THE ALL SOULS PEACE TASK FORCE
HELPS MAKE
NEW YORK CITY
A CIVIL LIBERTIES FREE ZONE
—by Lawrene
Groobert
On
February 4, New Yorkers made history, when the New York City Council voted
in favor of Resolution 60, which calls upon government
officials to uphold
civil rights and civil liberties when prosecuting the War on Terrorism.
New York City became the 250th legislative body in the country to pass
a Bill of Rights resolution. It was largely in the name of New Yorkers
who perished on 9/11 that the federal government adopted these antiterrorism
policies, which have sacrificed many of our fundamental rights and freedoms.
By adopting this resolution, New Yorkers said “No”—to
the rounding up of thousands of innocent immigrants, to detentions without
charges of U. S. citizens, to snooping into our private records, to the
stifling of political speech.
Unitarian Universalists
have been at the forefront of this issue.“Civil
Liberties” was selected at the 2002 General Assembly of the Unitarian
Universalist Association of Congregations to be the Study/Action Issue
for 2002-2004. Last year, our Rev. Jan Carlsson-Bull facilitated
a discussion series on this subject, which was attended by Lawrene
Groobert and Hanan
Watson of the All Souls Peace Task Force. The Peace Task Force,
headed by Paul Bennett,
became involved with this issue and joined with Community Church of New
York and Brooklyn Universalist Church last June to sponsor a forum on
civil liberties.
The All Souls Peace Task Force is a coalition member of
the New York Bill of Rights Defense Campaign (NYBORDC), which is comprised
of community
organizations
that have endorsed the campaign, one being the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination
Committee of which Hanan Watson is a member. Peace Task Force members
have tirelessly sent letters and made phone calls to City Council members
and
attended rallies in support of Resolution 60.
The historic
significance of this vote is immense, and the All Souls Peace Task Force
has been part of a campaign that has joined
the residents
of
New York City to the 43 million Americans now residing in “civil-liberties-safe
zones.”
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