Posted on 17-7-2003
Grassroots
Uprising Fights to Protect Rights and Freedoms
By Betsy Barnum, Common Dreams, 15 July 2003
In October 2001, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act
setting aside many of our individual freedoms for the sake of
fighting terrorism. Since then, I've worried about what's happening
to democracy.
Do we understand the threat USA PATRIOT poses to our
civil liberties? Or are we willing to give up our rights and
freedoms in return for a promise of safety, and shrug off the
danger to democracy from an unaccountable government?
I'm not worried anymore.
By last week, 132 cities and counties and three states
had passed resolutions stating their intention not to cooperate
with some provisions of USA PATRIOT. Elected office-holders
in these communities have publicly declared that they will not
abide by federal laws and orders that would compel them to accord
the people in their jurisdiction less than full rights and protections
guaranteed to all persons in the US Constitution.
These resolutions have happened because of people who
care about civil liberties. Groups of citizens in each of these
communities have conducted public forums, met with elected office-holders,
sought endorsements, drafted resolution language, canvassed
neighborhoods getting signatures on petitions, given countless
talks about threats to the Bill of Rights, and brought out standing-room-only
crowds for public hearings and votes.
Who are these people who have convinced so many local
lawmaking bodies to openly oppose federal law?
If they're anything like the Bill of Rights Defense Committees
in Minneapolis and St. Paul, they are folks from all walks of
life, all income levels and all points on the political spectrum.
Teachers. Consultants. Environmentalists. People who
voted for George Bush. People who voted for Ralph Nader. Engineers.
Unemployed people. Civil rights attorneys. Minimum-wage workers.
Retired persons. Students. Supporters of the war on Iraq. People
of faith. And a large minority from the arts community, people
to whom freedom of expression is as dear as life itself.
And many, if not most, are involved for the first time
in civil society political activism.
What they have in common is a conviction that the rights,
freedoms and protections guaranteed in the Constitution are
at the very core of what it means to be an American. They view
the Bill of Rights as a precious heritage from our ancestors
who struggled for generations to ensure that these freedoms
would be for all people, not just a certain class. And they
are unwilling to part with these cherished rights and freedoms
in return for an empty promise of safety from terrorism.
As a participant in the Minneapolis Bill of Rights Defense
Committee, which successfully urged the Minneapolis City Council
to pass a resolution in April, I was interviewed for two recent
mass-media stories on this effort, one in the Minneapolis Star
Tribune and one on National Public Radio. In these and all other
media coverage I've seen, journalists have missed the real story
by framing it as a contest between proponents and opponents
of USA PATRIOT.
The significance of resistance to USA PATRIOT and similar
acts is not who's 'right' and 'wrong' about how much they erode
civil liberties, or whether that erosion is justifiable.
The real story is that people in communities that now
total more 16 million in population have persuaded their city
councils to pass, often unanimously or near-unanimously, resolutions
in direct defiance of federal legislation. And if the other
cities and states with active citizen groups urging similar
resolutions also pass them, the total number of people living
in civil rights-protective communities could rise to more than
45 million.
This is the real story -- that the Bush administration's
efforts to launch the most direct assault on individual rights
and protections since the Alien and Sedition Acts in the early
days of our nation, have sparked in response the most open and
defiant assertion of local democracy ever seen.
There's no doubt that as a society we take our freedom
for granted. Most of us likely could not recite all the rights
guaranteed in the Constitution. And there are many who never
learned about those rights and don't value them.
But this grassroots uprising in defense of the Bill of
Rights involving people in hundreds of communities and of all
ages, careers and political persuasions -- and the willingness
of local and state elected office-holders to stand up in opposition
to federal efforts to curb civil liberties -- convinces me that
the Bill of Rights is still for many, many Americans a living
heritage worthy of immense effort to protect.
I know of nothing more hopeful than this for the future
of democracy and freedom.
Betsy Barnum is a member of the Minneapolis Bill of
Rights Defense Committee and is also founder and executive director
of the Great River Earth Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
She can be contacted at betsy@greatriv.org.
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