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Chapter 13 – Section 1
City Governments
MALE SPEAKER:Nestled along the rugged Pacific north coast the small town of Arcata,California, population 16,000, is nearly a world unto itself. From the Victorian homes of the long gone timber barons, to the colorful town plaza where twenty-first century hippies hang out, to the state university that is now the town’s economic backbone, the town paper is a weekly prepped for delivery in a private garage and filled with uniquely hometown headlines.
MALE SPEAKER: The big story right now is McKinley’s thumb.
MALE SPEAKER: Newspaper editor and publisher Kevin Hoover,“We have a statue of President William McKinley on the plaza.The thumb was stolen, the mayors put up a reward, and we have gotour thumb restoration fund at the bank downstairs.That would have to be the big story right now.”
MALE SPEAKER: Well not quite.Bigger than the thumb, or the decades long protest of logging in nearby redwood forests, or the latest crackdown on marijuana farms, the areas huge hidden economy, there’s another matter.
MALE SPEAKER: It’s often been said that Arcata is the smallest town with its own foreign policy.
MALE SPEAKER: This past April Arcata thumbed its nose at the Federal Government passing the city ordinance against the US Patriot Act.The Federal law, passed quickly after September 11 that greatly expanded the government’s surveillance powers. The Bush administration said the act was essential for national security.
MALE SPEAKER: Our ability to prevent anther catastrophic attack on American soil would be more difficult if not impossible without the Patriot Act.
MALE SPEAKER: In Arcata the Patriot Act meant something else.
MALE SPEAKER: For us, the Patriot Act was a reaction to what seemed like a loss of basic constitutional rights.
MALE SPEAKER: Arcata Mayor Bob Ornelas.
MALE SPEAKER: Right to privacy or right to an attorney, right to remain silent.
MALE SPEAKER: Councilman Dave Maserve.
MALE SPEAKER: I ran on the platform that the Federal Government has gone stark raving mad.
MALE SPEAKER: First term councilman Maserve, a building contractor, campaigned against the Patriot Act saying it violates the US constitution.
MALE SPEAKER: They can do sneak and peaks, they can come and look at your house and never say that they have been there and then if you are arrested your conversations with your lawyer can be listened into by prison authorities or federal authorities.
MALE SPEAKER: More then a 100 cities and counties and even a few states have passed resolutions against the Patriot Act, but that wasn’t enough for Maserve.He wanted defiance of the war to be official city policy by a vote of four to one Arcata passed an ordinance making at the first city in the nation to prohibit city officials from voluntarily cooperating with federal investigators under the Patriot Act.
MALE SPEAKER: In essence an act of civil disobedience, you know, at a city level.
MALE SPEAKER: Councilman Michael Machi was the lone dissenting vote.
MALE SPEAKER: And it feels like the Music Man to me,where there’s trouble here in Arcata city you know.It starts with a T and rhymes with P, and stands for Patriot.
MALE SPEAKER: Machi, a woodworker when he is not tending his garden or city affairs, is also worried about what he calls the expanded snooping powers of the government but he says the Patriot Act should have been challenged in court first.
MALE SPEAKER: Our ordinance is in direct contradiction of Federal Law, and the Constitution says no.Federal Law supersedes all local laws.
MALE SPEAKER: But this city has decided it’s going to defy.
MALE SPEAKER: No, not this city, this city council.
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