observer
Two Berkshire towns join
call for Patriot Act reforms
By DAVID SCRIBNER
Contributing writer
The Hill Country Observer
Voters in Lenox and Williamstown, Mass., have approved town meeting resolutions that call for the repeal and revision of parts of the USA Patriot Act.
The votes, at May town meetings, add the two Berkshire towns to more than 380 around the country that have criticized the anti-terrorism law as violating basic civil rights. Seven states legislatures, including Vermont's, also have passed resolutions calling for changes in the federal law.
Williamstown voters also passed a resolution May 17 calling for the withdrawal of Massachusetts National Guard units from Iraq. A similar resolution concerning the Vermont National Guard won approval earlier this year in more than 50 towns in that state.
The item passed by Lenox voters directs the town's selectmen to draft a petition recommending a review of the Patriot Act. The law, passed by Congress in the fall of 2001 at the height of the furor over the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is due to expire at the end of this year, and Congress is holding hearings to consider its renewal and expansion.
The issue was presented at the Lenox town meeting May 5 as a result of a petition signed by 90 residents of Kimball Farms, a local retirement community. The signature drive was organized by Ruth Miller after a luncheon discussion with Bill Newman of Amherst, the director of the western Massachusetts district of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Miller explained that the petition protested the Patriot Act’s new powers of search, detention and surveillance without judicial oversight; its provisions of guilt by association; its creation of a new classification of crime, “domestic terrorism,” which can be used to stifle dissent and which justifies violation of an individual's privacy; and, finally, its tendency to encourage racial profiling.
Because the issue was the 29th item on a lengthy town meeting agenda, voters discussed it around midnight. Many of the 400 residents who'd turned out for the meeting had left by then.
“I was surprised at how much opposition there was to the item,” said Lenox Selectman Janet Pumphrey, a lawyer who had helped the Kimball Farm group draft the article. “Five or six people spoke against it, even though it was almost midnight, and their objections took the form of saying the town shouldn’t be involved in a national issue.”
But the measure passed on a voice vote. Pumphrey said Lenox selectmen will now have to approve a resolution reflecting the decision of the town meeting.
Similar resolutions were adopted in 2003 by city officials in North Adams and Pittsfield.
Williamstown's debate
The Williamstown ballot article -- the result of a petition drive by retired New York Times copy editor Ray Warner -- passed easily on a voice vote at the May 17 town meeting, which attracted a scant 5 percent of the town’s registered voters.
In general terms, it calls on the town’s legislative representatives to oppose renewal of any Patriot Act provisions that “present the appearance of a conflict with the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.”
In particular, the resolution calls on the local police department to “refrain from engaging in surveillance of individuals ... based on their participation in activities protected by the First Amendment and from collecting or maintaining information about political, religious or social views, associations or activities of groups or individuals.”
Local lawyer Donald Dubendorf wanted to know whether police were already carrying out such investigations.
“This issue is either meaningless, or terribly important to get to the bottom of,” he said.
Town Manager Peter Fohlin assured Dubendorf that the town constabulary was not — and would not — conduct such surveillance.
By passing the resolution, he said, the town would be asking the police department "not to do what it doesn’t do.”
Another part of the initiative calls on the town library to destroy records periodically to prevent their being used to monitor patrons’ reading habits — as permitted by a controversial Patriot Act provision.
Williamstown librarian Patricia McLeod noted that shortly after the Patriot Act was passed, the library instituted a privacy policy that prevented intrusions by federal agents.
Williamstown also voted 104-38 to pass an article demanding the return of Massachusetts National Guard units from the Middle East. That measure calls on the president and Congress to withdraw all American forces from Iraq, “consistent with the mandate of humanitarian law.”
Bill
Densmore contributed to this report.