The Importance and Relevance of DISUR
BOOK PRESENTATION: DISSENT
Policing Social Control and The Anti-Globalization Movement By: Emmanuelli Rolando Jimenez JD, LL.M.
February 17, 2011
Museum of the History of Ponce
Sponsored by the Athenaeum Inter Ponce and Luis A. Ponce
Fernandez, is assistant professor at the University of Northern Arizona. His book was published in 2008 and reprinted in 2009 by the prestigious publishing Rutgers University Press. Professor
. My most sincere compliments.
The aim of the book by Luis A. Fernandez is a study in depth the mechanisms of repression of dissent from the anti-globalization movement that he calls "social control of dissent, for the variety of strategies in the use of force. Mechanisms of control groups in three areas that almost concentric circles intersect: Control Physical, Psychological and Legal.
The author reviews the look and metaphor of Michel Foucault, the great French philosopher, about the fact that the state and global supranational organizations like the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization, consider these movements such as leprosy, plague, to be controlled at all costs by fear, isolation, aparcelamiento and violence, so as not to disseminate pernicious for the rest of society and nations.
The author begins with the indisputable premise that the corporate forces of globalization, through the creation of supranational and global institutions increasingly powerful, direct to the States in the use of repressive mechanisms to keep people defeat the selfish and corrupt interests of unbridled capitalism and global.
When you study a work of this nature written in the United States is essential to analyze what is the relevance of this effort to Puerto Rico, particularly when it comes to a text that illustrates the anti-globalization movement, which has been very active in other countries, but in Puerto Rico has had only incipient manifestations and usually theoretical or academic.
As a matter of threshold, as to the relevance of this book for our reality, and for understanding the mechanisms of social control of the state, it is necessary to note that the text explains in detail the foundations that support social movements against globalization and the dangers that engenders the demolition of the border economic, political, cultural social and that this entails. All this after allowing the opening of markets to large corporations and unfettered capitalism, making money off of other peoples, increasing social and economic differences, and destroying indigenous cultures and the environment.
This message is relevant to the offensive total violent coup, neo-liberal and Tea-Parthians, based in Puerto Rico by the government of Luis Fortuño, it offers us the global context, theoretical and practical-for understanding of the elements selfish, greedy and marginalized behind these outrages.
I have to say that, although so far the people of Puerto Rico, on the colonial situation was still just a helpless pawn in the chessboard that control sovereign nations allied globalists and neo efforts, as will be discussed later, this is not an inevitable fate.
second thing I have to say about the relevance of this book to Puerto Rico is that this is the text that Figueroa did not read, and if he did not understand.
say that did not understand, because in this book explores in detail the strategic changes and developments that have earned the forces of repression of dissent, after the Great Battle of Seattle in 1999, which is the starting point the study of this text.
recall that the Great Battle of Seattle was a protest against the meeting of the World Trade Organization in 1999, where many and various groups opposed to globalization forced the cancellation of the activity to be held there. Unions, environmental organizations, professionals, fans of the new era, anarchists, and ordinary people were mobilized the streets of Seattle to derail the so-called Millennium Round, and more importantly, all independent of any political party or hierarchical structure of modernity.
This battle is considered the beginning of a new phase of anti-globalization movement, from which there have been mass protests in all the summits of the WTO and other global supranational organizations. According to the Seattle Police Department, the event was merely with approximately 40,000 participants. Seattle police were not prepared for the innovation and militancy of the movement and lost total control of the situation. Of that historical experience is that originate tactics and strategies that are discussed in this text, and to a greater or lesser extent, have succeeded in avoiding a victory so overwhelming in other protests after anti-globalization groups. If
Although the book focuses on anti-globalization movement, its relevance is vital for Puerto Rico, for what has been happening in the UPR, since in terms of motives, organization, strategies, diversity and participatory democracy, the similarities the student movement are extraordinary.
The book explains the diversity of groups that comprise the anti-globalization movement and the different structures that organize or bring together, detailing how smooth, horizontal and democratic operating in spectacular resemblance to our student movement, which is also diffuse , heuristic, non-hierarchical, supportive, creative and works based on strong principles of participatory democracy. 
And we must not lose sight of what we anticipate in Puerto Rico will be a big social battle to prevent the build the so-called Via Verde, which I think is the state infrastructure project of systematic corruption that has been most aberrant conceived in Puerto Rico. This book is essential reading for which we prepare for the feat that awaits us.
On the other hand, the relevance of the text to understand the contemporary world, we must say that what we are seeing in Cairo and other Middle East countries, are phenomena for which can be found in this text some theoretical and empirical, and that we all recognize as paradigms of possible courses of action to address the colonial problem and the dictatorship that we live in Puerto Rico.
A key aspect of this text is that it is a participatory and experiential research on the concept of Verstehen, but also has strong empirical and theoretical basis for validation of their conclusions.
Verstehen is a German word which translated into English means understanding, and generalized by Max Weber. The comprehensivist is a branch of epistemology that emerged in Germany during the nineteenth century in opposition to positivism and scientific method, posed that social science should be studied based on mere observation.
understanding or Verstehen involves, among other things, direct participation in the social phenomenon to be studied and the interpretation of the object of study by solidarity, otherness and empathy.
The author participated from 2001 to 2005 anti-globalization protests. In an exercise of Verstehen the author could see, touch and feel, first hand, as a protester protests: the motivations, reasons, feelings, fears, outrage and paranoia felt by the protesters to the mechanisms of social control of dissent by country leaders undisputed global supranational organizations. The book outlines in particular the protests in Washington, Miami and Cancun.
protests in which he participated were made after the Battle of Seattle and the September 11, 2001, therefore, could see how the state has gradually expanded the variety, intelligence and crudeness of the techniques of social control of dissent . This allowed him to observe and study in detail all the strength and sophistication achieved.
This book summarizes excellently the student body of theoretical thinking of the mechanisms of state control, explains the actual techniques of social control of dissent, from more subtle and almost invisible, even violence, including assault, arrest and illegal search.
The book explains the effect of these techniques in the movements, communities, and the psyche of the activists and observers to the protests. It also explains the dynamics of innovation and response between movements and the state, which are constantly in a game of trial and error, between the cat and mouse, with a purpose, to bring the message to your maximum disclosure, and the other to suppress a mere exercise of human agglutination useless.
The book is also valuable to end on a hopeful note about the effect that these struggles are having on the generation of environmental protective policies, decelerator aggressive globalization processes and the social and political changes that have occurred in response to these efforts.
The book is divided into seven chapters are:
Protest, control and maintain order.
Prospects in the control of dissent.
anti-globalization movement. Managing and regulating
protests: The social control and law. So
Democracy: The physical control of space.
Here comes the Anarchists: The psychological control of space.
Implementation of the Law and control.
Each of these chapters is marked by a series of subdivisions that details the various aspects on the subject and the relationship between the social control of dissent and its effect on people who protest.
Chapter one on protest, control and policing, the author notes the dramatic shift that occurred in the way the state began to look at the dissidents after the September 11, 2001, when he began to equate dissent with terrorists, to try to inhibit their actions and create a paranoia that would allow them more control.
Then the author explains the relationship between anti-globalization movement and control of their networks, going through what theorists say about the matter, texture, control, control and social movements and other prospects for control. End of chapter explaining the book's structure and approach and focus that has the copyright in the work.
Chapter two on the prospects in the control of dissent, the author discusses an overview of social control and examines the work of postmodern theorists on power, biopower and governance, particularly considering the concept of the multitude of Hardt and Negri, which studies the changes that have made the move from a society based on manufacturing to a knowledge society and services which has substantially altered class analysis and the work of Karl Marx. Then, the author examines the range of legal, physical and psychological control of dissent.
Chapter three of the anti-globalization movement, the author explains how to organize anti-globalization social movements and how they create their paradigms and bringing together people around them. Also, the author examines the data supporting his book, including their participation in protests, interviews with members of both sectors, the police and protesters. That is, both the repression and dissent, in addition to the documents published by both sectors.
The author then proceeds to discuss the reason why globalization is creating an opposition so vehement in some individuals and groups, and different types of globalization such as politics, cultural and economic.
The author then goes on to explain, what are the different anti-globalization movements and how an emphasis on anarchist movements, which have implemented more direct and aggressive action to challenge authority, and have then been the subject of proceedings more raw and dramatic illegal by the state.
In contrast, the author presents the affinity groups, which are closed nature, pursuing each one different interests and are not characterized by violent protest. All this results in clusters or clusters where there is the union of different affinity groups that make up the bulk of the protest, distributed work, and share some strategies. All this allows the motion fluidity and flexibility, which makes it rather difficult to organize or strengthen, as effective and elusive to the control of the state.
All of these groups involved in anti-globalization protests have their assemblies of participatory democracy which discusses in detail the strategies to be used from transportation, accommodation, food, route of travel, whether negotiated or not negotiated with the authorities, a course of action, and also the consequences of different enforcement policies and the impact it will have on the type of action that they will perform.
the author also emphasizes that the movement is not monolithic, but is also divided into sections and areas that supply accommodation, meals and of particular importance, the independent press as Indymedia, which in many cases, as in Puerto Rico as in the case of Radio goes, are the subject of brutal attacks and destruction of property to prevent the message they are captured out into the open.
In Chapter Four, managing and regulating the protest, the author examines how law becomes a mechanism of social control by the bylaws, and to revive old and archaic laws, including laws on the masks that were directed to Ku Klux Klan. Any resemblance to the laws of Puerto Rico is purely coincidental. 
Within this process of implementation of the Act with the aim of destabilizing the effectiveness of the protest, is the close public spaces the close accommodation, and conducting illegal searches and arrests, which are to be spurious, because prosecutors do not file charges. This creates anxiety, which affects the membership through fear and paranoia.
addition, the author deals with the regulation by the cities of the time, place and manner of protests, including meeting places, routes, hours, and far they can go, in order to minimize their impact or threat.
It also outlines the various actions taken in the city go affecting the course of organizing the protest, constantly changing rules, and to move the protesters to different places in last minute changes, so that they disband their consistency.
One of the most important contributions of the author, is examining the process of negotiation of dissent, through the municipal permitting process, and establishes convincingly that the permitting process to conduct protest proceedings is one of the more subtle but effective control when a protest, and that different groups have chosen to negotiate, which has led to a dramatic erosion in the efficiency of the protests to achieve the goals and spread their messages.
The dilemma facing the group is to negotiate or not negotiate. Many businesses and submit. Those who do not trade, are crude and violent confrontation of the State and used all the means of propaganda to demonize and isolate them.
These negotiations often requires protesters to give up their rights of speech and assembly to pressure the state and are therefore unconstitutional.
Chapter five, so it looks on democracy, the physical control of space, the author explains how state agencies select the particular place where the participants of the protests can exercise their right to protest and how organizations supragovernmental overall have been selecting locations for meetings increasingly remote or that are easier to defend the processes of the protests.
This strategy involves a planning process for a long time by state agencies and these global organizations, including not only the assessment and geographic strategy and urban, but the detailed study of intelligence and espionage of all persons could participate in protest activities.
occur These studies and preparations well in advance and cause extra costs in the United States have forced the federal government made substantial contributions to the defense of the cities in which they have carried out such operations.
On the other hand, the author in this chapter five, evaluates operations and signals intelligence gathering process on the demonstrators and groups, and infiltration of government agents in the movements, noting the experience of COINTELPRO in the sixties, here in Puerto Rico We are very familiar and outrageous.
With the experience of COINTELPRO, the author shows how the Patriot Act has given more power to carry out processes of infiltration and the infiltration has an inhibitory effect on the groups, it causes the groups begin to police each other and enter paranoid disputes affecting decision-making processes and the effectiveness of strategies. The infiltration is often hidden or exposed, and causes fear also inhibits the demonstrators as they do not know who you can talk, and it remains uncertain who can be trusted.
Also, the forces of repression used by preventive patrols, surveillance evident and covert, persecution and illegal detention purely research purposes in violation of the constitution. Although there is this type of management and arrests, the charges never prosper, because there are no legal grounds for carrying out these interventions. This is done in order to get the protesters off the streets, intimidating them and remove them from the protest.
This confirms that the performance that made the police here in Puerto Rico to arrest the students and not to subject positions, part of that strategy of harassment to try to suppress the protests.
Also, the author explains how it aims to reduce the anonymity of the participants in the protests by using video cameras and photography to intimidate participants. This also has an inhibitory effect on the participants, although these actions here in Puerto Rico exhibit signs of illegality in the light of the jurisprudence of the cases vs David Noriega. ELA, the carpeteo legal activities, is constantly used to send the message to the protesters to the State of is observing, identifying and processed.
Also in this chapter the author discusses the use of laws and ordinances prohibiting the use of masks. The author justifies in detail why many times the masks are part of the freedom of expression, particularly when the masks are used to identify different groups or carry out actions and plays.
The author examines how the state has had to resort to the fortifications of the protest sites and how to divide also uses protestors in different groups using high fences, and not just improvised, but built specifically for containment of large crowds. As mentioned, making the analogy of pest control and leprosy of Foucault, the author concludes that in terms of mass protests, are being handled by physical divisions and barricades, like infectious diseases, which should not be spread by rest of society.
The author also in this chapter, speaks of the mass arrests and preventive arrests surgical groups involved in protests and infiltrated selectively arrest people they identified a priori and no crime committed, which may represent a danger to state interests.
Chapter six on 'there are the anarchists, "the author talks about the psychological control of space and the effect it has on the community division of the protesters, demonstrators good and bad, and as the community adopts the discourse of the forces of repression based stereotypes within the anti-globalization movement have spread because of the Anarchist nickname. To demonize the Anarchist, the authorities used a detailed, thorough and planned public relations effort in order to create a message, sometimes ambiguous, in that respect the right of Protestants to appear, but they will do everything effort to defend the community from dangerous anarchists. All this in order to promote fear in the population who could sympathize with the protesters, not to join the protests and to establish a visceral rejection, particularly in the business community who fear that their businesses could suffer damage from the protests. This has the effect of isolating the protest and stop growing at effective levels.
All these efforts of the forces of repression have an inhibitory effect on the population that is hosting the protest and the protesters, who obviously have serious consequences on the effect of the protest through the use of mechanisms of fear.
Finally, in Chapter seven, on the enforcement and control, the author goes to establish that although mechanisms are being developed global power and that states have been giving some powers to these entities, yet keep the police power and repression of demonstrations against globalization.
The author examines the implications negotiated process of protest and how it has affected the effectiveness of activities. It also summarizes the control of space, but these efforts eventually established state control that have emerged from the Battle of Seattle in 1999, in most cases, are two or three steps behind the imagination and creativity demonstrators. As happens in Puerto Rico.
The author ends on a note of reflection on the hope that the movements continue to establish creative ways to bring their message and achieve social and economic changes, but anticipates that the State will continue to move towards more effective mechanisms and raw social control dissent.
In conclusion, the book is an extraordinary effort to dissect how the state evaluates the protests and dissent, how they faced, and how he tries to minimize its effect. Although the book is devoted to anti-globalization protests, the model has many aspects that could be applicable in any kind of protest, particularly where we're making in Puerto Rico and to come to save this country. Professor Fernández
:
Writing a book is the art of knowing when to begin and end. So there are second editions.
What I would like to see in a second edition. It
important that a second edition has a section on policing policing. That is, control and defense mechanisms that are available to the people to control more effectively and fast, physical abuse, psychological and social development by the State when facing this kind of protest. The legal system is slow and ineffectual prejudice.
I'd like to see an update on protests following the explosion of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, as the protests are reviewed prior to the development of effective communication mechanisms through these networks. Question: Do they add value these networks offer the protesters or control mechanisms effective to the state?
could include the specification of physical and psychological effects of violence in human beings, not merely speak of fear and deterrence, but to talk about injuries, pain, anger, fear and suffering psychological problems arising demonstrators when hit by the forces of repression as it has in the case of Puerto Rico. On the psychological effects: what can cause? Appeasement of resistance or exacerbation of attitudes and violence of the demonstrators.
I'd like to see in a future issue any details on the innovations of the resistance and police monitoring, particularly around the individual techniques of protest such as civil disobedience in the spontaneous protests against other social, environmental and economic.
would also be great to expand on the specific role played by the repression of independent media and the proliferation of such organizations and cyber available for immediate disclosure of information will definitely extend the framework of the protest and may be that the state has no effective mechanisms to prevent the spread of these ideas.
is easy to put gates in the city, it is easy to block the wind so they can not sleep the demonstrators, it is easy to call a specific route surrounded by police with rattan, horses and motorcycles, but the information is gathered and disseminated electronically through the social networks and the rest of the Internet, it is very difficult to control, and would be excellent analysis whether this disclosure has a direct impact on decision making by these global institutions of repression.
In conclusion, the book of Professor Fernandez is one that I recommend fully, because it gives us a specific vision of how the state is changing its approach to dissent and how these changes require a response and People's immediate social action, concerted Intelligent, creative and democracy, for social change to quality of life for all human beings.
This book offers vital tools in that route. I congratulate Professor
.
I hope to follow a prolific intellectual life. We need
. Thank
.
Emmanuelli Rolando Jimenez, JD LL.M.
- My iPad.
Location: Cll
Anguilla, Ponce, Puerto Rico
www.bufete-emmanuelli.com
liars 
Figueroa had read this book, or at least have understood, would have better tools, or perhaps more effective in the suppression of the protests taking place in Puerto Rico before the offensive Luis Fortuño. The ignorance and abuse of rabbits Figueroa, instead of suppressing dissent, have exacerbated, revived and strengthened, particularly in the student movement, for which, with your permission Professor Fernandez, a strong request applause. 
And we must not lose sight of what we anticipate in Puerto Rico will be a big social battle to prevent the build the so-called Via Verde, which I think is the state infrastructure project of systematic corruption that has been most aberrant conceived in Puerto Rico. 
This type of assembly is characterized by not having predominant leaders and are extraordinary examples of participatory democracy, which have resulted in exceptionally successful mechanisms in decision-making of students in the UPR. 
This organization has among its functions to integrate the 15 municipalities in the south to the central government delegated the powers of regional planning, industrial and tourism promotion. Issues that are centralized and have collapsed, or that what appears from time to time, as hoard selfishly in the north. 
Who in their right mind can be against DISUR or act for the purpose of destroying or boring their capacity for development? To me it's incomprehensible, but unfortunately coarsens and creates partisanship beetles that no matter the damage they cause, is to undermine what they want to eat and eat, boring to destroy everything in their path to achieving personal positions or perks.