Boston University's Free Press quotes Chris Ott, ACLU of Massachusetts spokesperson, in its story about the failure of the DREAM Act, which would have created a path to citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants.
We think that passing something like the DREAM Act is both the right thing to do, and a smart move. Even if parents come here illegally, it's not fair to punish their children -- and it doesn't make sense either.
Measures that reward children for things like doing well in school helps ensure a better future for them, and is better for all of us in the long run. If someone is talented and educated and could be a productive member of the economy and society, kicking them out of the country or forcing them to live in the shadows and margins of society doesn't help anyone.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
News: ACLU has concerns about SMOC lawsuit
The Framingham MetroWest Daily News quotes Sarah Wunsch, our Staff Attorney, in its story about a federal lawsuit brought by the South Middlesex Opportunity Council in Framingham, claiming that the rights of people with disabilities are being violated.
I was a little concerned with the way the story characterizes both sides as being in "the ACLU's crosshairs," especially since we were asked to comment on this story and didn't seek it out. But the story does explore the ways in which a group can be discriminated against.
I was a little concerned with the way the story characterizes both sides as being in "the ACLU's crosshairs," especially since we were asked to comment on this story and didn't seek it out. But the story does explore the ways in which a group can be discriminated against.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Unfinished Business
Today the Little Rock Nine are in town. So, of course, are the Rockies.
Fenway Park will be bursting at the seams. I hope the same will be true of Faneuil Hall at 5pm as we welcome Daisy Bates' courageous protégés to our town, fifty years after they took their lives in their hands by the not-so-simple act of going to school.
Through their actions, the Little Rock Nine and the countless foot soldiers of the Movement ensured that the "whites only" signs would come down, and the number of African-Americans registering to vote would go up. But now schools across the nation are re-segregating, the Supreme Court is turning its back on a history of discrimination, prisons are bursting at the seams with people of color, and the disenfranchisement of African-Americans is approaching pre Movement levels.
Fifty years after the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, we need a big wake up call.
We need that wake up call because we have never fully addressed the systemic racism that has deformed this nation from the beginning and, in the words of Movement veteran Anne Braden, "contradicted and corrupted our democratic ideals."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., for one, knew that shaking the foundations of white supremacy was not the same thing as taking those foundations apart, brick by brick, and building anew. It wasn't enough just to "dream" about an integrated, color-blind society. The social and economic structures that had been built on racism had to be completely reconstructed. Therefore, in the last years of his life, Dr. King tried to focus the nation's attention on "all its interrelated flaws – racism, poverty, militarism and materialism" and told his staff that that "radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced."
We never have faced it – which is one reason why so many people can shrug when nooses are placed on trees in the South and on door handles in the North and say, "what's the big deal?"
The big deal hits you when you open James Allen's book Without Sanctuary. This is a book of picture postcards – postcards made by white people to send to their friends to show what a great lynching they had in their home town. In the pictures, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of smiling white residents are enjoying a diabolical form of entertainment – the butchery of a human being in order to keep other human beings of his hue "in their place." They are proud of the spectacle and proud of themselves.
These pictures were taken in the 20th century. At the beginning of the 21st century, I discovered that this form of home-grown terrorism still exercised a powerful sway when I journeyed with our youth group Project HIP-HOP to Philadelphia, Mississippi. This is the small town in Neshoba County where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964 and where Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign in 1980.
There we met Mr. M.C. Campbell and heard his terrible story. On October 9,1990, his son, David Scott Campbell, was arrested by the local police for an unpaid driver's license fine. It was his 21st birthday.
That same night, as he sat alone in his prison cell, there was an electrical outage in the town. An hour later, when the electricity returned, the African American youth was found hanging with someone else's belt around his neck. The FBI declared in a suicide. David Scott Campbell had been dating a white girl whose father worked in the police department and had ties to the local electric company. His white girlfriend declared on national television that she suspected her father of lending a hand in his death.
David Campbell's death was one of nearly 50 suspicious "jailhouse suicides" that occurred in Mississippi jails in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
During that same trip, we visited Kokomo Mississippi, shortly after a young Black man named Raynard Johnson was found hanging from a pecan tree on his front lawn. He was just 17 years old. A popular football player, and a straight -A student, Raynard seemed to have everything to live for. He went out with several girls, both African American and white.
We learned from his family and the local press that two months before Raynard's death the phrase "Kill all niggers" was written on a bridge a quarter of a mile from his house – it was reportedly painted over by local police after Raynard's death. The family also told us that two weeks before the hanging, the uncle of the white girl that Raynard had been dating came to the house to state his disapproval of their relationship.
Did he kill himself? Local law enforcement officials said yes, stamped it a suicide, and ended their investigation. His family didn't agree and demanded a new investigation. And it was hard for us to think his death was self-inflicted when we saw the pecan tree standing in his front yard.
Raynard, we were told, was 6 feet tall. The branch he was found hanging from was at a 45-degree angle. The portion of the branch where the belt was tied was only 7 feet from the ground, and there was between 12-16 inches of belt between the branch and his neck. When his body was found, his feet were touching the ground and his knees were slightly bent. According to his family, the belt he was hanged by did not belong to him. The police disputed this.
As in Jena, Louisiana last month, thousands of people assembled in Kokomo on July 7, 2000 in an emotional procession to demand a new investigation. On February 1, 2001 the case was closed by the Justice Department which said it could find no evidence of a crime.
We don't know for sure why Raynard Johnson died. But we do know that for years, no one spoke openly of the ritualized crimes that took the lives of thousands – nearly all of them African American. During this same trip, we found that this was at last beginning to change.
We visited with a group in Georgia which had come together to commemorate the lynching on July 25, 1946 of two young African-American couples – George and Mae Murray Dorsey and Roger and Dorothy Malcom - near Monroe, a small town outside Atlanta. In 1992, a witness named Clinton Adams finally came forward and spoke about it. As a 10-year old, he had witnessed their murders while hiding in the bushes and had subsequently been cowed into silence by the KKK. His testimony encouraged local citizens and officials to form the Moore's Ford Memorial Committee.
The Committee spent six months searching for the grave sites of the victims. They renovated them and erected tombstones above them. Then they placed a state historical marker on a nearby highway. They also held a memorial service for the victims, attended by 400 people, both Black and white, and a full military funeral for George Dorsey, who was a decorated veteran.
The group has memorialized the lynching so it would be neither forgotten nor repeated. As the local newspaper said, "The best way to ease a wound is to treat it, not hope it goes away. It is time to heal."
The recent events in Jena, Louisiana remind us that this country has not thoroughly treated its wounds. It has attempted to bury the past instead of facing it – to forget it and move on. In the process it made changes which, as Dr. King told his staff in November 1966, "were not really substantive changes...the roots of racism are still very deep in America; our society is still structured on the basis of racism."
Until we face up to our history and make those "substantive changes," our national playing field will never be as level as that of Fenway Park.
Nancy Murray
Director of Education
Fenway Park will be bursting at the seams. I hope the same will be true of Faneuil Hall at 5pm as we welcome Daisy Bates' courageous protégés to our town, fifty years after they took their lives in their hands by the not-so-simple act of going to school.
Through their actions, the Little Rock Nine and the countless foot soldiers of the Movement ensured that the "whites only" signs would come down, and the number of African-Americans registering to vote would go up. But now schools across the nation are re-segregating, the Supreme Court is turning its back on a history of discrimination, prisons are bursting at the seams with people of color, and the disenfranchisement of African-Americans is approaching pre Movement levels.
Fifty years after the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, we need a big wake up call.
We need that wake up call because we have never fully addressed the systemic racism that has deformed this nation from the beginning and, in the words of Movement veteran Anne Braden, "contradicted and corrupted our democratic ideals."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., for one, knew that shaking the foundations of white supremacy was not the same thing as taking those foundations apart, brick by brick, and building anew. It wasn't enough just to "dream" about an integrated, color-blind society. The social and economic structures that had been built on racism had to be completely reconstructed. Therefore, in the last years of his life, Dr. King tried to focus the nation's attention on "all its interrelated flaws – racism, poverty, militarism and materialism" and told his staff that that "radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced."
We never have faced it – which is one reason why so many people can shrug when nooses are placed on trees in the South and on door handles in the North and say, "what's the big deal?"
The big deal hits you when you open James Allen's book Without Sanctuary. This is a book of picture postcards – postcards made by white people to send to their friends to show what a great lynching they had in their home town. In the pictures, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of smiling white residents are enjoying a diabolical form of entertainment – the butchery of a human being in order to keep other human beings of his hue "in their place." They are proud of the spectacle and proud of themselves.
These pictures were taken in the 20th century. At the beginning of the 21st century, I discovered that this form of home-grown terrorism still exercised a powerful sway when I journeyed with our youth group Project HIP-HOP to Philadelphia, Mississippi. This is the small town in Neshoba County where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964 and where Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign in 1980.
There we met Mr. M.C. Campbell and heard his terrible story. On October 9,1990, his son, David Scott Campbell, was arrested by the local police for an unpaid driver's license fine. It was his 21st birthday.
That same night, as he sat alone in his prison cell, there was an electrical outage in the town. An hour later, when the electricity returned, the African American youth was found hanging with someone else's belt around his neck. The FBI declared in a suicide. David Scott Campbell had been dating a white girl whose father worked in the police department and had ties to the local electric company. His white girlfriend declared on national television that she suspected her father of lending a hand in his death.
David Campbell's death was one of nearly 50 suspicious "jailhouse suicides" that occurred in Mississippi jails in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
During that same trip, we visited Kokomo Mississippi, shortly after a young Black man named Raynard Johnson was found hanging from a pecan tree on his front lawn. He was just 17 years old. A popular football player, and a straight -A student, Raynard seemed to have everything to live for. He went out with several girls, both African American and white.
We learned from his family and the local press that two months before Raynard's death the phrase "Kill all niggers" was written on a bridge a quarter of a mile from his house – it was reportedly painted over by local police after Raynard's death. The family also told us that two weeks before the hanging, the uncle of the white girl that Raynard had been dating came to the house to state his disapproval of their relationship.
Did he kill himself? Local law enforcement officials said yes, stamped it a suicide, and ended their investigation. His family didn't agree and demanded a new investigation. And it was hard for us to think his death was self-inflicted when we saw the pecan tree standing in his front yard.
Raynard, we were told, was 6 feet tall. The branch he was found hanging from was at a 45-degree angle. The portion of the branch where the belt was tied was only 7 feet from the ground, and there was between 12-16 inches of belt between the branch and his neck. When his body was found, his feet were touching the ground and his knees were slightly bent. According to his family, the belt he was hanged by did not belong to him. The police disputed this.
As in Jena, Louisiana last month, thousands of people assembled in Kokomo on July 7, 2000 in an emotional procession to demand a new investigation. On February 1, 2001 the case was closed by the Justice Department which said it could find no evidence of a crime.
We don't know for sure why Raynard Johnson died. But we do know that for years, no one spoke openly of the ritualized crimes that took the lives of thousands – nearly all of them African American. During this same trip, we found that this was at last beginning to change.
We visited with a group in Georgia which had come together to commemorate the lynching on July 25, 1946 of two young African-American couples – George and Mae Murray Dorsey and Roger and Dorothy Malcom - near Monroe, a small town outside Atlanta. In 1992, a witness named Clinton Adams finally came forward and spoke about it. As a 10-year old, he had witnessed their murders while hiding in the bushes and had subsequently been cowed into silence by the KKK. His testimony encouraged local citizens and officials to form the Moore's Ford Memorial Committee.
The Committee spent six months searching for the grave sites of the victims. They renovated them and erected tombstones above them. Then they placed a state historical marker on a nearby highway. They also held a memorial service for the victims, attended by 400 people, both Black and white, and a full military funeral for George Dorsey, who was a decorated veteran.
The group has memorialized the lynching so it would be neither forgotten nor repeated. As the local newspaper said, "The best way to ease a wound is to treat it, not hope it goes away. It is time to heal."
The recent events in Jena, Louisiana remind us that this country has not thoroughly treated its wounds. It has attempted to bury the past instead of facing it – to forget it and move on. In the process it made changes which, as Dr. King told his staff in November 1966, "were not really substantive changes...the roots of racism are still very deep in America; our society is still structured on the basis of racism."
Until we face up to our history and make those "substantive changes," our national playing field will never be as level as that of Fenway Park.
Nancy Murray
Director of Education
Monday, October 22, 2007
Oops
Tech blog "The Boy Genius Report" reports that Home Depot has lost a laptop in Massachusetts containing personal information, including Social Security numbers, for 10,000 of its employees.
Meanwhile, the Providence Journal reports that two Rhode Island Division of Motor Vehicles employees have been arrested for allegedly falsifying ID cards for drug dealers.
I don't mean to take advantage of unfortunate and problematic situations, but all of this helps make our point that the coming Real ID internal passport could be a nationwide bonanza for identity thieves when there is a security breach -- and that terrorists might still be able to get fake IDs, if they even need them.
Meanwhile, the Providence Journal reports that two Rhode Island Division of Motor Vehicles employees have been arrested for allegedly falsifying ID cards for drug dealers.
I don't mean to take advantage of unfortunate and problematic situations, but all of this helps make our point that the coming Real ID internal passport could be a nationwide bonanza for identity thieves when there is a security breach -- and that terrorists might still be able to get fake IDs, if they even need them.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Rendition: See the Movie, End the Practice
Michael Mukasey, our new Attorney General-in-waiting, just told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he doesn't know what waterboarding is. He also doesn't seem clear about what constitutes torture.
Someone should give him a ticket to see the new movie Rendition. The film has its dramatic flaws. But it also forces viewers to confront some critical and unsavory facts about how the US is fighting the "war on terror."
This is what it is like to have someone you love simply disappear at the whim of the US government. This is what waterboarding looks like. This is what it looks like to torture someone with electricity. Just imagine what that feels like. Wouldn't you say anything at all to make it stop?
It is my hope that the movie will awaken audiences to the crucial importance of the rule of law. Our standing in the world and our traction in the "war on terror" have been gravely undermined by the immoral, illegal and counterproductive practice of kidnapping victims and torturing them in CIA "dark sites" or outsourcing their torture to other countries.
The 9/11 Commission had it right when it said it was in our national interest to "offer an example of moral leadership in the world, commit to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors."
What is the law we should abide by – not simply abandon when the executive branch and its legal advisors see fit?
For a start, there is the Constitution, whose "checks and balances" are threatened by the secrecy and lack of any kind of accountability surrounding "extraordinary rendition." Then there is the Convention Against Torture, which the US ratified in 1994.
Four years later, in the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, Congress declared that it cannot be the policy of the US to "expel, extradite and otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States."
Tell that to the scores of innocent victims who have been kidnapped and "disappeared" into torture cells on flimsy evidence or no evidence at all. Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, had Massachusetts friends, neighbors and colleagues when he lived in Framingham from 1999-2001 and worked at MathWorks in Natick.
In 2002, he was taken from JFK Airport in New York by US operatives and soon found himself in an underground dungeon in Syria, where he was tortured into making false confessions. After a year he was released and a thorough investigation by the Canadian government exonerated him of any connection with terrorism. The Canadians gave him an official apology and more than $10 million in compensation.
What did the US government do? It insisted that the case he brought to clear his name be thrown out of federal court on "state secrets" grounds. And it refused to take him off its "no fly list."
It took until October 18th for Arar to hear any kind of regret from US lawmakers. On that day, he was beamed into a Capitol Hill hearing by videoconference to tell his story and Rep. Bill Delahunt and a few other Members of Congress gave him their heartfelt personal apologies.
The Canadian media was all over the story. If it was reported in the US media, I missed it.
As the years have gone by, we have learned that Arar is one of scores of innocent victims of our "extraordinary rendition" policy. People have been seized from the streets, bound, blindfolded, and rendered on "torture flights" for knowing one of the wrong people or being from the wrong country.
We would do well to heed the words of Khaled El-Masri. This German car salesman and father of six was kidnapped and tortured in a case of mistaken identity. After his lawsuit against the US government was also thrown out on "state secret" grounds, he said:
"This is not democracy. In my opinion, this is how you establish a dictatorial regime. Freedom and justice are disrespected, as are basic morals and values. And if you don't keep quiet after you are abused, you are considered a threat to international or national security."
Extraordinary rendition puts more than our basic values and morals at risk. It also threatens national security.
To see how, you need look no further than the case of another rendition victim, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi. Under torture he gave what former Secretary of State Rumsfeld called "bulletproof" evidence of a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq, even as the Department of Defense's own intelligence agency was concluding that he was giving unreliable information.
From the rendition of al-Libi, it was a short road to the disastrous invasion of Iraq and Abu Ghraib. Regrettably, the road from Abu Ghraib has not seen us returning to the rule of law, and to those values we say our nation stands for. Instead, our use of torture, our secret prisons, and Guantanamo have all continued to offer propaganda victories to Al Qaeda.
The result? Eighty-four percent of the nation's top foreign-policy, intelligence and national security experts across the political spectrum contend that the US is losing the "war on terror," according to Foreign Policy magazine's recent Terrorism Index. More than 90 percent said the world is growing more dangerous for Americans. And a Pew global survey shows in key "war on terror" countries – Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Turkey – our nation's approval rating ranges from 21 percent to 9 percent.
A key aim of terrorists is to deprive its opponents of legitimacy. There is no doubt that policies like "extraordinary rendition" help their recruitment efforts. We can only get back lost ground by returning to the rule of law.
As a move in the right direction, Congress should immediately pass Rep. Edward Markey's "Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act." And then it should make sure it is enforced.
It is time for Americans to stand up against a deplorable practice that is so at odds with our stated principles, and is making us less safe, not more.
Nancy Murray
Director of Education
ACLU of Massachusetts
Someone should give him a ticket to see the new movie Rendition. The film has its dramatic flaws. But it also forces viewers to confront some critical and unsavory facts about how the US is fighting the "war on terror."
This is what it is like to have someone you love simply disappear at the whim of the US government. This is what waterboarding looks like. This is what it looks like to torture someone with electricity. Just imagine what that feels like. Wouldn't you say anything at all to make it stop?
It is my hope that the movie will awaken audiences to the crucial importance of the rule of law. Our standing in the world and our traction in the "war on terror" have been gravely undermined by the immoral, illegal and counterproductive practice of kidnapping victims and torturing them in CIA "dark sites" or outsourcing their torture to other countries.
The 9/11 Commission had it right when it said it was in our national interest to "offer an example of moral leadership in the world, commit to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors."
What is the law we should abide by – not simply abandon when the executive branch and its legal advisors see fit?
For a start, there is the Constitution, whose "checks and balances" are threatened by the secrecy and lack of any kind of accountability surrounding "extraordinary rendition." Then there is the Convention Against Torture, which the US ratified in 1994.
Four years later, in the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, Congress declared that it cannot be the policy of the US to "expel, extradite and otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States."
Tell that to the scores of innocent victims who have been kidnapped and "disappeared" into torture cells on flimsy evidence or no evidence at all. Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, had Massachusetts friends, neighbors and colleagues when he lived in Framingham from 1999-2001 and worked at MathWorks in Natick.
In 2002, he was taken from JFK Airport in New York by US operatives and soon found himself in an underground dungeon in Syria, where he was tortured into making false confessions. After a year he was released and a thorough investigation by the Canadian government exonerated him of any connection with terrorism. The Canadians gave him an official apology and more than $10 million in compensation.
What did the US government do? It insisted that the case he brought to clear his name be thrown out of federal court on "state secrets" grounds. And it refused to take him off its "no fly list."
It took until October 18th for Arar to hear any kind of regret from US lawmakers. On that day, he was beamed into a Capitol Hill hearing by videoconference to tell his story and Rep. Bill Delahunt and a few other Members of Congress gave him their heartfelt personal apologies.
The Canadian media was all over the story. If it was reported in the US media, I missed it.
As the years have gone by, we have learned that Arar is one of scores of innocent victims of our "extraordinary rendition" policy. People have been seized from the streets, bound, blindfolded, and rendered on "torture flights" for knowing one of the wrong people or being from the wrong country.
We would do well to heed the words of Khaled El-Masri. This German car salesman and father of six was kidnapped and tortured in a case of mistaken identity. After his lawsuit against the US government was also thrown out on "state secret" grounds, he said:
"This is not democracy. In my opinion, this is how you establish a dictatorial regime. Freedom and justice are disrespected, as are basic morals and values. And if you don't keep quiet after you are abused, you are considered a threat to international or national security."
Extraordinary rendition puts more than our basic values and morals at risk. It also threatens national security.
To see how, you need look no further than the case of another rendition victim, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi. Under torture he gave what former Secretary of State Rumsfeld called "bulletproof" evidence of a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq, even as the Department of Defense's own intelligence agency was concluding that he was giving unreliable information.
From the rendition of al-Libi, it was a short road to the disastrous invasion of Iraq and Abu Ghraib. Regrettably, the road from Abu Ghraib has not seen us returning to the rule of law, and to those values we say our nation stands for. Instead, our use of torture, our secret prisons, and Guantanamo have all continued to offer propaganda victories to Al Qaeda.
The result? Eighty-four percent of the nation's top foreign-policy, intelligence and national security experts across the political spectrum contend that the US is losing the "war on terror," according to Foreign Policy magazine's recent Terrorism Index. More than 90 percent said the world is growing more dangerous for Americans. And a Pew global survey shows in key "war on terror" countries – Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Turkey – our nation's approval rating ranges from 21 percent to 9 percent.
A key aim of terrorists is to deprive its opponents of legitimacy. There is no doubt that policies like "extraordinary rendition" help their recruitment efforts. We can only get back lost ground by returning to the rule of law.
As a move in the right direction, Congress should immediately pass Rep. Edward Markey's "Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act." And then it should make sure it is enforced.
It is time for Americans to stand up against a deplorable practice that is so at odds with our stated principles, and is making us less safe, not more.
Nancy Murray
Director of Education
ACLU of Massachusetts
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Blog: 450,000 Social Security numbers on the loose
This is why we think collecting EVVeryone's information for the Real ID national identity card is a bad idea...
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