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by Gretchen Hildebran/PoorNewsNetwork
The news these days is pretty bad and some days I can't
make myself pay attention to it at all. Beyond the
tragedy of 9/11 is the daily horror of the war on
terrorism waged by the US government against the
people of Afghanistan as well as any US resident who
opposes their military and economic agenda. The FBI's
unconstitutional detention of over a thousand
"suspected terrorists" based on ethnicity alone hasn't
exactly inspired riots or impeachment hearings. Many
people of color in this country are familiar to this
form of blanket targeting and reprisal by police and
the feds. White activists such as myself are also
discovering their freedom of dissent is no longer
guaranteed. As "nice (middle-class) white people" we
have rarely experienced the targeting and arbitrary
punishment that historically has been reserved for
people of color and the poor in this country. In
times of war, however, even privileged white people
are expected to prove their allegiance or receive the
treatment of a "suspected terrorist."
Nancy Oden, a member of the Green Party USA national
coordinating committee who was detained and denied her
right to travel by National Guardsmen at a Maine
airport. Oden, who is a 60-year old white activist
and organic farmer, was intending to travel to a Green
Party convention from Portland, ME on November 1st.
She was targeted upon check-in, when an American
Airlines employee wrote an "S" on her ticket at the
check-in counter. This employee designated her for
being searched without checking her ID and informed
her, "You were in there (the computer) to be searched
no matter what."
When Oden arrived at the gate, she was pulled aside to
be searched by two National Guardsmen. According to
Oden, "They knew my face, my politics, and I was the
only one whose baggage was searched.î When one of the
Guardsmen grabbed her arm and began yelling his
pro-war views in her face, she responded by
withdrawing her arm and saying "Don't touch me."
Although the search of her baggage and person produced
nothing illegal, when she attempted to board the plane
she was informed that she had not "cooperated" with
the search and would not be allowed to fly.
Evidently her passive protection of her body and
political views provoked a group of six armed National
Guardsmen to detain her. Says Oden, "They were
planning to arrest me, until I pointed out that I had
not done anything." While this logic did keep her
from being arrested, Oden was told she wouldnít be
allowed on any flight out of Portland that day and
that her name had been passed on to all other airlines
at the airport.
"White people don't want to believe that a respectable
white middle class woman who holds dissident political
views would be targeted this way," Oden said in a
phone interview at her Jonesboro, Maine home last
week. "People call me on the phone and ask me, What
were you wearing? What do you look like?" She
believes this treatment was not due to her appearance
but her anti-war political beliefs. Her views against
the war were published the week before a Bangor
newspaper and she has worked in the environmental,
feminist and anti-war movements since the seventies.
The detention has been treated with a virtual news
black-out. National coverage has been minimal,
getting only a mention in the New York Times and other
national papers. No federal agency is willing to take
responsibility for the activist's detention. The FBI
has acknowledged the existence of a list of domestic
"suspects," but they refuse to say who is on the list
or why. Oden has been told that the FBI never heard
of her. She finds this hard to believe given her
history of radical politics and replies, ìWhat are the
going to say? That they are targeting me for my last
two decades of political work?
The FAA also admits that they are using a computer profile to target
people for searches in airports but will not discuss
the criteria of this profile, beyond asserting that it
is not based on gender, race or age. In a Bangor
Daily News article, a FAA spokesperson claimed that
travelers who bought tickets on the same day with cash
were the mostly likely targets of the profile. What
the article neglected to add is that Oden bought her
ticket online with a credit card six weeks earlier.
The article also quoted National Guardsmen claiming
that Oden was detained because she resisted being
searched, a charge that Oden categorically denies.
An outpouring of outrage and disbelief over this
incident has kept the activist on the phone non-stop
for the last two weeks. Many people who share her
political beliefs have never received this kind of
treatment by the government. Meanwhile the Internet
has filled with right-wingnut postings about Odenís
and the Green Partyís ìterrorist affiliations.î But
truly surprising has been the response by certain
members from her own political party.
A press release dated November 4th written by the
Green Party United States stated, Recent press
reports on the incident contained incorrect
information about the affiliation of the Green Party
member, stating that Nancy Oden is a coordinating
committee member of the Green Party of the United
States. Ms. Oden is not a member of the party's
Coordinating Committee (which consists of delegates
from affiliated states), but of a different
organization.
What the press release neglects to further explain
that there are currently two Green Parties in the US
which have very similar names, the Green Party of the
United States of America (GP/USA) and the Green Party
of the United States (GP-US). While Nancy Oden is not
affiliated with the GP-US, she is on the National
Coordinating Committee of the GP/USA.
This disavowal of Oden was followed up by internet
articles by members of the GP-US which leveled
personal attacks on her character, claiming She was
not targeted at the airport because she was a leader
of the G/GPUSA. She was targeted because she was rude
to the security officers,and We risk delegitimizing
ourselves by defending Nancy Oden's hysterical account
of airport security. Another posting by Starlene
Rankin, a GP-US media representative, claimed that
Oden had made a big fuss about it These attacks
also insisted that the GP-US be recognized as ìthe
national Green Party.
What is going on here? The Green Party, which in the
last presidential election provided me with an option
for expressing my dissent, was choosing to smear one
of its own activists rather than denounce the
abrogation of her civil liberties? And what about
these two Green Parties that have virtually the same
name?
According to Oden, the GP-US party is a splinter group
that came into being this summer at the GP/USA
national convention. She explains the rift as
ideological: These people want a seat at the table
of power. Their final goal is electoral participation
and recognition as an electoral body.î The goals of
the GP/USA, on the other hand, is to build a
grassroots movement, with activism coming before
electoral politics. Says Oden of the difference, "If
you want to build a movement, you won't change your
ideology to get elected."
Part of the GP-US agenda is to deny the existence of
the GP/USA, as they expressed in their press release:
The Green Party of the United States is the only
Green political organization organized nationally as a
party, in which at least 31 states are represented
(with other states' memberships pending). Oden
claims that certain members of the GP-US are using
this incident to further discredit her and the
grassroots goals of the GP/USA: This is called
selling out your allies, collaborating with your
enemies.
This strategy has evidently worked for the GP-US, who
on November 8th of this year was officially recognized
by the Federal Elections Committee as the National
Committee of the Green Party, allowing them to accept
up to $20,000 in individual donations. According to
their own press release, this makes them a serious
contender on the political landscape.
Whatever the original schism within the Greens or the
goals of each individual party, it is clear that while
the GP-US has not stood up for the rights of activists
who dissent in wartime. While the GP-US demands that
the US government ìprotect civil liberties and our
constitutional rights of dissent, free assembly,
privacy, due process, and mobility, they are also
actively discrediting an activist who has been
targeted for voicing her dissent.
Despite this treatment, Oden claims she is not
dwelling on the response of the GP-US, but considers
it the actions of a few within a positive
organization. Oden says she is a big admirer of
Medea Benjamin, the San Francisco Green activist whose
party is affiliated with GP-US. Oden explained that,
differences at the party level don't hold true at the
activist level. All Greens who abide by the 10 key
values (founding values of the Green Party) can work
together upon the issues we agree on.
Oden's activist skills have been further inspired by
this incident. She is encouraging people she
communicates with to join a Bill of Rights Defense
Committee, a non-partisan group that will act as a
clearinghouse for incidents of civil liberties
violations, share information about how to resist such
incidents and demand that our politicians "get some
guts and speak up!" To contact this organization go
to: www.billofrightsdefense.net, or send email to:
cleanearth@acadia.net.
When asked why she thought she was nearly arrested at
the airport, Oden said, "That guardsman wanted to get
even with me for resisting him, he was trying to
criminalize me. This is how communities that live in
resistance to the government are treated once they
are arrested for a small incident and in the system
they are forced to live in fear and under the thumb of
the authorities."
The denial of the right to travel experienced by Nancy
Oden is clearly not as catastrophic as the bombed
destruction of Afghanistan or the indefinate illegal
incarceration of "suspects" here in the US. But it is
important to note that the application of the term
"terrorist" now justifies every kind of surveillance
and militarization of our communities. This term will
also be applied to anyone arguing to retain the civil
rights we have learned to take for granted. The state
of the world makes you worry the next time you fly,
but will you worry as well the next time you go to
protest? Talk on the telephone? Publish an article?
(For Nancy Oden's account of the incident, look for it
at www.wartimeliberty.com)
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