Schwarzenegger -- People's governor or flouter of First Amendment rights?

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

It's the early 1970s. The Vietnam War is raging. Soldiers are dying daily with no end in sight. Many military officials say it's an "unwinnable" war. Lies are uncovered. The media begin to expose widespread military and law- enforcement surveillance of the anti-war movement. The strong anti-war voice at UC Berkeley is a major target. California's citizens, outraged at such blatant rights violations, respond by voting to amend Article 1, Sect. 1 of the California State Constitution. Going beyond federal constitutional safeguards, the amendment guarantees protections from privacy violations by both state and private entities.

Flash forward to Mother's Day, 2005. The Iraq war is raging. Soldiers are dying with no end in sight. Many military officials say it's an "unwinnable war." Lies are uncovered. An anti-war group called CodePink, along with the Peninsula Raging Grannies and Gold Star Families for Peace, stage a nonviolent protest in Sacramento, calling on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the commander in chief of the California National Guard, to bring the Guard home from Iraq. The San Jose Mercury News breaks a story that Schwarzenegger's office called on the same National Guard to monitor the protest as part of its new intelligence unit's "Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion" program. It has "broad authority" to monitor terrorists' threats, which becomes distorted and violates the Article 1, Sect. 1 rights of those who clearly are not terrorists.

But this isn't the first time Schwarzenegger has allegedly used state agencies to monitor dissenters. The Los Angeles Times reported that Schwarzenegger had the California Highway Patrol interrogate nurse Kelly DiGiacomo, who, dressed in her nurse's uniform, participated in a protest outside a movie theater showing a film hosted by the governor, which she also attended. The Nurses Association maintains Schwarzenegger used the CHP as his "personal political police force."

CodePink, the main organizer of the Mother's Day rally in Sacramento, has been a visible fly in Schwarzenegger's ointment since the day he opened his campaign headquarters, calling for an investigation of the multitude of sexual harassment charges lodged against him. It organized a 16-city "No Groper for Governor" day of protest. Its members were peaceful yet vocal at stump speech after stump speech. And CodePink was there on inauguration day, letting Schwarzenegger know we heard his promises and that we we would be watching him.

But little did we suspect that soon he would be watching us. Could it be that CodePink is feeling the payback for its outspokenness? Or with fast- plummeting public support, is Schwarzenegger scrambling to put out any and all dissenting sparks, lest they fan into a raging fire?

State Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Garden Grove (Orange County), and others are calling for an investigation to find out how much the CHP spends on Schwarzenegger's security as well as whether the California National Guard's intelligence unit was acting as a spy agency. Dunn, whose budget subcommittee oversees Guard funding, asked the Guard not to destroy any evidence. It nevertheless erased the computer hard drive of Col. Jeff Davis, the man overseeing the unit and its projects who has since retired and left the state.

The Guard's responses have been all over the map, with one spokesman defending the surveillance saying, "We live in an age of terrorism." Another said it was all just a big mix-up. Still another said, "We don't monitor people." Yet, the Mercury News obtained Guard e-mails that showed major interest in the rally.

Clearly, the truth needs to come to light via a full, independent investigation, as this has broad implications for how our elected officials use and abuse power in the post-Sept. 11 world, and it brings to the fore the privacy and free-speech rights violations that are happening not only in California, but all over our nation. But this investigation needs to stay in California.The FBI and federal investigators must cooperate with Sen. Dunn and the state, not seize all the documents and move the investigation to Washington, outside the state's jurisdiction and Dunn's accountability hearings.


Carol Norris is a member of and former national organizer for CodePink (http://www.codepinkalert.org) who organized many of CodePink's early protests against then-gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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