[Vision2020] Seattletimes.com: A Tiny Town Shouts 'Whoa!' to Patriot Act

[Tim Lohrmann]

Visionaries,
      I understand a local group has already submitted
a similar resolution to the Moscow City Council and
plans to make its disposition an issue in the next
elections. So, in that context,I thought this was an
interesting article.
      TL

> 
> A Tiny Town Shouts 'Whoa!' to Patriot Act
> Full story:
>
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001461096_patriot10m.html
> 
> By Ron C. Judd
> Seattle Times staff reporter
> 
> TONASKET, Okanogan County — If this is a hotbed
> of sedition, they're hiding it pretty well.
> 
> In fact, the most suspicious group activity on this
> scorching day in Tonasket, the bellybutton of the
> Okanogan Valley, is the alarming number of people
> eating ice-cream cones, all at once, down at
> Shannon's on the south edge of town.
> 
> Plenty of vanillas in the crowd. Radical these folks
> are not.
> 
> But you don't have to dig very deep at Tonasket City
> Hall to find the small seed of a populist uprising
> planted this spring and spreading like cheatgrass
> down to the county courthouse in Okanogan — and
> beyond.
> 
> It's a simple, two-page resolution supporting the
> constitutional rights of Tonasket's 1,000 citizens
> — and directly opposing one of the most
> significant acts of Congress in recent history.
> 
> "The Tonasket Resolution" is a symbolic broadside at
> the USA Patriot Act, the far-reaching
> "terror-obstruction" measure approved by Congress
> six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New
> York and the Washington, D.C., area. 
> 
> Tonasket's cheeky response was penned by
> self-described "constitutionalist" Mark Alan and
> edited by Tonasket's police chief, Don Schneider. It
> has since been adopted by the city councils of
> nearby Oroville and Riverside and is being
> considered by the Okanogan County Commission.
> 
> Its preamble reinforces the notion that America was
> created "in the shadow of bloody conflicts" with
> intentionally strict limits on government. It goes
> on to suggest that the Patriot Act and similar
> incursions on individual civil rights are
> unconstitutional.
> 
> The Patriot Act
> 
> 
> Some of the fundamental changes to Americans' legal
> rights by the Bush administration and the USA
> Patriot Act after the 9-11 attacks: 
> 
> Freedom of association: To assist terror
> investigation, the government may monitor religious
> and political institutions without suspecting
> criminal activity. 
> 
> Freedom of information: The government has closed
> once-public immigration hearings, has secretly
> detained hundreds of people without charges and has
> encouraged bureaucrats to resist public-records
> requests. "Sensitive" information has been removed
> from government Web sites. 
> 
> Freedom of speech: The government may prosecute
> librarians or keepers of any other records if they
> tell anyone that the government subpoenaed
> information related to a terror investigation. 
> 
> Right to legal representation: The government may
> monitor conversations between attorneys and clients
> in federal prisons and deny lawyers to Americans
> accused of crimes. 
> 
> Freedom from unreasonable searches: The government
> may search and seize Americans' papers and effects
> without probable cause to assist terror
> investigation. 
> 
> Right to a speedy and public trial: The government
> may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial. 
> 
> Right to liberty: Americans may be jailed without
> being charged or being able to confront witnesses
> against them. "Enemy combatants" have been held
> incommunicado and refused attorneys.
> 
> Source: The Associated Press, with information from
> Knight-Ridder Newspapers includedThe meat of the
> resolution takes care to endorse most efforts to
> combat terrorism. But it insists government had all
> the tools to do that before the Patriot Act.
> 
> And it boldly proclaims that any law that "dilutes,
> weakens or denies" a person's constitutional rights
> is "unenforceable in our jurisdiction." 
> 
> Practical impacts are debatable. Federal law clearly
> trumps local ordinances, but similar resolutions in
> other U.S. cities contain
> "unenforceable-in-our-jurisdiction" language to warn
> the feds that their police are there to protect
> citizens, not serve as FBI gofers. 
> 
> Local push has yet to come to federal shove in
> places that have approved Patriot Act snubs — a
> list that now includes three states and 141 counties
> and cities representing 16 million Americans,
> according to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee,
> which supports citizen petitioners. Opposition has
> increased with rumors that the Justice Department is
> drafting a stronger "Patriot II."
> 
> Anti-Patriot Act measures have been produced by an
> odd alliance of libertarians, extreme conservatives
> and flaming liberals, and often in the expected
> places. The act has been assailed in varying degrees
> in Bellingham, Bainbridge Island, Jefferson and San
> Juan counties, Port Townsend, Seattle and Vashon
> Island.
> 
> But opposition also has risen in lands less
> expected. Apple-growing, God-fearing,
> Wranglers-wearing north-central Washington might be
> the last place you'd expect locals to be shouting
> — during and after wartime — "Whoa!" to
> Congress, the Justice Department and the president.
> 
> Unless, these newbie constitutional activists
> insist, you'd bother to read the fine print.
> 
> Major changes
> 
> The Patriot Act sailed through Congress with little
> debate in those harried, post-9-11 days. It is a
> 56,870-word grab bag — a medium-sized novel's
> worth of bureaucratese.
> 
> But it made sweeping changes in laws affecting
> freedom of speech, rights to legal representation,
> freedom from unreasonable searches, the right to a
> speedy trial, the right to confront witness, and
> government access to formerly private, personal
> information.
> 
> Even in remote Okanogan County, where news sometimes
> arrives late, this perked up eyebrows. Two of them
> belonged to Alan, 46, who knows about tangling with
> the power of the federal government.
> 
> In February 2001 — before the Patriot Act was
> ever imagined — Alan was approached in downtown
> Oroville by two men who knocked on the window of his
> truck, asking him to roll it down. Fearing the men
> were carjackers, Alan hit the gas. Big mistake: The
> men were federal agents, in town to serve Alan with
> contempt-of-court papers. 
> 
> His crime: Running a nonlicensed radio station from
> an apple-picking shack on a hillside above Oroville,
> pop. 1,600. With a sister transmitter down the
> valley in Tonasket, Alan's faint, 5-watt FM signal
> reached only around the two towns, carrying news,
> high-school sports, advertising — and
> provocative, right-leaning political commentary
> pulled by satellite dish from "patriotic" national
> broadcasting networks.
> 
> Alan insisted his North Valley Broadcasting
> "microcast" station didn't need a federal license
> because it didn't interfere with other station
> signals and didn't broadcast over state lines. The
> Federal Communications Commission  — 
> pressured, Alan says, by a radio competitor in Omak
> — disagreed.
> 
> Moments after fleeing the undercover feds that day
> in Oroville, Alan, a former reserve police officer
> with nary a parking ticket on his record, was chased
> down and arrested at gunpoint. The father of six was
> tossed into the Spokane County Jail, where he sat
> for nearly two months, becoming something of a cause
> célèbre in his community. 
> 
> After a series of legal maneuvers, and a dispute
> over the legal name under which he could be charged
> (he goes by Mark Alan, his "baptized" name, but the
> feds insist he is Mark Alan Rabenold, his "family"
> name), he pleaded to a minor offense and agreed to
> unplug Radio Free Oroville.
> 
> He took the deal, he says, only after prosecutors
> threatened to arrest his wife, Jeri, as an
> accomplice, and put his six children in foster care.
> 
> A resolution is born
> 
>                                 GREG GILBERT / THE
> SEATTLE TIMES        Tonasket Police Chief Don
> Schneider edited the Tonasket Resolution to make it
> "strongly supportive of the U.S. Constitution and
> Bill of Rights."             What does that have to
> do with the Tonasket Resolution and the USA Patriot
> Act? Maybe nothing, maybe everything, Alan explains
> from his new office — a leatherwork and
> saddle-repair shop in tiny Riverside, north of Omak.
> 
> Alan, a thin, quick-to-smile Libertarian Party
> activist and 4-H volunteer, says his radio gig was
> born of "self-imposed poverty." He moved his family
> to a vacation getaway in Havillah, in the hills
> above Tonasket, nine years ago when his sales job at
> a Seattle international freight and customs
> brokerage was eliminated. He started selling ads for
> another would-be radio microcaster in Oroville, then
> went out on his own.
> 
> He recalls the radio station fondly, saying it
> served as a grand community forum and meeting place.
> "There were times when it seemed like everyone in
> town was listening," he recalls.
> 
> But he put the arrest behind him, he insists, and
> holds no burning resentment of the federal
> government — just a lingering dislike for
> Attorney General John Ashcroft's brand of justice.
> 
> Earlier this year, an acquaintance handed Alan a
> stock version of an anti-Patriot Act resolution
> purloined from the Internet. Alan made some changes
> and brought it to the Tonasket City Council.
> 
> The resolution was long and full of invective
> against President Bush, which made council members
> leery. After watching the council bat it around for
> several meetings, Don Schneider, 52, the Tonasket
> police chief who says he "normally tries to stay out
> of politics," stepped in.
> 
> Schneider suggested editing the resolution "to make
> it more positive, not necessarily anti-Patriot Act,
> but strongly supportive of the U.S. Constitution and
> Bill of Rights." A slimmer, more politically
> palatable version was adopted unanimously by
> Tonasket in April, then Oroville and Riverside in
> succeeding months.
> 
> Alan is now hoping the County Commission will
> embrace the measure. That would be a positive omen
> for civil-liberties defense nationwide, he says,
> because Okanogan County, which almost always picks
> the presidential-election winner — is a "pretty
> good place to take the pulse of John Q. American."
> 
> The Tonasket Resolution
> 
> 
> Section 1. The City of Tonasket supports all lawful
> and Constitutional efforts to prevent and
> investigate terrorist or other criminal acts and
> prosecute their perpetrators.
> 
> Section 2. The City of Tonasket believes that
> sufficient Constitutionally acceptable tools
> existed, prior to the passage of the "USA Patriot
> Act" or other such restrictive acts, for Law
> enforcement to accomplish their intended lawful
> purpose.
> 
> Section 3. The City of Tonasket believes that any
> act, enactment, law, or legislation, etc., which
> dilutes, weakens, or denies the State and / or
> Federal Constitutionally guaranteed Rights of the
> Citizen is void from its inception, is unenforceable
> in our jurisdiction, and should be quashed, repealed
> or found by a court of jurisdiction to be
> unconstitutional in part or in full, as appropriate,
> to protect the Rights and Freedom of the Citizenry. 
> 
> Section 4. The Tonasket City Council strongly
> encourages all citizens, organizations, and
> governmental legislative bodies to study, for
> understanding, the State and Federal Constitutions
> and their history, and the Bill of Rights and its
> history so that they can recognize and resist
> attempts to undermine our Constitutional Republics
> and the system of government that has brought our
> civilization so much success.
> 
> Section 5. The Tonasket City Council believes it is
> the duty of every citizen to protect and defend the
> State and Federal Constitutions from all enemies
> — foreign and domestic — and to
> demonstrate outspoken respect for the Rights that
> have been paid for with the blood and sweat of the
> American People throughout our history.John Q., in
> Alan's mind, is only now waking from a "9-11
> slumber" and realizing it's OK to act like an
> American again. To him, that means asking hard
> questions about actions taken in the name of
> national security, from the war in Iraq to the
> Patriot Act, that amount to "textbook fascism."
> 
> Alan says the resolution is more than symbolic and
> gives local officials leeway to refuse to cooperate
> with federal actions:
> 
> "If (a federal agent) showed up at the Tonasket
> Library and said, 'I want to see so-and-so's
> records,' I'm sure Chief Schneider would step in and
> say, 'Not here. You're going to need a warrant.' "
> 
> The chief himself is less cocky about that scenario,
> saying his officers have neither the desire nor the
> legal right to interfere with a federal
> investigation. But he's doubts it will ever be an
> issue.
> 
> "We rarely see an FBI agent or a DEA officer here,"
> he says.
> 
> If the situation described by Alan did occur, "We'd
> be there to keep the peace and take notes,"
> Schneider says — same as always.
> 
> Some have concerns
> 
> Other legal officials, however, do worry about the
> resolution being expanded to all of Okanogan County,
> rather than just the boundaries of three small
> cities.
> 
> Okanogan is the state's largest county. It borders
> Canada and overlaps two national forests and an
> Indian reservation. So officials there have daily
> contact with officers from the U.S. Border Patrol,
> Forest Service, Environmental Protection Agency,
> Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management
> and other agencies. 
> 
> "I'd hate to see it create a bad situation here for
> our law enforcement," says Heidi Appel, the county's
> civil deputy prosecutor, who is reviewing the
> resolution for the County Commission. "I'm not
> really sure what to do with it."
> 
> But Alan remains resolute, saying he can address any
> county concerns. He's encouraged by the lack of
> backlash against the resolution in the three small
> towns. 
> 
> Schneider is, too. For several weeks after the
> measure was approved in Tonasket, he would open the
> "letters" section of the local paper, braced for the
> worst. It never came.
> 
> "Everyone has been really positive about it," he
> says.
> 
> And working on the resolution has renewed his own
> appreciation for, and interest in, the Founding
> Fathers.
> 
> That's the goal, in Alan's mind. While average
> citizens here might not think daily about the
> Patriot Act, he says, they know what they value.
> 
> "In Okanogan County, most of us would just prefer to
> be left alone," he says. "People look at (the
> Patriot Act) and think, 'Here's another intrusion.
> Another way we can't control our own destiny.' "
> 
> He's confident the people will take that power back
> — even if it's one city council at a time.
> 
> "I've still got faith in America."
> 
> Ron C. Judd: 206-464-8280, or rjudd@seattletimes.com


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