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| SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2001 America is Attacked, Thousands of Innocents Killed... Freedom & Justice Threatened from within and without... The terrorist attacks on the United States on the morning of September 11, 2001 leaves a searing and painful wound on the collective consciousness of this entire nation, including the leadership and members of the NAACP. This is a tragedy that defies lines of race, color, or creed, for the purveyors of terror did not discriminate. Black and White, Jew and Gentile, Arab and Israeli, East and West; victims came from all walks of life and were of every conceivable nationality. All of us were victimized by the flames of hate and derision fanned by the winds of religious fanaticism and intolerance. Every American was brutally assaulted and gravely wounded on the 11th of September. It is an ache that will never completely heal, for at best it only become more tolerable as time passes. We fully support the efforts of our government to root out terrorism and organized terror groups from the modern world, although we believe that it can be done without defacing the basic freedoms of the US Constitution - despite Attorney General Ashcroft's insistence that the government will not abuse recently expanded police powers. Arresting aliens without disclosing the charges or evidence against them for weeks or longer is simply not the American way. Military tribunals that use secret evidence and do not allow for appeals, even when the death penalty is imposed, are completely contrary to the American system of equity and justice. Allowing the FBI and other legal agencies to tap phones, infiltrate political organizations and monitor online communications without judicial oversight is especially alarming, considering the past abuses the NAACP suffered at the hands of Federal and State agencies in this area, even when safeguards were supposedly in place. Now that those safeguards have been lifted, do we trust the government to control it's desire to monitor everyone, to develop secret dossiers on all political dissidents and "infiltrate" socio-political organizations like the NAACP? No we do not. The key question, from our perspective is simple: "Who is watching the watchers, and who is watching them?" It is a simple fact that in the recent past, government agencies have violated the law in monitoring political groups, immigrant organizations and other "perceived threats," your own NAACP among them. If these substantial abuses occurred during the period where these activities were supposed to be judicially approved (and weren't), the potential for worse abuses is all too clear simply as a matter of common sense. This should concern any citizen, not just minorities. However, the fact is that as usual, minorities will feel the brunt of this change in the socio-political paradigm compared to the population as a whole. The minority community is all too familiar with the abuse of police powers, it has been a regular South Florida occurrence even without these newly added police powers. The Fort Lauderdale NAACP has been at the forefront of community activism to reduce the abuses of police powers including police brutality, corruption, racial profiling, and rights violations. We have developed an open dialog with both the Fort Lauderdale Police Department and the Broward Sheriff's Office. We also actively engage the State Attorney's office in Broward in our attempts to provide some oversight to the local Justice system which has at times a dismal record in terms of racial and ethnic disparity. The events of September 11th, 2001 have served in many ways to unify much of our population in a single cause - the defense of the United States. However, the Bush administration has taken this cause and used it to promote it's socio-political agenda, an agenda that was developed prior to the attacks on America, an agenda that does not appear to put this nation's best interests first. In our view, this is a disservice to the victims of the attacks, the good people of this nation, and the men & women who risk their lives to fight for a nation that is fully free. It goes without saying that these changes can have a chilling impact on the minority community and a substantial effect on the day-to-day life of our membership. So we must be ever vigilant, and not loose sight of our aspirations and goals as a progressive organization, even while we fight this war on terrorism.
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