UNAMERICAN ACTIVITIES
By Michael I. Niman
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The following article has been copied from High
Times (where it is no longer available):
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With John Ashcroft as our Attorney General
and the specter of September 11 so close behind us, "suspicious
activity" has taken on a whole new meaning.
By Michael I. Niman
Barry Reingold, a 60-year-old San Francisco retiree, enjoys
daily visits to the local gym, where he works out and talks politics
with his friends and acquaintances. Since September 11th, those
discussions, like the political discussions many Americans are
now having, have gotten heated at times. Heated discussions in
the new post-Sept. 11 America, however, can earn one a visit
from the FBI.
Recently, two FBI agents paid a visit to Reingold's home to
question him about conversations he had been having at the gym.
Someone in the gym, they explained to him, had reported that
he had been, "talking about terrorism and September 11th,
oil profits, capitalism and Afghanistan." In an interview
with Emil Guillermo, author and San Francisco television host,
Reingold explained that he had been arguing with his gym mates
about how "hundreds and thousands of workers [are] being
laid off in the United States," and how, "this war
is not just about getting terrorists. It's also about money and
corporate oil profits." During a heated argument one day,
he called George W. Bush "a dog."
Offensive as the image of a barking, pissing canine Bush may
be to Republican loyalists, having the freedom to compare the
president to a dog, pig, or any other animal is at the heart
of the democratic discourse that makes this country great. Attempts
by government or private interests to thwart that discourse are
not only frightening ­ they're downright un-American.
Take Down Your Posters
The FBI's chilling visit to Reingold's home was not an isolated
incident. On Oct. 12, two Secret Service agents paid a visit
to the Durham, NC apartment of A.J. Brown, a Durham Tech freshman
attending college with the help of an American Civil Liberties
Union scholarship. According to a report published in The Progressive,
the agents told Brown, "We're here because we have a report
that you have un-American material in your apartment." When
Brown denied having any such material, the agents specified that
they were specifically investigating reports that she had an
"anti-American" poster hanging on her wall.
The poster in question was an anti-death penalty poster chastising
George Bush for overseeing the executions of 152 people as governor
of Texas. It showed Bush holding a noose and read, "We hang
on your every word. George Bush, Wanted: 152 Dead." Brown
opened the door so the agents could inspect her wall of posters,
ask a battery of questions, and take notes. They called her two
days later to verify her telephone number and ask her if she
had any nicknames!
In New York City, the Chashama art gallery and theater near
Times Square leased billboard space to the Adbusters Media Foundation
to display the "Corporate Flag," an American flag with
30 corporate logos replacing the 50 stars. The flag dates back
to the group's July Fourth campaign to "declare independence
from corporate rule." The billboard admonished passersby
to do the same, and listed the group's Website, www.adbusters.org.
Adbusters sells smaller versions of the corporate flag at
cost for $20 each. After July 4, they became fairly common. I
fly one in front of my house on sunny days. Common or not, however,
hosting a billboard-sized image of the corporate flag in New
York these days is risky. A Department of Defense investigator
visited Chashama, intent on finding out why they displayed the
corporate flag, who paid for the billboard and who created the
image?
All of these questions, which the DoD has no business asking,
could easily have been answered by reading the billboard, which
contained the Adbusters Website address. The visit, however,
was more about intimidation than investigation. Images going
against the jingoistic post-Sept. 11 grain have no business in
Rudy Giuliani's new Times Square.
Chashama isn't the only museum or gallery to receive a chilling
visit from government spooks. On Nov. 7, an FBI agent and a Secret
Service agent, both wearing identical US-flag lapel pins, and,
according to a museum worker, "looking like robot actors,"
paid a call on Houston's eclectic Art Car Museum (www.artcarmuseum.com).
They explained that they had received "several reports time,
the museum was running a show entitled "Secret Wars,"
which offered an artistic critique of US military interventions.
Once inside, the agents read a few words by Noam Chomsky,
commented on a painting containing George Bush's caricature on
a dancing devil's belly, asked questions about the curator, where
the museum got its funding, where it advertised and how many
people frequented it, all the while jotting down notes. According
to the Houston Press, they also asked the museum employee where
she went to school, and if her parents knew she worked "in
a place like this." Bob Doguim of the Houston FBI office
explained that the visit was conducted "in response to Attorney
General John Ashcroft's request that Americans be especially
vigilant of suspicious behavior." That would be the same
John Ashcroft who recently remarked that people raising the "phantoms
of lost liberties" are aiding terrorists.
Burn Your T-Shirts and Books
Similar chilling stories are piling up on a daily basis. In
West Virginia, high-school sophomore Katie Sierra was suspended
on Oct. 23 after attempting to start an "anarchy club,"
which was to host a food-not-bombs kitchen, a newspaper, and
a book reading and discussion circle. She also committed the
crime of wearing a T-shirt decrying "racism, sexism and
homophobia." School officials said she couldn't return to
school until her parents gave the school permission to examine
her medical records and administer psychological tests. When
Sierra's mother sought relief in a state court, the court upheld
the suspension, forcing her to home-school her daughter.
The story of Neil Godfrey is even stranger. On Oct. 10, the
22-year-old Philadelphia resident was en route to Phoenix to
meet his family and head on to a vacation in Disneyland. After
checking his luggage, he proceeded to his departure gate carrying
nothing but reading material, a copy of The Nation and Edward
Abbey's novel Hayduke Lives. According to airport officials,
it's the novel, adorned with a picture of a hand grasping dynamite
on the cover, which got Godfrey flagged by National Guardsmen
patrolling the airport. He was detained for 45 minutes by an
assortment of Guardsmen, Philadelphia police officers and Pennsylvania
state troopers who diligently took notes as they thumbed through
the book, asking him
In the end, he was not allowed on his flight. A United Airlines
employee explained that he was banned for three reasons. First
was the book he was reading, second was the fact that he purchased
his ticket online eight hours before the first hijacked plane
hit the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, and third, because his driver's
license was expired.
What we read has suddenly become of interest to the government.
The ominously named PATRIOT Act, which took effect in late October,
gives the Feds authority to search the records of bookstores
to ascertain what their customers are reading. The new regulation
precludes any objections by criminalizing protest against such
inquisitions. The bill clearly threatens booksellers with arrest
if they disclose to anyone the fact that they were served with
a government request for information.
Booksellers and librarians for years have attempted to protect
patron privacy. While few books give instruction in bomb-making,
many give information about how to survive with HIV or explore
one's sexuality ­ information many would-be readers might
want to keep personal. This new Big Brotheresque edict allows
government snoops to profile readers.
Buy the Right Stamps
OK. So you're not talking to anyone at the gym. You're not
wearing the wrong shirts, reading the wrong books or starting
the wrong clubs. Your walls are poster-free. You're keeping away
from museums and you don't care if corporations rule the world.
Don't think you're home free yet, however. Are you buying the
right stamps? That's right. Are you buying the right postage
stamps?
On Nov. 9, Dan Muller and Andrew Mandell of Voices in the
Wilderness, a group opposed to violence and the US sanctions
against Iraq, went to a Chicago post office, attempting to buy
4,000 US postage stamps for an upcoming mailing. According to
a report published in The Progressive, a problem emerged, however,
when the two made a simple request: They preferred stamps without
the American flag. The clerk asked if Statue of Liberty stamps
would be OK and they answered affirmatively.
The clerk retreated to a back room and called police, who
arrived and questioned the duo as to why they didn't want to
buy stamps with the US flag on them. They answered that they
preferred the liberty stamps. The police examined their IDs,
while the clerk told them she didn't have enough liberty stamps
in stock and asked them to return the next day. When they returned,
a postal inspector was waiting for them. He interrogated them
for 30 minutes.
While the post office may be a frightening place these days,
the atmosphere on America's college and university campuses is
more alarming. Around the country, rightist politicians have
used college professors as ideological whipping posts, chastising
them for their supposed un-American views after Sept. 11. At
the head of the charge is the American Council of Trustees and
Alumni (ACTA), cofounded by Joe Lieberman and Vice President
Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne. Since Sept.11, they've been keeping
a wacky sort of blacklist of what they deem unpatriotic campus
utterances.
In recent weeks, the ACTA has chastised professors and student
groups for espousing the following sentiments: Our grief is not
a cry for war; revenge is not justifiable; remember what we did
to Japanese-Americans during internment; try to empathize with
the suffering of people in other nations; the only way to put
an end to terrorism is to stop supporting it; we must use courage
to wage peace instead of war; an eye for an eye leaves the world
blind; not all Americans want war; and hate breeds hate. The
list is frightening. To the ACTA, speaking out against "hate"
is now un-American.
While the sentiments captured on the ACTA list are hardly
radical by any standard, they've run afoul of the new political
fundamentalism running amok in Washington and the corporate press.
Yet, without these sentiments, we can't have a healthy political
dialogue in this country. Likewise, we even need "subversive"
speech, whatever that may be, for America to truly work as a
pluralistic democracy. Stifling the statement of dissent, whether
in college classrooms, in art galleries, on billboards, on T-shirts,
in books, on posters or in conversation, is clearly un-American.
Now is the time for patriotic Americans to stand up and speak
out against the chill that's descended upon our nation. We've
lived through this before. We'll live through it now and we'll
live through it again. We value our freedom too much to give
it up. It's our culture.