NO PHOTO

Madison residents gathered Wednesday night to discuss police brutality to protestors demonstrating against the Free Trade Area of the Americas last week.

The FTAA is, essentially, an expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement to South America, Central America and the Caribbean. The 34 countries involved in the FTAA would unite their economies into a single free-trade area with an expected collective GDP that would exceed $13 trillion. According to the United States Chamber of Commerce’s website, the FTAA would create the largest trading block in the world, and since NAFTA created “millions of export-related jobs,” the FTAA is expected to have a similar impact.

However, the FTAA is expected to be more deregulated and more privatized, effectively giving more power to corporations. Those in opposition say the effects of NAFTA have proved to be devastating for working class people. According to Global Exchange, an international human-rights organization, as a result of NAFTA, 765,000 jobs in the United States have disappeared and manufacturing wages in Mexico fell 21 percent from 1995 to 1999.

Those in opposition also say NAFTA has been bad for the environment. Because of improper disposal of chemical wastes on the United States and Mexico border, there has been an increase in pollution, which has raised rates of hepatitis and birth defects. These issues are expected to be exacerbated with the creation of the FTAA. The FTAA is also expected to put family farmers out of business as agribusinesses take over.

One attendee at the meeting posed the question: Are we in a waiting game for more people to wake up? Most attendees of the meeting came to the conclusion that until people experience firsthand a real crisis in the job market, they remain apathetic. Another attendee showed frustration with the general population’s lack of “simple human compassion.”

“Students need to wake up and see that there are no jobs for them,” said Jeff Ryan, one attendee at the meeting. “They are being sold a dream that doesn’t exist. The reality is that they are worse off than their parents.”

Thousands of protesters came to Miami this past week to oppose the FTAA and were treated violently by riot police. Madison protesters were attacked by police wielding batons, tear gas, pepper spray, wooden and plastic bullets, shock batons and other chemical agents.

“Police were extremely brutal; it was heinous,” Ryan said.

Hundreds of people were hospitalized; medics, journalists and legal observers were specifically targeted for attack and arrest; and facilities providing emergency medical services were invaded and gassed.

Even in the face of such police aggression, one Madison resident, Josh Pitts, felt liberated at the protest.

“Despite being brutally attacked with a baton butt to the center of my collar bone, I felt liberated because of the unity demonstrated by steelworkers, the local African American neighborhood of Overtown and even water-utility workers of Miami-Dade County in a state of near-martial law.”

Next Wednesday, anyone interested is encouraged to come to a meeting at the Union where people will discuss the Miami protests. Attendees of next Wednesday’s meeting will be looking for ideas to move forward and decide how to respond to what happened in Miami.