One & the Same

I often get the question: Claire, what exactly do you work on? One day I’m working on immigration, another torture & habeas corpus, another government spying, and sometimes I throw in work on the federal budget just for kicks. And then, some days I work on a S. 381/H.R. 662 : The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Latin Americans of Japanese Descent Act.

The What? you ask. Well, it’s a funny story that you can read all about in the hidden appendix of the 1988 Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, commissioned by Congress in 1980. S. 381/H.R. 662 would simply set up a Commission to delve a little deeper into this story…

And the story goes: at the height of WWII, 3000 men and women from twelve Latin American countries were deported from Latin America to (yes, to) internment camps in the U.S. These citizens committed no crime except of course, that of being of Japanese ancestry. The U.S. government feared a Japanese attack in Latin America, particularly at the Panama Canal so as a result, all Latin American Japanese were suspect.

Governments made secret agreements, assets were frozen, deportation lists were compiled (according to no real criteria, except prejudice, it seems), normal legal proceedings (oh you know, warrants, hearings, indictment) were ignored, passports were confiscated and all of the sudden, 3000 citizens of Latin America found themselves in various camps from Texas to Montana. Families pleaded to be kept together; some even chose deportation to the U.S. rather than being separated. Arthur Shinei Yakabi, a deported baker from Peru, later recounted:

"I was asleep in February 1943 when some Peruvian police came and arrested my employer. My employer pulled a fast one by bribing the police, and offered me as a substitute."

Despite their involuntary arrival into the U.S., deportees had no visas and so were, in Lou Dobb’s magical words, “illegals.” Some were then used (yes, used) in prisoner exchanges with Japan—sent to Japan where many of them had no ties whatsoever. And of course, at the end of the war, the U.S. government scratched its head trying to figure out what to do with all these interned deportees. Internees filed habeas corpus petitions, applications for citizenship, or voluntarily repatriated to Japan. Negotiations dragged on and the internment program did not officially come to an end until 1953.

John Emmerson, a well-informed American diplomat in Peru during the program, wrote more than thirty years later: "During my period of service in the embassy, we found no reliable evidence of planned or contemplated acts of sabotage, subversion, or espionage."

The Commission report appendix concludes,“Whatever justification is offered for this treatment of enemy aliens, many Latin American Japanese never saw their homes again after remaining for many years in a kind of legal no-man's-land. Their history is one of the strange, unhappy, largely forgotten stories of World War II.”

A legal no-man’s land where suspected enemy aliens are held without due process? Why does that sound familiar? I may work on a million different “issues” but at the end of the day, they’re all one and the same.

A Green City in the Desert

Check out this article in Britain's Telegraph. The architect Lord Norman Foster has created a green city in the United Arab Emirates, on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. After reading this I had three thoughts: 1) I want to live there! 2) Where can I find out more? 3) If they can do this in a desert nation that primarily produces oil, why can't we do it in Washington DC? Or New York? Or LA? Turn Jersey City into a green town.

Foster+Partners description of the project.

I'm all for Pink - Thoughtful Pink

The cover of last week's Washington City Paper was awash with pink. When I saw it, sitting beside the door at my neighborhood corner store, I instantly knew what the story must be about. Since I went to work at FCNL the color pink has become synonymous for me with a loud-mouthed anti-war group: Code Pink. These women forcibly cut a noisy, disruptive, and bright swath across the Senate and House office buildings.

I agreed with a lot of what was in this article. The author points to preliminary success of this group in gaining members and grabbing attention on the hill. I support most of their positions. I also think that we need to end the war and get out of Iraq. I too believe that we need to help Iraqis affected by the war and avoid a confrontation with Iran. At FCNL I spend my days working to this end (they also have a beautiful website -- the web is most of my work to prevent war). I also agree that Code Pink has perhaps gone too far in their extreme tactics and protest methods. I'm all for protest. Loud, crazy protest can be effective and great fun. But I believe that there is a time and a place for that and a time and a place for measured negotiation. Code Pink has lost sight of when being disruptive is appropriate and when it is not.

Examples:

** It IS appropriate to attend a march (like the one on September 15th) and bring papier-mache heads of Bush and Rice. Shout, sing, have a die-in if you want. Scream at counter-protesters. Fine.

** It IS approriate to schedule lobby visits with your members of Congress and their staff members and talk about what upsets you about the war.

** It IS appropriate to attend congressional hearings on the war (or anything else) to gather information that you can use to build your case against the war.

** It is NOT appropriate to disrupt these hearings. Especially when they have nothing to do with the war. A friend told me that he was in a hearing on labor in Latin America that Code Pink crashed. Why disrupt work that had nothing to do with your campaign? Just to get attention? This same friend hadn't heard of Code Pink before the hearing. Now he knows about them, but doesn't think of the group favorably.

I suppose what I'm calling for is a return to respect -- for our elected officials, for the governing bodies of our country. A return to civility. The members of Code Pink may say that our officials and these bodies haven't shown respect for us by getting into this war and continuing to fund it. Fine. But be the bigger person. Return civility and respect to the houses of government. Don't turn it in to a free for all. Not only is this not dignified, it just won't get anything done. What legislative successes can Code Pink claim?


Code Pink has burned a lot of bridges in the past couple of years. How will they continue to do good work against war if they have no allies left in Congress?

Filibuster Friday (Round 2)

This week on Filibuster Friday:

-Guest stars Chrisiant "The Brack Attack" Bracken and Julia "Hejlstorm" Hejl regale us with Quaker Quotes and Tales of Morris Dance;

-Robert Byrd tells us he's old;

-Dan and Nick discuss recent news from the campaign trail; and

-More!

Puppies and Sunshine,
Dan & Nick

Episode 2

And We're Back...

Just when I was about to give up on Congress to wallow in a dark pit of cynicism, Representative Tom Lantos (CA), recently diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus, announced his retirement saying this about the United States:

“It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress. I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country.’’

What a stunning statement...

Happy New Year everyone!