PLEASE NOTE: Community Language and Culture Bank officially changed its name to Center for Intercultural Organizing in August, 2005 to better reflect our mission, work and values.

The Oregonian (Portland, OR) 
December 10, 2004 

Multnomah County Board Challenges USA PATRIOT Act  
Kimberly A.C. Wilson 

In a halting voice, Kayse Jama, founder of the Community Language and Culture Bank, described persecution by government agents in his native Somalia. 

The Rev. Leroy Haynes of the Allen Temple CME Church in Northeast Portland harkened back to the 1960s to recall covert FBI investigations into the leaders of the civil rights movement. 

Emily Simon of the Jewish Arab Muslim Dialog told of the present day "chilling effect" on religious expression in the local Muslim community. 

Their tales, along with the testimony of a dozen others, offered support Thursday for a Multnomah County Board of Commissioners resolution urging Oregon's lawmakers on Capitol Hill to fight reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act. No one spoke against the resolution. 

The act, signed into law within weeks of the carnage of Sept. 11, 2001, grants broad powers to local and federal law enforcement officers to fight potential terrorism. 

Those powers, said Portland pediatrician Herman M. Frankel, encourage the trampling of civil rights. 

"The reasons civil rights were enacted in the first place was to protect people from the incursion of the government," said Frankel, who led the effort in support of the county's Patriot Act Resolution. "The Patriot Act undermines those rights." 

Frankel drafted the resolution to focus on a provision of the Patriot Act known as Section 215, which allows federal agents complete access to the records of library cardholders, including books checked out and Web sites visited. Any of the 465,000 registered cardholders in the Multnomah County library system could have their borrowing and online search history used against them, he said. 

"What people may not understand is that this is not only about books," said Cindy Gibbon, a Multnomah County library spokeswoman. "It's about any use that someone may make of library resources." 

That includes cardholders' use of the Internet at local library branches as well as at-home use of electronic databases through the library's Web site. Last year, the library tallied 16.9 million page views on its main Web site, www.multcolib.org, the public access point to the library's catalog, its children's page and its homework center. In all, there were 93.7 million hits on the Web site in 2003. 

But since the Patriot Act became law, Gibbon said the library has not received a Section 215 order for information. But, she added, "if we had, I wouldn't be able to confirm that." 

The reason: The Patriot Act allows agents to obtain library records without probable cause and overrides state library confidentiality laws protecting those records. In addition, it imposes a gag order on libraries and librarians served with a search warrant for information. It also prohibits patrons from being informed that their records are being investigated. 

That cloak of secrecy prompted Elsa Warnick of Northwest Portland to testify on behalf of the county's resolution. 

"If we collectively, one county at a time, take this action, then we grow," Warnick said. "It is fascism in this country and it is scary." 

Commissioner Lonnie Roberts, the lone board member to vote against the resolution, agreed that parts of the Patriot Act may impinge on civil rights. 

"This country didn't expect 9/11 and I know we panicked," he said. Still, Roberts said he didn't relish second-guessing the federal government's attempts to prevent further acts of terrorism on U.S. soil. "I don't want to take that chance." 

The board's resolution is not binding but has the blessing of U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer and U.S. Rep. David Wu, both Oregon Democrats. It adds Multnomah County to the list of more than 360 jurisdictions nationwide, including Portland and Eugene, that have weighed in on the federal law.