Four Macalester students were arrested in Miami while protesting the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The students, Jason Tanzman ’06, Jay Bowman ’07, Hiu Yan Choi ’07 and Julie Ramsey ’07, all served time in the city’s jails. Twenty Macalester students attended the protests from Thursday, Nov. 20 to Sunday, Nov. 23.

The group arrived in Miami earlier that week and joined the mass demonstration on Thursday. That afternoon, the student protesters, along with an estimated 10,000 other demonstrators, gathered to protest along a fence surrounding the hotel where FTAA negotiations were underway. According to the New York Times, approximately 300 police in riot gear were on hand.

“The police presence was unbelievable,” Tanzman said.

Many demonstrators and nearby residents complained of an aggressive and intimidating police presence, according to the New York Times. Tanzman said he witnessed several instances of what he deemed to be police brutality.

“[During the march], this one lady was pulled out and pepper sprayed for doing nothing,” he said.

The police made 81 arrests, according to police reports. Tanzman said the police began to move forward into the mass of demonstrators, pushing them back. “Anyone who fell down got arrested,” he said.

“[There was no brutality] against me in the overt sense but lots in the bureaucratic, withholding of information and food sense,” Bowman said.

While most of the arrests that occurred on Friday and Saturday were classified as petty misdemeanors, many of the charges brought against those arrested on Thursday are more serious. The accusations against the police by some protesters are more serious, including torture, rape and the sexual assault of prisoners.

The four Macalester students were all arrested Friday while protesting outside of the prison that was holding demonstrators arrested on Thursday.

“They declared a lockdown on the [prison], so we began to wonder if we were being counterproductive,” Tanzman said.

According to Tanzman, the larger group disbanded at this point and many of the Macalester students began to leave the premises. They were told to get off the road and get on the sidewalk, which they said they did. At this point they were surrounded on three sides byand Tanzman said they continued to walk away and were arrested a few blocks away.

Bowman was arrested while talking on a phone in a parking lot many blocks away. He was charged with loitering and prowling.

“The police [apparently] had a quota to fill,” Choi said of her arrest. “It was not necessary for them to arrest as many people as they did.”

“I wasn’t trying to get arrested, but I wasn’t trying not to get arrested either,” Tanzman said.

The students attended court hearings Saturday and Sunday and were released late Sunday. Bowman and Ramsey pleaded guilty but the charges were removed from their records.

There have been accusations and concerns cited by several of those involved, particularly members of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), who had organized the march, namely that the prisoners were not given vegetarian and vegan meal options, that they were sexually assaulted and that they were physically abused.

According to the New York Times, the countries “reached a partial accord that fell short of the framework for an agreement that would end tariffs among 34 nations in the Western Hemisphere.”

“It was a moderate success,” Tanzman said. “I’m not sure how much of that had to do with us, though.”

“We made our voice heard another way,” Ramsey said. “It was a mobilization of all sorts of people coming together.”