Longmont Citzens for Justice and Democracy

Group protests USA Patriot Act

Longmont residents organize a 'subversive book check-out'

© Boulder Daily Camera

By Aimee Heckel, Camera Staff Writer
March 15, 2003

LONGMONT — Karen Treanor-Brown will intentionally put her name on "Big Brother Ashcroft's" blacklist today. She calls it a patriot act.

Treanor-Brown strongly opposes a different kind of patriot act: the USA Patriot Act, enacted in 2001 in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The law gives Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department new powers to find and prosecute suspected terrorists, at a potential cost to some liberties of American citizens.

Among the list of powers, the Patriot Act allows the government to monitor residents' library records and book purchases.

So Treanor-Brown and other members of the Longmont Citizens for Justice and Democracy want to give the government something to look at. They organized a "subversive book check-out" at the Longmont Public Library today.

Pair up, for example, a book about poisons and toxins with one about Boulder County's water supplies. Alone, either could be for a child's book report or on an environmental activist's reading list. But even if checked out years apart or by different people on the same library card, the combination could send the feds to your door looking for the "inadvertent terrorist," said David Rick, organizer of the event.

"It gives you the idea of the wrong impression the government can get about you by what you're buying or reading," Rick said.

To minimize the impact on library staff, members of the Longmont group selected 10 such "subversive" books they invite the public to check out and quickly return for someone else to check out. Books include a guidebook to nuclear reactors, a book about McCarthyism in America and another about the FBI's counter-intelligence program.

Treanor-Brown said the potential risk of attracting attention to her records by checking out subversive books is worth her goal "to reinstate our constitutional rights."

Rick said the Patriot Act's chilling effect — in which people modify their reading out of concern they will get unwanted federal scrutiny — is no different from the outright banning of a book.

The Longmont Citizens for Justice and Democracy wants the Patriot Act repealed. Following the subversive book check-out and a rally, the group will ask the Longmont City Council to pass a resolution opposing the law.

Sixty-three cities, including six in Colorado, already have passed pro-civil rights or anti-Patriot Act resolutions, according to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

Boulder passed a resolution July 23 declaring that "the city of Boulder has been, and remains, firmly committed to the protection of civil rights and civil liberties for all people." Longmont's resolution also would ask the state of Colorado's congressional delegation to monitor the act, associated orders and rules.

But Longmont City Councilman Marty Block said the council has an informal policy not to pass resolutions on federal issues.

"I really believe we're responsible for local issues," Block said. "We're not elected necessarily to represent the city on national issues. That's the purpose of state and national votes individuals make."

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