Tuesday, July 31, 2007
The president is threatening me
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Last updated July 30, 2007 5:03 p.m. PT
By MARIE MARCHAND
GUEST COLUMNIST
In case I get picked up and taken away under President Bush's Military Commissions Act of October 2006, I want it on record that I am not a terrorist or an enemy combatant, and that the organization I run in Bellingham is not associated with any terrorist cell.
The Whatcom Peace & Justice Center works non-violently to end the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is committed to envisioning and creating a world for our children where diplomacy and friendship are the measuring stick for our foreign policy. We have never intended, planned or considered violence as a means to peace.
In case my assets, which are few, get seized and my hard drive gets robbed under Bush's new executive order of July 17, 2007, I want you to know my name so that I am not disappeared. I have a 6-year-old son to raise, and, like so many intelligent, passionate peace activists, the world needs me to be a leader in ending my country's imperial addiction to warfare.
The new executive order blocks property of certain people who undermine efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq. Its language leaves the door dangerously open to broad and flagrant interpretation that could label as a terrorist suspect anyone who holds a political viewpoint opposite that of the White House.
There's no doubt that the administration preys on our civil liberties, and that the effects of unjust policies filter down to the local level. In 2003, a Quaker Meeting House in Florida was put under surveillance through the Pentagon's domestic spying program and labeled a threat. But Quakerism is a religion of pacifism; naturally, they would be against war. The Department of Defense spying on a group of draft counselors? Come on.
In 2004, the FBI approached the Whatcom County Library in Deming with a grand jury subpoena demanding librarians turn over the names and contact information of every person who checked out "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America." The library pursued legal action and the FBI eventually withdrew the subpoena. The director of the Whatcom County Library System, Jane Airoldi, received a human rights award for refusing to hand over patrons' private information. "Libraries are a haven where people should be able to seek whatever information they want to pursue without any threat of government intervention," Airoldi said.
When our government no longer equates terrorism with violence, but with the perceived threat of an unsubstantiated rumor of intent to "pose a significant risk of committing an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the government"; or when non-violent pacifism is misconstrued as a tactic that undermines national security, no one is exempt from capture, detention and possible torture.
I perceive Bush's July 17 executive order as a personal threat. When someone makes a threat, their intention is often to scare, isolate and subdue the other person into silence through fear.
I will not be silent.
Like millions of dissenters around the world, I want my name to be included among those who resisted those unjust policies and decrees. The American people must have the courage to resist. Otherwise, our friends and neighbors may begin to disappear, and we may not hear them being carted off in the middle of the night. As a patriotic American who holds steadfast to a belief in justice, I do not accept Bush's threats to my constitutional and human rights passively. If I disappear, I disappear. But I will not go willingly, and I will not go unnamed.
