Sunday, July 20, 2008

Read My Guest Column in the Clarion Ledger

In May I went to Washington as a student advisor for the Y2i program at the University of Southern Mississippi.

I accidently learned (like we didn't know already) the poor state of our current security measures:
The next day, the knife traveled through no fewer than five secure locations. I brought it into the U.S. Mint, the Washington Monument, the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian and I later gained admittance to the U.S. Supreme Court building standing feet away from the courtroom.

Most frightening, however, is that I went into the Dirksen Senate building, through its security, and met with U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, all while I had a knife on my person.

It is with this in mind that I ask citizens to consider the actions of our government recently which it claims will protect us. Laws have been passed allowing government agents to tap into our phone calls, demand our records (without being required to tell those they're targeting), and detain U.S. citizens infinitely.


Read the entire column at the Clarion Ledger.

5 comments:

  1. Frightening really. Bbut it's instructive, how safe are we?

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  2. Yep.

    I wonder if I'll now be on that million person watch list.

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  3. I visited with a group of students from the University of Southern Mississippi. I help lead a civics program at USM.

    I didn't get to interview him, but folks did ask questions.

    He didn't like the tough questions from what he thought was going to be a photo op. Someone asked about Tibet and he didn't have any idea what they were talking about.

    Students were then asked to not be as tough on Wicker when we met him. (True.)

    I was asked by folks from USM not to film. They know about my activism.

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