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“Listening to America” hears “Get FISA Right”

Posted by Thomas Nephew on July 28th, 2008

As advertised, I went to a nearby “Listening To America” Democratic platform drafting meeting yesterday. The idea was that “people all across America will hold Platform Meetings in their homes, or in their local churches and even coffee shops, to help build the Democratic Party’s platform for change from the bottom up.”

As it happened, ours really was in a coffee shop, the Mayorga Coffee Factory in Silver Spring. About twenty people showed up to the area set aside for us and signed in.

I brought a bunch of “Restore Our Rights & Demand Accountability” fliers I’d printed out drafted by the GetFISARight.net organization,* proposing three additions to the Democratic platform:

  • Stop government practices that violate the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech, privacy, and due process, including warrantless surveillance on Americans, secret evidence in military courts, torture, illegal imprisonment of U.S. citizens and others, and arbitrary racial and religious profiling.
  • Repeal or substantially amend laws that violate constitutionally guaranteed rights, including the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments law, the Military Commissions Act, related executive orders, and executive signing statements. Replace these with laws that reaffirm our fundamental rights and hold accountable all parties who violate those rights.
  • Restore constitutional rights that the Bush administration has eroded through its lawless theory of unchecked executive power, including dissent, free speech, assembly, habeas corpus, privacy, due process of law, and equal protection.

When the meeting began, it quickly became clear I’d have trouble getting all of those points adopted. The goal, it turned out, was to actually try to draft a single platform statement reflecting a group consensus, rather than perhaps voting on a series of possible statements like those above and just forwarding that to the higher ups in the process. The moderators — two very nice and able people from the policy side of the Obama campaign, Keith Harper and Chris Goldthwait (sp.?) — had in mind that we’d eventually form a couple of clusters around the commonalities that emerged as people introduced themselves and explained what they hoped for from the meeting. While I wasn’t alone in bringing the Constitutional/rule of law/civil liberties concerns to the table, there were plenty of other agendas — housing, health care, women’s reproductive rights, global warming, energy, education, poverty, to name just the ones I was able to jot down.

One woman (A.) noted how in other parts of the world, things like health care, education are considered human rights, and that (I’m paraphrasing) we need to catch up with that. So I suggested that maybe my civil liberties/constitutional erosion concerns and those like education and health care might be joined up under a single rubric of “restoring and expanding rights,” and that’s pretty much what happened.

The meeting broke up into basically one “rights” group and another “problems” group (energy, global warming), and got to work. After a bit of philosophical discussion about whether we were for expanding rights or reclaiming ones that were there all along, we settled on “Rebuilding and Reclaiming Our Basic Rights” as a title, and then A. came up with a pretty good preamble. From my notes:

The Democratic Party has long recognized that the most significant role of government is to protect basic human rights. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his “Four Freedoms” speech, set forth a comprehensive vision of human rights, and Eleanor Roosevelt fought hard to ensure that vision of human rights was incorporated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Then Keith, our moderator, said it was time to get specific - “put some meat on the bones.” I figured of the ones I’d brought, I most wanted the second one, because it mentioned accountability (i.e., prosecutions, I explained to one guy before the meeting started).

So I said that I knew I’d said a lot already, but I really hoped that point could be part of our platform recommendations. And people were OK with that; we dictated it to the “raporteur”/Obama organizer (Mona) keeping track on a poster sheet. Hooray! We then went on to “rebuild and reclaim” other basic human rights — living wage, education, health care, housing — with codicils that, for example, reproductive health care was part of the picture for universal health care. When we got back together with the rest of the meeting, no major changes were made by either group to the overall result.

I guess it’s true: sometimes all it takes is showing up. Of course I can’t guarantee that these points will make it to Denver or actually become part of the Democratic party platform. But it’s to the credit of the Obama campaign that they have this much grassroots input to the platform, and I think they’ll have to take note of all of us somehow. At any rate, it felt like a good afternoon’s work to me.

=====
* An alternative excellent flier focused on the FISA Amendment Act per se. I picked the “PlatformConstitution.pdf” one on the theory that it might help to put the FISA Amendment Act in a broader context in a platform discussion.

UPDATE, 7/29: You, too, can be part of a platform drafting team — follow this link to Netroots Nation’s Democratic Platform and vote on or write your own plank on Civil Liberties!
(UPDATE, 8/11: the full text of the 7/28 Silver Spring consensus statement is here.)

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11 Responses to ““Listening to America” hears “Get FISA Right””

  1. Aviva032 Says:
    July 28th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

    Thomas, I linked to this post in a thread dedicated to reports on platform meetings in the getfisaright.org forums. Sounds like it was very positive experience; glad the fliers came in handy.

    http://getfisaright.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=150&p=1000#p1000

  2. Thomas Nephew Says:
    July 28th, 2008 at 3:00 pm

    Good; there are reports from New Orleans and Austin there too, so far.

  3. Michelle Bailey Says:
    July 28th, 2008 at 7:37 pm

    great job! thanks for the writeup!

  4. Thomas Nephew Says:
    July 28th, 2008 at 10:47 pm

    Thanks Michelle.

    I’ll add what’s turning into a lengthy postscript about the “dog that didn’t bark” yet. IIRC, I was the only person who brought up Iraq to any major degree in the roundtable discussion, and no language about Iraq got into our consensus platform. (I argued that it and the FISA, MCA, torture issues were of a piece in a “do we intend to abide by the rules we set for ourselves” way, and “do we intend to limit the executive branch (even though we’re here via a presidential campaign)?” But Iraq was not what brought those people (or me, to be clear) to that meeting, other things were.

    I’ve been +/- accused of (paraphrasing) is that people like me are short-shrifting Iraq/peace concerns as we tilt at impeachment/etc. windmills. (Local peace activist guy, local conversation at the pool one time.) Among the many things I did not say that day, in favor of “Huh. Well, talk to you later.”, were:
    a) I don’t think it’s necessary for everyone to do every thing or only the “most important” thing,
    b) I see the impeachment/FISA/etc. and war issues as connected — one impeachment issue is the deceitful case for the war, and underlying both is the “commander in chief”-itis afflicting the country, and
    c) I do try to show up for Iraq things — demonstrations, writing, bringing Iraq plans to a congressman’s office.

    At this meeting, the structure was such that I felt I had to kind of pick one thing and stick with it; others may have felt similarly. Probably everyone there cared about Iraq, and probably most want us out by a time certain, sooner rather than later. But everyone probably felt “someone else will bring it up and push it, so I’ll stick with my other thing.”

  5. Lisa Moscatiello Says:
    July 29th, 2008 at 1:26 pm

    Thomas - I think this is great - making sure that the Democrats include civil liberties restoration in their platform. While it sounds like a no-brainer, depressingly, I wonder if they will be able to stand up for the Constitution. I will be pleasantly surprised if Obama can resist the urge to cave to the “we have to sacrifice everything to our fear of Islamofascist terrorist” crowd.

  6. Thomas Nephew Says:
    July 29th, 2008 at 1:42 pm

    Right — even if it gets in the platform, platform stuff often gets ignored afterwards. But what can we do; given the chance to get something in the platform, I’m glad I was able to (with the help and consent of many others). Thanks for your support, too.

  7. Nell Says:
    July 30th, 2008 at 10:10 am

    I’m really not that bothered by not having items calling for an end to the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia occupations in the platform.

    For one thing, any foreign policy/military commitments in a platform are easily ditched by an administration on the grounds that “conditions are different”, they don’t want their “hands tied”, etc. The rights you all put good work into articulating precede and should outlast any particular mil/fp situation; they’re fundamental to who we are as a country.

    Second, Obama already has a pretty clear position on Iraq and Afghanistan (and a strong desire for no one to bring up Somalia, I’d bet). We don’t like the position very much, but there it is. Electing better members of Congress and ramping up the non-electoral pressure on January 21, 2009 is going to be more effective than any platform plank.

    Third, it’s just the reality of where we’ve been pushed to over the last eight years: there are so many areas of need and concern that it’s pretty much impossible to treat them all adequately. And all the more so with the funnelling technique the campaign is applying to these sessions.

    If there’s one important principle to get in there, it’s restoration of our rights/accountability for their abandonment, which are absolutely two sides of the same coin. That is, no rights will be genuine if there’s no cost to their being abandoned.

    Good on ya.

  8. Thomas Nephew Says:
    July 31st, 2008 at 4:46 am

    Thanks, Nell. I agree with you; I was just kind of surprised that Iraq wasn’t discussed more, and that I did much of what discussion there was. I think you’re right that people take Obama’s position on Iraq for granted, and take for granted that it’s better than McCain’s even if it isn’t ideal.

  9. Liminal states » Towards a rebirth of freedom: activism on social networks, part 1 (DRAFT) Says:
    July 31st, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    [...] Nephew’s “Listening to America” hears “Get FISA Right” on newsrackblog.com describes experiences at a platform [...]

  10. newsrackblog.com » Blog Archive » “The Constitution is not a nuisance” — Democratic platform Says:
    August 13th, 2008 at 3:24 pm

    [...] Thomas Nephew on “Listening to America” hears “Get FISA Right” [...]

  11. newsrackblog.com » Blog Archive » How that worked out: an election followup Says:
    December 4th, 2008 at 6:54 pm

    [...] considerations aside, I’m also satisfied that I did my best to help raise the issues of Iraq, civil liberties, torture, global warming, Iran, and the rule of law during the election season, whether here on my [...]

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