Sign the Call: A Call To Stand Together To Oppose The Obama Administration’s Dangerous Assault On Fundamental Rights
From a Revolution newspaper reader in Harlem about why he signed the NDAA statement and why BA should be defended:
“They poison us with the TV and the media. They lie about everything. Every time I watch Bob Avakian on that DVD [Revolution—Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About] I learn something new… He is giving you a way to go… an alley, a doorway. Everybody else is working through this fucked up system. I got so much I want to say.”
A Call To Stand Together To Oppose The Obama Administration’s Dangerous Assault On Fundamental Rights
The administration of Barack Obama, which had promised to put an end to torture and other outrages committed by the Bush Administration, is in fact putting into place a dangerous system of repression and control. This is a serious assault on fundamental rights, and it must be answered not with silence and complicity but with heightened awareness and more determined opposition.
The record of the Obama Administration is a chilling one. President Obama has preserved Bush’s rendition program, which relies upon torture, and has extended the Patriot Act. His Administration has adopted a quasi-official assassination policy, complete with secret “kill lists” reviewed by the President, which Attorney General Holder has brazenly asserted meets Constitutional standards of due process. In the 2010 case of Holder v HLP [Humanitarian Law Project], the Obama administration successfully argued before the courts that the “crime” of “material support” to “terrorists” be broadened to include merely speaking with and advising (even on some legal matters) any group designated by the government as terrorist. The ruling has already been applied to pro-Palestinian activists and endangers many others, including prominent public intellectuals, as well as groups upholding or advocating fundamental social change.
The most recent expansion of dangerous and illegitimate government authority is the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This law grants to any U.S. president the power to detain any person, including U.S. citizens, indefinitely and without charge or trial, for the alleged crime of associating with a broad and vague category of people, which could include people who have nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks or with terrorism in general.
