By Claude Garrod

We, the undersigned Davis community groups, call on President Obama, our congressional candidate John Garamendi, and our U.S. senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, to take immediate steps to repeal detention powers under the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2012, which they supported.

This act could “give future presidents the authority to throw American citizens into prison for life without charges or a trial.” (New York Times, Dec. 15 editorial.) Our present Congressman, Mike Thompson, voted against this act.

The act is the latest step in detention of people by our government. In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, held that the executive branch has the power to arrest and detain U.S. citizens who were captured in an active combat zone and could be deemed “enemy combatants.”

The National Defense Authorization Act enlarges the power to detain U.S. citizens. Under section 1021, any person who “substantially supported” members of al-Qaida, the Taliban and “associated forces” may be subject to military detention, without trial, until the “end of hostilities.”

These amorphous terms paint with a broad brush. What kind of actions could result in a charge of “substantially” supporting an “associated force?” The definition of these terms remains legally unsettled. Even if these terms were clearly defined by our U.S. Supreme Court, how could a citizen challenge the charge without a trial?

In response to this type of criticism, legislators added a clause (Section 1021, subdivision (e)) that states that nothing in Section 1021 shall be construed to affect “existing law or authorities” relating to detention of people, including U.S. citizens, who are captured or arrested in the United States.

As the question of who can be arrested in the United States and placed in military detention has not been definitely decided by the courts, this subdivision does not resolve the concerns regarding detentions of U.S. citizens and other people, without trial, until the end of hostilities.

Non-citizens have suffered this mistreatment for more than a decade, as we know from Guantanamo. According to the UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, 171 non-citizens remain incarcerated in Guantatamo, Cuba, today.

Eighty-nine of them have been exonerated by an Obama-created panel, but cannot be returned to their home countries. The United States will not take them in, so they languish, probably forever, in the Guantanamo prison.

The others still await trial, a wait that for some will be futile since, “according to President Obama, there are some prisoners that are ‘too dangerous to release’ but ‘impossible to try,’ the latter being because the evidence against them would not pass muster in court,” says Almerindo Ojeda, director of the UCD Center.

Guantanamo has set the precedent for the present legislation. President Obama originally had threatened to veto the National Defense Authorization Act, but instead signed it, stating in his signing statement that he never would authorize the indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens since “doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation.”

Unfortunately, his signing statement would have no effect on the conduct of future presidents. The law still stands.

It is time for us to speak out against military detentions of people without trial. It is tempting to say “I don’t have to speak out; I will never be arrested under these laws.” But silence can speak louder than words, and be read as consent.

Let us speak out today. Write our president, our senators and Garamendi, asking them to work to repeal the NDAA provisions that authorize and support indefinite detentions of U.S. citizens without trial.

With this step, we also can shine the light of justice on the indefinite detentions of non-citizens at Guantanamo. President Obama is correct in saying that indefinite military detention breaks with “our most important traditions and values as a nation.” Our democracy depends on us to defend it.

— Claude Garrod writes on behalf of the Davis Peace Coalition. Co-signers are Karen Hudson-Bates for the Church and Society Ministry of the United Methodist Church of Davis; Tom Haller, chairman of Church and Society Ministry of Davis Community Church; Richard Livingston for the Yolo County chapter of the ACLU; Stuart Pettygrove and Kary Shender for the Davis Friends Meeting Peace & Social Concerns Committee; Lyla Rayyan for the Students for Justice in Palestine; Trudi Richards for the Davis Community for Peace and Wellbeing; Kristin Stoneking for the Cal Aggie Christian Association; Natalie Wormeli for the Sacramento/Yolo Code Pink; and Occupy Davis.

Reach out

Sen. Barbara Boxer: boxer.senate.gov/en/contact/policycomments.cfm

Sen. Dianne Feinstein: www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me

Rep. John Garamendi: (707) 438-1822 (Fairfield office)

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