More than 50 people urged the Evanston Human Relations Commission to adopt a resolution opposing the USA Patriot Act and other recent anti-terrorism measures at a hearing Thursday night.
Six panelists and 22 speakers from Evanston, Chicago and surrounding suburbs said the act could compromise the basic rights of American-born citizens and foreign immigrants, and broaden the official definition of the word “terrorist” to include civil dissenters. A straw poll during the hearing, held at the Evanston Civic Center, 2100 Ridge Ave., revealed that almost all of the hearing’s approximately 50 attendees supported the resolution.
The USA Patriot Act, passed in October 2001, expanded the federal government’s powers of surveillance and detainment. The Evanston Civil Liberties Coalition first introduced the resolution against it at the February Human Relations Commission meeting.
“I simply feel that what we are seeing tonight … is a very clear portrayal of arbitrary power that works in secrecy and acknowledges no appeal,” Evanston resident Margot Nagle said.
More than 50 communities in 19 states have passed resolutions against the act as well as other anti-terrorism laws, including the Homeland Security Act and executive orders enacted since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, fearing the measures would erode civil liberties.
Panelist Madeline Goldstein, a member of Evanston Civil Liberties Coalition, said the Patriot Act had been rushed through Congress in “haste and secrecy.” According to Goldstein, many legislators voted for the act before actually reading it and now are working to repeal it.
Terry Pastika, executive director of the Citizen Advocacy Center in Elmhurst, Ill., said that many provisions in the 342-page act were drafted well before the terrorist attacks. Prior to Sept. 11, most legislators rejected a national identity card system, but now many policy-makers and private companies back the idea, she said.
Danielle Strandburg-Peshkin, one of six Evanston Township High School students at the hearing, said the media did not adequately cover the act’s impact on average citizens, noting that “the fact that our civil liberties are being slaughtered without even a public hearing” distressed her the most.
For two Evanston residents, Luis Delgado and Asayo Horibe, the anti-terrorism measure evoked memories of oppression. Delgado, who lived in Spain during the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco that lasted from the1930s to the 1970s, said many new anti-terrorism measures reminded him of fascist laws.
Horibe was born in a concentration camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. She equated the apparent targeting of Arab Americans with the laws that led to the internment of approximately 150,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.
Panelist Frank Hoover, a former Evanston alderman, said although the act may have negative effects, citizens should “cut the government some slack” because the enemy is virtually unknown.
Liberals and conservatives often share the same goal and merely differ on how to achieve it, he said, noting that “newspapers like to magnify contention.”
Commission Chairman Michael Cervantes said the commission will vote on the resolution at its March 26 meeting. It will then go before the Human Services Committee, and Cervantes hopes the to bring the resolution before City Council by its April 8 meeting.
“The hearings tonight have been absolutely critical to us,” Cervantes said. “Our role tonight is just to listen.”
