Revolution #278, August 19, 2012
A Call To Stand Together To Oppose The Obama Administration’s Dangerous Assault On Fundamental Rights
The administration of Barack Obama, which had promised to put an end to torture and other outrages committed by the Bush Administration, is in fact putting into place a dangerous system of repression and control. This is a serious assault on fundamental rights, and it must be answered not with silence and complicity but with heightened awareness and more determined opposition.
The record of the Obama Administration is a chilling one. President Obama has preserved Bush’s rendition program, which relies upon torture, and has extended the Patriot Act. His Administration has adopted a quasi-official assassination policy, complete with secret “kill lists” reviewed by the President, which Attorney General Holder has brazenly asserted meets Constitutional standards of due process. In the 2010 case of Holder v HLP [Humanitarian Law Project], the Obama administration successfully argued before the courts that the “crime” of “material support” to “terrorists” be broadened to include merely speaking with and advising (even on some legal matters) any group designated by the government as terrorist. The ruling has already been applied to pro-Palestinian activists and endangers many others, including prominent public intellectuals, as well as groups upholding or advocating fundamental social change.
The most recent expansion of dangerous and illegitimate government authority is the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This law grants to any U.S. president the power to detain any person, including U.S. citizens, indefinitely and without charge or trial, for the alleged crime of associating with a broad and vague category of people, which could include people who have nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks or with terrorism in general.
The pattern is disturbingly clear: not just a continuation but a further leap in the draconian measures taken by the Bush administration—under the pretext of the open-ended, so-called War on Terror—to detain, torture, and assassinate…not just a continuation but a further leap in measures to restrict and criminalize dissent and opposition to the status quo.
This must not go unanswered—nor be allowed to continue to grow increasingly worse. In opposing these repressive moves, it is imperative that people not allow anyone, or any one group, to be singled out or targeted for repression. In this regard, the lawsuit Hedges et al. v Obama et al. that is challenging ominous provisions of the NDAA is quite salient. On May 16, a federal district court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and issued a temporary injunction blocking the government from implementing Section 1021 of this law. But insinuated into this mainly positive ruling is a reference to the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and its Chairman Bob Avakian which is an erroneous and potentially harmful characterization that could be used as a pretext to criminalize what is constitutionally protected freedom of speech and association and potentially sweep the RCP and its Chairman into a category of organizations identified by the government as terrorist.
Those of us signing this statement cannot speak for the RCP and indeed have various levels of familiarity with and a variety of views on its philosophical and political principles and objectives. But we do not countenance—and recognize as very dangerous—the designation by the powers-that-be of groups as politically “acceptable” and “unacceptable.” History teaches, by negative and positive example, that we must stand against attempts to divide progressive, radical, and revolutionary forces along any such lines.
In this there are very important lessons to be drawn from the self-critical summation by Pastor Martin Niemoeller of his experience when confronted with the heightening repression carried out by the Nazi regime in Germany during the 1930s:
“First they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak out because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak out for me.”
The signatories of this statement call on people to step forward and stand together to oppose the assault on dissent and the moves to restrict and criminalize oppositional speech, association, and political activity, which are being carried out by the Obama Administration and which continue and expand dangerous precedents and mechanisms which can also be utilized by any future Administration.
Initial Signatories
Elliott Adams, Veterans For Peace, past President, Creating a Culture of Peace, Secretary
Rafael C. Angulo, Clinical Associate Professor, University of Southern California School of Social Work
Jane Bark
Fr. Luis Barrios, Co-Executive Director, Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization-IFCO
Deb Bazell
Toby Blomé, Bay Area CodePink
Leah Bolger, President, Veterans For Peace
Maure Briggs-Carrington
Robert Cliver, History professor
Daniel Costa, ACLU
Peter Coyote, Actor, Writer, politically engaged human
Daniel Ellsberg
Larry Everest, Revolution correspondent, author
Sharon Gadberry
Ann Fagan Ginger, Author, human rights attorney (ret.)
Lyn Hejinian, Poet and Professor, Department of English, University of California, Berkeley
Dave Heller
George Homanich, Binghamton, NY
Mickey Huff, Director, Project Censored/Media Freedom Foundation
John Hutnyk, Professor, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Chuck Kaufman, Executive Director, Alliance for Global Justice
C. Clark Kissinger, Revolution Books, NYC
Jim Lafferty, Director, National Lawyers Guild, LA
Linda LeTendre, Saratoga Peace Alliance
Raymond Lotta, Revolution newspaper, advocate of Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism
Bob Meola, Courage to Resist, War Resisters League
Theresa Nona
Jon Olsen, Green Party
Scott Olsen, Iraq Veterans Against the War
Art Persyko, SF99% Coalition
Peter Phillips, President, Project Censored/Media Freedom Foundation
Michael D. Rectenwald, Ph.D., Professor, Liberal Studies/Global Liberal Studies, NYU
Walter Riley, Activist, Attorney
Stephen Rohde, Civil liberties attorney and author
Candice Rowser, Hunter College CUNY
Marc Sapir, MD
Saratoga Peace Alliance
Carole Seligman, Co-Editor, Socialist Viewpoint
Cindy Sheehan
Michael Steven Smith, National Lawyers Guild and Center for Constitutional Rights
Carol Strickman, Attorney
Jeffrey Shurtleff, Amnesty International USA 466, and SF99% Coalition
Michael Sorgen, Civil Rights Attorney
Mark D. Stansbery, Columbus Campaign for Arms Control
David Swanson, Author, warisacrime.org
Debra Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait
Howard Switzer, Architect & Green Party of Tennessee delegate to the GNC
John F. Thielking, Peacemovies.com
Veterans For Peace, Chapter 147
Paul Von Blum, UCLA African American Studies Program
Steve Wagner, Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace
Donna Wallach, Justice for Palestinians
Steve Wasserman, Professor of Constitutional Law, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, NYC
Curt Wechsler, Editor, FireJohnYoo.net
Andy Zee, Revolution Books, NYC
Maggie Zhou, Ph.D., Boston, MA
Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics, University of San Francisco
Institutional affiliations are for identification purposes only, and do not imply endorsement
To sign the call go to opposerepressionndaa.net.
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