Thursday, July 03, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Cover Story: Acts of patriotism

Flagstaff's struggle to define its rights revives democratic roots

By Heidi Walters

On Oct. 26, 2001, President Bush signed into law the USA PATRIOT Act. The flag-waving acronym stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism."

It was introduced while the country was reeling from the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Congress, whose members had little time to read (and many didn't, some admit regretfully now) let alone analyze the 342-page bill, passed it quickly. There was no public debate.

Not long after, communities across the country began officially objecting to the act, which is aimed at "domestic terrorism" and slackens the leash on the FBI and CIA, allowing them more leeway to snoop into and even disrupt people's lives. Critics say it clashes with civil liberties protections granted in the Bill of Rights. As of June 27, according to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (www.bordc.org), three states (Hawaii, Vermont and Alaska) and 129 cities, towns and counties--representing 16.2 million people--have passed resolutions vowing to uphold their residents' civil liberties. Many resolutions cast a wary glance at the PATRIOT Act, the Homeland Security Act and other executive orders to emerge from the 9/11 fallout. Some resolutions request that local law enforcement not cooperate with federal agents acting under some of the more Constitution-bending provisions. Arcata, Calif., even passed an ordinance forbidding its department heads to help federal law enforcement with "unconstitutional detentions or profiling" or "with investigations, interrogations, or arrest procedures, public or clandestine, that are in violation of individuals' civil rights or civil liberties as specified in the Bill of Rights and 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution."

But most communities have taken a more symbolic approach. And other communities have yet to do anything--Las Vegas among them. But there is agitation from civil liberties groups here to push for a resolution. If it does come our way--this wave of dissention sweeping the country from Gustavus, Ark. (pop. 450) to the entire state of Alaska (pop. 626,932) to Broward County, Fla. (pop. 1.6 million)--what can we expect?

At worst, apathy.

At best, for now, an impassioned debate that brings out the citizen in our citizens and makes local governments struggle with the fundamentals that constitute this country.

That's what happened in Flagstaff, Ariz. Our neighbor 250 miles to the southeast--population 53,000, politics diverse and often anomalously progressive in a conservative state--was among the first 20 communities to pass a PATRIOT Act-related resolution. The Dec. 17, 2002, decision didn't come easily. The vote was 4-3 with the congenial mayor included in those against. And nobody, for or against, seems ecstatic about the final version of the resolution.

But that isn't the point.

Mayor Joe

Flagstaff is a very nice city. Sure, rents downtown are "going through the roof," as one resident puts it, and there's little affordable housing, wages are low, the constant horn-blaring train traffic is ear-splitting, car traffic's up, the drought's made the whole region kindling, bark beetles are chewing the life out of the encompassing forest, big-box mall culture on the edges is likewise gutting the prosperity of the historic downtown, the ski area's expanding and using reclaimed water to make snow (this, in a severe drought), and, according to slow-growthers, sprawl-enabling zoning changes loom on the horizon. Heck, even voter turnout is low--people are too busy hiking and biking, says Mayor Joe Donaldson.

But trails snake through the city's greenways. There's open space. And people smile and say hello and start up conversations here. They read a lot. They let you in front of them in traffic. They serve you steamed milk free of charge with that on-site-roasted rich coffee. They drink a lot of beer. They make pretty storefronts and stay up late walking around the vibrant, hip downtown where there's a band in every bar and cafe. They ride bicycles everywhere.

And Mayor Joe sure is nice--the veritable embodiment of the word. If you wanted to, you could say the 62-year-old Donaldson, who's in the homestretch of his second two-year term, put the smile in Flagstaff City Hall. Why, in his spare time, he's even writing three books about being nice. Just look: He walks down the stairs inside City Hall and tosses a cheery greeting to a uniformed woman standing in a line at a window. "There's Kim," he says. "She fights all our fires for us." Kim smiles and says "Hi" back to the mayor. Outside City Hall, posing for a photo, the mayor joshes with a passerby he knows, telling him to get in the picture. Another guy walks by, calls out "Hi, Mayor."

"The first book is about customer service," Donaldson says. "I used to be a Safeway store manager, for 38 years." It was there, at Safeway, that he perceived the niceness-inducing magic of the nametag. "Wearing a name badge, that puts a mark, a stamp of quality on things," he says. "It says, 'Hi, how can I help you?'"

He brought name badges to City Hall--even he wears one.

"The book on customer service is so important," Donaldson says. We're sitting in his airy and clean, inviting upstairs office, and we've been talking about a not-so-nice topic: the city's hotly debated passage last December of Resolution No. 2002-91, "A Resolution Reaffirming the City of Flagstaff's Commitment to Civil Liberties." The mayor voted against it. "We [must] treat each other with respect. I need your knowledge, you need my knowledge." He says he created a customer service committee at City Hall, and started encouraging employees to share their thoughts.

"The second book is about attitudes and perceptions--how we perceive something occurring is driven by our attitude. The third book is a book of thoughts. When I was a store manager in Scottsdale, when I filled out employee schedules I used to write a thought for a day. It's a compilation of those." He says, with a self-conscious laugh, that people can tell if someone at Safeway was trained by him (it must be those cheery, chiming hellos--noted in a local Safeway--bouncing around the store that give an employee away). "They call it the School of Donaldson," the mayor says.

All this attention to niceness casts a strange reflective glow on the resolution debate of last year. And Donaldson doesn't sugarcoat his recollections of that.

"It was a poor attempt at addressing civil liberties because it entered in areas where we have no control, such as dictating what the federal government can do when they come to Flagstaff," Donaldson says. "It's like a city passing a resolution saying this is a nuclear-free zone--yeah, lotsa luck." (Flagstaff did that, before Donaldson's time. He notes that 1,800 trucks, and some trains, pass through Flagstaff daily carrying nuclear materials.)

The mayor says the resolution "means nothing." "It changed nothing in the way I'm going to act," he says. "I'm not going to challenge the FBI. I'm not going to challenge the CIA...or the Secret Service. In Flagstaff, we have several federal [entities]: There's the Naval Observatory. There's Camp Navajo--that's Army. At the university there's Dr. Paul Keim's lab, where we have the world's purest anthrax spores. You think I'm going to say, 'Wait a minute, FBI, wait a minute, Secret Service--have you checked with City Hall to see if you abide by our rules?'"

Donaldson calls the anti-PATRIOT Act faction in his town "a vocal minority" that acted "on no information." "We have some people in the community who, no matter what they read, get it screwed up," he says. "Because they start with a firm bias. This community doesn't engage itself in discussion, they engage in attack." He says the anti-PATRIOT Act people "pressured" the council into adopting something that, in the mayor's mind, was out of line.

"I look at it this way: Nobody knows more about city government than the councilmen you elected," Donaldson says. "And nobody knows more about state government than the legislators you elected. And nobody knows more about national government than the congressmen you elected. So, the citizens must have some faith in the people they elected."

The resolution notes how federal actions such as the "USA PATRIOT Act, several Executive Orders, and the Homeland Security Act may allow the federal government...to sacrifice fundamental liberties," and "requests" that city departments "continue their strong commitment to preserve residents' freedom of speech, religion, assembly and privacy; the right to counsel and due process in judicial proceedings and the protection from unreasonable searches and seizures."

It doesn't demand disobedience. But still, Mayor Joe would have liked a less forceful version--like the one he drafted that took out direct reference to the specific acts, and at the end "commits" the mayor and council to cooperate "fully with federal agencies and law enforcement...as granted by those acts and orders...until otherwise found by the nation's Supreme Court to be unconstitutional."

The "vocal minority" and four council members wouldn't have it. Nor were they impressed with his warning that passing a tougher resolution might cause the feds to withhold federal funds from local projects. They called that blackmail.

Which brings us to the mayor's recollection of a particularly un-nice moment in the debate--when citizen Norm Wallen, who started the whole resolution drive here to begin with as a member of the Peace and Justice Coalition, stood up.

"Norm Wallen, he had control of the council," Donaldson says. It was the council's second meeting on the matter. "He was all excited, ranting and raving. And then [Councilman Art Babbott, who introduced the resolution on behalf of the coalition] called the question. Norm went storming out of the chambers. And these are the same people that [later] were against the war and held rallies."

Stormin' Norm

Activist Norm Wallen, a retired psychology professor and former head of the local Sierra Club chapter, laughs heartily at the notion that he "had control of the council." Wallen, who once served on the Flagstaff City Council, agrees that he acted inappropriately at that December meeting. But he doesn't apologize for pushing the resolution. Sitting in his gardeny back porch, aspens rustling behind him, he tells his version of the story.

"What happened was, two on the council kept trying to change the wording, and were weakening it," Wallen says. "We had already weakened it. And--in 10 years, we've only had three resolutions put forth by citizens. It's not a lot. And with the others, the mayor brought it back to the audience to discuss the changes." But Donaldson didn't do that, Wallen says. Babbott, however, asked Wallen to speak, and so the mayor consulted the city attorney, who said he could do that but it would "open up the public hearing and everyone else will want to speak.' "Which is asinine," Wallen says. So, the mayor declined to lob it back to the public.

"I just stood up," Wallen says, "and said, 'Well, if you guys continue the way you're going, you're taking the guts out of it. And we don't want it.' Which, of course, is totally out of order."

Then, he says, Babbott "called the question," which ends discussion. The council voted, and passed it 4-3. "So, then we're clapping, and the council takes a break," Wallen says. "I went outside, and on my way back in, this guy came up to me and said, 'Osama bin Laden thanks you.' I kind of flipped, and yelled, 'Don't call me a traitor, you son of a bitch!' And it turns out the council inside heard this. But I was really pissed. And the police came, and said stop it. So, that was pretty exciting. And then the war continued for the next six weeks in the letters to the editor."

Even though the council often votes 4-3 on issues, Wallen adds, this "was certainly the most vitriolic" in a long time. And he puzzles over the mayor's notion that it's not the role of the city to question the federal government.

"We believe it was important for cities to show that a great many people oppose the stuff in the PATRIOT Act," he says. "It is an effective way to get laws changed--if you have enough cities pass resolutions, Congress has to listen. And even though Flagstaff is not on the front burner with the federal government, we have had a number of incidents of harassment by the FBI of Middle Eastern students at [Northern Arizona University]. So I think it's a local issue."

Joe Haughey

Joe Haughey, who voted against the resolution, like the mayor accuses Wallen of puppeteering the council.

Haughey has agreed on short notice to meet to talk about the resolution. I wait for him at his real estate office, and then he whisks me off to Sam's Club in a newer part of town for a Polish dog--it's a good, fast lunch when you're running full speed all day, he says. We sit in the enclosed porch at Sam's Club, and Haughey tells me he's "lived here 25 years, raised four kids" and has "11 grandchildren living here."

He came on the council about a year ago, and that's his night job: 15 to 20 hours a week for a token $300 a month. "I wanted to give back to the community," says Haughey. "I didn't come to the council with an agenda. I'd like to think I represent 90 percent of the people in the community, because most of them probably don't have time to get involved. They have to trust the government."

Haughey voted against the civil liberties-affirming resolution. He says he met initially with the Peace and Justice people, and "was taken aback" by their proposal. "The original resolution basically ordered our police not to cooperate with the federal government. I was a police officer for 11 years [in Downey, Calif.], and as a policeman it wasn't my job to interpret the law."

That language was toned down, but Haughey still didn't like the resolution. "I thought it was anti-government," he says. "I find it embarrassing that the city of Flagstaff passed the resolution. We're in a war on terrorism--hello!" And he says City Hall wasn't the right venue. "It's the law of the land--what can we do? The people should have gone to the House of Representatives and Senate to get the law changed. Or the court system. We have a lot of local issues--water, zoning, economic development, affordable housing--and I didn't think that it was appropriate for City Council to waste time debating a national issue." He adds: "My feeling is the majority of citizens are not worried about the PATRIOT Act."

This spring, as the United States invaded Iraq, Haughey introduced a "Support Our Troops" resolution "that did not mention the war or Iraq" but simply told the 154 soldiers from the Flagstaff area that their neighbors support them. Some of his ideological opponents point out that that's an example of local government mixing it up in federal issues.

The whole hubbub really rankled Haughey. "It began polarizing different groups in the community, and I didn't think that was healthy," he says. And then there was that bad moment: "Norm Wallen got up, walked around to the landing, and yelled out, 'You're gutting it!' It was an outburst."

In the end, Haughey just seems perplexed. "My main point about the PATRIOT Act is, if you're not doing anything wrong, what are you worried about?"

Citizens against

Rick Krug, political director of the Coconino County Republican Party, and his buddy John Echols (who was the political director for new Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi's campaign last year) agree with Haughey. They sit inside a colorful, noisy downtown cantina and talk about why they dislike the resolution. Like the mayor, they say City Hall's not the right venue. And they don't like how the resolution specifically mentions certain acts. They also don't like how it "is asking our civil servants to commit treason." But what they both really seem to hate is that the whole movement is so anti-Bush and "disrespectful."

"When President Bill Clinton was the president, I called him `President Clinton,' not `Clinton,'" Krug says. "But now I hear `Bush Bush Bush' and `Bushies' and `Bush-heads'--what's that about?"

Krug complains that, according to his website browsing, "the Peace and Justice Coalition is supported by the Communist Party, whose express purpose is to overthrow the government of the United States."

Echols adds that the resolution movement "was a way for [the coalition] to get free press and City Hall time. Their only forum previous to this was the corner of [Route] 66 and Humphreys [Street]. And bumper stickers saying `Peace Please.'"

Krug says his biggest problem with the resolution was that it "disrespects" federal representatives. "The PATRIOT Act was passed by an overwhelming majority," he says. "And it wasn't pushed through like people say. I have enough faith in even the liberal congressmen and senators that they're not going to let someone push them. I think they're smarter than that. I don't think there's any idiots in Washington."

He apparently doesn't extend that faith to his local officials. Which brings us back to that December night--and Krug's version of what happened: "In the City Council meeting, Norm Wallen positioned himself right in front of Art Babbott. So, when Art looked up, he could see Norm. And Norm said, `You're gutting my proposition, you son of a bitch!' Right then, Art calls the question, which means they have to take a vote. It was real obvious to me that Art was being a puppet. There was a lot of pressure on him to bring this."

Nevertheless, Krug praises a system that allowed "Art to bring this resolution," calling it "a testimony to our process, to our freedoms that do exist."

"We don't have a Hitler in the White House," Krug adds. "I like our country. I'm not afraid of anything that's in [the PATRIOT Act]. And I know this falls on deaf ears, but, if you're not doing anything wrong, then you don't have anything to fear."

Professor Caution

That oft-spoken sentiment enrages Northern Arizona University criminal justice department head and professor Rob Schehr, who definitely is listening. He says such acquiescence to widespread snooping on U.S. residents, granted under the PATRIOT Act and expanded under the proposed new Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 ("Patriot Act II"), "is very frightening."

He says it's dangerous to accept a watered-down Fourth Amendment and to be complacent about the feds reading your e-mail, monitoring your Internet chat-room activity, sneaking into your house or office without a warrant and looking at your stuff, seizing your property or even you without probable cause, holding you indefinitely without filing charges (like the more than 1,000 detainees following 9/11), finding out what books you're reading and who you're associating with, obtaining your financial, medical and work records, and maybe eventually even rescinding your citizenship and escorting you from the country.

Schehr, who has a Ph.D. in sociology, is also writing a book, about what he calls the "new American fascism." And, he works for the Arizona Justice Project, getting "wrongly convicted people out of prison." He just returned from lecturing in London, where he says he talked about "homeland insecurity--class issues, wages, health care, underemployment, environment, education."

"I said, 'Here's how this country's being hollowed out,'" Schehr says. "There is no core."

Schehr was involved, as a citizen, in last December's resolution debate and associated public forums. This April he had a piece published in Flagstaff's daily paper, the Arizona Daily Sun, which the editors titled, "Fascist Control Abets Drive for Empire."

In that piece, Schehr quotes author George Orwell (Animal Farm, 1984): "In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." Schehr's article details how over the past two years "actions taken by the Bush administration--especially the Justice Department, State Department and Pentagon--reveal a disturbing and inherently undemocratic and unconstitutional predilection for fascism."

He compares fascism to "a companion concept--nationalism" which "establishes the belief that individuals find meaning by bonding with the national community," and finds America making the transition from one to the other. "Fascists believe the mass of people are easily controlled through manipulation of sentiments using symbols, slogans, flags, and anthems--what [Italian theorist] Pareto referred to as 'political formulae.'" He says the Bush administration is following the path of Mussolini, who, "in order to maintain national unity...enacted severe repression of civil liberties accompanied by an unwavering commitment to use military might to establish its strength in Europe." He also attacks the "militarization of the media" and chides local news media for creating a fund to "support families of the troops," thereby substituting serious journalism with "jingoism."

When we talk on the phone, Schehr underlines his concerns by offering an answer to the mayor's question about defying federal agents. "The answer to him is, of course you're supposed to stand up to them! Who the hell are we? We're not bootlickers. The bottom line is, everything the feds do affects us locally. [The mayor] misses the point. He misunderstands what democracy means. The federal government can't dictate anything until it's experienced, because it's abstract. And all of these regulations are experienced locally. The mayor fears autonomy. He has a fear of freedom."

Schehr says the resolution the city passed is too limited. But he appreciates its symbolism. "It solidifies people around an ideal," he says. "It creates a collective discourse. And that's important."

As for the true meaning of patriotism, Schehr says it means you "fight for those principles in the Constitution. To be a patriot--it goes beyond the Constitution, which is legalistic. It means to speak to the highest ideals of humanism and other organic sentient beings."

Schehr adds that, during the debate last December, he "felt sorry for [councilman] Art" Babbott. "They were really beating him up."

Art Babbott

Last December, around the time Art Babbott introduced the civil liberties resolution, he and two business partners also reopened the Orpheum Theatre, which had been closed for 3 1/2 years. It was a movie theater before, and when it opened in 1917 it staged vaudeville acts. When I meet Babbott on a hot, sunny Friday afternoon inside the cool, dark theater, he points out the back-of-the-house balcony where Native Americans and African-Americans were forced to sit in the early days.

"The first act we had, we invited in Navajo and Hopi drummers," Babbott says--a purging of the past.

Babbott's dog, Kamoze (after the reggae star), pads around the office within the theater in a friendly manner. There are bumper stickers on the office furniture: "Peace Please" and "Make love, not snow." Babbott and his partners have reinvented the theater into a live concert hall--the sound of Robert Earle Keene, crooning from a CD over the loudspeakers, foretells a promise of packed-house nights yet to come. Despite this theatrical setting, Babbott doesn't come across as anyone's puppet. He scoffs at the notion.

"The only pressure that [influenced] me came from my gut," he says. "If I vote the way I do because I come from the ideological left--well, guilty as charged. And Norm's been demonized, he's always the one [on the former council] `who wouldn't agree.'"

Babbott's been on the council for 14 months and involved in local politics for the past eight years. His background is in urban affairs and policy. He takes criticism as part of the job. But he also takes issue with some of his opponents' arguments.

"There are certain people who think it's outrageous we address this issue," he says. "But the city charter explicitly gives authority to the council to address resolutions concerning national issues. We do it all the time--land exchanges, anti-land mine, nuclear-free zone. And especially on matters involving the intent of the Founding Fathers, I personally can think of no better venue than City Hall. The most powerful part of the debate was listening to hundreds and hundreds of citizens telling what it means to them in their gut--and that goes for people who were for and against it. At times it gave me goosebumps. I personally believe our country needs more discussions on the relevance of the debate that occurred 230 years ago to today."

But he warns of the "potentially dangerous" pitfall of such discussions. "After thousands of people were murdered [on Sept. 11], the next greatest casualty has been the notion that if you disagree with the current administration's policies and that of the attorney general of the United States, then you are somehow unpatriotic."

So what's `patriotic'?

Mayor Donaldson says there was a backlash after they passed the resolution--letters to the council, phone calls, mean e-mails. "The general public was really upset," he says, "because, one, the city has no business dabbling in federal issues; and, two, they thought it was unpatriotic."

So, basically, people weren't very nice--they were, in fact, outspoken.

Well, that's actually pretty patriotic, say council members Kara Kelty (who voted for the resolution) and Art Babbott, who note that they also received a flood of appreciative responses.

Among other reasons, Kelty doesn't like the PATRIOT Act because "some of the provisions open the door to racial profiling," she says. Kelty, who had been on the council only six months at the time, took a lot of heat during the December resolution debate (one letter writer called her "a bimbo"). She says the process was a trial by fire, and that, in the end, "a gift" because she learned to stand up for her principles.

I meet up with Kelty in Macys, arguably the best coffee house in town. The Peace Please bumper sticker makes an appearance here, among other pacifist quotes. Kelty opens her day planner and reads a Martin Luther King Jr. quote pasted inside: "`The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.'"

"To be honest," Kelty says, "I was nervous of the fallout" from the council's vote. "And it was more contentious than I thought it would be. At first I was very preoccupied with what others thought of me, and of whether I was representing the community. But at some point I let [the fear] go. This is a representative democracy...and the community has the responsibility to let elected officials know where they stand on certain issues." City council members, she says, have the responsibility to listen, and also to "uphold the U.S. Constitution."

"I want the terrorists prosecuted just as much as anyone," Kelty says. "And we weren't saying `don't prosecute terrorists.' We were saying, `Develop a lead, and have a reason to search someone's house or someone's library records. And [look at] who's saying, `If you're not doing anything wrong, why worry?'--white, middle-aged men."

Kelty says citizen apathy is the country's "greatest threat." "The Constitution established the people as the ultimate checks and balances," she says.

As Babbott puts it, "What happened last December was exactly what our Founding Fathers had in mind: an interactive citizenry discussing what freedom means. The best thing for me was, I felt like I was part of a continuum from 1776 to today."