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Today's
Stories
February
5, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Jordan
Green
Democratic Patronage in Northern New
Mexico
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
January
27, 2004
Steve
Philion
Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with
CNN's Aaron Brown
Daniel
Ellsberg
Leak Against This War: Expose the
Lies from the Inside
C.G.
Estabrook
Can George Ever Really be Elected
President?
Josh
Frank
Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke
Screens
Greg
Moses
Racism 101 All Over Again
Gilad
Atzmon
Blood, Soil and Art
Mike
Ferner
"We're All Lied To": an
Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
General Disorders of the Day
January
26, 2004
Sean
Donahue
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's
Drug War Zealot
Gary
Leupp
David Kay's Admission
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has
Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in
Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10,
Morris 0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan
Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's
Revelations and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the
Mafia
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
February
5, 2004
A Post-Absurd, Post-Camp
Activist Moment
Turning
NYC into a Patriot Act Free Zone
By BENJAMIN SHEPARD
Where do we go after postmodernism? It's a simple
question that writers and critics have debated for decades. Over
the last year, I have written a number of dispatches for the
Journal of Aesthetics and Protest and Counterpunch
that have addressed this topic in relation to activist responces
of the use and abuse of the narratives of the 'War on Terror'.
The first outlined the limits of the "straight" activist
project, deconstructing the workings of reified chants and protest
structures--walk in a circle, scream same old chant 'no justice,
no peace', repeat - while promoting an "absurd response
to an absurd war" in which activists deployed a fresh, creative
approach to protest. As the absurd idea of war turned into a
very real war with real casualties on the ground, the second
essay addressed how the absurd response felt decreasingly savvy
or inspiring. We were facing the limits of camp. As Susan Sontag
once said, once we know it's camp, it's no longer camp. The essay
concluded with a call for activists to contribute to other more
concrete political narratives, "building counterpublics
and liberatory spaces, while expanding on the Patriot Act Free
Zones popping up from Hawaii to Alaska." Yet the need
for a fresh approach to protest remained vital.
This third dispatch follows that call.
It happens at a moment when the predominant cultural narratives
ofthe War on Terror are used to justify curtailed civil liberties
for duration of what the Vice President suggests could be a 50-year
conflict. Circumstances were and still are such that activists
need to turn this narrative on its head. to shift the terms of
this story. Irony recedes in relevance when political situations
become too dire or when there is an urgent need to engage in
dialogue with the political mainstream. The following is a response
to such politics from the point of view of a basically anarchist
political point of view.
The Patriot Free Zone
Campaign
"Patriots Against the Patriot Act,"
read the banner held by members of Reclaim the Streets New York,
dressed in faux 1776-era garb, as they stood in front of City
Hall on the morning of October 20, 2003. Others wore pins stating,
"The Patriot Act is Sooo 1984." Surrounded by City
Council members, a Manhattan congressman, members of the ACLU
Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a few Green Party members,
and more than a handful of system-abiding liberals and direct
action anarchist types better acquainted with the streets than
the legislative corridors, RTS had joined the campaign to push
the anti-Patriot Act ordinance, Resolution 909, through the City
Council. The question was, how did this radical direct action
group find itself involved with such a bourgeois, reformist campaign?
RTS' support for the 909 campaign can
be attributed to two elements of the group's history. First,
the group has its roots in a global justice movement that recognizes
a diversity of tactics, depending on the situation, from non-violent
civil disobedience to incremental reform, and in a long history
of struggles for access to public space and debate. Second, and
more to the point, members of RTS have endured countless illegal
arrests over free speech issues. Long before September 11, 2001,
the powers-that-be had sought to delegitimize activist groups
such as Earth First and RTS as terrorists. On May 10, 2001, FBI
director Louis Freeh testified at a Senate committee hearing:
"Anarchists and extremist socialist groups-such as Reclaim
the Streetsæhave an international presence and, at times,
also represent a potential threat in the United States."
This process of delegitimization became a great deal easier after
the terrorist attacks the following fall.
For the Bushies, the best way to protect
the constitution was to curtail it or bully those who sought
to use it. Recall December 2001, when Attorney General John Ashcroft
claimed that those who opposed his approach to challenging terrorism
"only aid terrorists," while Bush Administration press
secretary Ari Fleischer suggested that Americans "need to
watch what they say, watch what they do."
In the months after the October 2001
passage of the Patriot Act, the law was used to prosecute long-standing
targets of the right, including opponents in the "War on
Drugs" and various protestors. Further, the Bush Administration
labeled U.S. citizen Jose Padilla, a Puerto Rican, as an "enemy
combatant," thereby denying his right to counsel and habeas
corpus. Throughout the mobilization against the U.S. invasion
of Iraq, activists were targeted. Members of RTS were swept off
the streets and into the jails of New York City for protesting
outside the Carlyle Group's offices in Manhattan, asserting that
the Bush family was profiting from the war.
By the spring and summer of 2003, the
mobilization against the war in Iraq was waning. The group Mobilize
New York had worked with RTS to make use of stickers with catchy
slogans and an e-mail list of several thousand to help rally
opposition to the war. To avoid the post-mobilization letdown,
RTS and Mobilize New York focused their next campaign on restrictions
of civil liberties. The Republican National Committee was, after
all, seeking to capitalize on the September 11 tragedy for political
gain by scheduling its convention for New York City in 2004.
Thus, activists knew they stood to face even more restrictions
on their civil liberties if they failed to speak up. Further,
Harlem City Councilman Bill Perkins, who had already sponsored
hearings on police abuses during the February 15, 2003 antiwar
march, had introduced a resolution before the council calling
for the city to affirm civil liberties while opposing the Patriot
Act. Cities from Baltimore to Chicago to Philadelphia
had already passed resolutions similar to 909.
Players from countless perspectives joined
the effort to turn New York into a Patriot Act Free Zone. But
the campaign needed a little push. The mainstream left has long
needed a shot in the arm from the radical left, both in terms
of grassroots energy and flashiness. RTS hoped to bring a bit
of its sartorial splendor to this effort, mobilizing direct action
folks, whoæalthough strongly affected by restrictions on
civil libertiesærarely got involved with local city politics.
RTS began by organizing a poster campaign
calling on citizens from all walks of life to create Patriot
Act Free Zones where difference was honored and profiling rejected.
Members of the group made great posters and hung them up throughout
the city. The group also distributed a tool kit of sorts that
included the poster and a worksheet, "Ten Ways to Create
a Patriot Act Free Zone in Your Own Community." The worksheet
included simple steps along the lines of the old "How to
Create a Community" campaign, which instructed folks to
introduce themselves to their neighbors. In addition to supporting
Resolution 909, the listed suggested:
Remind your friends and yourself: freedom
is about acts of freedom, not authority.
Support those fighting for political
freedom across the country.
Speak with ten people about the Patriot
Act's attack on constitutionally protected freedoms including:
1st Amendment Rights to Freedom of Speech,
Association, and Government Information
4th Amendment Rights against Unreasonable
Searches and Seizures
5th Amendment Rights to Due Process &
Freedom from Being Held without Charge
6th Amendment Right to Legal Representation
and a Speedy Trial
8th Amendment Freedom from Cruel and
Unusual Punishment
Remind them, national Security does not
justify abuses of the Constitution.
Remember, the best way to defend freedom
is with more freedom.
The best way to protect democracy is with more democracy.
Ranting and Partying
for Freedom
Next, the group organized a number of
community events including a "Rant Off for a Patriot Act
Free Zone," where members of New York City's Bill
of Rights Defense Committee mingled with Lower East Side wing
nuts to revel in the First Amendment. The point of the
Rant Off was simple. As emcee for the event, I asserted, "To
Live is to Rant, To Be Human is to Rant!" The point of the
Rant Off was to make room for all the flamers, moaners, groaners,
complainers, kvetchers, and spammersæ"all those with
something legitimate to say"
The guidelines for the event were simple
enough: one dollar per minute, three minutes per rant. Like any
good democracy, those requiring more time to speak would need
the sponsorship of a financial backer. Throughout the night's
event, I noted that we were also running a fundraiser for the
Republican National Convention in New York, shredding copies
of the Constitution for $5 a pop with our battery-powered shredder.
All proceeds would go to the RNC and its push to turn the country
into an Oceania-like Total Information Awareness superhighway
and shopping mall. The schtick didn't work as well as I thought
it would. Some people theatrically ranted and preached, others
screamed, RTS members passed out Patriot Act Free Zone posters,
the Bill of Rights Defense Committee distributed information
on 909, and one guy performed a play about COINTELPRO, while
others delighted in the improvisation. Between rants, we peppered
the event with discussion of the idea of Patriot Act Free Zones
popping up across the country. The point of the discussion was
to suggest that Council Resolution 909 calling upon federal,
state, and local officials and city agencies and institutions
to affirm civil rights and civil libertiesæwas a way to
realize a Patriot Act autonomous zone. Yet unlike Hakim Bey's
Temporary Autonomous Zones, which had always inspired RTS actions,
the point of supporting Resolution 909 was to build something
that might last or give civil liberties a bounce going into Fall
2004. Without being heavy-handed, the event served as a teach-in
on the legislation. There are certainly limits to such a model
. Yet, along the way, the direct action crowd and civil libertarians
were finding common ground on which to communicate.
Resolution 909 in
Play
Next, RTS tapped into the large e-mail
list put together to mobilize people against the war in Iraq,
using the Mobilize New York alerts to update the list about the
campaign. The first alert in September 2003 announced, "We
will be focusing as much attention on the home frontæspecifically
the current war on civil liberties being conducted under the
veil of the 'war on terror'æas on the ongoing occupation
of Iraq." The point was to push different constituencies
to support the resolution, ensuring that different council members
would take a position.
By the end of the summer, RTS worked
with the 74th Unwelcoming Committee, a group of recent New York
University graduates, to hold a Patriot Act Free Zone Street
Party. The unpermitted street carnival was one of the first events
promoted with the Mobilize New York alerts. The evening's theme
was a citywide celebration of resistance to the Bush Administration
and the Patriot Act. Its aim: to show Bush that the RNC is not
welcome in NYC in 2004. Event propaganda stated: "With the
RNC planning its latest convention ever in September of 2004
to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary, the RNC plans to turn
a tragedy into their policy political convention."
In response, the Unwelcoming Committee planned its own "unwelcoming
party" for the Republicans. The aim of the event was to
show that resistance to the Patriot Act was spreading. Flyers
declared:
nyc today (under the patriot act):
paramilitary in the subways,
police (& police brutality) everywhere, surveillance cameras
on every block, immigrants detained indefinitely without access
to lawyers, government spies searching our homes, monitoring
our internet use, libraries, financial & medical records,
the mass incarceration of people of color, charges of "terrorism"
for civil disobedience, government monitoring of religious and
political groups...
nyc tomorrow:
one year from now, the very same tyrants who brought us this
Orwellian nightmare plan to hold their Republican National Convention
(RNC) in new york city, capitalizing on our city's tragedy by
scheduling their conference date in close proximity with 9/11.
we believe
that even in these times of repression and fear, New Yorkers
can refuse to be cowed into submission and scared into silence!
We can get together, smile at each other, dance in the streets
together, make art & music together! We can create alternatives
to the systems we oppose. our varied and dissonant voices will
not be silenced! on september 5th, we can and will reclaim NYC
as a PATRIOT ACT FREE ZONE!!!
Creating a Patriot Act Free Zone was
as elementary as creating a street party. Friday September 5th,
activists arrived at Union Square, some wearing party masks,
some carrying flags with the familiar RTS party person logo,
and some dancing. Nearly 300 revelers then skipped out of Manhattan
on the L-train, as a subway party ensued on the way to Brooklyn
for the street party in Williamsburg, at Bedford and North 7th
Street. Police appeared stumped as the regular Friday night crowd
took over the street for fire dancing and the evening was filled
with music and bodies in motion and bikers from Times UP! Outnumbered
four to one, the police just stood and watched. And with few
arrests and little interference from the police, the dancing
and joy turned what would have been just another night into a
carnival. The party embodied the kind of civil liberties-protected
Patriot Act Free Zone the group hoped to see expand and continue.
As one member of the 74th Unwelcoming Collective observed, "We
have almost a year to let these guys know that New York doesn't
want them hereæand they have a whole year to decide not
to come!"
What to Do?
As summer turned to fall, Resolution
909 made its way through the legislative corridors with astounding
momentum. And support from the City Council increased. On October
20, hearings on the measure were scheduled.
The hearings presented a telling challenge
for RTS. When Bush was elected, activists had employed irony
with the pseudo-paramilitary Students for an Undemocratic Society,
or SUDS. When Bush escalated towards war, the group morphed into
Absurd Response to an Absurd War, dressing as right wing drag
queens and kings, playing with irony in the manner of the Billionaire
and SUDS concepts. With both, we'd deconstructed traditional
protest models, reaching the limits of play and camp. By the
time Resolution 909 came along, we were faced with the painful
question: What do you do after post modernism? You can't live
on irony alone; there is too little to show for it. So we re-embraced
a canonical narrative of "straight" protest.
The question we were facing was a simple
one: Why can't irony work now?
Different people have offered various
answers. Author and RTS member Larry Bogart suggests: "Carnival
is supposed to be a liberatory action, which means that we shouldn't
be chained to it. It should be used when it best suits the movement
or affinity group. In the same way, the use of irony is situationally
determined. Depending on the context, irony can be either a posthip
cop-out or a challenging, effective way of engaging publics.
Irony always includes the risk of a misfire in communication."
Occasional RTS participant and one of
with the leading architects of the Absurd Response concept, L.A.
Kauffman has suggested that it is easy for activists to fall
into rut in which they repeat the same approaches over and over,
confusing a tactic with a strategy. The Absurd Response was
a fun tactic for speaking to other activists. But for speaking
to City Council members, it was not the most useful approach.
RTS organizer Steve Duncombe suggests
that in term of pure politics for many of us, Bush and the Patriot
Act appears so absurd that parody comes perilously close to reality.
With Bush in office, ignorance really is strength. In the same
vein, the Republicans appear so vengeful, angry, and even frenzied
over 9/11 and the war that many would likely agree with RTS'
most outrageous, absurd responsesæ"All War all the
Time," "Leave no Billionaire Behind," etc. Further,
while the Absurd Response was a great way to think about politics
and fun, the political terrain was shifting. Irony works best
as an inside joke to mobilize and appeal to a subculture. Yet
Bush has polarized so many issues that there is now a realistic
chance to reach a majority of people who think of themselves
as thoughtful, not even ironically patriotic, citizens of the
USA. In the end, irony is good for critique, but is limited in
demonstrating what kind of world we really want to create. If
we are going to suggest that another world is possible, we'd
better be able to suggest that this world is more than simply
ridiculous.
In an essay entitled "Mass Action
Since Seattle: Seven Ways to Make Our Protests More Powerful,"
George Lakey suggests that actors heighten the contrast between
protestors and police behavior. While sophisticated theater audiences
might prefer complexity, shades of gray are harder to pull off
in the street. "Our power lies in our choices," he
writes. "We can choose to design our confrontations using
appropriate symbolism so that the part of the public we most
want to influence will see us as the people standing for justice."
With this in mind, RTS/Absurd Response members made a
decision not to shred the constitution as a fundraiser for the
RNC. Instead we would play it straight dressed like actual age-old
patriots, carrying a banner reading "Patriots Against the
Patriot Act" at the rally before the public hearings.
Prodding Speaker Miller
The hearings for Resolution 909 were
telling. Peter Vallone, Jr. the son of the former council
speaker from Queens who was ousted after term limits, was
the only council member opposing the measure at the hearing.
His testimony offered a revealing glimpse of the cultural anxieties
and biases supporting the Patriot Act. Vallone explained that
he thought the reason New York City had not been attacked again
was because of the Patriot Act. Further, Vallone suggested that
protecting the masses from an ambiguous enemy was enough of a
justification for the Patriot Act's encroachment on constitutionally
protected freedoms. Fear propelled a zero-sum quest for security
over freedom. At one point in the hearings, Donna Lieberman
of the New York Civil Liberties Union explained that Jose Padilla,
a Puerto Rican, had been detained in the U.S. and held without
access to counsel as an "enemy combatant." Vallone
said he was perfectly comfortable with illegal aliens being held
without access to lawyers. Lower East Side councilwoman Margarita
Lopez repeatedly asked Vallone if he knew that Padilla was from
Puerto Rico, and therefore a U.S. citizen. Vallone backed down.
September 11 had created yet another
enemy "other" to place in a long cavalcade of villainsæfrom
witches to communists to immigrantsædemonized throughout
U.S. history. After 9/11, these "us and them" dynamics
propelled a new wave of racial profiling as even U.S. citizens
were denied access to the U.S. court system because they "looked
like terrorists." Lieberman situated the Patriot Act's detentions
within the long history of encroachments on civil rights, including
the internment of people of Japanese ancestry during WWII
the anticommunist "witch hunts" of the 1950s, and
COINTELPRO, all of which were later regarded as mistakes. "But
if you read the history of these outrages, there is always a
counter-narrative in which wiser voices respond to the hysteria,"
Lieberman testified. "To those who claim the times are so
perilous and the risk of harm so great that we cannot tolerate
democratic principles of freedom, there are other voices that
say: we do not accept the argument that in order to preserve
democracy, we must suspend individual freedoms."
Walking out of the hearings, RTS members knew where 909 stood
on the legislative food chain and moved to act. In the weeks
before the hearings, it had become increasingly apparent that
the resolution's fate rested in the hands of Council Speaker
Gifford Miller, who could allow the measure to die in committee
without ever letting the full council vote on it. Calls to the
speaker's office went unreturned. When activists finally reached
his office, his staff offered political doublespeak. Miller supported
both civil liberties and security, we were told. After the hearings,
the goal was to convince the speaker that civil liberties and
security are not a zero-sum game, but rather that one cannot
exist without the other. In the following weeks, coalition members
made use of the Mobilize New York alerts list, wrote letters,
and begged friends to beg the speaker to "Pretty Please
Support City Council Resolution 909."
We sent out hundreds of letters stating,
"There are 29 supporters out of 50 on the City Council who
support the defense of our civil liberties. Please help New York
preserve constitutional freedoms and civil liberties for our
diverse communities by passing anti-Patriot Act Resolution 909."
We collected some 500 signatures on post cards at the Critical
Mass Halloween party alone. And so it went throughout the fall.
Some days the speaker's office representatives
took calls, other times they put calls through to message machines
already filled to their limit. Yet his office knew something
was in play. They could not get through a day without taking
calls.
On December 2, in the midst of a snowstorm,
coalition members gathered at City Hall for a "Rally to
Defend the Bill of Rights and Pass Resolution 909." Once
again, the patriots arrived, but this time their numbers were
dwarfed by the large outpouring of New Yorkers from all walks
of life who had been offended by the political misuse of 9/11.
Speaker Miller even made a surprise appearance in which, using
political doublespeak, he thanked everyone for coming, spoke
out against the Patriot Act, but somehow avoided mentioning support
for the resolution. Again we inundated his office with calls.
By late December, some 33 of the
council's 50 members had signed on. Miller co-signed a letter
with Deputy Majority Leader Bill Perkins committing to bringing
Resolution 909 to a vote at the City Council's first business
session in 2004. The letter read, "Res. 909-A makes clear
that the government's anti-terrorism initiatives can and must
be undertaken in a manner that respects basic constitutional
rights and liberties. We strongly agree with this proposition
and we look forward to adopting the resolution with the support
of an overwhelming majority of the City Council members."
Throughout the final weeks of 2003, rumors
whirled through the internet that City Council would vote on
the resolution by the end of the session in the third week in
December. Yet, for many of us, a tenuous feeling remained. We'd
claim that victory when the resolution actually passed. December
15th, the date the resolution was scheduled to move came and
went. Nothing. Word from the council was after the Capture
of Saddam Hussein, they did not want to 'send the wrong message'
by passing the resolution after the capture of this brutal dictator.
"Wrong message?" many grumbled. Maybe the right message
would have been to pass a resolution opposing the Bill of Rights,
others suggested. Well, at least the Democrats did not have
Nader to blame for their inaction. And most of us of us stumbled
into the holidays.
Many took heart that Philadelphia had
tabled their anti Patriot resolution when its first vote coincided
with the start of the war, only to watch it succeed. Yet, New
York had to wait. It would be almost two months and countless
false starts later before the resolution (renamed #60) was scheduled
for a February 4th vote date. By that time, even Los Angeles
had passed its own anti Patriot resolution. In addition, portions
of the Patriot Act itself were found unconstitutional. Feeling
the heat of the burgeoning Bill of Right's Defense Movement,
even the President defended the Patriot Act in the State of Union.
Yet that was not enough to keep New York City Council from moving
onward. And on February 4, a vast majority of New York City
Council responded passing Resolution 60 calling for government
to uphold civil liberties, despite the war on terror. With 60's
passage, New York became the 250th legislative body to pass such
a Bill of Rights resolution, creating a series of civil liberties
free zones from NYC to Los Angeles and Hawii.
Udi Ofer and Glenn C. Devitt of The New
York City Bill of Rights Defense Campaign would note: "Given
that the Council convened to deliberate on the resolution only
a few blocks from Ground Zero, it was hard not to appreciate
the historical significance of the vote. It's largely in the
name of the New Yorkers who perished on 9/11 that the federal
government continues to push through antiterrorism policies which
needlessly sacrifice our most fundamental rights and freedoms."
With the passage of Res. 60 New York said: no more immigrant
profiling, illegal detentions, no more harassing library clerks
for records of citizens, no more stifling free speech. Not in
our name.
Riding home one night through the snow
after one of our bi weekly drunken RTS "meetings" and
planning sessions, a friend explained that even if the world
she lived in was going completely to hell on a macro level, she
still had to do something at home. That was the only thing she
could see doing. As answers to bigger questions--few emerged.
Irony and play would still be necessary fun parts of strategy,
to be used when they seemed tactically appropriate, when coordinated
with great research and political saaavy. But for now, direct
action had successfully coordinated with a legislative campaign
to make one city and the U.S. a little bit more free.
February 4th, I sent out a final email
congratulating everyone involved: "thanks for all your amazing
work, thanks to everyone who sent a fax, signed a card, showed
at a rally, a street party or a rant off.... thanks to all of
you, New York City just became a Patriot Act Free Zone."
Benjamin Shepard
is co-editor of From
ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the
Era of Globalization (Verso, 2002) and author of White
Nights and Ascending Shadows: An Oral History of the San Francisco
AIDS Epidemic (Cassell, 1997).
He can be reached at benshepard@mindspring.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for February 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
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