It is going to take a lot of hard work to restore all of our constitutional rights and roll back the abuses of power of the Bush administration over the last eight years.
Attending the Obama Listening Platform meetings and asking that these rights be restored is a good first step. The Get FISA Right group has created two fliers (one that covers constitutional rights in general, and one that covers only FISA) with 3 simple bullet points to be added to the party platform. Take these bullet points to their local platform meetings and ask that our party restore our constitutional rights.
Simple instructions and links to fliers after the jump...
The Constitutional rights platform statement flier [pdf].
The FISA-only platform statement flier [pdf]
Note: The flyer was made as a two-sided half sheet to save some trees. Print copies of the first page, then put those pages back into the printer drawer, and print the second page onto the back side..
Use whichever flier you feel more comfortable using.
We think that the text of these statements is simple enough that it can both help educate other attendees at the platform meetings and strong enough to provide a basis for restoring our fundamental rights when our new president and new congressional delegation take office in 2009.
We worked with a constitutional expert (a professor at a very prominent school) to draft these statements. I don't know whether he wants to be identified, so I will not use his name, but I would like to acknowledge his work, and say thank you in case he is reading this.
Feel free to use and abuse these fliers. If you disagree with our text and want to modify it, we don't mind if you copy the parts you like into another document and use it. We just want to see our rights restored -- and we hope you're active in this fight.
Here is the text of the position statements for those who want to read it before downloading the documents:
Constitutional Rights Platform Statement:
* Stop government practices that violate the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech, privacy, and due process, including warrantless surveillance on Americans, secret evidence in military courts, torture, illegal imprisonment of U.S. citizens and others, and arbitrary racial and religious profiling.
* Repeal or substantially amend laws that violate constitutionally guaranteed rights, including the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments law, the Military Commissions Act, related executive orders, and executive signing statements. Replace these with laws that reaffirm our fundamental rights and hold accountable all parties who violate those rights.
* Restore constitutional rights that the Bush administration has eroded through its lawless theory of unchecked executive power, including dissent, free speech, assembly, habeas corpus, privacy, due process of law, and equal protection.
FISA-Only Platform Statement
* Repeal or substantially amend the FISA Amendments Act, which threatens Fourth Amendment and other fundamental rights. Replace the FISA Amendments Act with a law that restores fundamental rights and holds all parties accountable who violate those rights.
* Conduct a full investigation of illegal government surveillance programs, make public the legal opinions that justified them, and hold accountable those who ordered illegal warrantless surveillance.
* Restore the rule of law and end unchecked unitary executive power by bringing to justice all corporate entities, government agencies, and persons who violated the Fourth Amendment and other fundamental rights.
Before I sign off, I thought I'd also share some of the other good things that Get FISA Right has in the works:
* We're in the process of creating a comprehensive website (right now it's just a shell, but we'll be flipping the switch soon -- hopefully later this week).
* We've produced a television ad. We can only afford to show it in some smaller markets right now, but we'll build on that.
* We are compiling information on congressional races that are upcoming in August and September where FISA is a distinguishing issue.
* Most important, we are planning to work very hard to ensure that Barack Obama is the next President of the United States and that we create a stronger majority with better Democrats in the U.S. Congress so that we can roll back the eight years of Bush administration abuses of power.
P.S. This is not part of the official agenda of the Get FISA Right group, but I wanted to add a personal note that I'm also going to ask at each platform meeting that I attend that we insert a very simple statement that We must put an end to all torture and prosecute every person who has been complicit in the torture of any person.