Robert Steinback. Published Sunday, August 26, 2001 in
The Miami Herald
Miami suffered a black eye with the pullout of the Latin Grammy Awards show
-- but it was a sucker punch that left the bruise.
I'll state it up front: In my column Wednesday, I
was too hasty in denouncing Miami's ineptitude and the intolerance of exile
protesters for the loss of the Latin Grammys.
There is no question that we in South Florida are still paying for our past
reputation of intolerance of freedom of expression -- it's hard for a city that
featured rabid protesters throwing batteries and soda cans at concert fans just
22 months ago to convince the world our next protest would be orderly and
respectful.
But the longer I look at this, the more I believe Latin Recording Academy
Chief Executive Michael Greene deliberately used Miami's reputation against it
for whatever insidious gain he sought by taking his program back to Los Angeles.
It's customary for a region to bend over backward to attract lucrative
private enterprise. Business people, after all, can spend their money where and
how they please.
Miami city officials tried to meet the organizers' requests. The late change
in location of the designated protest area was a logistically manageable
compromise between the legitimate rights of Cuban exile groups to protest and
the legitimate security concerns of the event organizers.
City Manager Carlos Gimenez says there never was a formal agreement two
months ago to keep protesters 800 feet away from the red-carpet area where
celebrities would arrive at AmericanAirlines Arena, as the Grammy folks claim.
He said event organizers had requested such a buffer zone, and city police
planners simply indicated, informally, they had no problem with it.
When representatives of groups seeking to stage protests contacted Gimenez
six weeks later, they felt the distance was excessive.
They were on solid legal ground: The right to protest wouldn't mean much if
you could be kept so far away from a venue that no one notices you're there.
The protest organizers wanted to be on Biscayne Boulevard directly across
from the red-carpet area, but Gimenez said no. He, too, was on solid ground: The
right to protest doesn't include the right to disrupt a legitimate event. Being
that close would have been a security risk.
So city officials proposed a protest zone on the west side of Biscayne in
front of the Freedom Tower, south of the railroad tracks. At its closest point,
this zone would have been 333 feet from the red-carpet area -- longer than a
football field, said Miami police Maj. Hector Martinez. Most of the protest zone
would be 400 or more feet away.
This was plenty reasonable.
The protest organizers -- and the American Civil Liberties Union -- accepted
the compromise. The Latin Grammy folks didn't. They initially refused to even
discuss it, Gimenez said -- and later showed little interest in finding a
solution.
"This guy [Greene] was looking for reasons to leave,'' Gimenez told me.
"If they had sat down and said we had a problem with this or that, we could
have worked it out. There just wasn't a willingness to do this on the other
side.''
So was it really Miami's fault for driving away the event?
Only if you believe a city must not only bend over backward to please
private enterprise, but kiss its toes in the process.
Even the $35 million Latin Grammys aren't worth that.
I admit I was swept up in the frustration of seeing Miami lose yet another
high-profile event. Our city has been foolish in such matters in the past. I
erroneously presumed Miami had done it again.
Miami didn't "lose'' the Latin Grammys. We extended a hand of welcome
and Greene slapped us -- and then blamed us for it.
Let him take his show back to L.A. They deserve him.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald
Exiles
drown out Grammys' voice / Robert Steinback / Miami Herald | 
