Intercepting and Obstructing Terrrorism?
Poverty and the USA Patriot Act
by: Jesse Leah Vear
From a speech delivered on July 3, 2003 at a speakout against the USA
PATRIOT Act in Portand
"Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing the Appropriate Tools
Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism."
— The initial letters of these words make up the name, USA Patriot Act
Now I'm a low-income person and I work with other low-income people fighting
for economic justice, and these words have a very different meaning for us.
In the richest country in the history of the world, poverty is more than
criminal — it is terrorism. Rather than intercept and obstruct poverty, we
must eliminate it altogether. Root it out. We already have the required
tools. While millions of tons of surplus food are destroyed yearly, and
millions of luxury homes and apartments stand vacant, millions of Americans
suffer from the terror of hunger and homelessness.
Every day upwards of 70 million Americans experience the terror of poverty
and economic hardship; the terror of not having access to their medications
or not being able to see a doctor; the terror of skipping meals so their
children might have something to eat; the terror of facing another week
without electricity, heat, hot water, or a home, the terror of having their
families destroyed and their children taken away from them. Millions of
Americans live day to day in just such a state of terror.
Martin Luther King warned us about this terror, and the urgency it presents,
when, in 1967, he said, "There is a fire raging against the poor in this
society. Disinherited people from all over the world are bleeding to death
from deep social and economic wounds. They need brigades of ambulance
drivers who will have to ignore the red lights of the present system until
the emergency is solved." Decades later, instead of brigades of ambulance
drivers we have ever more red lights. Instead of strong social programs,
universal health coverage, living-wage jobs, and well-funded schools we have
homeland security, total information awareness, a giant military-industrial
complex, well-funded prisons, and legislation such as the USA PATRIOT Act,
all of which are purported to make America more secure, to make Americans
safer. But after billions and billions have been spent "enhancing our
nation's security" and "strengthening our nation's intelligence" WE MUST
ASK: What intelligence? Whose security?
While our families sleep on floor-mats in overcrowded shelters, while
millions toil endlessly at dead-end jobs that don't pay enough to cover the
rent, while our children go to their crumbling schools with nothing in their
bellies but fear, WE DON'T FEEL A LICK SAFER.
Our country spends our resources, not to build affordable housing, but
instead to search and wiretap our homes. Instead of funding and restoring
our libraries and schools, our government is infiltrating them to monitor
and harass patrons and students. Instead of developing universal health
coverage, they've developed a system to snoop and survey our medical
records. Instead of providing more jobs they sic the INS on us at work, and
rather than providing opportunities for higher education they've given us
endless detentions, deportations, and jail without charges.
So much for uniting and strengthening America. We find ourselves living in a
dark time, in a land governed by confused and very backward morals. If our
leaders exercised any amount of REAL intelligence, homeland security would
mean a roof over the head of every American, food in the bellies of every
American, healthcare and living wage jobs for every American. For this is
true domestic security.
As for intercepting and obstructing terrorism, we ought to swing that
magnifying glass around, and intercept and obstruct terrorism right from the
top. We must start by scrutinizing the real terrorists: the current regime
in Washington, an administration employing more convicted criminals than any
other in US history, who from the moment they stepped into office have been
steadily gutting our civil liberties, our economic human rights, and our
very democracy, not to mention our treasury. Calling themselves patriots,
these white-collar, bloody-fisted criminals have desecrated the bill of
rights and criminalized the right to dissent. Were he alive today, Dr. King
himself would be subject to John Ashcroft's microscopic lens. America's
pre-eminent civil rights leader would find himself detained and harassed at
airport security checkpoints. His phone would be tapped, his email
monitored, his home secretly searched, his church under surveillance. All
of this, because he dared to resist the current order of this society.
Indeed, we ourselves must form those brigades of intrepid ambulance drivers.
Now more than ever we need to blaze on through the red lights of this
nation's ridiculous color-coded terror alert system. We must declare it
unacceptable, and truly we must not allow this government to spend our
billions to spy on our own people, while millions of Americans go hungry and
homeless. No, we must not allow our precious resources to be squandered
spying on, monitoring, profiling, and harassing law-abiding citizens and
immigrants for traces of some elusive and ill-defined threat, when all the
while, right before our eyes the terrorism of poverty, all-too-easily
detected, continues ruining the lives of our fellow Americans. Right before
our eyes, in a country that protects its borders better than it protects its
human lives. Right before our eyes in an America where untold thousands rot
in undisclosed detention centers, while millions have no homes.
The time is now. We must all find the courage to truly unite and strengthen
America by denouncing the USA Patriot Act, by fighting for economic human
rights and REAL domestic security, and by driving right on through those red
lights.
For until justice works for all of us, we must all work for justice!
Jesse Leah Vear is a low-income rights activist working with Portland
Organizing to Win Economic Rights, POWER, email power@riseup.net,
207-681-0035, POWER PO Box 4281 Portland, ME 04101.
Back to Peace Talk Index, Fall,
2003