Recently in Civil Rights Category

...You may find yourself on "the list." Is it possible that a high school grudge can result in costly and surreal political pay-back? Maybe.

Until a few days ago I had never heard of Chuck McGee or the New Hampshire phone jamming scandal for which he served prison time.

Last week a high school friend inadvertently indicated that a woman we went to school with is very likely involved in some aspect of my surveillance/harassment situation. Because my case is so epic and absurd, there were many times when I wondered if there was a personal vendetta at play. This woman, Carrie, was my then best friend's twin sister and hated me with passionate intensity. She was a right-wing and militantly pro-life Catholic, and though most of my friends were evangelical or Mormon, Carrie always seemed to have the least tolerance for my pro-choice, gay-friendly, and nearly all other views. (There were personal aspects, having to do with her sister's and my friendship, and our shared school activities, that seemed to propel her anger in ways I didn't understand.) The last few times I saw her she didn't speak to or acknowledge me. When I heard the things she said about me, I was always baffled.

I knew that her husband was a Republican big wig in New Hampshire, but that was all. During my reunion weekend in 2003 I stayed at her sister's house, where a picture of Carrie and her husband with President Bush hung on the fridge. This didn't surprise me. Such a trajectory totally made sense for her. I thought about Carrie rarely -- in the course of reflecting on my relationship with her sister, occasionally through my academic work, and the personal process of trying to  break out of conventional left/right thinking and build my own tolerance for people with very different views.

For the last month plus I've dealt with a new wave of elicitation centered around Christians, Mormons, my mother's finances, and a local ski area developer. (It's kind of a Keystone Cops situation -- I don't understand why they don't think we'll notice when multiple people attempt to get our thoughts on these topics in quick succession. Especially people who are supposed to be installing tile or kitchen cabinets rather than playing 20 Questions.) This thread is not new -- my surveillance seems to have been funded by anti-environmentalists and the religious right, as well as tax payers -- I've noticed multiple attempts to get me to malign evangelical Christians. (I think perhaps private contractors use these recored conversations for fund-raising purposes.)

It was reflecting on this most recent wave that led to my friend's inadvertent revelation about Carrie's possible involvement, which led me to find out exactly who her husband is. Who knew he would turn out to be notorious? In the course of my research, I found this summary from Chuck McGee's interview with the FBI, detailing the genesis of his plan to prevent Democrats from voting:

McGEE stated a few weeks before the election in November, 2002, his wife CARRIE showed him a flier that came into the mail from the Democratic Party. This letter gave information for voters on registration and voting procedures. It also included information on prescriptions and Medicare. McGEE stated that over the years he had decided to keep all the opposition mail that he received at his home. He remembers placing that particular
advertisement in his pocket. He remembers there was a number on the paper to be used on election day, something like 1-800-WIN- DEMOCRAT. During that same week, he remembers hearing the Democrats had hired 6,000 students to go to the polls on election day. He also heard there were several people going door-to-door the weekend before the election. McGEE said he was "torqued" by this idea and because of his military training came up with the idea that "communications is as important as beans and bullets." McGEE stated he may have talked to his wife about this idea.

Several aspects of this passage are remarkable to me. I've used the word "enemies" (in quotation marks) to describe oppositional interests. But never in a million years would I want to interfere with "the opposition's" democratic participation. Seeing fellow Americans as "the enemy" in a militaristic manner doesn't make sense. I guess I can relate to it insofar as I encouraged an anti-corporate boycott in response to the Iraq invasion, but that was because the democratic process seemed to have been so perverted, and Bush was encouraging us to shop on the eve of creating hundreds of thousands of refugees and PTSD-suffering veterans. The point was that our elected officials weren't listening to the majority of us, that we were obviously being lied to by the highest office holders. I guess what I'm saying is that it wasn't about "winning." It was about the need for truth and open debate.

"Winning" at the cost voter participation seems profoundly un-American. Given what I remember about Carrie, that Chuck may have discussed it with her (indeed, that she brought the offensive get-out-the-vote effort to his attention), and she didn't immediately squash the idea, do not surprise me. I never got the sense from her that we were free to be you and me. I wasn't simply "different," I was "the enemy." In my experience, people with this sort of win/lose with us/against us thinking project it onto others. If they were ok with a veering toward a somewhat sociopathic plan to disenfranchise people, what did they fantasize me capable of?

Living in a pluralistic society, I see those who vote differently than I do, or lead different lifestyles, as part of the mix. We're always trying to balance respective rights and liberties. This is why I always had a hard time understanding attempts to convert me to various strains of Evangelical Christianity, or a complete inability to even hear my political or philosophical point of view. I was fine with other people being Saved or speaking on tongues. Why was it not ok with them that I supported Clinton? Or didn't know which god I believed in?

It's not surprising that the Department of Justice may have delayed prosecuting McGee for political purposes. Unfortunately, it's also not surprising that a personal vendetta could have grave consequences for someone like me within an administration rooted in cronyism and devoid of accountability. Growing up during the Cold War, we were meant to love all that made us different from the Soviets: our supposed freedom from the dictates of propaganda and petty, repressive politics.

This is the United States of America. High school grudges should not contribute to the waste of millions (yes, it has to be millions by this point) in taxpayer dollars, what has amounted to wrongful imprisonment, and a complete arrogation of 4th Amendment rights. They just shouldn't. I can only hope that no one continues to cook up a way to justify it all. Enough is enough.

~~

Now I have an inkling of how it feels to be Britney Spears. The girl is a walking economic stimulus agent. Her very existence supports thousands of individuals -- from paparazzi to copy editors to advertising executives. My case has been that of an unwitting commodity for intelligence contractors who have given nearly everyone in my life the opportunity to make some cash off of information, solicitation or entrapment.

These are people with bumper stickers like "Live Simply So Others May Simply Live." People who take their dogs on generous afternoon hikes on the sides of mountains before studying the I Ching. Individuals who ride their bikes, buy organic, and play benefit concerts in their quasi-hipster alt-country bands. Who among them would like to think of themselves as akin to Nazi collaborators? I can't even simply equate them with "Good Germans" who stood by and did nothing as the Jews were dehumanized and eventually carted off. They were/are modern day willing executioners.

Today there has been much reflection on MLK's assassination. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be alive then, losing both him and RFK in quick succession.

Someone also asked today what would have been "done about Bush" in an earlier era (meaning -- how he would have been violently overthrown). I think these sort of questions miss the point, and are very contrary to Dr. King's Gandhian and Christian teachings. 

There have been extraordinary abuses of power in the White House, but the people -- citizens in all strata of society -- have allowed them. We have not held our leaders accountable. Taking one man's life would not add a bit of good to the world or correct a corrupt system. In fact, I imagine that any sort of attempt on anyone in the White House would only result in more draconian security measures and civil liberties abuses.

I don't think I actually condone killing of any sort except in extreme self-defense, if I felt my life was in danger (even then, we're in very theoretical territory here -- my fingernails are my most viable weapon). When a friend and I once discussed the possibility of my learning to use a gun, I could only imagine doing so in self-defense, to injure, which apparently is an unrealistic expectation (I have never been so scoffed at in all my life, actually). I don't remember having handled a gun since I shot a sparrow's eye out with a BB-gun at around age 8. I had to put it out of its misery and felt guilty for weeks.

One of the people who recently entered my life under false pretenses did a lot of talking about a friend of hers who runs a gun control organization out of the U.K. -- brought her up every time we met. Like much of what she said, this apparently was designed to elicit some sort of incriminating self-disclosure from me (instead, I expressed interest in interning with the organization before commencing the study of human rights law). Reflecting on her motivations makes me want to be very clear in case my passions for civil liberties and civil rights have been misunderstood.

When it comes to "martyr-like" characters responding to fascism (and we in the U.S. luckily still have the opportunity to ensure we don't go Germany's route), I would relate much more to Sophie Scholl than Dietrich Bonhoeffer (whose story a friend introduced me to last fall). Scholl expressed her political views in a rather unobtrusive manner, trying to influence through words, and was subjected to a kangaroo court and then execution. An example was made of her and two others in the White Rose resistance. I admire her courage, fortitude, and loyalty and would expect nothing less of myself. I strive to be the kind of person who would have the will to face my fate with such resolve.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, on the other hand, was a Protestant minister who was part of the resistance that attempted to assassinate Hitler. At this point, the war was raging on, and, the way I see it, this was more of a tactical/militaristic decision. For him it was also one of faith. I have no military training, or mind, and would certainly be the last person to ever do well in any such undertaking. I can see the value of having Hitler gone, but don't see how that situation at all applies to our current one. Again, we are still in a place where we have the ability to prevent something like Nazi Germany from fully flowering on U.S. soil.

King's sentiment seems the most effective:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

People are at the heart of King's dream. We aren't meant to kill them to get there.

~~