Author: jameswagner

the mauling of American liberties

There are all kinds of reasons to question the various plans for the site of the World Trade Center, but one of them is not an argument about aesthetics.
The entire former WTC area was extraterritorial, meaning not subject to the laws of New York City or New York State. Significantly, the Port Authority buildings were the last New York City commercial or office spaces to regulate or prohibit smoking, and in the end that was done independent of New York laws. More significant for civil rights was the fact that demonstrations or protests of any kind, and the behavior or even the very presence of the public was subject to the whims of the Port Authority and could not be challenged by law. I have personal experience with the burden of arrogant Port Authority power. These were not the streets of the city. Private property!–we can keep you out.
The World Trade Center was Supermall, and those planning its replacement now are repeating this affront to New York freedoms and sensibilities. Private property!–we can keep you out.
All of this brings me to my latest story about the outrageous violation of civil liberties in the name of public order. Stephen Downs was arrested in an Albany area mall on monday night for wearing a pro-peace t-shirt.

One shirt simply said “Let Inspections Work” on one side and “No War With Iraq” on the other. The other shirt said “Give Peace A Chance” on the front and “Peace On Earth” on the back.
. . .
Signs posted at entrances to the mall say that “wearing of apparel… likely to provoke disturbances… is prohibited” at the mall.

When security approached Downs and his 31-year-old son in a food court, they were asked to remove their shirts. The son did so, but the father refused and was arrested for trespasssing when he declined to leave the mall as requested by mall security. Today Newsday reports, “The men had had the T-shirts made at a mall store and wore them while they shopped.”
The malls of America, they’re not just an assault on our aesthetic and social sensibilities anymore. They are an assault on our freedoms as well. Private property!–we can keep you out.

Bush war violates Article 1, Section 8

Some of us know that there was a fascist coup two years ago, but some of us refuse to give up. John Bonifaz probably expects to take his case to the Supreme Court, although he can hardly have any illusions about its chances.
Newsday‘s Ellis Henican says that Bonifaz believes that war should never be a one-man choice, and that, like many of us, he believes that under the U.S. Constitution it must be the decision of Congress.
The “legendary creative legal stratgist” and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient argues that the Constitution does not permit Congress to delegate its unique power to declare war [even to an elected president, and even when we have such, I might add], according to Article 1, Section 8.

As he drew up his court papers, some legal strategists – even some of Bonifaz’s friends – were openly dubious. “Forget about this,” they told him.
Congress hasn’t passed a formal declaration of war since World War II. Somehow or another, the U.S. had found its way into Korea and Vietnam and the first Persian Gulf War – plus nearly six decades’ worth of smaller conflicts – without a single formal declaration of war, whatever Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution might seem to say.
Good point.
But the more he studied the law, the more this young lawyer became convinced. This time was different.
In Vietnam, the legal challenges hadn’t been brought until the war was underway for years. By then, Congress had already approved major war expenditures and even extended the draft – actions that were arguably the equivalent of a formal declaration of war.
None of that applied here.
“This case deals with an extraordinary moment in American history,” Bonifaz said. “Never before has the United States premeditated a first-strike invasion of another country and the conquering and occupation of that country. This is not about repelling a sudden attack.”

No and this is about much more than a tyranny replacing a republic. It’s about world dictatorship, and it has to be stopped.

the world will turn

I think we have hardly seen the beginning of a powerful antiwar movement without precedent.

LONDON, March 2 — The people who helped organize the largest worldwide peace demonstration in history last month say they are not through yet.
More than 120 activists from 28 countries emerged from an all-day strategy session here this weekend with plans not just to protest a prospective U.S.-led war against Iraq but to prevent it from happening. They want to intensify political pressure on the Bush administration’s closest allies — the leaders of Britain, Italy and Spain — and force them to withdraw their support, leaving the United States, if it chooses to fight, to go it alone. And they intend to further disrupt war plans with acts of civil disobedience against U.S. military bases, supply depots and transports throughout Europe.

And I also think that the movement will not disappear even if the war does.

Organizers say they would like to find a way to channel the newfound enthusiasm and activism into a worldwide political movement. But they say the disparate nature of those participating would make such a movement difficult if not impossible.
“This was caused by social forces, and it’s not something that organizations produced,” said Andrew Burgin, a member of the coalition’s British steering committee. “They’re not in our control. . . . You don’t lead a movement like this, the movement leads you.”

Bloomberg says it’s all about decor

Some would say it’s about decorum. His.
I say it’s plain political hypocrisy and homophobia.
The man who claims to be a mayor for all New Yorkers says he will march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade again this year.

Parade organizers have long banned gays and lesbians from marching under their own banner, a policy that a federal judge upheld on the grounds of religious freedom 10 years ago.

Bloomberg excuses his insult to all New Yorkers by insisting that it’s not up to him to tell parade organizers who they can exclude.

“If I were running a parade, I’d run it differently,” he said. “But you know, [if] you’re invited to somebody’s house, you don’t walk in and tell them how to decorate, or what to serve or what the conversations should be.”

City Councilwoman Chis Quinn didn’t let this one go by:

“I actually find the mayor comparing discrimination and gay civil rights to upholstery, curtains and other decorations offensive,” she said. “That’s bizarre.”

Begging your pardon, Mayor sir, but last October you very dramatically boycotted another celebration of ethnic pride on grounds which you refuse to apply to this one. Columbus Day parade organizers vetoed your marching with two cast members of “The Sopranos,” complaining that the hit HBO show negatively portrays Italian-American life, so you treated the stars to lunch elsewhere while the parade was in progress. On the day before the big event you marched in a different Columbus Day Parade in the Bronx, boasting,

“It’s great to be in the Bronx and it’s great to be at a parade where you can march with all your friends,” Bloomberg said as he walked with local officials.

It’s obvious that you do not consider the New York area’s two million queers to be your friends, and it’s absolutely clear that they mean nothing compared to two millionaire television stars.
Hoping to offend only those who should be offended, I finish with a rhetorical question. The Mayor agrees with the atavistic professional Irish in New York who own the Parade, and one federal judge, that their precious rally is first and foremost a service of a religion whose cult members are forced to represent themselves as heterosexual. If their St. Patrick’s Day Parade is about the Catholic Church and exclusivley-procreative sex, why are they bellowing and guzzling and pissing in our streets instead of praying in church or fucking and making babies?
Ok, one more rant. None of the devotees seems to have had any problem with a still-married Mayor Giuliani participating in their rites three years ago by prominently marching with his mistress, Judith Nathan.

headline of the moment

Actually the moment has already passed. On Friday the NYTimes print edition included the following amazing headline in the “Business Day” section:

Random House Names an Editor With Literary Ties

By evening at least, the online edition was displaying the somewhat less satirical caption to the same story:

New Editor at Random House

Someone decided not to reference quite so dramatically what the Times article calls the publishing house’s recent “unusually harsh dismissal” of the new editor’s predecessor, Ann Godoff, in what most people in the publishing world considered a move away from quality and toward the more commercial status of the firm’s sister company, Ballantine, with which the Random House label itself was consolidated at the same time.
[editor’s note: I suppose we should just be happy we get anything at all these days other than John Grisham and Danielle Steele. Look at what’s happened to radio and television.]

“I am just like everyone else.”

But he isn’t, and for that we are very happy. This story about Detective Francis Coppola and his firefighter partner Eddy appeared in The Hartford Courant this week. Maybe it’s a little hokey, but that’s part of its strength.

Divorced, Coppola discovered his soul mate in an old friend, Eddy, a firefighter separated from his own wife. After some fits and starts, they began a life together. Not an easy life, for it included all the tidal waters of a modern relationship. Eddy insisted they conceal it from most of the rest of the world.

Thanks to Dennis for the story tip.
For a face to go with the story, here’s one picture, and another.
____________________
After posting this, I searched for more sites with the story. I found stuff from the media in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Philadelphia, but not New York. Coppola lives and works in New York City, but he testified in favor of a same-sex marriage bill in Hartford, not Albany. There is no such bill being discussed in the New York legislature. For me however the story is not about marriage but rather the respect owed to human difference and human relationships. The states surrounding our own have for some time been way ahead of us on this measure civilization by most any standards of law.

cyclist wins asylum but remains in jail

In fact he has always been truly free, but the great and tender soul of Reza K. Baluchi was officially granted political asylum yesterday by U.S. immigration judge LaMonte Freerks. Today his body remains in jail, because the INS itself hasn’t yet decided whether they will appeal. They have 30 days to decide whether they will try again to throw him to the tender mercies of the Iranian government which had tortured him and from which he fled 6 years ago. Iran, of course, is part of the administration’s own invention, the “axis of evil,” regardless of the merits of that designation.

During his asylum hearing, which began Monday, Mr. Baluchi was nervous, said his lawyer, Suzannah Maclay of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.
“He was clearly very anxious,” Ms. Maclay said. “He had expected to get a final decision, and instead he’s taken back to detention.”

But Baluchi is definitely not down yet.

“Today I’m happy,” Mr. Baluchi said with his customary optimism after the hearing. Once he gets out, he said, he plans to ride to Los Angeles. From there, he will run across the country, eight hours a day, to New York City — and ground zero. Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Baluchi wrote that he would conclude his voyage at the site of the World Trade Center, “so that my message of peace and love can reach the whole American people.”

Valentine’s Day art massacre

Nicolás Dumit Estévez and his performance piece, his art, was assaulted by New York City Police on Valentine’s Day. They succeeded in shutting down his activities for the day, but the artist and the work somehow survives. Here he describes the project which he began and which the police concluded. The art survived the experience, and was made more powerful for having been so outrageously challenged, but the honor of our Police Department was again compromised, and in the same degree.

NOTES ON “LOVE IS BLIND”
An intervention developed by Nicolás Dumit Estévez and modified by the New York City Police
On February 14 I left El Museo del Barrio blindfolded, unaware of what I would see at the end of a performance piece that I called “Love is Blind,” which was part of “The Love a Commuter Project.” This project consists of a series of site-specific performances and interventions that take place every year on Valentine’s day in the New York City subway system. In 2003 the project was presented in conjunction with “The S Files” at El Museo del Barrio. Besides watching out for some icy spots on the sidewalk, my job during the performance was to locate pedestrians who would help me find the way to the subway station at 110th and Lexington Avenue in exchange for a white carnation. The plan was to save the remaining part of the bouquet to share with subway commuters. Along the way to the subway station a policewoman helped me cross under the tunnel below the train tracks on Park Avenue, and an older woman who spoke Spanish proffered a blessing “Dios te bendiga mi hijo,” after making sure I was going to be ok. Someone who I perceived as a strong man grabbed me by the arm to help me walk from 108th to 109th Street, while a disgruntled pedestrian tried to confuse me when I asked him for directions. “You’re at 125th St.,” he said, while my Samaritan told me that we were crossing 108th. Another man helped me make it all the way down the stairs of the subway station. I remember feeling his hand as he took mine and guided it to the cold metal railing. I then proceeded to use the white cane I was carrying to search for an empty spot near the token booth. I found one on the north side of the station. Two children initiated the first underground interaction as they detached several carnations from the bouquet. “Take another one for your mother,” yelled a commuter, perhaps from the other side of the turnstile. “Don’t touch them,” said an adult to a child who insisted on having one of the carnations. What felt to me like a rushing commuter snapped up a flower without giving me time readjust the bouquet in my hand. Then there were the predictable quiet moments between the departure and arrival of the Number 6 train. All of the sudden, the hissing sound of police walkie-talkies invaded the space. That day the city was under Code Orange, raised from Yellow by the Department of Homeland Security. Sensing what might be happening, I took the blindfold off and walked above ground to find that three uniformed officers were questioning my colleague Manuel Acevedo, who was videotaping the project, as well as a friend who came to watch the piece. After several attempts to explain what we were doing, we were ushered into the back of a car and driven to the precinct, where I managed to make a quick phone call from my cell phone before one of the agents confiscated my phone and Manuel’s video camera. We were not permitted to contact anyone else. At the precinct I glanced at a booklet on fighting terrorism and the snapshots of several individuals who were wanted by the Law. We had plenty of time to kill as the agents busied themselves swiping our ID cards and figuring out what was recorded on the video camera they could not manage to operate. About 40 minutes later, an officer came to us and asked us to show him the video. He later return with our IDs, shook our hands and apologized. We could go. I remember shaking his hand while holding the bouquet in my other hand, when suddenly the friend who came to watch the piece took the flowers and tossed them into the trash, perhaps trying to rid himself of the memories of the incident. I rushed to retrieve them. The carnations still looked fresh, ready for other commuters to pluck them from the foam that held them in place. Instead, they ended up in a glass vase at home, as a reminder of how current law enforcement in the name of “safety” has reconfigured the use of the spaces we share in the city, not to mention the interactions we forge with one another in these so-called public places.
Nicolás Dumit Estévez
February 21, 2003, New York City