BY DWIGHT SHELLMAN
Dwight Shellman has been a Woody Creek attorney for more than 40 years. In the 1970s and ’80s he served as a Pitkin County commissioner and sat on the county planning & zoning commission and the RFTA board. From the early 1990s until his recent retirement as president of the Cad-do Lake Institute and chairman of the U.S. National Ramsar Committee, he directed renowned community-based science and conservation programs for wetlands of international importantance.
A spontaneous bit of street theater concluded the public hearing on the “Bill of Rights Defense Resolution” convened by the Pitkin County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) on August 2, 2006. At the end of the hearing, we all stood up, raised our hands, and retook their official oath of office, together, to support the Constitutions of the United States and the State of Colorado.” It turned out to be a bonding experience between the audience and the elected officials in the hearing room.
Pitkin County added that opportunity to bond as a “lagniappe” — Cajun for “a little something extra thrown in.” But standing up and taking the oath together really nailed home the point made by all the elected officials at the hear-ing: We can’t demand that others protect our rights unless we also stand up and show that we will do it with them.
Among those who took the oath that night were BOCC Chair Mick Ire-land and members Patty Kay-Clapper, Jack Hatfield, and Mike Owsley, joined by several other local elected officials: John Wilkinson, chair of the library board and member of the Snow-mass town council; Aspen City Council members Rachael Richards and [FIRST NAME?] Torre, and Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, who also provided his own Bill of Rights Defense Policy Statement. (The full texts of the BOCC Bill of Rights Defense Resolution as adopted at the hearing and Sheriff Braudis’ Bill of Rights Defense Policy Statement appear on pages 49 and 50.) These elected officials also heard presentations by the Woody Creek Caucus team, who proposed the hearing (as I discussed in my last Woody Creeker column).
The hearing was framed around the Colorado legislature’s Senate Joint Resolution SJR 05-004 cautioning state agencies and local governments not to participate in federal Patriot Act activities that violate the Bill of Rights in the nation’s, or any state’s, Constitution. A major point of discus-sion was how every generation of Americans must reclaim these rights for themselves, j’:1st as t~e first generation of Americans did. After all, the original U.S. Constitution proposed only new federal government power arrangements; the Bill of Rights had to be added to guarantee individuals that the federal government could not re-peat the abuses imposed on the colonies by the British Empire. In those days, the young American citizenry clearly rejected the idea of federal officials acting like the monarchs of England and France, who routinely abused their offices through the use of warrant-less searches and arrests, secret detentions, and interference with their subjects’ free speech and assembly. The earliest Americans demanded that such federal powers could be exercised only against individuals involved in actual criminal conduct.
Yet now, some two-and-a-third centuries later, those at the BOCC hear-ing found themselves having to make the same demand. Cathy Hazouri from the Denver office of the American Civil Liberties Union related a number of federal and local government abuses of Americans’ most fundamental rights that have occurred in Denver and elsewhere. Hazouri also shared her grave concerns about how the pervasive secrecy of the federal process shields the government from oversight by the courts, Congress, and meaningful public discourse.
Along the same lines, the Woody Creek Caucus team summarized the American Bar Association’s refutation of the cur-rent administration’s claims to imperial powers of warrantless search and arrest and to chill our right to free speech powers specifically prohibited by the Bill of Rights. We also discussed the ABA’s call to Congress to hold public investigations and, after full public discourse to exert control over too-broad federal activities, because congressional leaders are still trying to spin — and dodge — their responsibilities ensure public discourse and oversight of the executive branch. Attorney John Van Ness reminded those at the hearing that our state constitution’s Rights accords Coloradans more rights than its federal counterpart does — which is why the oath to support state constitution is so important.
Each Pitkin County official also made a brief statement at the hearing. Snowmass Village’s John Wilkinson reminded the assemblage that the American Library Association had worked the hardest to resist the federal privacy violations. He urged citizens to call on Congresss to support the Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act that Senator Ken Salazar is sponsoring in Congress to correct excesses and ensure supervision of federal security activities. The other elected officials proved to have done their homework as well providing thoughtful quotes or comments to show how retaking their oaths of office would affirm our local government’s special obligation to protect our Bill of Rights guarantees.
As I listened to both friends and foes from past policy debates express their passion and appreciation for the Bill of Rights, I was reminded that those debates had been over details, not basic principles. We all agreed on the principles; indeed, they are what nurture our right to debate the details.
After our mass oath-taking, an interviewer from the Canadian Broadcasting Company asked me, “Will this little hearing make any difference, or just be dismissed as a trivial action of the rich and famous?” I replied, “Well, the rich and famous weren’t here tonight, just real citizens and real elected officials. They are the ones who make the real juice of politics.” Indeed: Electoral Juice is the only real currency in public policy, and every elected official and bureaucrat in the country well knows it.
And we aren’t squeezing this fruit alone. We are adding our juice to similar resolutions already passed by more than 400 other local elected government bodies across the United Sates. And this isn’t how authentic grassroots movements arise — as the one that created our nation did, when America’s earliest citizens forced the power brokers to add the Bill of Rights to the Constitution in the first place? Authentic movements have always grown from collective actions by lots of individuals and communities. It has ever been thus: real progress fomenting under the radar of the imperial power brokers, today just as it was at the beginning of our Republic.
Our moment of political theater at the hearing on August 2nd felt right for a reason. It may have been symbolic, but our taking the oath together created a valiant and valuable gesture of support for the demands of the Bill of Rights Defense movement.
