(A call to action! - promoted by David)
I've spent literally thousands of volunteer hours on this in the past few years. I'm asking you, the readers, to spend 10-15 minutes of your own time, today, to help push us over the finish line in style. It'll only take a few short phone calls....
In December, as several provisions of the Patriot Act were set to expire, the Senate bucked the Bush administration's request to make most of them permanent, and Congress passed 5 week reauthorization. Yesterday, the Senate confirmed Alito, and the House has just returned from their winter break. Now, both houses of Congress are set to take up Patriot Act reauthorization - and, with luck, meaningful Patriot Act reform.
There's potential for real reforms that would restore important checks and balances. The debate will be close, and we could win or lose. The groundwork for this fight has been laid through the hard work of organizations and grassroots groups all over the country in the past four years. Massachusetts is in a unique position of leverage to bring a lot of that groundwork into focus at just the right moment.
I'll go into more detail below the fold, but here's what I'm asking you to do today: - Call your state Representative, and ask them to pass HB 1881
- Call your state Senator, and ask them pass HB 1881
- Call house speaker Sal DiMasi at 617-722-2500 and ask him to bring HB 1881 to a vote this week
- Drop me a brief email, at cos@municipalfreedom.org, letting me know you saw this post, and which legislators you called
- Forward this to other people you know in MA and ask them to make the same calls
You can look up your state Representative and Senator at WhereDoIVoteMA.com - click their name to get their contact info. Here's what you can say when you call:Hello, is this the office of Representative/Senator [name]?
Congress is about to consider reauthorizing the Patriot Act. I'd like Massachusetts to go on record urging the Congress to reform the Patriot Act and restore our civil liberties. HB 1881, the Massachusetts civil liberties resolution, is on the legislative calendar. Now is the time when it will matter most. Please pass it this week! |
What's at StakeCongress could give Bush what he wants: Not only would the Patriot Act become permanent, but certain portions of it would become even worse. Or, Congress could pass the Senate compromise, which includes:
- a meaningful standard of suspicion linking secret Patriot Act records orders to a suspected foreign terrorist or spy,
- a meaningful right to challenge the secrecy of national security letters or "NSLs" (FBI records demands without any court review),
- a rule requiring notice of secret searches in most general criminal cases after something considerably less than a month, and
- a four-year "sunset" or expiration date on a few key powers so that another review can happen before the end of the decade.
It's not everything we need, but it would be a very large step back from the brink, and a major defeat for Bush.
What is HB 1881?The Resolution Affirming the Civil Rights and Liberties of the People of Massachusetts (click to read the full resolution) would put Massachusetts officially on the record in opposition to the post-9/11 civil liberties crackdown, and in support of meaningful Patriot Act reform on a federal level.
What Difference Can It Make?A resolution is a political, not a legal tool. Obviously, the Massachusetts legislature has no legal authority to reform federal law. But the US Congress is at a tipping point, and the tenor of news coverage and public debate could tip them in either direction. So could evidence of widespread political organization which may affect elections. HB 1881 is in a position to highlight both.
Shortly after the Patriot Act first passed, local groups in communities around the country began organizing to pass local civil liberties resolutions in their cities, towns, and counties. The national movement actually began here, with the Northampton-based Bill of Rights Defense Committee. To date, over 400 such resolutions have been passed, evidence of a tremendous level of local organizing in almost every corner of the country. Among these are seven state level resolutions, spanning the partisan spectrum from blue states to swing states to the reddest of the red: Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, Colorado, Montana, Alaska, and Idaho.
With the exception of Colorado, though, those are all states with small, mostly rural populations. And it has been nearly a year since the most recent one (Colorado, May 2005). Massachusetts is a very politically influential state. It is densely populated, and actually has more people than all six of the states that passed resolutions before Colorado, combined. By passing our own resolution now, we can bring the campaign back into the news. We can provide the hook that newspapers need to tell the story, and remind the Congress of the broad, bipartisan, grassroots effort to reform the Patriot Act. And we're poised to do it at just the right time.
Why Your Calls Are The KeyHB 1881...- Has over 40 co-sponsors
- Passed out of committee last fall with a favorable recommendation
- Was placed on the legislative calendar on January 9th
- Will probably pass with a strong majority if voted upon
But will it come to a vote? And if so, when?
The legislative calendar is busy, and HB 1881 could languish there until it's too late. It's up to Speaker DiMasi to decide, each morning, which bills off the calendar to consider that day. It's up to the other members of the legislature to ask for the bills they want. And they're only going to pay attention to this one, and ask for it to come to a vote, if they know we care.
It could happen any day. It could happen tomorrow. The hard work has already been done (and I intend to post a lot more about that soon). Now's the easy part.
State legislators don't get a lot of calls. Just two or three calls in one day to a member of the House about a bill like this, is more than enough to get him or her to take some action. 10 or 20 calls to DiMasi in one day, would be a landslide. If we can generate that level of calls in the next few days, we can pass this bill. |
