Producers/Hosts: Amy Browne and Meredith DeFrancesco
The WERU community is celebrating 20 years of great community radio—and counting down to our next membership drive— by taking a look back. Today we’re going back to 2003. In November of that year we reported from the protests at the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, ministerial meetings in Miami. Inside luxury resort hotels, the FTAA meetings were not going well as more and more countries were becoming aware of the negative impacts of corporate globalization. The resorts were surrounded by fencing and riot police, keeping any dissent well out of view of those inside. The protests were spirited, but in no way violent. We broke away after covering a Teamsters protest march and found a pay phone to call in to WERU with an update. What follows is that call-in segment, engineered by Heather Candon, then recorded audio from the protests that aired later, including an impromptu press conference with a Miami police official in which you will also hear the voice of Andrea DeFrancesco and other reporters as well. So let’s take a trip back in time to 2003…