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In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
How immigration is transforming our society.
The definition of “terrorist” has drifted far
from ground zero.
The return of the culture wars.
The Angolan war’s connection to suburban Arizona.
Market Magic's Empty Shell
Days of infamy and memory.
Let's review the tape.
Back Talk
The liberal media strike again.
Appall-o-Meter
Israel’s gravest danger is not the Palestinians.
Bush unilaterally junks the ABM accord.
Broken Trust
Washington gives Indians the runaround—again.
Mumia's death sentence is overturned, for now.
Coal Dust-up
Massey Energy, Inc. targeted by labor and greens.
In Person
Phil Radford: Last Call, Save the Ales.
BOOKS: Empire’s new clothes.
The Empty Theater
BOOKS: Joan Didion vs. the political class.
BOOKS: The Complete Works of Isaac Babel.
Ghost World
FILM: The Devil’s Backbone of the Spanish
Civil War.
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December 22, 2001
Liberty on the Defensive
In Florida, West Virginia, Indiana and elsewhere, students have been expelled
from high schools for expressing anti-war views. The arrests of Jewish Defense
League members in Los Angeles on charges of plotting to blow up a mosque—and
the offices of a Republican congressman of Lebanese descent—remind us that
terrorism is not the exclusive province of “rag-heads” (the newly
popular schoolyard epithet of choice). Those of us who have written critically
of the war have become accustomed to receiving death threats of unimaginative
obscenity. The most reliable national poll—conducted for the Wall Street Journal
by Democrat Peter Hart and Republican Bob Teeter—shows big majorities support
military tribunals for terrorist suspects, blanket roundups of legal residents
of Arab descent for questioning, government monitoring of e-mails, detention
of some 600 suspects without charging or naming them, and wiretapping of detainees’
conversations with their lawyers. Even that odious religious primitive John
Ashcroft is popular, with a 57 percent approval rating (and only 13 percent
critical). That’s not surprising when one considers the failure of the
Senate Democrats to lay a glove on Ashcroft when he appeared before the Senate
Judiciary Committee; their spineless, powderpuff questioning was so ineffectual
the Wall Street Journal chortled that it was a “rout” for the Holy
Roller. Poll-driven congressional Democrats have taken to heart the strategy memo written
by former Clinton strategists Stan Greenberg, the pollster, and James Carville,
the pit bull, which instructed them to breathe no word of criticism on the conduct
of the war, either at home or abroad, and instead to concentrate their fire
on the economy. But even in that they have failed to make a coherent case with
populist appeal. As Russ Hemenway, veteran director of the National Committee
for an Effective Congress, puts it, “Ordinary people can’t understand
what they’re talking about. They have no theme. They should be hammering
on trickle-down economics and corporate welfare.” But with the party’s vice presidential candidate last year, Sen. Joe Lieberman,
having endorsed the Bush approach to the economy—tax cuts for business
over help for the unemployed—and the chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial
Campaign Committee, Sen. Patty Murray, and many other Democrats supporting the
$30 billion Boeing-boondoggle bailout, why be surprised that the Democratic
leadership’s attempts at compromise have fallen flat? The CNN/Gallup poll confirms the Democrats’ failure to effectively develop
a truly alternative anti-recession program: It now shows 44 percent favor the
GOP’s approach to only 35 percent for the Democrats’ (a Republican
gain from November, when the numbers were even). Indeed, a plurality now believes
that the recession is just a normal part of the business cycle: 49 percent oppose
any direct government action on the economy, as opposed to 47 percent in favor.
In other words, half the country thinks the “economic stimulus” package
is irrelevant. That, Hemenway says, is helping to make Democratic prospects for next year’s
congressional elections “simply dreadful.” And if, as he forecasts,
the Democrats lose the Senate next year and fail to gain in the House, the Republican
rollback of civil liberties will continue unchecked.
The duo are currently in jail, charged with making harassing phone calls to
editors and reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle demanding, among other
things, more attention to the threat to the AIDS community contained in the
model quarantine law Bush is pushing for states in the wake of the bioterrorism
scare. (The proposed law, a version of which is now working its way through
the California legislature, authorizes a quarantine for “any infectious
disease that can be transmitted from person to person,” a definition so
broad that it includes HIV. The city’s AIDS czar has already suggested
quarantine for “promiscuous” HIV-infected men). The indictment of Petrelis and Pasquarelli accuses them of stalking, terrorist
threats and conspiracy on 27 counts—half of which are felonies—carrying
a potential total penalty of 78 years in prison. A probable cause hearing on
the indictments is not scheduled until January 23—and meanwhile, the two
ailing men are languishing behind bars, where they are being held on bail of
$500,000 each. Both men have AIDS, are in fragile health and have complained
of the inadequacy of medical attention in jail. Petrelis has esophageal candidiasis
(“thrush”), a particularly painful affliction, and on December 8 a
judge ordered him to be rushed to the prison medical unit for treatment (a serious
skin condition now covers 60 percent of his body). One can object to both Petrelis’ and Pasquarelli’s politics and actions,
but what is being done to them is deeply disturbing. The prohibitively high
bail for these activist marginals amounts to preventive detention. While admitting
to making obscene late-night phone calls, both men vehemently deny having made
a bomb threat, as the indictments charge. Those who have no sympathy for the
pair should recall the case of ACT UP’s Kate Sorenson, who was arrested
in protests at the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, then
held on $1 million bail on felony charges, but eventually acquitted. Or the
takeover of GlaxoSmithKline’s New York offices last February by ACT UP
activists protesting inflated drug prices, against whom felony charges are still
pending. The punishing of nonviolent civil—or even uncivil—disobedience with
felony charges, instead of the usual misdemeanors, constitutes an attempt to
repress political dissent. And while late-night obscene phone calls are a repugnant
and juvenile form of political protest, the accusations of “terrorism”
against Petrelis and Pasquarelli by San Francisco’s putatively progressive
District Attorney Terance Hallinan—who, with his radical past, should know
better—can only be viewed as blatant political pandering to his hometown
newspaper. And it makes it difficult for the duo to get a fair trial. (As the
magazine went to press, In These Times learned that Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San
Francisco, the House Democratic Whip, had written to the Justice Department
requesting that Petrelis and Pasquarelli be investigated under the USA PATRIOT
Act for “terrorism.” New felony charges also have been added to Pasquarelli’s
indictment by Hallinan, who had had his bail increased by another $100,000.) An open letter initiated by Queer Watch’s William K. Dobbs, a New York-based
gay civil liberties lawyer, demanding bail reduction for Petrelis and Pasquarelli
has already been signed by 125 prominent AIDS and gay activists, writers, lawyers
and academics—few of whom agree with the imprisoned pair’s views.
Judy Greenspan, an HIV advocate for California Prison Focus, has been on the
receiving end of some of their phone calls, but says, “I don’t believe
in prosecuting them on felony charges, and I certainly don’t support the
use of the word terrorist.” Scott Tucker, a well-known progressive gay activist and writer who co-founded
ACT UP/Philadelphia, says that “Petrelis has a wide reputation for being
erratic and abrasive, but he has also asked some of the rude questions which
have crossed the minds of others who have kept quiet.” But Tucker adds:
“Many Americans are wondering what it means for the courts to do their
thing under the shadow of Ashcroft and the USA PATRIOT Act; the implication
of this case goes far beyond these two defendants. Since 9/11, the definition
of terrorism has drifted far from ground zero. That should concern all activists
and civil libertarians.” |
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In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
he political mood in this country is getting uglier as the open-ended long
war drags on. Frustrated at not seeing Osama bin Laden’s head “brought
home on a stick,” as one CNN commentator growled, Americans are turning
on their fellow citizens and the Constitution.
ut not all the predations on our civil liberties are coming from Washington.
One of the most unsettling reflections of the malignant national mood can be
found in the supposedly liberal city of San Francisco, where two dissident AIDS
activists have been arrested as “terrorists.” Michael Petrelis and
David Pasquarelli are hardly figures who inspire universal affection in the
gay and AIDS communities. Petrelis is a sometimes-useful gadfly whose guerrilla-theater
tactics, often targeting what he considers the AIDS and gay establishments,
can range from silly to offensive to downright counterproductive. Pasquarelli
is an HIV denier (meaning that he believes HIV is not the cause of AIDS) against
whom restraining orders have been issued to prohibit him from harassing individuals
at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Project Inform and the city health department.