[IP] [Politics] member of Quakers' group singled-out for special airport searches
Begin forwarded message:
From: Jim Warren <jwarren@xxxxxxxx>
Date: December 2, 2004 7:30:16 PM EST
To: Dave Farber:;
Subject: member of Quakers' group singled-out for special airport
searches
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/printer_5767.shtml
What Price Freedom?
Return of the Blacklist
By BOB KERR
Providence Journal
Nov 30, 2004, 06:42
Molly Little is a "Female Special."
She didn't know. She didn't seek the title. She found out about it at
the airport in Portland, Maine.
Little is from South Kingstown, R.I., a freshman at Colby College, and
she doesn't like a lot of things her government is doing. So she
demonstrates and asks questions and is drawn to people who share her
outrage. Last year, she did an internship with the American Friends
Service Committee, the organization founded by those peace-loving
Quakers.
She made news with some friends last April when she took part in a
symbolic washing of the United States flag at the Rhode Island State
House.
"We're saying we're the future and we want to cleanse the United States
of what it represents right now," she said at the time.
But she has found that speaking out and being very public in her
opposition to government policies, while allegedly every citizen's
right, can make her stand out in a crowd.
On Nov. 18, she was headed to Fort Benning, Ga., to take part in the
annual nonviolent demonstration ...
At the Portland airport, Little found that maybe, just maybe, a person
can no longer speak out without getting his or her name on a list.
She was running a little late when she got to the airport due to a
speeding ticket. At the Delta ticket counter, the attendant asked if
she was in the military because she was on a list for an extra security
check. The attendant spent some time on the phone but could not tell
her why she was on the list.
It was when she got to the checkpoint on the way to the boarding gate
that she found she was a "female special." That's what yet another
attendant yelled out after Little presented her boarding pass and
driver's license.
"I didn't know whether to burst out laughing or slap her or run away,"
Little says. "But before I could make a choice, I was whisked out of
the line of harmless citizens and into an area enclosed by
shoulder-height walls."
She says she was patted down and scanned with a metal detector. Her
carry-on bag was emptied out, and her textbooks and journal were
flipped through by a security person. Again, she could get no
satisfactory answer as to why she was being singled out.
...
At the airport in Atlanta for the flight home, she was once again
directed to a separate room and patted down. The people who did it were
very nice, she says.
But still, she is angry about her treatment. She was never told why she
made the list. "The idea that I could be dangerous, that I could hurt
other human beings, is preposterous," Little says.
But, she concedes, what she went through was merely an aggravation.
Many others are being detained for weeks and months and harassed on a
daily basis, she says.
...
Her experience brings back memories of that heated and angry time more
than 30 years ago when outspoken critics of President Nixon and the
Vietnam War had their names put on an enemies list. There were
reporters, priests, entertainers _ people who insisted that the
Constitution still protected the right to speak out.
...
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