour bus drive, including stop-overs and all that good stuff.

DM: Give us the run-down of the trip and the event itself. What were your general impressions of the protest? How big was it?

CT: Well, it’s really hard to estimate the exact number of people there. We got there Wednesday night and there were already a lot of people and direct actions organized at 7 AM the next morning. During the time I was there, I don’t know if there was ever a point where all the people, all the activists were together. There was also another – the FLCIO had a permitted rally.

DM: What’s that?

CT: It’s like a labor and union organization. So they had steel workers, and labor unions, and all sorts of organizations from all over the country had tens of thousands of people there at this permitted rally. That was later in the day, on Thursday. I don’t know how many thousands of people we had, but basically, since the outset, we were getting harassed by the police. We had different groups converging. One of them had this sort of symbolic action thing going on against the WTO and the FTAA.

DM: This is the kind of thing that was done in Seattle.

CT: Yeah, yeah.

DM: Did you get into this little group?

CT: Well yeah, I was in this one group that marched to the building hosting the meeting and basically, we got boxed in by the riot police there.

DM: Was the riot police there the entire time – all day?

CT: Downtown Miami was shut down the entire week, before we even got there. They were taking people off the streets. You know, if they see you walking around and you look like a radical or something, they would pull you over and arrest you.

DM: This was without any incidents…

CT: Without any incidents. All right, so, I was in jail on Friday through Sunday, and one of the guys I saw in there actually had nothing to do with the demonstrations. He was just profiled along with us. I mean, not that any of us deserved to be in there more than he did, but…just the fact that he was walking around the street and he got pulled in. And he’s been in jail since Tuesday or Wednesday or something like that. They had undercover “snatch squads” in SUV, they would pull over next to people on the street, beat them. They had an incredible arsenal of guns using rubber bullets, plastic bullets, tear gas, pepper sprays…

DM: Concussion grenades…

CT: Concussion grenades, yeah. They had electric shields even. All of these things were used, of course.

DM: These were used on non-violent protesters, though.

CT: Yeah, they were. You know, everything you saw on the news about all the violence and confrontation…and I’m not gonna say that everyone there was not gonna cause any damage or anything like that, but the demonstrations were largely, largely non-violent. Especially the things that I felt we are a part of. There were instances of vandalism and things like that but even lots of that anger comes from the way we were being treated by the police. The group that I was in had a Free Carnival of the Americas and there were drums and musicians, and so on. So we made it to the fence, where we were cornered. We were surrounded on all sides by riot cops who were pushing us in.

DM: This was on Thursday?

CT: This was on Thursday morning. We got up at like six o’clock to go down there. I was on the front line between the riot cops who were trying to hold the line so that we didn’t get completely run over. They were pushing us into one another, there was no space, they were pinning us in completely. The one girl next to me, who had no helmet or shield or anything – just bare head – the cop smashed her a couple of times over the head with a wooden baton. She was bleeding from the head. They also used teasers, which hurt people in the past even. They used pepper spray. Everyone thought the pepper spray was really bad. They had undercover cops who were dressed like protesters who had icons like “Yeah, fuck the FTAA!” and then all of a sudden, it would seem like a riot started out between the protesters. Then you could see people who looked like us, who were wearing these bandanas, and they would be dragging people away.

DM: So these were undercover cops, dressed like protesters, trying to incite incidents to give an excuse for banging people on the head.

CT: Yeah. I mean, they didn’t even try justifying it. The police chief…what was his name? You can look it up online. Timoney, or something like that [Ed: Police Chief Jonathan Timoney]. His view, and he’s been public about this, is, you know, these people are going to come into our city and vandalize it and break all the property, and we’re not going to stand for that. So basically, anyone who looked like “those people” that he characterized would be profiled and you had no rights down there. They would just come up and they would take you away. They would search you, they would take things off of you, arrest you. So that was the morning action and it was very violent, but it was nothing compared to later during the day. There was that FLCIO march with tens of thousands of people. As soon as that got done and we started clearing up, there was a battle downtown. Riot cops started shooting people. There were members of the media who were profiled as trespassers. The cops would just come up to them, spray them in the face – lawyers, reporters, activists, I mean – there was just total disregard for everything. They would shoot randomly into the crowds. There was tear gas and people were being bombarded with rubber bullets. There were homeless people on the side of the street, and still they were shooting at will into the crowds.

DM: Tell us about the actual jail experience.

CT: Ok, well on Thursday, there were between 130 and 150 people arrested.

DM: Was this all at once?

CT: No, this was through the day. There were really no mass arrests. On Friday, the meetings were shut down. They passed a watered-down version which, a lot of people say, was due to the protests. If the negotiations had gone on, it would have been different, probably. So part of our focus was community building, community action, outreach, and jail solidarity. We were fighting the image that people held that we were there to vandalize the city. So, there were about four or five of us waiting outside the jail cells where people were being held since one o’clock with water and food, help with legal forms and stuff like that. At about two o’clock, there was a press conference about a block away, and from there, they marched around the corner right in front of us at this Day County Jail. There were 300 people there, making a lot of noise. “Let them go, let them go!” This meant a lot to the people inside. I mean, the ones who were in jail later reported how appreciative they are because they could hear them inside. It does make a difference. It was very demoralizing, considering the way we were being treated. But immediately, the riot cops showed up and surrounded the jail. They surrounded the block that we were on. They made a deal with us, supposedly, that if we stay off the streets, the riot cops would back off.

DM: They made a deal with you? How’s that? An officer came and…

CT: Well, we had a negotiator. A liaison – like a lawyer who was working with us. Eventually, they said that this was an illegal assembly and that we had three minutes to leave. There was only one way they would let us leave. Most people listened but there was a group of five or six people who decided that they weren’t going to be pushed around this way and they were arrested. And they were sitting down, with, like (shows a peace sign with his hand) peace signs and stuff. They were taken away. There were also people who were trying to disperse and they were being pursued by the riot cops. They were pinned down and arrested very violently, pepper sprayed. They would even arrest people from ten blocks away supposedly because of the same action. I mean, they would surround people randomly. I was in a group of about three of us who were waiting for the cops to go away so we could go back later, and we were taken away.

DM: Were you pepper-sprayed?

CT: On Thursday, not on Friday.

DM: So not during your actual arrest.

CT: No, not during the arrest.

DM: How did the arrest go – how did the guy who actually dragged you away treat you?

CT: Well, I was actually treated much better than most people were. They gave me those zip cuffs – those are really hardcore – and they bit into my hands and my wrists a lot. We were walked into the back of this patty-wagon with low to no ventilation. For about two to three hours. There was about 80 people arrested initially, and probably more than that throughout the whole thing. Then they brought us back to this parking garage that looks like a metro station. There’s a processing center in there, where they take your paper work and record what supposedly happened and what you supposedly did. Then they lock you up in your cell in this parking garage – I was in there for a couple of hours but some people were in there for a long time. If you had been pepper sprayed, they put you under a very cold fire hose shower. They cut your clothes off. There were females with us, some of them members of the press who had been arrested, and there would be a male officer cutting their clothes off and putting them under this cold shower. Then they give you hospital garments – hospital clothing. The two guys who were in there had their shoes thrown away, their socks thrown away - they had to walk on their bare feet. So, they eventually moved us from there to this one jail, TJK. Our particular group got there at midnight. That was about six hours we spent in processing. In our cell, there were about 20-30 people in there. The last person finally was allowed water eleven hours after the arrest. I mean, this is Miami – it’s hot! Plus people have pepper spray all over their clothing. Some were bleeding…

DM: How old were the people in your cell?

CT: There were people from about 16-17 years old onward and there was this one guy who was probably seventy or eighty years old.

DM: Did you talk to them much? Were they mostly activists?

CT: There were all sorts of people in there. There’s union people, there’s people who have been activists their whole life, there were environmentalists, progressively-minded people, communists, socialists, anarchists…the anarchists are probably the most misconceived group there because they are portrayed in the news just as these people who vandalize things, but there really is a lot more to it than that. It was a very, very diverse group of people. And it was a wonderful group of people – I met people who were probably some of the most wonderful I’ve ever met. They were welcoming, very supportive of each other. There were people who you met just five minutes ago who would give you the shirt off their back. Very caring of each other, it was a terrific experience, as far as that goes.

DM: What do you think about the media’s popular image of irrational, violent, usually anarchistic people that the police have to defend themselves from?

T.M.: Yeah, well I think it’s unfortunate. The media coverage has been atrocious. Exactly what you mentioned – the way they are portraying the violence. They said that we were throwing tear gas at them, and all these things. It’s complete lies, basically. Most people have access, or only choose to have access to the mainstream media and they get the idea that we deserved this. Not that when we were in the cell, we didn’t get water for eleven hours, people didn’t get to contact their lawyers, people didn’t get phone calls.

DM: Violations of rights?

CT: Great violations of the constitution. The constitution was not applicable down there. Rights were violated left and right.

DM: How long before you were allowed to make a phone call?

CT: 24 hours later, after I had already had my bond hearing. And it was a collect call, it wasn’t a free call. So, I didn’t get to speak to a lawyer before my bond hearing. I got to speak to a public defender literally ten seconds before I got to speak to the judge. It’s a shame because tens of thousands of union people showed up, and then lots of them turned away. I heard, I don’t know if this is true, but the FLCIO reported that 170 odd buses were turned away. This isn’t just a movement of people who are anti-capitalist or anti-government – it includes those people – but it is a very diverse movement. It affects us all, whether we want to realize or not, whether we choose to care about it and understand it, or not. The way the media is portraying it is not conducive in getting more support. And furthermore, another unfortunate incident that you see at FTAA and WTO protests is that what comes across is the violence, but not of the police. But that all gets lost when we are beaten by the police, and the police this and the police that. It’s unfortunate that they don’t let people see the gruel way the police is acting and it also takes away from the actual reason why we’re there. You see the connection between the state and corporate interests when you have the police just brutally suppressing people’s rights to express themselves. Even people who do hear the news about this say “Oh yeah, there are protests down there. So, what is the FTAA?”

DM: Speaking of which, can you suggest some good sources of info for people to educate themselves about this issue – some good web sites maybe?

CT: In terms of a media source, there’s a very good one with individuals working from all over the world, which is IndyMedia, and if you go to their website at www.indymedia.org, you can find out information about them and also links to a lot of sites, including the official NAFTA website, FTAA, World Bank, all of these things. There’s www.ftaa.org , and basically you can go online and search for yourself. After reading over the NAFTA and FTAA website, it was very difficult to get anything useful from those because they are so vague and often ignore certain facts.

DM: Another popular media stereotype of people who attend these rallies is that they are not well-educated people, that they never come from “elite” centers like Princeton and that people like that are not really involved. Furthermore, some say that they shouldn’t be involved. What do you think about that?

CT: Well, obviously, I don’t agree with it, being from Princeton and having been down there. This is something that affects everyone. It doesn’t matter who you are. I feel that our world is going in a very dangerous direction in terms of the corporate interests and how they tie in with the government, and that affects everyone. Some people who are unwilling to accept that as a reality. As powerful as they are, I don’t want to accept that fact that corporations will be running the world along with the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF. So, I think it is important because when you have corporate interests tromping government interests and human interests, it is a question of profit. They don’t care about people. They don’t care about human life. They don’t care about the environment. Anyone who cares about these things should take notice. I don’t want to live in a world like that, I don’t want to grow up in a world like that, I don’t want my kids to grow up in a world like that. As much alienation as there is in the anti-globalization movement, especially in the United States, if you are there for the right reasons and if you are really committed to it, people are not going to judge you. People are very welcoming. Community down there, as I was saying, was the most wonderful thing.

DM: Solidarity.

CT: Absolutely! I went down there knowing nobody and I met some amazing people and got to hang out with them, work with them, spent time with them in an office building and in a local church where they were having people sleep over and were taking care of them. Amazing people, if you fall down, they’re always gonna help you up. That is a microcosm of a world in which I wanna live in. It’s not an exclusive, elitist kind of thing, it’s, you know, “we’re all humans, and we’re going to work together.”

DM: Let’s wrap it up with a bit of a romantic question. If you could rewind to before the protest, knowing that you are going to spend two days in jail and get tear gas in your eyes, would you go again? Any regret?

CT: I would definitely do it again. Including jail. It was hard, especially when you’re alone in jail, but I personally and lots of people I know down there are not going to be coward by this. They’re not going to be harassed and they are going to still speak out. You can pull us through what you will, but it’s not going to silence our voices.

DM: Thanks, Chris!

Danilo can be reached at dmandic@princeton.edu.