Letter Printed in the Montclair Times

Opposes Patriot Act
Wednesday, April 14, 2004

An impressive number of residents gathered recently to urge the council to add Montclair to the growing number of locales that have voted to oppose the Patriot Act. I was proud to be in attendance.

Anne Beeson, associate legal director of the ACLU, cited accounts of its broad powers (e.g., the ominous Section 215) impacting the lives of law-abiding citizens. Cheryl McCoy, director of the Montclair Public Library, explained how librarians can be compelled to secretly disclose readers’ borrowing habits. In all such scenarios, investigators can “sneak and peek” without meeting any burden of just cause.

Stacey Balkan, a professor at Montclair State, addressed the Act’s chilling effect on funding and curriculum. Alan Smith, a teacher and local activist, was eloquent in challenging local municipalities to do that which the White House and Congress have shamefully neglected to do, i.e., protect average citizens from harm and injustice.

It is highly improbable that the Patriot Act, a 350-page draconian text, could have passed virtually unopposed into law without the coincidence of Sept. 11. That it was compiled as quickly as claimed or even read by the legis-lators who passed it, this too stretches belief. Yet to suggest, even a few months ago, that the attack was preventable was to engage in heresy, an appropriate word given our “leaders’” self-professed mandate from God.

The ignominious Patriot Act, the misguided and deadly adventure in Iraq, the continuing shame of Guantanamo Bay all required the pretext of a spectacular Pearl Harbor-type event. You have only to read the “Project for the New American Century” (search on Google), the demented fairy tale of world domination that all good neo-cons undoubtedly read to their young.

Ah yes…another coincidence.

GERARD BIZZARO

Montclair

 

Montclair Campaign to Defend Civil Liberties