The University of Massachusetts’ chapter of the Americans Civil Liberties Union held a rally in front of the Student Union yesterday, in an effort to protest many aspects of the USA Patriot Act.
There were seven speakers at the rally, representing the ACLU, Asian Americans for Political Action, the Graduate Employee Organization, Office of ALANA Affairs, the Muslim Students Association and the Department of political science at Mount Holyoke College.
Bill Newman, head of the Western Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU, spoke of the presence of the FBI on college campuses, particularly at UMass. Newman alleged that he requested records of the FBI’s correspondence between the UMass Police and the Amherst Police Department, but has received no information from either department.
“UMass won’t disclose any records,” he said.
Newman also informed the crowd that according to an article in The Springfield Republican, the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority, which is the bus system that services the UMass campus, will soon be installing small microphones in the front of every bus. He claimed that this new measure would be an infringement of people’s civil rights.
“The price of getting on the bus is the price of a ticket, not the price of privacy,” he said.
Tru Lang of Asian Americans for Political Action, spoke on behalf of the group regarding deportation of immigrants due to parts of the Patriot Act. Lang said that as a result of the Patriot Act, many Cambodians are being deported back to their country of origin, even if they no longer have family or community ties there.
He used an example of one woman who had been living in the United States for approximately 22 years.
He said she was convicted of shoplifting and was sentenced to deportation. The woman was a mother of two and had no means of survival in Cambodia. He explained that she “had survived the killing fields in 1980 and came to the U.S. at the age of nine.”
“Now her children would not have a mother to care for them,” he said.
Lang also said he was disappointed with the low turnout of students who attended the event, particularly Asian American students. There were only about 50 students who attended the event.
“I don’t see many Asian faces in the crowd,” he said, “I’m disappointed in the apathy among Asian American students.”
Rene Gonzalez of the University’s Student Government Association’s ALANA caucus spoke at the event. He said most Americans have a feeling that laws that make a totalitarian society would not happen in the United States, but his disdain toward the government was clear.
Gonzalez compared the type of government in the United States to fascism. He also said that the little opposition of U.S. citizens to the policies of President George W. Bush is not dissimilar to the rise of Adolf Hitler in World War II.
“In Germany, the [support of Hitler] happened first with little things. Then they had a politician with the unquestioning support of his people,” he said. “That’s what fear in a conformist nation does. That’s what’s happening [in the United States] today.”
