I need to file my appeal by Monday in order to reverse my resisting arrest without violence conviction; the last of the original nine charges I was slapped with in February 2007 for photographing cops against their wishes.

I’ve already been granted a 30-day extension so there are no more delays. No more extensions.

It is crunch time. The two-minute warning. Deadline.

I’ve spent the last several days immersed in legal research, analyzing laws through various Websites, combing through case files and portions of transcripts of my trial that I’ve purchased, and listening and re-listening to portions of the trial on audio to decide what other portions I need transcribed.

Am I stressed? Well….just a little.

Although I was unable to afford the ten thousand dollar going rate for an appellate lawyer; and although I was unable to find a pro bono lawyer; and although I was unable to afford the $3,000 to get the entire trial transcribed in order to let the ACLU review it; I am not alone.

I have a lawyer in my corner. A coach on my sidelines. A guide by my side.

Some of you might know him.

His name is Señor Cohiba. Cigar Mike. Michael Pancier. Lawyer by day, right-wing blogger by night. And photographer when he gets away from it all.

And did I mention he was a photographer?

Check out his work below. The photo (not painting) he is holding was taken on a recent trip to Maine, part of a series of prints he is selling for the holiday season. Excellent work, and I’m not just saying that because he is helping me with my case.

Whatever you say or think about him, he has guided me through this process since I was convicted last June, even donating to my Legal Defense Fund as well as sending me sample appeals and tweaking my Motion for Extension to legalese where I was able to file it in on the very last day allowed.

This week, he has responded to the multitude of questions that have popped up for me along the way, sending me statutes and case laws that help build my case, encouraging me when I’m headed in the right direction and informing me when I’m headed down the wrong path.

It will soon be two years since I spent the night in jail for crimes I did not commit and I know I’m going to win this thing. I guarantee it.

Those are strong words but I’m building a strong case. And I have Mike on my side, who believes just as strongly as I do about photographers’ rights. Perhaps more lawyers should get into photography.

Please contribute to my Legal Defense Fund by clicking at the top of the left sidebar. Donations will help pay for transcripts I need to purchase this week, which go for six dollars a page because of the rush job.

The Chicago police officers on that site, including the original poster and many commenters, agreed with me that Mike Andalzi’s arrest was completely out of line. Especially considering it was a civilian flack who ordered the arrest - a detail that was first reported on Photography is Not a Crime.

There appears to be bad blood between the officers and the police spokeswoman, Monique Bond, whom some of the officers refer to as “Lips”.

There is also bad blood between her and Chicago reporters, not just including himself, Anzaldi said, adding that she was hired by the Chicago Police Department about 18 months ago.

“She used to be a lot nicer when she worked at the (Chicago) Department of Aviation,” he said. “In this job, she has lot her mind.”

It is not too often that you will find me agreeing with police officers over an arrest of another photographer. In his blog post, which I posted below, Second City Cop acknowledges that the police and media are usually at odds. The two bold paragraphs in italics is what he cut and paste from my original story.

We usually have little tolerance for the press. They and police are constantly at odds. Here’s what we are disturbed by:

“Anzaldi was charged with obstruction against a peace officer after he refused to stop filming an investigation of an incident involving an off-duty police officer who shot and killed a man trying to rob him Tuesday night.

But the initial order for him to stop filming came from a civilian, a police spokesperson named Monique Bond who is not even a police officer. A flack without a badge.”

Um, it would seem that this political hack just put a sergeant, a detective and two PO’s in the trick bag. Ordering a photographer arrested? On private property? We foresee a large payout from the taxpayers based on Monique’s interpretation of law.

As of this writing, the post has generated 92 comments, most who are evidently cops who agree that Anzaldi’s arrest was unjustified, not only because he was not breaking the law, but because the order was generated from a civilian. They expect the Chicago Police Department to eventually dish out a huge legal sum over this matter.

Meanwhile, I’ve been talking to Anzaldi and he is promising to give me an update soon that will prove his innocence. He said a judge ordered the return of the video camera, so perhaps he will post the video he recorded before police arrested him and confiscated the camera.

To read a selection of the comments being left on Second City Copy, click on this link.

RoaVaPD said…

Why did they follow an unlawful order from a non-cop? I wasn’t there and I don’t want to second guess them, perhaps there was more to the story. But like you posted, there’s going to be a pay out for this. WTF???

Anonymous said…

If anyone arrested this guy on an order by Lips, then they get what’s comming. What happened to police officers conducting an investigation. It should have been politely explaned to Lips that no crime had occured. Further more if she insited, ask her to have the w/c or street dep. order an arrest.
It would have ended there.Always document all orders by any boss to arrest someone. You will end up in federal court. It will help having it on the reports.

Anonymous said…

What a f*cking hack. Something tells me she’s not gonna take time but everyone else that is involved with this arrest will. Wasn’t there a street deputy or someone with higher rank there to tell her to close her suck hole? It was a police shooting, so some gold star had to have been there.I hope the first line of the case and arrest report reads: From a direct order by Monique Bond, Director, Media Affairs the A/O’s were instructed to……

Anonymous said…

Great. Just Great. How many hundreds of thousands of tax dollars did Moron Monique just light on fire?We are truly our own worst enemies. Couldn’t the Sgt. and/or dick have told Monique that the man was NOT committing a crime? Instead, we just routinely bow down to our civilian clout-laden bosses. The Sgt. and the dick will now be sued along with Monique.

Anonymous said…

a couple things need to be kept in mind. first, ‘everybody’ in this case is aware of most of the media coverage surrounding the arrest. yes, this blog is media. second, the facts of this incident are unfortunately undisputable. i witnessed the event, and can confirm the accuracy of the reporting on it. the photographer is a news stringer who shoots both spec and assignment. i’ve seen his byline in the tribune and with the associated press. the video is usually sold to local TV. i believe most stringers are self-employed. i don’t know about this guy. that said, whether you consider stringers as “real” media or not, i believe their rights are the same as any network media, which are the same as the general public. i can confirm that a media credential does not provide photographers or reporters with any more access than the general public, as one story pointed out. defense of monique bond in this case is a risk the city and states attorney can’t possibly afford. any defense of her actions at all would indicate a disregard or intolerance of chicago code, illinois law, and the constitution of the united states, by the chicago police department. the CPD will be forced to say bond acted outside her authority, and does not agree with her actions.the arresting officer will likely need to be slapped too. the article says it was a sergeant! even worse. if supervising officials like sergeants and the media director are not familiar with simple laws like media rights, then the state of the department is indeed troubling. the first amendment is, well, the first one on the list! if you can’t get that one right, what chance do these folks have of processing a complex homicide scene? yikes.

Anonymous said…

If i were an FTO still I would instruct my PPOs to simply ignore the commands of any civilian member of this department. Walk past them as if they do not exist. If they interfere at a crime scene arrest them for interference/obstruction. They do not understand the requirements of PC to arrest and have not been through trials. Nor do they have the legal or administrative authority to give you an order and therefore i do not see how the department could substantiate an insubordination beef should you ignore their order.

Anonymous said…

Although Monqiue is a complete an utter idiot, why in sam hell did a SGT and POs listen to a ridiculous order as that. Anyone with half a brain would know given the details you published, that you cannot lock someone up for that. Get ur heads out of ur asses people.

Anonymous said…

Why did they follow an unlawful order from a non-cop? I wasn’t there and I don’t want to second guess them, perhaps there was more to the story. But like you posted, there’s going to be a pay out for this. WTF???Do we not all follow orders from a NON-COP???? Yeah i’m talking about you Jody you retarded looking weasel

Anonymous said…

Who cares let the buzzards eat!These sack of shit media types need to make a living too. Hell I am already paying the income taxes for these ghetto rats. I don’t want to pay more for some dirt bag who can skull fuck a story to death with a camera. If this guy can’t get the story he will be hitting the unemployment line. Keep the video Rowling. Keep those crime scenes full.Why did they follow an unlawful order from a non-cop? I wasn’t there and I don’t want to   second guess them, perhaps there was more to the story. But like you posted, there’s going to be a pay out for this. WTF???

David Wallis published a book and founded www.featurewell.com, an online syndication service that provides news to more than 1,500 magazines throughout the world.

And Ralph E. Smith is publisher of the Guardian Chronicle, a website that targets black law enforcement workers. He is also a public information officer for the New York City Corrections Department.

The three men were denied press credentials from the New York City Police Department because they do not work for a “legitimate news organization”. Last week, the three men sued the police department.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, asserts that the three men were denied press credentials in 2007 “with little explanation or opportunity for appeal,” and that the system for issuing press credentials is “inconsistent and constitutionally flawed.”

The lawsuit is the latest debate between the quest for legitimacy from the New Media, which is essentially anything published in print or online that is not affiliated with a major corporate news entity, and the Old Media, a conglomeration of corporations that has reluctantly acknowledged the New Media’s existence.

The last time the debate arose was in the wake of the mass arrests at the Republican National Convention in September, in which Minneapolis officials tried to determine which journalists would be entitled to have their charges dropped. It basically boiled down to the clout of the organization backing them.

But Freedom of the Press, which is part of the First Amendment, does not differentiate between the corporate media and independent journalists like myself (not that I was not once part of the corporate media).

In this day and age of media conglomeration and downsizing, it is only natural to expect a rise of independent media sources, such as Photography is Not a Crime. And I’ll put my journalistic skills and experience against any corporate media reporter any day of the week.

Rather than clarify the issue on Freedom of the Press, The New York Times kicks off its article on the NYPD lawsuit by asking the following question:

“In the ever-shifting media landscape of 2008, who, exactly, is a journalist?”

Being the legitimate news organization that it is, The New York Times should instead ask: “Just whom exactly determines who is a journalist?” Because in this case, it is the New York City Police Department.

And if we’re going to allow our local police departments to determine who qualifies as legitimate media, then we’ve already lost the concept of the Fourth Estate. Then we’ve already given up on Freedom of the Press.

And we might as well kiss the First Amendment goodbye.

By Carlos Miller
As a civil libertarian, I never understood why some people feel the need to dictate other people’s private lives, specifically in the matter of gay marriage. And especially during a time when we, as a nation, displayed our progressiveness by electing the nation’s first black president.

I know it’s a religion thing, but that is exactly why I don’t understand it. If our democracy was founded on the principles that protected those who were persecuted for their religion, why should some use their religion to deny others certain rights?

It’s not like we’re going to turn gay people straight by denying them the right to marry.

On the contrary. The recent passage of laws in Florida, California and Arizona that banned same-sex marriage prompted more than one million people across the United States to take to the streets in protest, including more than 1,000 in Fort Lauderdale.

Click on the link under the photo to see the rest of the photos I took.

Click here to see more photo essays

A uniformed Secret Service officer, that is, which strikes me as an oxymoron but what do I know?

Bralley, who spent 24 years as an Albuquerque police officer but has been a photographer much longer than that, now blogs about politics in New Mexico where he is a self-described watchdog on government officials, especially when they violate the Constitutional rights of civilians.

On Oct. 8, he was trying to get into a McCain rally at the University of New Mexico when he snapped the following photo of three uniformed Secret Service officers.

This is how he describes what happened on his lengthy analysis titled Why John McCain lost New Mexico (if you click on his blog, scroll way down until you see the photo for the story).

While waiting for a call back, I raised my camera and photographed three USSS uniformed officers, above. The officer in the center raised his hand just above his belt and waved it back and forth three times. I took it to mean, not to take pictures. I lowered my camera.

The officer approached me and said, “Don’t take any pictures.”

“This is America; First Amendment and all,” I asked?

“Oh, I’m not telling you that you can’t take pictures,” he said. “Just don’t take my picture.”

As a journalist, a member of the fourth estate, a watchdog on government, I’m required to confront such a statement, which is a form of censorship.

“You’re a uniformed agent of the United States,” I said. “You may not ask me that.”

“You can take pictures,” he repeated. “Just don’t take my picture! OK?” The officer used the verbal demand utilized to intimidate the unknowing citizen.

I told him if he didn’t want his picture taken, then step out of the line of the camera’s lens.

Bralley was then escorted off the grounds by the following two University of New Mexico police officers, whom he describes as Officer Christopher Crespin and Sergeant Jeremy Parrish.

Bralley asked why he was being kicked out.

He and Parrish wouldn’t engage in much discussion and certainly weren’t going to admit that they had no idea why the Secret Service officer wanted me removed.

Listening to only one side of a story, even if it is from another law enforcement officer, is an improper police procedure.

I wonder why an officer would be so willing to risk becoming part of a violation of civil rights complaint, by not even listening to the facts.

I’m thinking Bralley needs to launch a business where he offers training sessions to officers in how to deal with the media. Maybe I can even partner with him because there is desperately a need for this training throughout the country.

And it was all caught on tape.

The video is so appalling that it’s a wonder Oakland School District Police Chief Art Michel hasn’t been fired yet, not that the Tribune hasn’t called for his termination. He even went as far as confiscating the video camera before returning it three days later.

It all started when Tribune videographer Jane Tyska was filming a student protest against immigration raids and she came in contact with Michel’s squad car.

Tyska claims Michel grazed her with his car as he drove by. Michel claims that Tyska deliberately hit his car with her elbow as he drove by.

Regardless of who’s telling the truth - and I believe Tyska is telling the truth - Michel went completely overboard in his reaction to the incident by telling her to “get in the fucking car”, “you’re a pain in the ass” and “you’re a lying sonofabitch”.

Considering it was election day, perhaps Michel was upset that McCain was losing in a landslide.

Whatever his excuse, he has no excuse. It’s shocking to see that an officer with such a volatile temperament was able to become a police chief in the first place. No telling how he treated people when he knew he wasn’t being filmed.

Tyska, who was threatened to be arrested for inciting a riot, was never arrested.

By Carlos Miller
Like many South Florida photographers, I’ve photographed the MacArthur Causeway Bridge many times from all different angles, but I couldn’t resist doing it again last night as I was on Watson Island photographing the Miami skyline for a make-over on my new company logo.

This colorful bridge links the City of Miami to the City of Miami Beach, part of a four-mile dash that many residents take on a daily basis whether it is beach residents commuting to work in downtown Miami or mainland residents cruising to the beach to party the night away.

It is Miami’s signature bridge although it is not nearly as recognizable to the rest of the world or photographed as much as San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge or New York City’s Brooklyn Bridge.

It might not have the historical or cultural significance of those two bridges nor the classic architectural style, but the homeless people living under it wouldn’t change it for a spot under either of those bridges if you offered it to them.

I found the Golden Gate Bridge (two pictures below) difficult to photograph mostly because it is almost impossible to find an angle that hasn’t been photographed thousands of time already. And on a clearer day at that.

I like this photo of the Brooklyn Bridge with the Manhattan Bridge in the background that I took in 2006. I processed it in sepia because it just looked better that way.

One of my favorite bridges in the world is the Charles Bridge in Prague, which I visited 13 years ago. Back then, I wasn’t much of a photographer. In fact, I had just gotten my point-and-shoot stolen in a train from Berlin to Warsaw by the so-called Russian Mafia, so I didn’t even have a camera. But that’s another story altogether that I might tell one day on Magic City Mania when I have time.

Like the Golden Gate Bridge, there are hundreds of photos of the Charles Bridge on the Internet, but I like this one from the Praque Art Shop.

The beauty of the Charles Bridge is that each statue on the bridge tells a different story. Historically speaking, it blows any American bridge away because it was constructed in the 15th century.

I’m interested in seeing bridges from your cities, whether you photographed them or pulled them off the Internet. I’m interested in hearing the stories about the bridges.

Surprise me.

The most recent incident involves the arrest of a Penn State journalism student who was photographing a riot that broke out after a college football game between Penn State and Ohio State on October 25.

Michael Felletter, 20, who snapped the accompanying photo, was charged with failure to disperse and the old reliable, disorderly conduct, which I will continue to assert is nothing but a standby that police use when they can’t think of an actual law that was broken.

From Penn State’s Daily Collegian newspaper:

According to the criminal complaint, State College Police Officer Nick Argiro saw Felletter taking photographs and told him to leave the area at about midnight. About 20 minutes later, Argiro saw Felletter taking photographs of officers attempting to arrest a subject, and Argiro again ordered Felletter to leave, police said.

About 20 minutes later, Argiro saw Felletter and took his driver’s license from him, police said.

Another officer later told Argiro he saw Felletter taking photographs and also told him twice to leave the area, police said. Police said they told Felletter he “was causing the crowd to become more exhuberant [sic], excited, and destructive.”

Fortunately, it appears that the Daily Collegian will fight the charges against Felletter.

By Carlos Miller
When I first heard CNN’s Jack Cafferty ask his viewers what would they miss most about Bush, I shook my head and said “absolutely nothing”.

But then I started thinking about it, wondering how my life would have turned out if there had never been an election fiasco in Palm Beach County in 2000. If there had never been a hanging chad or an inverted dimple or a butterfly ballot.

If the Supreme Court had never stepped in and selected George W. Bush as our 43rd president.

For one thing, I would not have developed such a passion for photographing activism.

Thank you, Bush. You showed many Americans the true value of the U.S. Constitution.

After all, when you can still march down Broadway in New York City holding signs stating “Fuck Off Bush”, “Fuck Your War” and “Imprison The Criminal” and not be arrested for it, all is not lost.

I was living in Phoenix when Bush first became president, working as a reporter for The Arizona Republic. I remember feeling helpless as my home state fell into chaos with only 538 votes separating Bush from Al Gore. I remember feeling robbed when the Supreme Court stepped in and handed Bush the presidency, making him the first president to win the White House without winning the popular vote since 1888 (and only the fourth in U.S. history to do so).

And I remember feeling angry at the corporate media, which I was part of, for not making a bigger fuss over this abuse of our sacred separation of powers.

That feeling lasted until Sept. 11th, 2001 when I realized that we needed to come together as a country. I backed Bush up 100 percent when he vowed to track Osama bin Laden down and bring him back “dead or alive”.

But then he started talking about Iraq. About Saddam Hussein. About weapons of mass destruction. And I knew he was full of shit. But the media continued to cheer him on.

By the time his reelection rolled around, I had quit my job and returned to Miami in the hopes that I could make a difference in my home state. I volunteered for Kerry. I volunteered for MoveOn. And I started photographing political rallies.

After Bush was re-elected in 2004, I was convinced - and still am - that he stole the presidency through the use of computer voting machines. But again, the media didn’t seem to care.

In March 2005, more than 100 people gathered in downtown Miami to protest the second anniversary of the war. Not only was there a group of counter-protesters who accused of being traitors, countless people in cars flicked us off.

Then came Katrina in August 2005 and there was no turning back. I flew to Washington DC a month later for an antiwar protest where an estimated 250,000 people marched against Bush and his war and his crimes. We ended up surrounding the White House, but Bush was back home in Texas relaxing at his ranch.

Many veterans from the Iraq War, including some who had returned home in wheelchairs, participated in this march.

After returning to Miami, I sought out local activist groups and started photographing local protests, including one in Fort Lauderdale in the wake of Hurricane Wilma, in which you can see a boarded-up building in the background.

In January 2006, during Bush’s State of the Union address, about 100 people gathered in downtown Fort Lauderdale to protest Bush and his war. By this time, I started shooting only in RAW format instead of JPG, so there is a noticeable improvement in the quality of my photos.

And in May 2006, I flew to New York and photographed another antiwar protest where an estimated 250,000 people marched down Broadway, which is where I took the top two photos in this thread. The two photos below were also taken during this protest.

In January 2007, during another antiwar protest on Miami Beach, it was becoming noticeable that the tide was turning because there was a significant increase in horns blowing in support of us instead of drivers flicking us off. And the counter-demonstrators had long disappeared.

Dave Patlak, pictured below, a veteran who ran against Ileana Ros-Lehiten in 2006, was one of several veterans attending that protest.

And in April 2007, when Bush delivered the commencement address at Miami-Dade College and more than 1,000 people showed up to protest, it was clear that Bush’s legacy was dead.

So when Jack Cafferty asks what will I miss most about Bush, it is most definitely the protests. Because throughout all the protests I photographed, including the ones that had nothing to do with Bush and the smaller ones I did not even post here, I never came close to getting arrested.

So although it sometimes seemed as if it was, democracy was never dead.

By Carlos Miller
Sometimes I wish I could be at several places at one time. On election night, as many of you know, I was at the Miami-Dade Democratic Party victory celebration at Parrot Jungle.

Meanwhile, one of my photojournalist friends, Al Crespo, was at Versailles restaurant, which anyone familiar with Miami can tell you, is Ground Zero for right-wing Cuban-American politics.

I find it one of the most exciting places to take pictures, even if I was once assaulted by a Cuban-American senior citizen as I was video-taping a protest.

This is how Crespo describes election night:

From a side street, Jesus Rodriguez, with an Obama poster, climbed onto a newsbox and held his poster high for all to see. It was an act of defiance as much as it was a political statement.

The McCain supporters didn’t know what to do. At first they made some feeble attempts to use their signs in an attempt to block photographers from taking photos of Rodriguez, but soon turned their focus to the street, where cars were beginning to pass with people holding out Obama signs. A few McCain supporters attempted to rip the signs out of the hands of the people in the cars, but soon gave up.

Then a man with a Confederate flag came running onto the scene, something I’ve never seen in the hundreds of times I’ve been to Versailles.

Read all about it on Crespo’s website:

And check out the following video from Univision via South Florida Daily Blog. It’s in Spanish, but basically the two Cubans interviewed are saying what we all are saying, that we needed a change.

By Carlos Miller
We, the People, decided we were sick of the Bushit. That we were sick of the divisive politics. The fear-mongering tactics. The globe-bumbling arrogance. The corporate-looting barons.

We, the People, decided that it didn’t really matter if your middle name is Hussein. Or that your father was born in Africa. Or that you were a member of a black church with a fiery preacher.

We, the People, chose hope over fear. Diplomacy over bravado. And progress over blindness.

We, the People, chose change.

For me, the victory was sweet because not only did we win our country back, I won my state back.

After eight years of watching Florida get swiped from the voters by Supreme Court judges, then swiped again by computer voting machines, I can finally kick back and say, happy days are here again.

I spent election night at a victory party at Parrot Jungle sponsored by the Miami-Dade Democratic Party where the change was already evident with signs stating “Cubans for Obama” and “Republicans for Obama”.

Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, a former democrat (and fellow blogger)  who switched to independent prior to running for office because he believed he would be unable to win the Cuban vote otherwise, was touting his blue colors proudly as he hugged his son and daughter.

Unlike previous generations of Cuban-Americans in Miami, where the father dictated to the rest of the family to vote republican, Diaz’s son was the one who convinced him to support Obama, in case the mayor had any doubts.

Among the cheers and celebration throughout the night were also quite a few misty eyes in the room, including on Diaz’s face and the lady below.

After all, we had just made history. We had taken a black man who would have been lynched 100 years ago for daring to aspire to such high offices, and placed him in the highest office of the land.

We had proven that we are truly a melting pot of a nation

Check out the guy with the Cuban flag vest holding an Obama sign. That’s a sign of change I welcome. A democratic Cuban. No, a victorious democratric Cuban.

Here is a short video of last night’s event produced by the Miami Herald

More photos from the presidential campaign.

By Carlos Miller
Two presidential candidates. Two political rallies. Two mobs of politically-charged crowds. And two multimillion dollar sports arenas aptly named after banks.

No matter who wins the presidential election today, we all know who the real winners are going to be; those institutions that made out with billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money during last month’s financial crisis bailout.

On a positive note, at least the government wasn’t spreading the wealth to the actual people.

Tuesday’s Barack Obama rally at the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise drew more than 20,000 people. And Sunday’s John McCain rally at the BankUnited Center in Coral Gables drew more than 8,000. And that’s considering that McCain didn’t even take the stage until after midnight, minutes after he landed from New Hampshire.

Both rallies proved that South Floridian democrats and republicans have more in common then they would like you to believe. However, their differences are black and white.

In the republican rally, there was a sense they were voting against Obama rather than for McCain, while in the Obama rally it was the complete opposite. Perhaps this is the reason some republicans accuse democrats of idolizing Obama.

But then again, during the 2004 election, many republicans accused democrats of voting against Bush more so than voting for John Kerry. They were right and that is why Kerry lost.

This time looks to be different. Or does it?

As is customary in Miami republican circles made up of mostly Cuban-Americans, it felt mostly like a rally against Fidel Castro than against an American politician who has no affiliation with the communist party.

Enemies of the United States = Friends of Obama

In the above picture, the sign translates to “I left Cuba to Venezuela, then from Venezuela to the United States. Where do I go from here?”

The guy in the blue shirt is Michael Marko, a photojournalist buddy of mine who doesn’t like it when people tell him not to take photos. Even though it was hours before McCain was to arrive, they had the press corralled into a side section where they refused to let us go on the main floor, where it seemed everybody else was being allowed to go.

Marko started asking around and received contradictory responses from security guards and event organizers, some of them telling us we were welcome to go on the floor to take all the photos we please, others telling us we can take all the photos we want as long as we don’t step on the floor.

Finally, we got the green light by a guy in a suit and a transmitter ear piece, who told the security guard to allow us on the floor. About five minutes later, two guys in suits confronted Mike, ordering him off the floor, which may have been restricted to republicans only, not that he was stating his party affiliation.

Then they came after me. As if that’s a surprise.

He was actually a nice guy and eventually worked it out so we could get back on the floor if we promised to go back to the media area before McCain arrived, which wasn’t for at least another three hours.

It seemed as if there was an obligatory prerequisite to wear stickers that said “Joe” in order to get on the floor.

In fact, these stickers were being handed out by Miguel Saavedra, center, who heads the Vigilia Mambisa anti-Castro group.

I wonder how Joe the Plumber would have reacted if he had come to Miami and learned that his moniker had been translated into Spanish.

One of the most refreshing similarities between the two rallies was the high number of young people in attendance, many who did not appear old enough to vote but nevertheless were fully involved in the political process.

There was an abundance of women at both rallies, something which would never have happened 100 years ago. Perhaps change does not always mean dictatorship.

So both sides obviously benefit from the positive changes that have undergone in our democracy since its birth more than 200 years ago. But this year, the republicans are resisting the change, as groups have done throughout history.

There was also a certain uniformity among the republicans, especially in how many of them held up homemade signs that appeared to be written by the same person. And no, I don’t believe she is a democrat.

The democrats did not have as many homemade signs but they were just as enthused about their candidate, if not more enthused.

One thing you can’t take away from Miami’s Hispanic republicans is that they can party as hard as any democrat, and they partied for several hours sans alcohol while several Cuban bands performed in the hours before McCain arrived.

But what’s a political rally without the politicians? Here we have former Florida democratic governor Bob Graham, and Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, two republican Cuban-American congressmen who are in jeopardy of losing their seats today.

Here we have democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden and republican Florida Senator Mel Martinez, also a Cuban-American.

And, of course, the candidates themselves, one which will be elected president today. Unless the media gets its wish for a repeat of 2000.

And through it all, I managed to sit down and rest before McCain’s arrival, which is when my photojournalist buddy Al Crespo snapped this shot of me.

Click here for more photo essays

You might remember back in early August I was having issues with my hosting company, Lunar Pages, when they informed me that this site was “using too much resources”.

Because I was getting an exceptionally high number of readers due to interest in my trial along with the Scott Conover exclusive, Lunar Pages ended up removing my blog - without warning - from the shared server it was on, which essentially meant that my blog disappeared from the web during a time of extremely high readership.

I ended up having to cut and paste the Conover story on my other website, Magic City Mania, which is my more literary blog and not designed for the more journalistic tone I take on this site. I’ve since put that story back on this site and would like to remove it from that blog, but it still gets tons of page views.

At the time, Lunar Pages refused to place the blog back on the shared server, telling me it would be detrimental to all the other blogs on the server and lead to a complete breakdown on the World Wide Web.

The only alternative, they told me, was to upgrade to a Virtual Private Server, which meant I had to pay $45 a month instead of eight dollars

I agreed to upgrade my account on a month to month basis with the intention of shopping around for another hosting company. I ended up back online a few days later.

At the time, I had specifically informed them that I wanted to keep my shared server account open because I did not want to move my two other sites to the VPS, only to have to move them again when I switched to a new company. Migrating websites to a different hosting company is more stressful than relocating across state borders, which I’ve done several times. At least for a techno-dunce like me.

Because I find this so nerve-racking and because I could not find a company that would charge me less than $45 a month, I stayed with Lunar Pages, telling myself I would eventually get around to doing it.

After all, every company I spoke with informed me that my blog gets way too much traffic for a shared server. One of them told me they figure this out by checking out my site’s stats on Whois, something I haven’t been able to figure out how to do.

I did find this hard to believe because although my blog’s readership has increased dramatically since my trial, I don’t get near the readership that some blogs do. Of course, I have no idea what platform they are using to host their sites.

On Thursday, my site went down again, along with my two other sites and my email accounts. When I called Lunar Pages, they acted as if they had no idea why this was happening. They first tried to blame Go Daddy, which is where I bought my domains, then they tried to blame me for not properly uploading the files to the new server, as if a mistake like this would suddenly pop up more than two months after the fact.

The truth is, they ended up placing my site back on the shared server after I had agreed to upgrade to the VPS. And last Thursday, they decided to shut down my shared server account without informing me because they figured I had all my sites on the VPS.

It turns out, I never had anything on the VPS. I was paying $45 a month for nothing. All my sites were on the shared server, including this site, which miraculously did not cause a breakdown in the World Wide Web.

They didn’t admit this until late Friday afternoon, after I had spent hours talking and griping to a multitude of tech workers who make up Lunar Pages’ “help desk”. And they told me it would be nearly impossible for them to retrieve my lost files.

They tried to justify their actions by blaming me for not uploading my files to the new server, which I specifically remember doing. They also blamed me because I insisted on keeping my shared server running, which apparently caused them much confusion.

“Most people only use one server,” one condescending punk told me.

When I asked him how come my site was back on the shared server, especially after the problems it supposedly had caused, he blamed me by telling me it was my responsibility to make sure it goes on the right server. He informed me that their job is to only provide server space and nothing else.

When I asked him to at least help me set up my email account again, he grudgingly walked me through a few steps on the Plesk control panel, but only after telling me, “I won’t spend all day with you”.

Friday night, I finally spoke to a guy who admitted they had screwed up by neglecting to do whatever it is they need to do to make my site go live. He also said they had canceled my shared server account - without contacting me - because they had assumed I had migrated all my sites to the VPS.

He was probably the tenth person I had spoken with since my site went down and was very professional and courteous, unlike the previous nine. He set up a new shared account for me free of charges and was able to retrieve my lost files and place them on C-panel, where I was able to download them to my computer.

On Saturday, I decided to switch to Go Daddy on a month to month basis to see how it goes. I am paying $14 a month for “unlimited space” on a shared server, so we’ll see how true that is.

I am far from a techno guru, so I’ve been spending the last two days trying to complete the migration. I’ve managed to get two sites up and running, but I still need to get my Magic City Media site up again. But I’m having some issue with the SQL database and the “delimiter”. And the solution to the problem lies somewhere here.

And although I’ve placed the proper settings on my email account so it will work through Go Daddy, I am hearing reports that some emails are getting bounced back. But others are making it through, so who knows.

I’ve also lost some comments on the last post before the blog went down, which I will try to retrieve though my emails. So no, I’m not trying to censor anybody.

And although my billing month with Lunar Pages ends on Nov. 7th, they’ve already charged $45 to my credit card. Today, I called to cancel my account and order them to return my money, as well as the money they charged for the previous months, but they told me I had to cancel via email.

When I asked why, they said they do this with VPS accounts because they want to get it on record that the customer wanted this, in case they delete his files without him backing them up. Obviously, they don’t practice this custom with shared server accounts.

So stay tuned to my email, which I will post here and plan to CC to Lunar Pages CEO Ron Riddle, if I can find his email address.