The USA-PATRIOT Axe
May 25, 2003
This article (“Patriot Raid”, by Jason Halperin) gives the “USA-PATRIOT” Act some perspective — a first-person one. He experienced a raid while eating dinner at a restaurant in New York City, where the agents involved claimed the “USA-PATRIOT” Act as the legal cover for the raid and their conduct during it.
If you know anyone who says, “Don’t worry about the Patriot Act…it only applies to terrorists and immigrants…if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about…the Patriot Act is just providing law enforcement with the tools it needs…”, make them read this article. Twice if necessary. Make them acknowledge the reality of it. If they want to continue thinking the above thoughts, fine. But they need to make sure they aren’t playing fast and loose with Pastor Martin Niemoller-style excuses and evasions.
The USA-PATRIOT Act means machine guns in your face, and boots kicking in doors where you are, doing your innocent and ordinary things. Not just the terrorists and the guilty, not just the immigrants and the minorities…you. You, sitting there in a restaurant eating dinner. Jason Halperin is you and me and everyone else.
As I see it, the only Niemollerism left upon acceptance of those realities is the idea that “none of those people were harmed; the raid was just a necessary inconvenience in the War on Terror. It’s a small price to pay for security from terrorism. ‘Loaded guns pointed in faces, people made to crawl on their hands and knees, police officers clearly exacerbating a tense situation by kicking in doors, taunting, keeping their fingers on the trigger even after the situation was under control.’? Well, this is a war — it won’t be all fun and games.” Fine, keep thinking that if you want — and maybe you won’t be in the restaurant (or store, or apartment building, or intersection) when one of these raids goes wrong. (And raids do go wrong. That’s undeniable.)
I suppose there is one other very slender thread of evasion left that says that it was still a predominantly minorities-focused raid. I guess that could provide folks in the White Belt with a thin veil of false assurance. (I just made up the term “White Belt” as far as I know — hopefully it’s clear I’m talking about the many swaths of America which have a very small minority population. I mean no disrespect to Caucasians. Many of my friends are Caucasians. ;-))
I’m on the far western edge of that belt myself — the minority population here is about 5%. It’s a pretty liberally-minded place, and I’ve never noticed any remarkable amount of racism here, but in regard to the War on Terror I think there’s definitely a sense that we’re kind of out of that loop. We have no major metropolitan areas or “high-value” terrorist targets, and we hardly have enough Arabs or Hispanic folks to speak of. (I think the mainstream perception that War on Terror enforcement mostly involves those groups is pretty dominant.) Most people here probably think that nobody in Nevada County is going to be hauled away, raided, or hassled by the FBI, CIA, INS, or the Department of Homeland Security. And they probably think that nobody here is getting searched or surveilled without probable cause and reasonable justification.
I bet that a lot of people, White Belters and otherwise, think those things in the process of processing the thoughts that lead to the “OK”-ing of the “Patriot Act”. Well, they need to read Jason Halperin’s story. And they need to read Pastor Martin Niemoller’s regrets. It doesn’t take much puzzling to put those two pieces together into a bigger picture. If you can knowingly, with full awareness, look at that bigger picture and still say, “Yeah, let’s go for it!”, then fine. You’re entitled to your opinion. Though I utterly oppose your view, I won’t begrudge you your reasoned and thought-out opinion.
But it’s time to set the evasions aside. Dump the “It won’t happen to me”, the “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about”, and the “It only applies to terrorists and immigrants.” Those are fake reasons — you don’t get to use them. If you’re going to help propel the bandwagon that’s driving us toward this new, disturbing America, at least be honest about it. With us, and with yourself.