John Ashcroft Resistance: Thurs., 6:30 p.m.
Nathan Mullenax
tonight (Wednesday) to make signs and do some last minute discussion for
the event. If you need directions, please call me! (607) 342-4720. Hope
to see everyone there. Thanks.
Dear all:
As you may know, our school and some of our student organizations have
brought former Attorney General John Ashcroft to speak at Cornell this
coming Thursday. For those of us who remember Ashcroft less than fondly,
there will be a demonstration outside Statler Auditorium prior to his
speech. Come check it out!
DEMONSTRATION: CRITICAL RESPONSE TO JOHN ASHCROFT
When: 6:30 - 7:15 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 29
Where: Outside Statler Auditorium (Intersection of Campus & East)
What: Picket line, commentary & comraderie, before bringing our critical
voices inside
Who: Anyone offended or oppressed by the USA PATRIOT ACT, secret
government surveillance, secret detentions, pretextual racial round-ups,
the war on drugs, the war on immigrants...
For more info on Ashcroft, see this creative YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8TnOOdcCZ0
Check out the Facebook group:
http://cornell.facebook.com/event.php?eid=8900420820
Or, peruse these five points:
(1) Ashcroft Promoted Illegal Detention and Torture. As Attorney
General, Ashcroft presided over such extralegal maneuvers as the
classification of "enemy combatants", internment at Guantanamo, and the
Bybee memo attempting to redefine torture, all of which have come under
attack and rollback.
(2) Ashcroft Increased Secrecy, Spying, and Border Patrols. Ashcroft was
an architect of the USA PATRIOT Act, which has increased government
secrecy, enhanced wiretapping authority, increased surveillance of
civilians, increased border patrols, and created an enormous database
tracking civilian activity.
(3) Ashcroft Initiated Racist Post-9/11 Roundups. As Attorney General,
Ashcroft implemented a policy of special registration for people of
Muslim, Arab, and South Asian descent that recalls the racism of the
internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The Department of
Justice secretly detained over 1,200 men without due process and sought to
question 8,000 based solely on their national origin. Years before, as
governor of Missouri, Ashcroft fought against desegregation.
(4) Ashcroft Persecuted Political Prisoners and Exonerated Political
Activists . Ashcroft punished U.S. political prisoners by moving them
into solitary confinement after the 9/11 attacks. He reopened every
unsolved case of so-called domestic terrorism, and in at least one
case—the case of the San Francisco 8—rehired the very officers who had
been implicated in using torture to extract confessions in the early
1970s.
(5) Ashcroft Cultivated the Prison-Industrial Complex through Wars on
Drugs, Gangs, and Immigrants . Ashcroft presided over the continued
racist expansion of the prison-industrial complex under the "war on
drugs", the "war on gangs", and "the war on immigrants", as well as the
expansion of the Department of Justice-owned and –operated corporation
UNICOR (aka Federal Prison Industries), which has come under attack for
fraud, labor abuses, and worker injuries up to and including death.