Court Invalidates Most of Arizona Immigrant-Check Law

In  spite of my usual criticism of both Congress and the President, I tend to be deferential to the Supreme Court.  Maybe it’s because it’s in this body that I place my last vestige of hope that our Republic will not entirely transform into the Evil Empire; maybe, on less desperate days, it’s because I understand that fine the points of law on which many decisions turn are not really the broad stroked reported by the mass media.  

 Nonetheless, I was initially feeling dejected when I heard that Arizona’s immigration law (“SB 1070”) was upheld.  The harassment of all racial, ethnic, and linguistic minorities could not proceed with legal blessings.  The media have shown Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer gloating and declaring that enforcement will begin.

But wait.

I then heard that the vote was a unanimous 8-0 vote (with Justice Kagan not participating.)  

Unanimous?!  Even the liberal Justices?  Even Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who once infuriated conservatives by saying,

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life..."

How could this “wise Latina woman” support a law that places every latino under legal suspicion by their mere existence in Arizona?!

And so, I set aside the media accounts of the ruling and looked closer at what the Court actually said.

The  Court considered four separate sections of SB 1070. 

SB 1070 §3 made it a crime for failure to apply for, or carry, “alien-registration papers.” 

A majority, 6-2,  struck this section down as unconstitutional. It crossed the philosophical divide: conservatives Alito & Roberts, centrist Kennedy, and liberals Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor all voted to void this section.  No one will have to apply for ‘papers’ and carry them.

SB 1070 §5: made it a crime for illegal immigrants to seek work, apply for work, or perform work. 

A 5-3 majority (Breyer, Ginsburg, Kennedy, Roberts, and Sotomayor) struck down this section as well, because it conflicts with the Federal Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which makes it illegal for employers to hire or employ unauthorized workers. If Congress wanted to create crimes against employees as well, it would have done so, said the Justices.

SB 1070 §6: permitted police to make a warrantless arrest of a person if there was probable cause to believe the individual committed a public offense making them deportable.  

The same 5-3 majority (Breyer, Ginsburg, Kennedy, Roberts, and Sotomayor) struck down this section as well.

That leaves only one section of the bill that was challenged and upheld:

SB1070 §2B: Requires an officer to make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested if there’s reasonable suspicion that person is in the country illegally. This portion also requires law enforcement to check the immigration status of people arrested and hold them indefinitely until the status is determined.

This section was approved 8-0. 

Keep the following in perspective:

The Court is not saying they agree with or like the law; they are simply issuing a determination as to its constitutionality.

Second, the law only permits the inquiry “…if there’s reasonable suspicion that person is in the country illegally.”

Not if they’re brown.  Not if they speak Spanish.  There must be a reasonable suspicion that they are here illegally.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion, was very clear in warning Arizona by writing that this section, too,  could face future constitutional problems if it results in law-enforcement officers detaining an individual longer than they would have without SB 1070 requirements.

All in all, the Justices threw out the most onerous provisions of the law; the one provision they allowed to stand, they allowed to stand with a stern warning that how Arizona chooses to carry out this provision will determine its fate.

I’m breathing a little easier.

.

When the Republic Becomes the Empire: Jimmy Carter on U.S. Security Policy

"THE United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights. 

Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues. 

While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile. 

The declaration has been invoked by human rights activists and the international community to replace most of the world’s dictatorships with democracies and to promote the rule of law in domestic and global affairs. It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” 

Recent legislation has made legal the president’s right to detain a person indefinitely on suspicion of affiliation with terrorist organizations or “associated forces,” a broad, vague power that can be abused without meaningful oversight from the courts or Congress (the law is currently being blocked by a federal judge). This law violates the right to freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration.

In addition to American citizens’ being targeted for assassination or indefinite detention, recent laws have canceled the restraints in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to allow unprecedented violations of our rights to privacy through warrantless wiretapping and government mining of our electronic communications. Popular state laws permit detaining individuals because of their appearance, where they worship or with whom they associate. 

Despite an arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is declared an enemy terrorist, the death of nearby innocent women and children is accepted as inevitable. After more than 30 airstrikes on civilian homes this year in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has demanded that such attacks end, but the practice continues in areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are not in any war zone. We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times. 

These policies clearly affect American foreign policy. Top intelligence and military officials, as well as rights defenders in targeted areas, affirm that the great escalation in drone attacks has turned aggrieved families toward terrorist organizations, aroused civilian populations against us and permitted repressive governments to cite such actions to justify their own despotic behavior.

Meanwhile, the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, now houses 169 prisoners. About half have been cleared for release, yet have little prospect of ever obtaining their freedom. American authorities have revealed that, in order to obtain confessions, some of the few being tried (only in military courts) have been tortured by waterboarding more than 100 times or intimidated with semiautomatic weapons, power drills or threats to sexually assault their mothers. Astoundingly, these facts cannot be used as a defense by the accused, because the government claims they occurred under the cover of “national security.” Most of the other prisoners have no prospect of ever being charged or tried either. 

At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer, America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends. 

As concerned citizens, we must persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership according to international human rights norms that we had officially adopted as our own and cherished throughout the years."

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, is the founder of the Carter Center and the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. A version of this op-ed appeared in print on June 25, 2012, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: A Cruel and Unusual Record.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Challenged by Citizen Action in VT

On May 23 of this year, more than 100 concerned citizens, including four local members of Nuke Free Monadnock, for entered into an assertive dialogue with the representatives of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at a public hearing held at the Brattleboro (VT) High School.  At least one local newspaper criticized the public for being ‘chaotic,’ ‘disruptive,’ and unproductive.

Not so, says my friend and colleague Steve Chase, Director of the ES Master’s Program 

Concentration in Advocacy for Social Justice and Sustainability at Antioch University New England. 

What follows is his detailed account of how a group of citizens refused to allow the NRC to bully them into submission. In the end, the citizens prevailed and were heard.

His eye-witness account:

“… The so-called disruption … was that a half dozen elderly women [who] stood near the NRC’s table at the front of the room. They were not in the way and were completely silent. They just wore black clothes and white masks and held signs saying the aging and accident-prone Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor is not safe.

At this point, an NRC representative said that having women standing at the front of the room disagreeing with the NRC was intolerable and disrespectful. The NRC reps then refused to start the meeting until the women sat down.

Members of the crowd asked the NRC officials to please just go ahead with the meeting. The NRC refused again. The crowd then voted on whether the NRC should start the meeting. The crowd overwhelmingly voted yes. The NRC officials then ignored the crowd’s vote and instead sent police to pressure the women at the front of the room to sit down — even though the women were breaking no law and were not being disruptive.

At this point, about 40 to 50 people quietly got up and joined the women at the front of the room to make sure these women would not be mistreated or arrested at the orders of the NRC officials in the room. The NRC officials then got angrier and walked out of the meeting en mass saying the meeting was over.

Four concerned citizens then sat down at the table at the front of the room and said that the “People’s NRC is now in session.” In order to let the public be heard, one of these people asked if there was anyone in the audience who would like to speak about their concerns about the safety of the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor. People lined up at the mic and then started giving their testimony in an orderly fashion.

As this was happening, we could see the NRC officials looking in through a window and saw their upset faces once they realized that the meeting was going on without them and their attempt to disrupt the meeting had failed.

They then engaged in much animated discussion with each other and the police outside the meeting room. Finally, after several minutes, they came back, stood close to the door, and said that they would now be willing to hear testimony and respond to questions from the public.

Several members of the public thanked them for changing their minds and agreeing to engage in a real democratic dialog. Questions, statements, answers, and animated back and forth dialog with the NRC began and went on for more than 30 minutes beyond when the meeting was scheduled to end.

Then, after the NRC spokesperson admitted that there is nothing the public could say that would change the NRC’s mind about supporting Vermont Yankee, more than 90 concerned citizens got up and said the meeting had gone on long enough.

We then marched out slowly in a single line chanting, “Shut It Down.” We didn’t even chant that loudly.

Thinking over the whole evening again, I do believe that “this is what democracy looks like.”

This wasn’t chaotic mob action, but a disciplined group of concerned citizens who were assertive and spoke up for the public interest and challenged the NRC for being more of a lapdog for the nuclear industry than a watchdog for public safety.

Hopefully, the [media] will no longer disparage concerned citizens who have come out time and time again to participate in hearings, rallies, marches, petition drives, or lobbying their elected officials. This ongoing citizens’ movement has now won the full support of Vermont’s U.S. senator, governor, state Senate, and attorney general — as well as the attorneys general of several other states.

STEVE CHASE

Director of the ES Master’s Program Concentration in

Advocacy for Social Justice and Sustainability

Department of Environmental Studies

Antioch University New England

40 Avon St., Keene NH 03431"

Congratulations to all who participated and held their ground!

.

In Memory of "Sparky," one year later....

[This is a re-post from one year ago...it still makes me very sad...and very angry.  Angry at the "AIDs Service Agency" that banned him from assistance for speaking his mind.  Anger at those who spit epithets at him because he had a virus.  Anger at those who were annoyed at his presence - and made their feelings obvious.]

 Mark Parsons was a big-hearted man, a philosopher, a theologian in his own right, a housemate for over a year, and, most of all, a wonderful man and a true friend.

He wrote the following last night, before taking his life this morning. The message is universal:

Hate creates Hate and here is proof

"I am a gay man with AIDS. I have been living with it for 27 years now. I always see bible thumping christians pontificating about the evils of homosexuality but did you know an even more incideous hate exitsts very close by where the people have access to you heart and Soul? Your sisters perhaps? You know, the "I love you but wish you weren't gay thing". Always a but.......Here is a quote from my Loving sweet sinister, [name ommitted by me]

You fucking AIDS faggot! I wish you would die fucking soon so me and the rest of our family can catch a break! Will you please fucking die and get it over with!

This is the woman I chose to be my health care proxy. I know, that is kind of like a jew asking hitler over for dinner. But i have a forgiving heart, but after all haven't I been forgiven by so many! But I thought this would be a good lesson for ME because now I will know the results of manifesting Hate in the world. I have always wondered what that was like and Now I will now. What I may do with the information I am not really sure. I will let you know in a follow up. I can't really recall ever manifesting hate before. I wonder if it will make me feel guilty. Probably not because guilt really only comes from judging doesnt it? Ulnimately the lesson will be mine. I wonder if all the "Loving" people in my life will turn on me. That would be interesting. Maybe I will get sad but thats no problem because i don't have anything. Or i guess I could go to jail but they at last will provide three hots and a cot."

Love you always, Mark....

.

Wildfire FireFighters Go Without Health Insurance...

According to the US Fire Administration, a branch of FEMA, there were more than  78,792 wildfires in 2009.  These fires burned a total of  6,00,000  ( 9,375 sq miles) an area larger than my home state of New Hampshire.

In the last 12 years, 179 firefighters died on the job while putting out these blazes….and that doesn’t include the numbers of firefighters who were injured or who are suffering long-term health effects from intense exposure to heat and smoke.

And in spite of the heroic efforts put forth by those who put their lives on the line saving other people’s property…the federal government refuses to allow these firefighters to access government employee health insurance, because they are considered "temporary employees."  The perverse irony of that is that more effective the firefighters are, the more they are marginalized as just 'temporary' workers.

Jon Lauer, a Denver, Colorado firefighter, has initiated a campaign to change this federal policy.  In an open letter to President Obama, Lauer writes:

“Dear President Obama,

I am writing to request an optional health benefits plan for seasonally employed federal wildland firefighters and their families.

The work that wildland firefighters perform is critical. Each year they are responsible for keeping tens of thousands of homes and businesses from being consumed, often protecting entire towns from the threat of fire.


Because wildfire is overwhelmingly more common between the months of May to October, the majority of firefighters are seasonally employed. More than 90% of these return to service year after year. They often work the equivalent of a full year's worth of hours in six to seven months, but are never given the opportunity to buy into a government health care plan even at the most basic level, because they are classified as temporary workers.


There are many risks these brave men and women take in order to serve their community. Since the year 2000, 179 wildland firefighters have been killed in the line of duty, and the conditions of the firefighting environment have been linked to cancer and respiratory disease leading to permanent lung damage.


Seasonal federal wildland firefighters demonstrate a commitment to service equal to that of permanently employed firefighters and other emergency responders. It is only right and fair that they have access to a quality, affordable health plan for themselves and their families. I urge you to introduce legislation that makes seasonally employed federal wildland firefighters and their immediate families eligible for year-round health insurance coverage.”

Lauer has an online petition at :

http://www.change.org/petitions/give-health-care-to-firefighters-who-battle-wildfires

 We encourage support of Lauer and America’s firefighters.

.

Gay "Pride" Month - I Finally Get It...

I’m 52 years old, and this past weekend was my first “Pride” Parade.

 I’m not 100% sure why I never attended, but I know that I always was skeptical about the whole thing. I think I just didn't understand why there was such a thing to begin with. Outside of a reason to party, these parades merely seemed (to me) to simply give more conservative folk another reason to hate gay men and women: young hardbodies gyrating on floats in speedos, men fabulously dressed up as women, a heavy dose of sexual innuendo…I wasn’t sure what good this would do for anyone.

But this year, I decided not only to attend Boston’s Pride parade - - but to march in it. Being older-than-dance-club age, and having a belly that disqualify me from the cover of Men’s Health, the obvious choice was to march with MassBearz, a fairly recent organization of gay men who identify with the “Bears” subculture.

 We gathered at 10:00 am in Boston’s back Bay, for a parade that began at 12 Noon, only to find that we were towards the end so we never stepped off until after 1:00 pm. The 30 men gathered blew up balloons and played the “hurry-up-and-wait” game as we watched larger groups of political campaigns, flashy floats, and musical sound systems gather around us.

And then we stepped into the streets, and started along the parade route, smiling and waving and handing out candy gummi-bears to the crowd. And the further along the route we went, the closer we got to Boston City Hall Plaza, the larger the crowds grew – and something amazing happened.

Now, I have experienced parades before - being raised in a fireman’s family, parades where a standard part of the summer, and for a number of those summers I played snare drum in the Baldwin Fire Department Drum & Bugle Corps. But no parade had prepared me for this.

The crowds went crazy for us. Cheering, clapping, yelling out, “We LOVE you, Bears!” and generally going over the top to applaud us. Not a few people here and there, but massive walls of tens of thousands of people lining the streets of Boston. By the time we reached the ‘finish line,’ my partner and I were both in tears. And I now understand the importance of “Pride” parades.

It wasn’t for the press, or the politicians, or the sponsoring companies seeking gay dollars, or the local businesses hawking water and rainbow flags, or the disapproving.

It was for me.

It was for those of us who marched.

It was for those of us who can name a dozen or two kids in high school who made fun of us and called us “faggots,” who could now witness a hundred thousand people cheering us.

It was for those of us who, comparing the short-comings of our less-than-ideal male bodies to pumped-up movie images, could witness thousands of people proclaiming their adoration of those middle-aged bald spots and soft bellies.

It was for those of us who never ‘fit in’ in high school, and could now feel like we were the Kings of the city.

It was for those of us who never won an athletic letter (much less get picked for any team sport until no one else was left), but who now felt like we were being held up on the crowd's shoulders after winning the game.

It was for those of us who felt awkward and unsure and self-conscious speaking with girls, only to have women by the thousands giving us “thumbs-up” signs and asking to have pictures taken with us.

Pride is, indeed, about just that: Pride. Pride in who you are, pride in your skin, pride in your commonality with your fellow humanity.

I get it now. I’m sorry I wasted all these years. But I won’t waste the future…you can bet that I’ll be found at a Pride Parade every June.

.

Judge Rules 'Occupy' may Proceed in Class-Action against NYPD for Brooklyn Bridge Entrapment

On Oct 2, this blog reported how the NYPD led Occupy Wall Street protesters onto the Brooklyn Bridge, only to then kettle and arrest hundreds of them. The initial reports in the New York Times reporting the entrapment was then changed (and the reporter’s name changed) after receiving calls from NYPD spokesmen 20 minutes after publication (see original article New York Times Changes Story, Shifts Blame)

 In an opinion issued late yesterday, US District Judge Jed Rakoff ruled that a class action lawsuit against the police may proceed, and that New York Police Department officers are not entitled to qualified immunity from the arrests from the October 1, 2011 Brooklyn Bridge incident. He has ordered the lawsuit to proceed. In issuing his ruling, Judge Rakoff referred to historic protests by Thomas Paine and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"This is a major victory in the fight for justice and vindication for the seven hundred people falsely arrested by the NYPD," stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund which filed the class action lawsuit days after the arrests. "This is a clear message in defense of free speech. The Court's ruling means that scores of NYPD officers are potentially liable to hundreds of arrestees who were mass arrested in a peaceful protest in a blatant violation of their constitutional rights."

"From the onset, this case has involved competing narratives: the police's carefully crafted PR presentation that was spun to the press in the immediate hours after the mass false arrest, versus the truth," stated Carl Messineo, Legal Director of the PCJF. "The plaintiffs in this lawsuit sought to set the record straight in their demand for justice. The court repeatedly cited the evidence presented in the complaint, including multimedia video evidence, in its finding that NYPD officers can be held liable for conducting these false arrests. We've said all along that the police invited protestors into the bridge and then turned around and, without notice or warning, arrested them. The ruling vindicates and credits that narrative that we have said is the truth all along."

The Judge’s rulings states:

 "[A] reasonable officer would have understood that it was incumbent on the police to clearly warn the demonstrators that they must not proceed onto the Brooklyn Bridge's vehicular roadway...the officers...turned and started walking away from the demonstrators and onto the road way -- an implicit invitation to follow. While the demonstrators might have inferred otherwise if they had heard the bull horn message, no reasonable officer could imagine, in these circumstances, that this warning was heard by more than a small fraction of the gathered multitude...Indeed, the plaintiffs' video shows what should have been obvious to any reasonable officer, namely, that the surrounding clamor interfered with the ability of demonstrators as few as fifteen feet away from the bull horn to understand the officer's instructions."

The ruling opens with the following: "What a huge debt this nation owes to its 'troublemakers.' From Thomas Paine to Martin Luther King, Jr., they have forced us to focus on problems we would prefer to downplay or ignore. Yet it is often only with hindsight that we can distinguish those troublemakers who brought us to our senses from those who were simply . . . troublemakers. Prudence, and respect for the constitutional rights to free speech and free association, therefore dictate that the legal system cut all non-violent protesters a fair amount of slack. These observations are prompted by the instant lawsuit, in which a putative class of some 700 or so 'Occupy Wall Street' protesters contend they were unlawfully arrested while crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1, 2011."

Delaware Libertarians Endorse Green Party's Andrew Groff for Senate

This blog is devoted to establishing alliances between libertarians and progressives – something that I find very natural, but which is often viewed with suspicion by purists on either side. I am delighted, then, to be able to report on this ‘under-the-radar’ development in Delaware:

Delegates from all three counties in Delaware (New Castle, Kent, and Sussex) voted Saturday at the Libertarian Party of Delaware’s annual state convention in Dover to endorse Andrew Groff for US Senate. The party could not nominate Groff as its candidate because the Green Party has already nominated him, and the General Assembly recently abolished fusion nominations in Delaware. But the endorsement means that the Libertarians will not nominate a competing candidate, and will support Groff’s campaign.

Groff is the owner-operator of Avero Holdings LLC, a computer consulting business, and an adjunct instructor in Computer Information Systems at Delaware Technical and Community College. He decided to take the plunge and run for public office after doing organizational work in support of Occupy Delaware.

At the convention, Groff told the Libertarian Party, “I have always been one of you in spirit.” He opposes the Patriot Act and the Federal “war on drugs,” and supports marriage equality. “The government receives its power by consent of the governed,” Groff said. “States have no rights other than those consented to by the people.”

Groff also discussed the barriers that Democrats and Republicans in the General Assembly have created to make ballot access and successful campaigning possible for “alternative candidates.” “Raising the number of members in a political party necessary to appear on the ballot nearly extinguished several independent parties,” Groff said. The Constitution Party has lost ballot access this year, and the Greens are scrambling to gather the final registrations necessary to assure that his name will appear on the November ballot. “I think we’ll be all right,” the candidate said.

Both the Libertarian Party of Delaware and the Independent Party of Delaware have sufficient registered members to guarantee their candidates will appear on this year’s ballot.

“I intend to give Tom Carper a good hard run,” Groff promised. “This year will be about a citizen against the corporate candidate.”

 For more information, or to donate (he really likes donations!), visit  Goff's Campaign Website

Jindal Signs Parole Reform for Louisiana (Highest Incarceration Rate in the US)

Louisiana's prison crisis has been much in the news recently. Just a few days ago Marjorie Esman of the Louisiana ACLU publicized the horrific conditions in Louisiana, the state with the highest incarceration rate in the country (853 inmates per 100,000 people - a number rapidly approaching one for every 100 people. This figure is higher than most totalitarian regimes around the globe, and is significantly weighted against black men). Today, significant progress has been made in addressing that issue.

The ACLU had sponsored a bill, House Bill 543, which  grants parole eligibility for nonviolent and non-sex offenders who have been sentenced to life without parole. These prisoners wouldn’t automatically be let out of prison – rather, they would have the chance to go before a parole board and prove that they are ready to re-enter society rather than spending the rest of their lives behind bars.

They worked on that bill with a wide range of allies, including the warden of Angola State Penitentiary and the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops. For different but powerful reasons they, like the ACLU, understood that prison should be for people who pose a risk of harm to others, and not for people who have redeemed themselves and can be productive again.

In a remarkable victory, this bill is now law. It passed the Louisiana legislature and on June 4 it was signed by Gov. Bobby Jindal, a conservative Republican who knows that the state has better ways to spend its money than on overcrowded prisons.

A statement released by the ACLU said,

"The United States, led by the State of Louisiana, should not be the world's largest incarcerator. We're doing what we can to change things."

Kudos to Louisiana's ACLU!

.