Taking the Safe & Free Campaign on the Road

The ACLU of Oregon hit the road this spring with our Oregon Safe & Free Tour. We started with our annual membership meeting in Lake Oswego (May 15), toured to Roseburg and Medford (June 1 & 2) and then finished up in Hillsboro (June 10). We expect to hit the road again sometime this fall with stops in Corvallis and Eugene.

While there have been many public forums on the USA-PATRIOT Act in Portland, we recognized that there have been too few opportunities for the public to get briefings on the civil liberties implications of the war on terrorism in suburban and rural areas around the state. 

While there have been many anti-civil liberties actions taken by the Bush Administration since 9/11, our forums distilled the issues into three central themes:

1) Secret courts and secret surveillance; 

2) Profiling based on race and religion; and

3) Privacy implications surrounding data mining

While the turnout was gratifying at all four events, we were especially pleased by the response in southern Oregon. In Roseburg more than 85 people attended the forum at the Douglas County Public Library and in Medford we had a standing room crowd of about 180 at the Jackson Co. Public Library.

Each of the panel presentations included Oregon ACLU Executive Director David Fidanque along with local panelists addressing particular issue areas. We want to extend our thanks again to all of the volunteer panelists and moderators for each of the events:

Lake Oswego – Shahriar Ahmed, President of the Bilal Mosque Association; Stuart Kaplan, Assoc. Professor of Communication at Lewis & Clark College; and moderator Candace Morgan, former President, Freedom to Read Foundation of the American Library Association.

Roseburg – Charles Lee, Roseburg attorney; Pat Adi, Islamic Cultural Center of Eugene; and moderator Jim Arneson, Roseburg attorney.

Medford – Jan Lofthouse, educator and retired attorney; Phil Studenberg, Klamath Falls attorney; and moderator Jeff Golden, Jefferson Public Radio.

Hillsboro – Chief Ron Louie, Hillsboro Police Department; Dick Ginsburg, Hillsboro attorney; Candace Morgan and moderator Jeannette Hamby, former State Senator.

In addition to the panel discussions, we were able to brief newspaper editors in Ashland, Medford and Hillsboro. We also got great media coverage of the panel events in Roseburg (front page of the News-Review and both TV stations) and in Medford (page 2 of the Mail-Tribune). The ACLU’s David Fidanque also appeared on the Jefferson Exchange on Jefferson Public Radio that airs from Redding north to Eugene.

But David said his favorite media opportunity was spending an hour live in the studios at KCMX in Medford on the Garth & Rosemary Harrington conservative talk show. Again proving that when it comes to the USA-PATRIOT Act there is not necessarily a conservative/liberal divide, Rosemary Harrington started the show by describing the ACLU as “the most corrupt organization in America,” but then proceeded to say that ACLU is on the right track to criticize the USA-PATRIOT Act.

“Rosemary & Garth’s listeners had a hard time dealing with the fact that they actually agree with ACLU on some issues,” Fidanque said. “It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”

David reports that one listener was so impressed, he drove by the studio to introduce himself: Jackson Co. Sheriff Mike Winters.

The Oregon Safe & Free Tour was made possible by a grant from the National ACLU Foundation and your membership dues.