On the stump for Patriot Act, yet he refuses to talk to public
By Betsy Barnum (Published in Star Tribune as an op-ed Saturday, Sept. 27, 2003)
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft touched down in the Twin Cities Sept. 19 to give a closed-door speech to police, including Minneapolis Chief Robert Olson, on the wonderfulness of the USA Patriot Act.
Ashcroft has been touring the country for a month or so to talk about the need to take away individual liberties guaranteed to all people in the U.S. Constitution in order to keep all of us safe and protect our system of freedom and democracy.
But wait a minute -- protect our freedom by giving it up? Keep us all safe by taking away our Bill of Rights protections against secret searches, secret arrests, even FBI snooping into what books we check out from the library?
Ashcroft is often quoted in mass media saying that people have got entirely the wrong idea about USA Patriot -- he uses phrases like "public hysteria."
Yet in the cities he visits, he doesn't address the public, to explain to us regular folks how we've got it wrong, and help ease our hysterical fear of an unaccountable government.
Instead, he speaks to select groups, usually law enforcement personnel, and keeps his itinerary so secret that even the media often don't know until shortly before he arrives.
Since about a year ago, 165 cities, towns and counties and three states have passed resolutions opposing the USA Patriot Act and other executive and Justice Department directives since 9/11 that, in the name of fighting terrorism, take away rights guaranteed in the Constitution.
Elected officeholders on city councils and county boards in these communities have stood up in support of the constitutional rights of all persons in their jurisdictions, and in defiance of federal efforts to take away any of those rights from any of those residents.
The Minneapolis City Council passed such a resolution on April 4. Other major cities with resolutions include Detroit, Denver, Tucson, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Almost all of the resolutions have passed by unanimous or near-unanimous votes.
Nineteen million people live in these 165 communities. And if all the cities, towns and states with active Bill of Rights Defense Committees pass similar resolutions, the total U.S. population living in civil-liberties-protective communities could rise to more than 60 million.
Many have speculated that it is this growing public resistance to his policies that has brought Ashcroft out on the stump -- yet he refuses to talk to the public.
How does he hope to address the misconceptions and "hysteria" that he claims are rampant if he doesn't talk to us?
Betsy Barnum is a member of the Minneapolis Bill of Rights Defense
Committee.