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By Montgomery County standards, it qualified as a political earthquake: the respected Takoma Park/Silver Spring “Progressive Neighbors” PAC steering committee did not endorse Chris Van Hollen in his bid for re-election to Maryland’s 8th Congressional District seat in the House of Representatives.  As their election issues flier — to be distributed by volunteers before and on Election Day — states,

Progressive Neighbors is split between endorsing the incumbent Chris Van Hollen and Green Party challenger Gordon Clark.  We appreciate many of the stands Van Hollen has taken but have been disappointed by his lack of progressive leadership on issues that Clark is championing such as ending the War in Iraq and single payer, universal health care.

The organization’s web site front page adds, “The positions of both the incumbent Chris Van Hollen and Green Party challenger Gordon Clark were considered by the steering committee, and the committee came to a split decision.”

I spoke with Progressive Neighbors steering committee member and contact person Wally Malakoff, who said he agreed with the position the group took: “Van Hollen has taken good positions, but could be more aggressive” in pushing them, while Clark is a “good, articulate spokesman” for progressive positions.  He said that the steering committee solicited member opinions via email and also considered those responses — roughly evenly divided — in coming to its decision.

The two candidates submitted letters to the Progressive Neighbors steering committee — first one by Van Hollen requesting endorsement, and then a response by Clark– both of which are now posted on the Progressive Neighbors web site.*  Given that Van Hollen had to miss the only debate he was willing to schedule with Clark, the letters are perforce the only debate the voters of the 8th Congressional District will get to judge.

There are a lot of specific points made by both candidates in their letters.  Instead of dwelling on these specifics, I’ll try in the following to get across the themes of both candidate’s positions accurately.  In case it needs restating, I should make it (even more) crystal-clear that I support Clark.

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Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) executive director Mike Tidwell writes that he, too, was listed as a “terrorist” by the Maryland State Police on their now-infamous “Case Explorer” database.  Tidwell:

Since 2001, I have devoted my life entirely to the peaceful promotion of windmills and solar panels to solve global warming. Apparently not everyone liked my work, however. Believe it or not, the Maryland State Police - your state police - put my name in their criminal intelligence database as a “suspected terrorist” as part of their larger program of collecting information about political activists in 2005-2006. I was on this outrageous “watch” list apparently because of a single act of peaceful civil disobedience I participated in outside a coal-fired power plant in 2004. CCAN’s former deputy director Josh Tulkin was also put in the database as was another former CCAN staffer who has chosen to remain anonymous. Neither of these people has ever been arrested for anything in their entire lives. (See background below)

So about one third of the entire Maryland CCAN staff - one of the largest environmental groups in the state - was officially spied on by the police while we peacefully promoted clean electricity and clean cars for Maryland. This is, of course, an outrage and a threat, not just to civil liberties in Maryland, but to the state’s entire environmental community. When people who are trying SAVE the climate and SAVE the Bay are considered terrorists, the world has truly been turned upside down.

Tidwell asks readers to send an email to Governor Martin O’Malley asking him to release all surveillance files gathered by the MSP (who prefer to destroy the files), and to support comprehensive legislation (being drafted by local State Senator Jamie Raskin) to prevent similar abuses from happening again.  There will also be a 10:30 am rally tomorrow at the Silver Spring Metro station to further publicize the scandal and press these demands.  The rally and email campaign are both coordinated with the ACLU-Maryland, whose lawsuit helped uncover the scandal earlier this year.

This fishing expedition by the Maryland State Police task force was as un-American as McCarthyism or Nixon’s “dirty tricks” — it was a dry run for Chinese- or Stasi-style surveillance and infiltration of innocuous activist groups, and their labeling as literally enemies of the state.  Dry run is putting it kindly, actually — this was the real thing. The recently released Sachs report relays what I consider a snickering, bald-faced lie about how the “terrorist” designation was considered no big deal by those aware of it:

While the MSP employees with whom we spoke recognized that the individuals and groups under investigation here were not “terrorists,” under any reasonable and accepted definition of that word, none who were aware of the use of the designation seemed to consider that a government agency’s decision to label someone a terrorist, particularly when that label is included in an external database, could cause serious harm to that person’s reputation, career, and standing in the community.

Baloney. They knew full well they were putting a bureaucratic scarlet “T” on all of the people they labeled that way. For this assault on civil liberties to be fully repulsed, that needs to be turned on its head: the superiors involved should be disciplined and demoted, and those doing their bidding should be reassigned to simpler chores, like checking parking meters or directing traffic.

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UPDATE, 10/23: CCAN online communications manager Susanna Murley has set up a “No Police Spying” facebook group, with photos from the rally; alternatively, see the CCAN blog post about it.  Also, the New York Times  Andrew Revkin (”.Dot Earth” blog) is covering the story.

Max Obuszewski and other activists spied on by
the Maryland State Police. From left to right:
Maria Allwine, (Baltimore Pledge of Resistance
(BPoR), Kit Bonson (Washington Peace Center),
Obuszewski (BPoR), Mike Stark (Campaign to End
the Death Penalty). Allwine and Stark were also
among those surveilled by the MSP.
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew.

I’ve written a couple of times now about the Maryland State Police spying scandal (”Sachs Report…”, “Maryland Police Surveillance: Case Explorer and Civil Liberties“).   This Saturday, I attended a forum about it organized by the Washington Peace Center and held at the Presbyterian Church in Takoma Park.

Speakers included four activists surveilled by the state police (Baltimore Pledge of Resistance (BPoR) activists Max Obuszewski and Maria Allwine, and Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) activists David Zirin and Mike Stark), state senator Jamie Raskin, and David Rocah, the ACLU-Maryland lawyer who obtained the documents breaking the Maryland police spying scandal.  Ann Wilcox of the National Lawyer’s Guild broadened the focus by reporting on infiltration and surveillance connected with the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota in September.

Obuszewski, Allwine
Mr. Obuszewski explained that the discovery of police surveillance was connected with protests he was part of at the NSA facility at Fort Meade. Noticing that documents were being provided to the judge in his civil disobedience case, Obuszewski got the help of the ACLU in August of 2006 to obtain whatever he could by federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Maryland Public Information Act petition. Fellow BPoR activist Allwine said she was certain that surveillance had been going on before the time frame they were able to uncover, and may well go beyond the state police.  Allwine is particularly curious about an intelligence unit of the Baltimore City police.  Referring to a October, 2003 incident, she wants to know whether Martin O’Malley — then mayor of Baltimore — was aware of city police surveillance of groups like hers at that time.

Allwine spoke of the chilling effect this can have on free speech; she’s advised worried people in the past that “you have to assume we’re being spied on,” but added “this is the most un-American thing I can think of — people responsible for public safety turning around and spying on” people exercising their right to free speech.

Below:
Fifty-three peace and death penalty “terrorists” — not four
Dissatisfaction with Sheridan, Sachs
Raskin/Hixson legislative reponse
The real “fringe”

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– and three candidates, for that matter.

In a profile of Republican Congressional candidate Steve Hudson, one C. Benjamin Ford of the Montgomery County Gazette informs his readers:

Van Hollen said he knew little of Hudson’s background, but that he had an impressive record of service. The two were scheduled to debate, but it was canceled by the congressional action on the economic crisis.

(Emphases added.) Thing is, I’m positive I saw that debate a week ago at the Rockville Public Library! Van Hollen couldn’t make it because of the House vote on the bailout bill, but Van Hollen’s legislative director was there — he even said “responsible, responsive, and properly prioritized,” which almost made me swoon and just isn’t something I could make up.   Hudson was there!  Write-in candidate Deborah Vollmer was there!  Looking back, I’ll grant there was a certain hallucinatory quality to Lih Young’s remarks, but everything else made sense!

Especially Green Party candidate Gordon Clark, who made a solid, persuasive impression as the Green Party candidate for Congress in Maryland’s 8th Congressional district.  Seriously, you can watch the debate online here; if you’d like to cut to the chase of any particular participant’s remarks, you can use this time chart and the slider on the video.

I’m informed that Mr. Ford will interview Gordon Clark for a coming issue of the Gazette.  That’s great — well, actually it’s the least the Gazette could do; they really ought to promise to put Clark on page 1.

But someone ought to interview Mr. Ford and his editors as well: what does it say about their reporting and standards that he’d claim (a) there were just two candidates for Congress in Maryland’s 8th District, and (b) that a debate hosted by the League of Women Voters, attended by close to a hundred people, and broadcast on TV and the Internet was “canceled”?  Are they lazy, incurious, easily misled, in the tank, or all of the above?  Hell, I found out about the debate all by myself, ran to catch two trains to make it there after work, and wrote it up within a day.  Can’t an actual newspaper and journalist be bothered to try to follow a story about a congressional election campaign in their own back yard — and try to get it right?

Saturday for Barack Obama in Leesburg, Virginia; Sunday for Gordon Clark (Green) in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Obama
Marylanders — most, if not all, from Montgomery County — swamped the Loudoun County Obama headquarters in Leesburg on Saturday in two shifts.  I was on the late one, 1 p.m. from Bethesda High School (the meeting place there is now in front of the high school, not in the parking lot).  Drove over with a very interesting lady, wife of a former Republican congressman from the South.  As she explained, being progressive in the South once meant being Republican.

Loudoun County Obama HQ.
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew.

Anyhow, the briefing at Leesburg was a little chaotic — people kept interrupting the guy doing the briefing — but the upshot was that we were using data from the past few elections to contact sporadic, possibly persuadable voters, we wanted data even if it was indirect, and we wanted to make sure people were registered.  As in Dumfries two weeks ago, the questions were about who people were supporting (“not ‘voting for’ — people will close the door on you if you ask that”) for president, senator (Mark Warner (D) vs. Jim Gilmore (R) to replace outgoing Senator John Warner), or representative — Judy Feder vs. incumbent Frank Wolf (R).

Bank owned property, somewhere in
Leesburg.
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew.

The two of us wound up in a similar neighborhood to the one I canvassed in Dumfries a couple of weeks ago — rental apartment complexville, Mr. and Ms. (Pretending They’re?) Not Home on Weekends.  Between the two of us, we knocked on about 60 doors, found 8 strong Obama supporters (2 volunteers among them), 1 leaning towards Obama, 2 McCain.  I was surprised at that, because I got both McCains, the Obama leaner and the undecided person, and just one of the strong Obamas; maybe people are likelier to open the door for an older lady than for me — even though I’m such a nice guy!

Unlike in Dumfries, this time every time I actually did speak to someone, it was the person named on the list.  The “Votebuilder” lists are quite good, but there are some glitches.  To whoever programs the software: you might as well not include “Apt 000″ addresses in the printouts, OK? Also: the only “lit” (=”literature” =political fliers to stick in people’s doors if they weren’t home) they had for us to drop was a Warner/Obama flier — nothing for Judy Feder; that was a bit of a missed opportunity for that campaign.

The last observation of the day was from a birthday party Maddie went to here in Takoma Park that evening.  It must be the circles we frequent, but many of the other moms and/or dads had been out canvassing as well.  People really want this.

Clark
Today I fried my face on Carroll Avenue in Takoma Park from 10 to noon while repeating three main phrases — “Gordon Clark for Congress,” “Here he is,” and “Would you like a sticker?” — to families drifting by the Green Party booth at the Takoma Street Festival.  (See these posts — mainly this one — for why a long-time Democrat like myself is supporting Clark over Van Hollen.)  Our booth faced south, and I forgot to bring a cap.  I think I’ll pay a price tomorrow, even though I did use some sunblock.

Gordon Clark was there too, of course.  He’d been at the “Taste of Bethesda” event on Saturday, and said Chris Van Hollen came by.  The meeting was not cordial — Van Hollen told Clark to “stop lying” about him; Clark says he replied he’d be happy to debate Van Hollen whenever he liked.  I wonder what that was about — everything on the issues comparison brochure the Clark campaign has is documented.

People can be funny about political booths.  It’s their weekend, of course, and not all of us want to gather political information at a crafts, food, and music fair.  But some people pick up speed and/or veer away as they might catch something from us, while others will make a self-approving point of how much they dismiss whatever you’re doing — demonstrative handwaves of refusal, little snorts, that kind of thing.

But the people who kind of slowly walk up, looking at the signage and the table, coming to a decision — they make up for that.  I think it’s kind of fun, and kind of good, to be a part of that — encounters like that, decisions like that, they’re the little atomic units and molecule formations of politics.  I’m just there trying to help catalyze the reaction.

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EDIT, 10/6: added comment about having no Judy Feder fliers.

The Maryland 8th Congressional District candidate debate was hosted by the local League of Women Voters (LWV) in Rockville’s main public library last night.  It will be rebroadcast on “Access Montgomery” public cable channels 19 and 21 three times in the next 7 days.*

Gordon Clark (Green), Steve Hudson (R), Van Hollen (D)
legislative director Bill Parsons at League of Women
Voters debate in Rockville.  Write-in candidates
Deborah Vollmer and Lih Young were also there,
but are obscured behind the photographer on the
right.  The moderator was LWV president Diane Hibino.
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew.

To my disappointment, but not to my surprise, my Representative, Chris Van Hollen (D) was unable to attend; he had to stay on Capitol Hill because of the “bailout” legislation.  Legislative director Bill Parsons took his place. The other candidates on the ballot — Gordon Clark (Green) and Steve Hudson (R) were on hand, as were write-in candidates Deborah Vollmer and Lih Young.

As I wrote on Monday, I’ve decided to support Gordon Clark in this election, and I saw nothing to change that decision last night.  Clark has a formidable grasp of issues from global warming and energy to foreign affairs to the financial crisis.  He also communicates that well, with a forceful, clear speaking style that contrasted well with the other challengers — and with Van Hollen’s last-minute substitute Mr. Parsons, for that matter.  I could easily picture Gordon Clark as a United States representative; none of the other challengers met that simple test, in my view.

The debate began with prepared statments by each of the speakers, followed by one minute responses to questions prepared by the moderator, by the audience , or submitted by email correspondents to the LWV.  I’ll give a thumbnail impression of each speaker in the following; an embedded video of the debate is just after the jump.

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In “Review Assails Spying in Md. By State Police,” the Washington Post’s Lisa Rein reports:

The Maryland State Police “significantly overreached” when they spied on peaceful opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war and were oblivious to their violation of the activists’ rights of free expression and association, an independent review concluded yesterday.

Calling the 14-month monitoring during the administration of then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) a “systemic failure,” former U.S. attorney and state attorney general Stephen H. Sachs said the police violated federal regulations and showed a “lack of judgment” when they entered personal information about some activists into a federal anti-terrorism database.

(Emphasis added.)  This was the part of the scandal I singled out for scrutiny in late July when the story broke (”Maryland police surveillance: “Case Explorer” and civil liberties“), and I’m pleased to see it got detailed attention in the Sachs report.

From that report (”Review of Maryland State Police Covert Surveillance of Anti-Death Penalty and Anti-War Groups from March 2005 to May 2006“; .PDF, 149 pages, link added):

Second, MSP [Maryland State Police -ed.] violated federal regulations when it transmitted some of its investigative findings to a database maintained by the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program, a federally-funded initiative to promote cooperation and information-sharing among federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. Regulations promulgated by the United States Department of Justice permit MSP, when participating in the HIDTA project, to collect and maintain intelligence information concerning an individual “only if there is reasonable suspicion that the individual is involved in criminal conduct or activity and the information is relevant to that criminal conduct or activity.” See 28 C.F.R. § 23.20(a). Again, no such reasonable suspicion existed with respect to the investigation at issue here. To its credit, in late 2005 MSP discontinued, on its own initiative, its practice of sharing this type of information with HIDTA. [...]

While the MSP employees with whom we spoke recognized that the individuals and groups under investigation here were not “terrorists,” under any reasonable and accepted definition of that word, none who were aware of the use of the designation seemed to consider that a government agency’s decision to label someone a terrorist, particularly when that label is included in an external database, could cause serious harm to that person’s reputation, career, and standing in the community.

While this is absolutely no reflection on Mr. Sachs’s excellent report, that last part seems so implausible that I wonder if any of this was based on depositions under oath; if not, that’s a step I would then hope is not long in coming.*

Setting that aside, the Sachs report provides a wealth of information about the decision to use Case Explorer, and the ramifications of that decision; I’ll be studying that part of the report and writing about it separately.

Meanwhile, Sachs recommends that the Maryland State Police “formulate binding regulations that govern covert surveillance of “advocacy” or “protest” groups” which respect their constitutional rights.  But Sachs also makes several specific database- and “Case Explorer”-related recommendations (emphases added):

2. MSP should establish standards for the collection and dissemination of criminal intelligence information; provide for periodic auditing of the contents of MSP’s intelligence database; and require that information inappropriately entered as criminal intelligence information be purged promptly and that other information be purged on an appropriate cycle. Numerous law enforcement agencies around the country, including in Maryland, have promulgated regulations that address these issues. In Section IV below, this report identifies several models from which MSP may choose to draw.

3. MSP should revise, and possibly discontinue, its use of the Case Explorer database in connection with its intelligence-gathering activities. If funds are available, it should separate its criminal intelligence database from the information that it maintains in Case Explorer for other purposes. As presently employed by MSP’s Homeland Security and Intelligence Division, Case Explorer encourages the overinclusion of individuals and groups in the database, does not facilitate supervisory review of ongoing investigations, and, for a variety of technical reasons, frustrates the troopers, civilian analysts, and supervisors who have to use it on a regular basis.

He also recommends that MSP allow surveilled individuals who aren’t suspected of violent crime to see their files and then purge those files.

These recommendations echo those by constitutional law professor Jack Balkin in “The Constitution and the National Surveillance State”, which I outlined in my “Case Explorer and civil liberties” post: “…create a regular system of checks and procedures to avoid abuse … stop collecting information when it is no longer needed … discard information at regular intervals to protect privacy.“  If the Sachs recommendations are enshrined in state law and regulations, Maryland will have turned an deeply disturbing civil liberties failure into a historic civil liberties success, one that can show the way for other states and even the nation.

I’ll be forwarding these comments to all of my Maryland state representatives, and to any others who seem to have a role to play in enacting reforms.  I hope other Maryland citizens will add their voices in support of the Sachs recommendations.

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* UPDATE, 10/2: Sachs notes that he could not take testimony under oath, but got full cooperation from the MSP.  From the introduction: “As you know, I was not asked to conduct a formal investigation.  I had no power to issue subpoenas and no authority to take testimony under oath.  That said, my colleagues and I consider it important to note that we have received full cooperation from the State Police in [making MSP personnel] available for interviews, and giving us full access to all of the many documents we sought to examine…”

Anticipation is building for the Biden-Palin vice presidential debate this Thursday — but another debate earlier the same evening here in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District deserves attention as well.  The League of Women Voters is sponsoring a debate between Representative Chris Van Hollen (D), Gordon Clark (Green Party), and other challengers this Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Rockville Library (21 Maryland Drive; Meeting Room 1; map). The debate will be preceded by a “Meet and Greet” event at 6:15 p.m. in Meeting Room 2 of the same building.

For a quick overview of where Van Hollen and Clark stand on a variety of issues, I recommend “Gordon Clark vs. Chris Van Hollen On The Issues.”*  As that pamphlet shows, there’s a strong positive case to be made for Gordon Clark.  If you want universal health care, if you oppose the InterCounty Connector (ICC), if you want strong, immediate action to rein in global warming, and if you oppose adding yet another war to those we’re already waging, you’re on Gordon Clark’s side.

But as a long-time Democrat, I’m also supporting Mr. Clark this election because I want to send a message to the Democratic Party and its leadership — Van Hollen is chair of the powerful Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) — that I’m very dissatisfied with their leadership these last two years.

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Million Doors for Peace on Saturday. Obama on Sunday. Today must be Monday.

I only knocked on about 80 doors this weekend, but on Sunday it seemed like every d…elightful one of them was on the 3d floor of IdentApartmentComplexVille in Dumfries, VA.

In both cases, I was working from walking lists — lists of selected names in address order.  The common thread was that both lists — as usual — bore only an approximate relation to reality.  On Saturday, I was in my own neighborhood, and the names were of infrequent or new voters.  They turned out to be mainly — duh — kids who had left for college.  I had enough presence of mind to ask their parents whether they might sign on to the MD4P petition  to Congress (out of Iraq in one year), and a fair number did.  Most importantly, I got three or four (potential) volunteers for future work that way, vs. only one off the walking list.

Dumfries, VA Obama HQ.
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew;
see also slideshow.

For some reason, I was less mentally flexible the next day, though the problem was a little different.  In this case I was in a cookie cutter low-to-middle-price range apartment complex development in Dumfries, Virginia.  By whatever criterion the names were selected here (perhaps also newly registered and/or infrequent voters), turnover was high — and this time, instead of doing something with Mr. or Ms. Surprise NewlyMovedIn at the door, I just gave them the packet of literature and moved on.  The difference, I think, was (a) that I was maybe a little more tired and stupid on Sunday, (b) I had it in my head from the briefing that I was only after answers about the names on my walking list, and (c) that I didn’t have any designated piece of paper to put Mr. or Ms. Surprise NewlyMovedIn on.  (Though I might have crossed out the Mr. or Ms. NotThereAnymore and just written in the new name.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.)  I did get one volunteer and a couple of strong Obama supporters, but my unstupid partner did much better with fewer doors.

Well, I’ll do better next time.  Now to bed.

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UPDATE, 9/22: Prior “Million Doors for Peace” posts here. Also, eRobin at factesque provides a video of how things went in a Pennsyvlania “Million Doors for Peace” canvass.  Pretty well! — 3 hours, 257 contacts, 11 volunteers.
UPDATE, 9/22: SurveyUSA has Obama up 51-45 in Virginia, though results are among voting age; likely voters made up 80% of the tally. Still, how about this: “Among women, Obama led by 6 points before Sarah Palin was named to the GOP ticket, now leads by 16.” Survey taken 9/19-21.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE, 9/22: I’d heard of this, from Yale U.’s Brett M., but here’s the specific finding and reference, via Sean Quinn (”fivethirtyeight.com”): “For every twelve voters who you talk to at their doors, one voter goes and votes who would not otherwise have voted. If you’re asking: “how can I be most effective in helping my candidate win the election?” then an organizer’s answer is going to be: knock on doors.” (Source: Getting Out the Vote in Local Elections: Results from Six Door-to-Door Canvassing Experiments. Donald P. Green, Alan S. Gerber, David W. Nickerson; Yale University.)

On July 27 I attended a “Listening to America” event in Silver Spring, Maryland. The meeting at Mayorga Coffee Factory was held to gather local consensus positions for the Democratic party platform.

I had been alerted to the event — sponsored by the Democratic Party and Obama presidential campaign — by the people at “GetFISARight.net,” an online group dedicated to opposing and reversing the FISA Amendment Act passed in July. So I went with a fistful of fliers proposing platform planks dedicated to reversing this and other erosions of constitutional rights in the past eight years.

I found no argument at the meeting, and much agreement, so that one of the “GetFISARight” planks could be folded in to a broad set of planks under the rubric “Rebuilding and Reclaiming Our Basic Rights.” In the slightly rearranged and polished result that was circulated to attendees late last week as a report of the Platform Meeting, the passage read:

• It is critical to 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. We must endeavor to replace these with laws that reaffirm our fundamental rights and hold accountable all parties who violate those rights.

Thus, as can be seen by comparison with the original flier version, the “GetFISARight” language (the 2d bullet point in that flier) was reported back in essentially verbatim form, as were other points asserting that health care, education, a living wage, and housing were basic human rights. Similarly, language from a second focus group concerned with energy, global warming, economic and immigration challenges was accurately conveyed back to meeting attendees.

Likewise, I’m pleased to say, some of the gist of this message has emerged in the “Draft 2008 Democratic National Platform” presented by the Platform Drafting Committee chaired by Arizona governor Janet Napolitano. Turning to pages 48-50 of that document, even the phrase “Reclaiming” is used in the title of the relevant section, “Reclaiming our Constitution and Our Liberties,“ showing at very least that great minds think alike.

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