Category — Civil Rights

Earlier this month, Peter Roskam voted to give a big gift to telephone companies: retroactive immunity from civil lawsuits for their role in George Bush’s illegal scheme to spy on Americans. Peter Roskam, would tell you, no doubt, that large campaign contributions from telephone companies and Roskam’s close personal ties to lobbyists for Verizon had absolutely no influence on his vote to obliterate the constitutional rights of his constituents. 

The vote came on 6/20. The bill was H.R. 6304, FISA Amendments Act of 2008. This so-called “compromise” on FISA allows the federal government to conduct mass untargeted surveillance of all communications coming into or going out of the country without any need to seek court approval, even if there is no evidence of wrongdoing. In those circumstances where court review is required, where there is a specific target, a prior court order is not required and the courts are not allowed to know who is being targeted. They may only review general procedures for establishing targets. When a court rules against the government it will be allowed to continue spying while it exhausts all appeals. The measure allows no effective check to the power of the government to spy on Americans and no effective oversight regarding the manner in which it applies that power.

The gift to the telephone companies contained in the bill is the assurance it provides that all lawsuits pending from the companies’ illegal activities in support of the Bush spying program will be dismissed. It does this by changing the standard so that the companies are not required to have received a legal order - any order is fine. ATT, one of Peter Roskam’s largest campaign contributors, and Verizon, who’s lobbyist’s Jason Roe and Kirsten Mork have close ties to Roskam, are no doubt pleased by this provision. Maplight.org, a campaign finance watchdog group , found that those lawmakers who voted for the bill received, on average, twice the amount in donations from large telephone companies.

Roskam’s vote is just one more example of his consistent pattern of giving a “rubber stamp” of approval to the worst abuses of the Bush administration and of placing corporate interests over the interests of his constituents. Voters who care about civil liberties should contact Roskam to protest his vote. Roskam can be reached at his Washington office at (202) 225-4561 or in Bloomingdale at (630) 893-9670.

Before the FISA amendment becomes a law, it faces a vote in the Senate. That vote has been delayed until next month. Concerned voters should also contact Senators Durbin and Obama to pressure them to do the right thing and protect our civil liberties and deny immunity to the telephone companies that have broken the law.

Peter Roskam is Mr. Law and Order when it comes to migrant workers who come to our country seeking a better life for themselves and their children. But Roskam draws the line at telling the big corporations he represents in Congress, or even the President that they need to obey the law. In fact, Roskam wants to give the President and the telephone companies a pass. This is a pattern with Roskam: giving free rein to Bush’s lawless administration while promoting the interests of corporations over those of ordinary citizens.

George W. Bush broke the law by directing the National Security Agency to start eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants by listening in on their phone calls and reading their email messages He did this despite having the legal means at his disposal to obtain warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Bush solicited the cooperation of some large telephone companies in his criminal enterprise and they cheerfully complied.

Once Bush’s illegal program was uncovered, he started pressuring Congress to cover his own ass and the collective asses of the telephone companies by granting the companies retroactive immunity from prosecution for their complicity.

Now the question of immunity is coming to a head. Under consideration now are two competing revisions of a revision of the FISA legislation: the Senate version provides retroactive immunity to the telephone companies, the House version does not.

Bush and Roskam and other Republicans are trying to intimidate legislators and scare citizens into accepting the Senate’s bill, even presenting television commercials with a ticking time bomb implying that the bill is the only thing than can prevent another terrorist attack. Citizens should not let themselves be cowed by the likes of Bush and Roskam. It is possible to be secure and at the same time require that the President and the corporations obey the laws and observe due process when their is a real need for surveillance.

Residents of the 6th Congressional District can help Democrats in Congress ensure that the final bill supports the rule of law and protects citizens from warrantless surveillance by doing 3 simple things:

• Call the White House at (202) 456-1111 and tell President Bush to quit trying to scare the public into accepting a bad FISA bill including immunity
• Call Peter Roskam at (202) 225-4561 and tell him the same thing. Remind him of his own words: “we are a nation of laws.”
• Visit the Fix FISA website of Rep John Conyers and Senator Patrick Leahy and use their simple tool to help you send a letter to the editor of a local newspaper

The need is urgent Please do these 3 things today and let men like George Bush and Peter Roskam know that laws are for everyone.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — On the first day of July (2007), Satender Singh was gay-bashed to death. The 26-year-old Fijian of Indian descent was enjoying a holiday weekend outing at Lake Natoma with three married Indian couples around his age. Singh was delicate and dateless — two facts that did not go unnoticed by a party of Russian-speaking immigrants two picnic tables away.According to multiple witnesses, the men began loudly harassing Singh and his friends, calling them “7-Eleven workers” and “Sodomites.” The Slavic men bragged about belonging to a Russian evangelical church and told Singh that he should go to a “good church” like theirs. According to Singh’s friends, the harassers sent their wives and children home, then used their cell phones to summon several more Slavic men. The members of Singh’s party, which included a woman six months pregnant, became afraid and tried to leave. But the Russian-speaking men blocked them with their bodies.

The pregnant woman said she didn’t want to fight them.

“We don’t want to fight you either,” one of them replied in English. “We just want your faggot friend.”

One of the Slavic men then sucker-punched Singh in the head. He fell to the ground, unconscious and bleeding. The assailants drove off in a green sedan and red sports car, hurling bottles at Singh’s friends to prevent them from jotting down the license plate. Singh suffered a brain hemorrhage. By the next day, hospital tests confirmed that he was clinically brain dead. His family agreed to remove him from artificial life support July 5.

Outside Singh’s hospital room, more than 100 people held a vigil. Many were Sacramento gay activists who didn’t know Singh personally, but who saw his death as the tragic but inevitable result of what they describe as the growing threat of large numbers of Slavic anti-gay extremists, most of them first- or second-generation immigrants from Russia, the Ukraine and other countries of the former Soviet Union, in their city and others in the western United States.

In recent months, as energetic Russian-speaking “Russian Baptists” and Pentecostals in these states have organized to bring thousands to anti-gay protests, gay rights activists in Sacramento have picketed Slavic anti-gay churches, requested more police patrols in gay neighborhoods and distributed information cards warning gays and lesbians about the hostile Slavic evangelicals who they say have roughed up participants at gay pride events. Singh’s death was the realization of their worst fears.”

After a couple years of fundamentalist and Slavic Christian virulent anti-gay protests at almost every Sacramento gay event in the region,” said local gay rights activist Michael Gorman, “what the gay community has feared for some time has finally happened.”

The story above is excerpted from a longer article at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report. I quote it at length because I want readers to understand what hate crimes look like and then look at Peter Roskam’s stance on anti-hate crime legislation.

Satender Singh’s death appears to be a direct result of the hatred against gays that is being whipped up by Christian extremist groups. SPLC notes one in particular called Watchmen on the Walls, whose co-founder, Scott Lively, authored a book which claimed that gays were responsible for the Holocaust. SPLC has posted a video of Lively giving an alternate history of Singh’s death to an audience of followers in Russia in August. It is pretty chilling.

On November 19, the FBI released its annual Hate Crime Statistics report for 2006. According to a story on the release by the Washington Post, hate crimes reports were up by 8%. But as the Post has also reported, the reports are pretty spotty because the reporting by local law enforcement agencies is not mandatory. Mississsippi, for example reported no hate crimes at all.

Democrats in Congress have recently taken action to address the problem of hate crimes. H.R. 1592: Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 was introduced in the House in March, 2007. The bill seeks to offer Federal assistance to local law state and local law enforcement agencies in the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes. Its provisions include:

• Defining a hate crime as “a violent act causing death or bodily injury because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability of the victim”.
• Amending the federal criminal code to make violent hate involving firearms, explosives or incendiary devices punishable by a fine or a prison term of up to 10 years.
• Providing funding to state and local programs combating hate crimes committed by juvenilles.
• Allowing the Attorney General to provide technical, forensic, prosecutorial, or other assistance in the criminal investigation or prosecution of hate crimes by state and local jursidictions.

Some Christian groups are portraying this legislation as an attempt to stifle free speech and free exercise of religion by Christians and other religious groups. Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council has produced a video denouncing the bill as an attempt to silence the church by legislating against “thought crimes”. Ironically, even many black pastors are opposing the law on the grounds that it will prevent them from preaching against immorality.

H.R. 1592, however, specifically provides that “that nothing in this Act shall be construed to prohibit expressive conduct or activities protected by the First Amendment.” The bill does nothing to prevent Christian extremists from preaching hatred. It only provides for prosecution of those who act out that hatred in a violent manner.

President Bush has expressed his opposition to H.R. 1592 and threatened to veto, citing the lack of any persuasive demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of violent crime enforcement”. Apparently gay men getting their heads bashed in is not persuasive. Anyone can look at the history of the struggle for black civil rights in the South and understand that local jurisdictions are often unwilling or unable to take steps to protect their citizens. Bush also cited the potential unconsitutionality of the legislation but given our long history of federal civil rights legislation, this excuse doesn’t seem to hold water. This appears to be an attempt to placate Christian extremists by refusing to extend the protections enjoyed by other citizens to gay people.

Predictably, Peter Roskam opted to support Bush’s stand, voting against passage when the bill came before the House on May 3rd. His web site appears to be silent on the issue. Apparently, it was not considered an issue of importance. The bill went to the Senate where it was attached to the 2008 defense authorization bill which is now in conference.

Peter Roskam owes an apology to his constituents for refusing to extend the protection of the Constitution to all of the citizens of his district. I hope that our Democratic candidates will take a strong stand against hate crimes.

On Wednesday, November 7th, Peter Roskam once again gave his rubber stamp of approval to anti-gay bigotry by voting against the passage of H.R. 3685, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). The bill, if signed into law, would provide federal protection of workers against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

In doing so, Roskam remained in lock-step with President Bush, who is also opposed to equal rights for gay people and has previously threatened to veto the measure.

The measure passed 235 to 184. The bill’s future in the Senate is uncertain and, even if passed, would likely be vetoed by Bush. Still, it’s passage on Wednesday was something of a triumph for civil rights. Democratic legislators had been trying to pass similar legislation for over 30 years but have been blocked by Republicans like Roskam who who are opposed to allowing gay people the same rights that other citizens enjoy under our Constitution.

Roskam’s corporate clientele are largely ok with protecting gay people in the workplace, many large corporations having established policies that ban discrimination and, in some cases, even confer benefits on same-sex domestic partners. Roskam’s vote, therefore is best viewed as an attempt to obtain the votes of Christian extremists, many of whom believe that interference with their persecution of gay people is a violation of their religious freedom.

Sadly, the final version of ENDA which passed in the House lacked protections for transgendered persons.