Chang - Silencing political dissent: how post-september 11 anti-terrorism measures threaten our civil liberties

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Copyright 2002 by Nancy Chang and the Center for Constitutional Rights

A Seven Stories Press First Edition,
published in association with Open Media.

Open Media Pamphlet Series editor, Greg Ruggiero.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

eISBN: 978-1-60980-303-2

Cover design and photo by Greg Ruggiero.

v3.1

T his book is dedicated to the memory of my mother, T. C. Chang, who passed away on March 18, 2002. Her example of how an ordinary life can be conducted with extraordinary grace, purpose, and wisdom carries me forward.

In addition, this book is dedicated to my husband, Daniel Rossner, who, but for the New York primary election scheduled for September 11, 2001, would have been in his office on the fifty-eighth floor of One World Trade Center at the time that tower was struck. Dan has encouraged me both in the writing of this book and in my work for the past five and a half years as an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. I am grateful to him for his love and support, and for his unwavering commitment to the Bill of Rights.

Finally, this book is dedicated to the memory of those who fell victim to the September 11 attacks and to their loved ones.

I wish to thank all of my colleagues at the Center for Constitutional Rights for their tireless efforts to safeguard the Bill of Rights in the wake of September 11. This book has benefited enormously from my discussions with CCR colleagues William Goodman, Ron Daniels, Michael Ratner, Arthur Kinoy, David Cole, Abdeen Jabara, Franklin Siegel, Barbara Olshansky, Denise Reinhardt, Paul Schachter, Shayana Kadidal, Anna Liza Gavieres, and Janice Badalutz.

I also wish to thank everyone who generously volunteered their time to assist in the researching, proofreading, citation checking, and editing of this book. I am especially indebted to my dear friend of more than two decades, Barry Bennett, and to Greg Diamond, Bryan Gunderson, Julie Rivchin, Justin Weyerhaeuser, and Pavani Yalamanchili, friends I have made through the Center for Constitutional Rights student internship program, for their outstanding and invaluable contributions.

In addition, I wish to thank the individuals with whom I have had the privilege of working toward the goal of preserving our civil liberties in the postSeptember 11 world. Included among their ranks are attorneys, political activists, grassroots organizers, labor organizers, lobbyists, representatives of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities in the United States, journalists, university professors, schoolteachers, students, firefighters, artists, and ordinary Americans. While their areas of concern are diverse, they are united in their determination to resist the rollback of our political and personal freedoms.

Finally, I wish to thank my editor, Greg Ruggiero, who founded the Open Media Pamphlet Series in 1991, and who skillfully shepherded this project through from its conception to its actualization with a boundless enthusiasm. I am grateful to Greg and to Dan Simon, the publisher of Seven Stories Press, for their support of this project, for their creative vision, and for bringing forward views not aired in the mainstream press. Their Open Media Books broaden the terms of political discourse and encourage democracy to thrive.

T his analysis by Nancy Chang of the Center for Constitutional Rights should be read by everyone concerned with a free society. It reports a chilling set of rules, now the law, which directly affect millions of Americans who are not citizens, but also the rest of the population, who must live in an atmosphere of fear. Furthermore, this draconian law, worthy of a police state, is extremely unlikely to be overthrown by the courts, given the historic subservience of the courts to executive authority in time of war.

It is ironic, but a historic truth, repeated again and again, that exactly at those moments when citizens need the greatest freedom to speak their minds, exactly when life and death issues are involved, that is, when the question is war or peace, it is then that our liberties are taken away. The juggernaut of war crushes democracy, just when the nation claims it is fighting for democracy.

It becomes crucial, then, for citizens to demand their freedom to speak, to resist the power of the state when it demands unanimity and slavish obedience to the arbitrary decisions of government. In order for them to do that, they must understand the laws used to stifle their voices. They will then see that the so-called PATRIOT Act is the opposite of patriotism, if patriotism means love of your country and not the government, love of the principles of democracy and not the edicts of authority.

That is why this analysis of the new law is so important for everyone concerned with freedom.

T he September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon stunned us with their stealth, their precision, their calculated cruelty, and the horrific trail of death and destruction left in their wake. They have forced us to confront our vulnerability to terrorism and to take steps to improve our nations security. But in our desperation to feel safe, we are sacrificing the core democratic values that have guided this nation since its founding without first examining whether we are, in fact, any safer as a result.

This book examines how a number of domestic antiterrorism measures implemented in the nine months since the attacks undermine our civil liberties. By the end of October 2001, a panic-stricken Congress had acceded to the executive branchs demands for broad new powers in a major piece of legislation titled the USA PATRIOT Act. The acts broad new crime of domestic terrorism threatens to criminalize protest activities and stifle dissent. The enhanced surveillance powers that the act grants the executive threaten to intrude upon the privacy of everyone in the United States, even those with no ties to terrorism. And the acts authorization of mandatory detention and deportation of noncitizens based on their political activities and associations threatens to deny noncitizens their most basic constitutional rights. Before casting the lone vote in the Senate against the USA PATRIOT Act, Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin warned: