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Ridin’’
The Bus With Deborah
By Doris Colmes
11/29/05 "ICH" -- -- When Deborah Davis hit the news, I got hit as
well – right in the pit of my stomach where terror hides, and panic
lurks.. “Oh God, I mumbled, “It’s happening again”
And just exactly what had Deborah done to get this emotionally
detached old lady into such a replay of emotions left over from 1938
Nazi Germany? It was the gut-wrenching realization that the Nazi
Police State in which I was raised has come back to roost – in the
United States.
Deborah, who commutes by bus in Denver, Colorado, had been asked to
present her I.D. to a man in uniform. If she didn’t, she was told,
it would mean walking several miles to her job. So, she complied,
but, it rankled. Deborah knew that, unless she was being a danger to
self or others, behaving irrationally, or drunk and disorderly, no
one had the right to ask for her identification. As long as she was
sitting quietly in her seat, she could not be arbitrarily asked for
ID. (She’d learned that in her 8th grade Civics class, where she had
also been taught about police states, and how casually they usurped
the rights of their citizenry.)
And so it went. For several weeks, when asked to show ID, Deborah
refused, and, when asked if she were getting off at the Denver
Federal Center she said, “no” was left in peace, completing her bus
trips right on schedule.
And then it happened: On September 26, 2005, when the bus reached
its stop at the Federal Center, a guard got on the bus and
confronted her. When Deborah insisted that she was under no
obligation to show any ID whatsoever, the bus was halted, a
supervisor climbed on, and demanded ID. This time, when she refused,
a second cop arrived, and, when Deborah stuck to her guns, she was
suddenly arrested.
And it was not a gentle arrest. As she relates on her website
http://www.papersplease.org/davis/facts.html
" 'Grab her' was the shout, and with the police wrenching her arms
behind her back, she was jerked out of her seat, handcuffed, thrown
into a police cruiser, rushed off to the police station inside the
Center, where cops had a bit of difficulty deciding with what to
charge her. So they wrote up a couple of tickets (contents unknown)
took off her cuffs, and told her that if she ever entered that
Center again, she’d go to jail." No more bus commutes for Deborah!
Reading this, took me straight back to that living nightmare called
Nazi Germany. There, if one didn’t show ID upon command, and/or if
anything was even the slightest bit out of the ordinary on these
papers, it was “Bye-Bye,” and – if one were a Jew, a Gypsy or seen
as “gay” by the arresting officer – that was some long Goodbye,
indeed (http://jack-dalton.blogspot.com/2005/05/papierebitte.html)
Death camps were waiting, needing monthly quotas, and age was not an
issue. Little kids zoomed off to extermination just as quickly as
adults, and all for the sin of, perhaps, an inkblot on an
identifying number, or the magic word “Jew” printed on the top.
And, now, it seems, we’ve come full circle. Not only do we now have
the Patriot Act (a wonderfully modern up-date of Germany’s “Enabling
Act,” (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info / http://jack-dalton.blogspot.com/2005/06/enabling-ptriot-act.html),
right down to the last comma) but we also have a 82 billion dollar
defense bill, which (with a vote of 100 to 0) had the Real ID Act
hidden inside it. (S.1637, FSC-ETI. Passed May 11, 2004) This law
allows a national identification process in which each and every
person in the U.S.A. will be on computer. And, yes, you’d better
show that ID upon command, or you’ll wind up like Deborah. And, as
time goes by, much worse: Honorable, ethical, racially profiled, and
dead.
Is this an exaggeration? Well, let’s look at the current
administration expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon Agency
called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was
created three years ago to protect military facilities from attack..
According to Washington Post writer Walter Pincus, (http://washingtoonnpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/26/AR2005112600857_pf.html
) a presidential commission will expand and transform the CIFA into
an agency that has authority to investigate crimes within the USA,
such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic
espionage. And would allow it to label – at will – any person or
activity of which it did not approve under these headings.
The Pentagon has pushed legislation that would create an
intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and
others to share information gathered about US citizens with the
Pentagon, CIA and other agencies, as long as the data is deemed to
be related to foreign intelligence (See CIFA).
This, of course, in addition to the Patriot Act revisions which give
unlimited power and access to any and all governmental agents to
anyone or anything they choose, without warrant or even “reasonable
cause” (whatever that now means)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn once wrote: “If the least important soldier
in the German Army had chosen not to comply with orders to execute
innocent people, others would have followed his lead, and there
would not have been a Holocaust.” Those words still ring true, right
along with the actions of Mohandas Gandhi and Rosa Parks, and,
today, with the action of Deborah Davis.
Sure, lots of folks protest that they have had enough and that
“someone” needs to take action and then – at least in my experience
– they say, “Oh this is such a shame,” shrug their shoulders and
start talking about the newest TV Reality Show.
In Deborah’s case, why are there not crowds holding signs,
protesting, outside the Denver Federal Center? Could it be because
of current media censorship? Diversionary news, such as Michael
Jackson and/or Scott Peterson get major coverage – to the point of
insanity – but persons like Deborah, or, just as currently José
Padilla, are shuffled off to the side-lines. My hunch is, that
although Deborah faces arraignment in Denver on December 9, 2005,
hardly anyone in that town is even aware of what just happened. As
for media censorship and how it works, that’s a whole other article.
It takes someone with not only the courage of her/his convictions,
but also with a deep sense of urgency, to actually do something
concrete that graphically shows the rest of us what is actually
happening here. And that is what Ms. Davis has accomplished. The
same steely resolve needed for anyone to say, “I have had enough,
and my answer is NO” is reminiscent of Rosa Parks, also on a bus, a
half-century ago..
I love this country. It literally saved my life at a time when I was
pretty convinced that there was nowhere left to go, except, perhaps,
to the nearest oven. And, through the years, I’ve witnessed all that
is so dear, so valuable, so much the essence of my entire existence,
dissipate. Dissipate into a haze of hidden agendas, corruption and
increasingly self-serving administrations.
Of necessity, what happened to Deborah Davis must be compared to
what happened to so many people at the start of the fascist regime
in Germany, when “compliance” was the daily hymn, and acquiescence
to the German
“Enabling Act” (Bona fide ancestor of our “Patriot Act”) was so
absolutely expected, that anyone who protested disappeared
immediately and permanently.
I thank Deborah Davis not only for being a role model, but also for
setting an example that I, for one, will unconditionally follow.
In conclusion, let us all memorize and act upon together, this poem,
written by Pastor Martin Niemöller in Nazi Germany:
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was
not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I
was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller
Doris Colmes <dhcolmes@msn.com>
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