Cities Asked To Restore Due Process

When President Obama signed the NDAA on December 31, 2011, he authorized indefinite military detention, without a trial or day in court, of anyone—even US citizens and residents—accused of a “belligerent act,” or any terror-related offense. The NDAA subjects these individuals to arbitrary detention without trial, denying the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process and Sixth Amendment rights to challenge evidence and confront one’s accusers. The NDAA also violates First and Fourth Amendment rights, because the radically unconstitutional PATRIOT Act deviously expanded the definition of “material support for terrorism” to include speech and association even by defendants who neither committed nor ever intended to support violence.Americans wanting cities to challenge the law say that “This law is brazenly and dangerously unconstitutional, a treasonous assault on our Republic and on Democracy, and a peril to each of us and our children. It overturns over 200 years of law, which has kept the military out of domestic policing (the Posse Comitatus) and opens the floodgates to a Nazi-style police state. This extremely frightening step toward tyranny for our Republic and the impending destruction of Democracy must be uncompromisingly rejected by our community.

“A video presentation by The Real News Network titled New Military Detention Powers Threatens Basic Rights explains further why Santa Cruz must reject the NDAA 2012. The

ACLU has written that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA and that the breadth of the NDAA’s detention authority violates international law because it is not limited to people captured in the context of an actual armed conflict as required by the laws of war.”Cities, counties, and even states across America have already begun mobilizing. The first resolution opposing the NDAA passed in El Paso County, CO, home of the U.S. Air Force Academy.

On Feb. 28, 2012, at the Regular Meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council (Calif.), citizens united in defense of their constitutional rights will propose the adoption of a Resolution to Protect Due Process and the Right to Trial based on a model resolution already adopted by Northampton, Mass.