"This is not America." (Salon- 1day pass req'd)

It was the end of two days of what many observers called unprecedented
police vindictiveness and violence toward activists. Certainly, complaints
about the police have become a standard ritual after each major
globalization protest. But what happened in Miami, say protesters, lawyers,
journalists and union leaders, was anything but routine.

Armed with millions of dollars of new equipment and inflamed by weeks of
warnings about anarchists out to destroy their city, police in Miami donned
riot gear, assembled by the thousand, put the city on lockdown and
unleashed an arsenal of crowd control weaponry on overwhelmingly peaceful
gatherings.

Videos taken at the scene show protesters being beaten with wooden clubs,
shocked with Taser guns, shot in the back with rubber bullets and beanbags,
and pepper-sprayed in the face. Retirees were held handcuffed and refused
water for hours. Medics and legal observers, arrested in large numbers, say
they were targeted. A female journalist, arrested during a mass roundup,
was made to strip in front of a male policeman. A woman's entire breast
turned purple-black after she was shot there, point-blank, with a rubber
bullet.