Hospitals & Asylums
Day of Action to Restore Law and JusticeHA-26-6-07
By Anthony J. Sanders
Four thousand Americans
traveled from across the nation to Capitol Hill to demand that Congress restore
due process rights, and the rule of law as enshrined in the Constitution.
Nearly twice the twenty five hundred expected.
Over eighty organizations, led by the American Civil Liberties Union,
Amnesty International USA, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and the
National Religious Campaign Against Torture, came together to organize a rally
and lobby visits to Congress on the annual International Day in
Support of Victims of Torture that is commemorated on 26 June for the
eradication of torture and the effective functioning of the 1984 Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,
which entered into force on 26 June 1987. In addition to the rally, attendees at the Day of Action to
Restore Law & Justice delivered over 250,000 petition signatures to
Washington lawmakers, urging them to:
1. Restore habeas corpus and
due process.
2. Pass the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007.
3. End torture and abuse in secret prisons.
4. Stop extraordinary rendition: secretly kidnapping people and sending them to
countries that torture.
5. Close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay and give those held currently
access to justice.
6. Investigate wrongdoing and ensure those who broke the law are held
accountable.
7. Return to the rule of law.
The free bus ride to Washington was
successful in bringing more than a thousand people from all parts of the
country. I was the first to arrive at
the Wal-mart parking lot across the street from Tri-county mall. I arrived a minute before the bus pulled up
to where I was walking. After the
hydraulics let the bus down the door opened and the bus driver, “Frank”,
introduced himself. We left 15 minutes
late while we waited for a man who was driving 3 hours from Ashland, Kentucky
who had been pulled over for speeding.
There were only 6 passengers from Cincinnati. Three of them were teenage girls who sang 60s songs in perfect
harmony.
It was a short trip to another
Wal-mart in Columbus. While there the
group captain got on board and we learned that we needed to go to Cleveland to
pick up more people. The bus driver
agreed to the longer trip although it meant fourteen hours behind the wheel
instead of eleven. At the ACLU office
in Cleveland the bus filled up. The
rest of the trip was in the middle of the night. I had the room to stretch my legs and slept until a rest stop at
6 am in Pennsylvania. At this rest stop
there was a sign that told how in 1919 Eisenhower and his army convoy took 62
days to travel from DC to San Francisco.
This trip led to his future commitment as President of the United
States, to the Highway fund that constructed our current system of roads.
By 10 am we were passing through the
woods surrounding DC on a route that followed the Potomac. This area was very scenic and lush
green. It was not clear if the woods
were virgin, but the trees were very tall.
The Potomac was dramatic with numerous bridges and bike paths. As we neared DC there were modern
headquarters for corporations and as we approached the center these buildings
turned into ministerial buildings done in classical architectural style. The streets by the capital building are
restricted to bus traffic. We made our
way instead to Union Station across the Mall from the House of Congress. We disembarked in a third floor-parking
garage. A guide in a green ACLU tee
shirt boarded the bus and told us, “We are here to restore law and justice. You
will be given white tee shirts and a granola bar”.
I changed into the white ACLU tee
shirt and returned my old shirt to the bus while munching on a granola
bar. I took the second group going to
Union Station from the garage, after resolving to separate from the rest of the
bus. The guide pointed us to the
capital building and told us, “The park is half way to the capital. People interested in lobbying would be
invited by state, after the speeches.
The schedule is 1-3 pm with the Senators and 3-5 pm with Congress
members. The buses leave at 5:30 pm”.
I ventured out on my own. Two blocks down there were Latinos pouring
concrete where the NGO booths began. I
gathered some information from Amnesty and other groups. I then walked to the stage directly across
the street from the capital building. I
sat down on a bench in the shade by the speaker’s platform and media
accreditation table to write about the journey and be prepared to take notes on
the speeches.
A cheerful man in a blue button down
shirt and magenta tie was talking with a woman at the media sign in table. I began writing. The man whom I thought had some hidden sorrow underneath his
cheerful demeanor introduced himself to me, “Hi, I’m Anthony Romero.” I shook his hand and responded, “I’m Anthony
Sanders.” It was a great honor to shake
the hand of the Executive Director of the ACLU and being preoccupied with my
writing did not think to ask him permission to use his name in my July 4th
edition of Attorney General Ethics, before he continued on his way without
breaking stride.
Walter Sullivan, a retired Catholic
Bishop from Virginia opened the speakers with a prayer at around 11 am. “There
are many people here with a common desire for the nation to end torture and
stop denying habeas corpus. O God you
created this world so intricately that scientists have taken millennium to
understand it. We meet here with tears
in our eyes because people are being denied ancient habeas corpus rights. O God we want a world where everyone is
treated with compassion, even our enemies, with dignity and justice”.
Anthony D. Romero introduced Carolyn
Fredericks, ACLU legislative director.
She said, “It is a fabulous day.
Thanks for coming. Lobbying is
more effective when thousands of people are assembled. Senator Leahy is a friend of the
Constitution, he is fighting to restore habeas corpus protections. We have removed this check on the legal
system, it is wrong and unconstitutional.”
Senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt)
Chairman of the Judiciary Committee took the podium and said, “I am proud to be
an American and I look forward to the day when we will uphold the Constitution
again. The rule of law has been taken
from us. Let us restore it. Congress made a mistake last year with the
Military Commissions Act. We must
restore habeas corpus and close Guantanamo.
Today is a day of action to restore law and justice. We cannot live in fear. We did not protect the Japanese from
internment in WWII and created a stain on our history. Habeas corpus let’s us go to court to
contest our charges. The Military
Commissions Act denies this right to foreigners accused of being enemy
combatants. This is un-American. Restore America to America”.
Anthony Romero announced, “We have
250,000 petitions addressed to the House and Senate. We have lived through dark times these past six years. Looking at this crowd we cannot help but
feel that the pendulum is going to swing back the other way. We have people from every state of the
Union. Habeas corpus must be restored,
it is illegal and immoral to hold people without charge. Guantanamo must be closed and special
renditions to countries likely to torture need to stop. We joined together because we cannot let
fear override our rights”.
Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said,
“Thanks for being here. I am the leader
of the bill to close Guantanamo. We
don’t need Patriot Acts, we need patriots to stand up to the White House, to
tell them no, we won’t torture. My bill
will settle the legal status of Guantanamo detainees. Years ago, as a legislative assistant, I played a role closing a
similar detention center on an island outside of Vietnam where Vietnamese were
tortured without the protection of habeas corpus or the Geneva Conventions. In both cases detainees were deprived of
their rights and were not tried as Prisoners of War to deny them the protection
of the Geneva Conventions. This is not
upholding the values we hold other nations to.
The solution is to the tear down that prison.”
Representative Jerrold Nadler
(D-NY-8th) of the
House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil
Liberties stated, “ It is not a pleasure to restore what we always had. Let’s restore liberty. We pioneered liberty under law. We always had flaws. In most of our wars we trampled on civil
liberties. During the War on Terror we
have abolished habeas corpus. The
president can designate you an enemy combatant and jail you forever. No English speaking executive has claimed
such power since the Magna Carta was signed 800 years ago, whereby the even the
King does not have the power to hold people without charge. One of the dastardly actions justifying
revolution in the Declaration of Independence was the deprivation of the right
to a jury trial. George II is worse
because we have no recourse to justice.
There is nothing more important.
Nobody can hold people without due process. We must restore habeas corpus and kick out the ignoramuses”.
Larry
Cox of Amnesty USA said, “Thank you.
Amnesty has worked for forty years to protect people from arbitrary
detention and torture. The past six
years have been a slump. We will never
accept a war on terror that has become a war on human rights. We demand Congress fix the Military Commissions
Act. We need a US that is free. The US flag has been flown at Gitmo and Abu
Ghraib. We want it back. We want a nation that aspires to honor the
pledge of liberty and justice for all”.
Deavid
Kean, Chair of the American Conservative Union spoke, “I am here today because
as a conservative I feel our nation is the greatest and I want our children to
say the same. As citizens we need
realistic methods to protect ourselves.
Our right must survive. No right
is more important than being free from arbitrary detention. We must remind our leaders what it is they
are fighting to defend”.
Representative
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH-10th) said, “In the long constitutional
history of our country we are at a moment when we are called upon to defend the
letter of the constitution. The
document has been under assault, which is why I introduced articles of
impeachment. Our criminal justice
system has been trampled and we must restore habeas corpus. We recognize that to save our constitution
we must challenge this administration”.
Senator
Chris Dodd (D-Conn) said, “You are patriots.
There is no more patriotic act than to defend the constitution. The constitution is there to defend us. Habeas corpus, Geneva Conventions and ban on
torture need to be restored. America
must get back on its feet again”.
The
speaker of the Religious Campaign Against Torture that was founded in 2006
quoted, “De’Toqueville said, ‘America is great because America is good. If America ceases to be good it will cease
to be great’. The religious community
has decided that torture is a moral issue.
Governments are not behaving well when habeas corpus is denied, when
they send people to nations where they face torture. If we want our great nation we must work to ensure a good
one. Respect, dignity and fairness are
important”.
In
conclusion Reverend Lennux Yearwood spoke on behalf of the Hip Hop Caucus. He said, “If you want to restore habeas
corpus make some noise. I came here
because I’m looking for something that got lost. I’m looking for habeas.
We are in a state of emergency. To overcome the vicious forces we must come together as human
beings fighting for justice. The reason
that the hop hop community is here is because if we don’t stand up there will
be no 22nd century. I am
happy to see blacks, whites and Asians stand up for habeas. Our parents had Jim Crowe. We are fighting something more insidious that
I call Jim Crowe Jr. Esq. We’re not going to forget it. Stop torture now, restore habeas corpus so
that we can say, like Martin Luther King Jr. ‘ free at last, free at last,
thank God I am free at last’”.
This
trip was much more peaceful than the Freedom Riders who rode interstate buses
into the segregated south to test the decision in Boynton v. Virginia (1960)
364 US. The first Freedom
Ride left Washington DC on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New
Orleans on May 17, riders were however arrested for trespassing, unlawful
assembly, violating state and local Jim Crow laws, etc, many were severely
beaten by mobs, and they never made it.
Although more peaceful the spirit of this Day of Action was however the
same. People rode free buses to
Washington DC to encourage Congress to restore the rule of law, habeas corpus
and the constitution. Although the mob
violence is not so bad the government has backslid from discrimination and
segregation to outright slavery.
After
the speeches ended at noon people organized by state to lobby Congress. Led by a green shirt guide, people from Ohio
first went to the Hart Senate Building to visit Senator Voinovich in his glass
walled office. The line out the door
took more than half an hour to clear security.
One girl was treated for heat stroke inside, near the door. As the result of the long lines the legislative
assistant who had scheduled a moment to meet with us had to go to a hearing on
immigration and another had to be found.
After fifteen minutes Matt Ortman met with us at a table and heard our
pleas for Congress to pass the Restore Habeas Corpus Act and Restoring the
Constitution Act.
We
then walked through the basement to the Russell Senate Building to speak with
freshman Senator Sherrod Brown.
Freshman Senators do not get such nice offices and he had to share his
small lobby with a half dozen other freshman Senators. A legislative assistant, Caroline Wells, led
us to an open space in the hallway to hear our petition for the sponsorship of
the restoration laws. We were then
directed to visit our local Congress people Rep. Chabot had however scheduled a
visit at 5 pm and my bus left at 5:30 pm so I decided to let a friend who drove
himself to the rally represent our interests.
The
bills supported by this Day of Action are Restoring the Constitution Act of
2007 S. 576
and HR 1415
and the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 S.185, that is
sponsored by Sen. Brown, H.R.267, H.R.1189, H.R. 2543 and H.R.1416. All of these bills are trying to repeal the
denial of the privilege of habeas corpus to people alleged to be enemy
combatants as the result of the signing of the Military Commissions Act of
2006, S. 3930,
on October 17, by the President. This
bill was immediately denounced by human rights organizations. When I read it I found that it needed to be
repealed from section 5 on because the amendments depriving detainees of the
writ of habeas corpus were an unconstitutional, cruel and unusual rebellion
against the decision of the US Supreme Court in Rasul v. Bush No.
03-334 (2004) that found detainees at Guantanamo
did indeed have a right to challenge the legality of their detention in federal
court resulting in the release of more than two hundred prisoners.
The
fight for habeas corpus rights does not end with the passage of these bills
making the Military Commissions Act acceptable. The closure of Guantanamo is only the beginning of our nation’s
fight to enjoy the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. For nearly three decades, since 1984, the
United States has languished under mandatory minimum sentencing rules that overturned
the basis of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, that the legislature would set forth
the maximum sentence a court could issue for a crime. These laws forced judges to issue harsh mandatory minimum
sentences for crimes such as the possession of crack cocaine, that they would
normally have let go free or after a couple of days in the slammer. The
prison system has quintupled since this began and continues to grow. The judiciary is unsafe for petitioners and true
to the XIII Amendment to the Constitution Congress must be sought to regulate
slavery.
In 2004 the ABA Kennedy Commission admitted that the US had
the most prisoners of any nation in the world and that measures would need to
be taken to redress this problem. In Blakely v. Washington No.
02-1632 of June 24, 2004 the Court eliminated sentencing guidelines schemes.
Sentences imposed under such guidelines in cases currently pending on direct
appeal, or in cold habeas petitions, are in jeopardy. In both legislative and litigate practice Criminal sentences must
be adjusted downward rather upward, mandatory minimum schemes eliminated and
acquittals the norm for most crimes where there are significant mitigating
factors. USA v. Booker J. & Fanfan No.
04-104-105 (2005) provides for the wholesale release of people convicted
for drugs. These two decisions were
however Rehnquist’s apology. Robert’s
Court has not continued these sweeping reforms and protected by a violent
reaction against freedom by Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez the prison
population has continued to grow.
Art. I Sec. 9 Clause 2 of the
US Constitution says, “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be
suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may
require it.” The Military Commissions
Act is the tip of the iceberg in regards to the abuse of habeas corpus. Congress has clearly abused their power to
suspend habeas corpus and must make amends. The Constitution makes it clear that the government must justify
their detention in terms of public safety, even in times of war. The President cannot arbitrarily designate people
enemy combatants when it is not the case nor can he strip them of the Geneva
Conventions that basically provides that prisoners of war shall be released
after the cessation of hostilities as long as they are not adjudicated of any
war crimes.
The Day of Action in
Washington DC challenges the nation to restore habeas corpus. It is a great challenge. The US must close Guantamo, try the
prisoners of war, release the innocent and the law abiding combatants and
detain the terrorist threats, in regular prisons with regular sentences that
suit their crimes. As a basic legal
principle the US Congress must uphold the Supreme Court in regards to freedom. Congress cannot trample upon the only good judicial
decision of the decade and expect to foster legitimate government. Congress must repeal the Military
Commissions Act, at least the provisions from Section 5 onward that infringe
upon the writ of habeas corpus. Congress
must enforce freedom in bills like the Second Chance Act of 2005 H.R.1704,
so that the prison population will go down.
Bibliography
1. American Bar
Association Kennedy Commission. June 23, 2004
2. American Civil
Liberties Union. Day of Action to Restore Law and Justice. 26 June
2007
3. Arsenault,
Raymong. Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. Oxford
University Press. 2006
4. Blakely v. Washington No. 02-1632 June 24, 2004
5. Boynton v. Virginia 364 US (1960)
6. Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 S.185, H.R.267, H.R.1189, H.R. 2543 and H.R.1416
7. Military Commissions Act of 2006 S. 3930, signed October 17
8. Rasul v. Bush No.
03-334 (2004)
9.Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007 S. 576 and HR 1415
10. Second Chance Act of 2005 H.R.1704
11. UN Chronicle
E-Alert. International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. No. 6. 26 June
2007
12. USA v. Booker J. & Fanfan No. 04-104-105 (2005)