August, 27 2015, 08:45am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Bernie Sanders Gets Petition: 25,000 Push on Foreign Policy
A petition with more than 25,000 signers from around the United States was transmitted to the campaign headquarters of Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday (Aug. 27), urging him to directly tackle foreign policy issues in his run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Organized by the online group RootsAction.org, the petition says:
WASHINGTON
A petition with more than 25,000 signers from around the United States was transmitted to the campaign headquarters of Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday (Aug. 27), urging him to directly tackle foreign policy issues in his run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Organized by the online group RootsAction.org, the petition says:
"Senator Sanders, we are enthusiastic about your presidential campaign's strong challenge to corporate power and oligarchy. We urge you to speak out about how they are intertwined with militarism and ongoing war. Martin Luther King Jr. denounced what he called 'the madness of militarism,' and you should do the same. As you said in your speech to the SCLC, 'Now is not the time for thinking small.' Unwillingness to challenge the madness of militarism is thinking small."
The petition is headlined "Bernie Sanders, Speak Up: Militarism and Corporate Power Are Fueling Each Other." In addition to signing the petition, about 5,000 of the 25,000 signers wrote individual comments that are posted online as part of the petition.
In a letter to Sanders that accompanied the petition, RootsAction.org offered to directly relay any response from him to all of the petition's signers.
NORMAN SOLOMON, solomonprogressive at gmail.com
Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and co-founder of RootsAction.org. He is the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He wrote the recent piece "Bernie Sanders Should Stop Ducking Foreign Policy.
"This petition to Bernie comes under the heading of critical support for his presidential campaign," Solomon said today. "Bernie has been terrific in this campaign as he eloquently denounces corporate power, economic inequality and 'oligarchy.' But he's not saying much about crucial issues of war, militarism and foreign policy -- issues that have a great deal to do with a wide range of concerns that have been central to his grassroots campaign.
Solomon added: "As RootsAction noted in launching this petition campaign, ongoing war and huge military spending continue to be deeply enmeshed with basic economic ills from upside-down priorities. The National Priorities Project has documented that 54 percent of the U.S. government's discretionary spending now goes to military purposes. We sidestep these realities at our peril."
JEFF COHEN, jcohen at ithaca.edu
Co-founder of RootsAction.org and director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, Cohen said today: "Like most progressives, I'm thrilled that Bernie's campaign has aroused so much enthusiasm among voters, especially young voters -- despite mainstream media's embarrassing obsession with candidate Trump. In strongly endorsing Bernie for president, human rights champion Cornel West grouped him with 'prophetic politicians' who deserve 'our critical support' despite 'their faults and blind spots.' That comment probably speaks for thousands of Bernie supporters and sympathizers who signed the RootsAction petition: It is a serious 'blind spot' to denounce corporate power and oligarchy without emphasizing militarism and perpetual war."
Cohen added: "Bernie is connecting with voters by arguing that a country as wealthy as ours should provide free college and healthcare for all and infrastructure jobs. But some supporters are questioning how that's fundable unless billions of war dollars are redirected homeward."
SAM HUSSEINI, sam at accuracy.org, @samhusseini
Communications director for the Institute for Public Accuracy, Husseini just wrote the piece "Lousy Food, Small Servings -- Sanders Foreign Policy: Backing Saudi Intervention." He said today: "While Sanders' pronouncements on foreign policy have been scant, a perhaps larger problem is that some of what we've heard has actually been regressive. The foreign policy issue that he seems most passionate about is particularly dangerous. Sanders has pushed for the repressive Saudi regime to engage in more intervention in the Mideast.
"Saudi military intervention in Yemen has helped bring what the UN calls a 'humanitarian catastrophe' to that country and more Saudi intervention in Syria, Iraq, Libya or elsewhere will almost certainly lead to more human suffering.
"Sanders has repeatedly argued for more Saudi intervention. He said on CNN: 'Saudi Arabia is the third-largest military budget in the world, they're going to have to get their hands dirty in this fight. We should be supporting, but at the end of the day this is [a] fight over what Islam is about, the soul of Islam, we should support those countries taking on ISIS.'
"Progressives in the U.S. are supposed to look toward the Saudi monarchy to save the soul of Islam? The Saudis have pushed the teachings of the Wahhabi sect and have thus been deforming Islam for decades. This actually helped give rise to ISIS and Al Qaeda. It's a little like Bernie Sanders saying that the Koch Brothers need to get more involved in U.S. politics -- they need to 'get their hands dirty'."
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
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The reauthorization, officially called the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, passed the Senate 60-34 despite the more than 20,000 constituents who called opposing the measure, which the Brennan Center for Justice said would enable "the largest expansion of surveillance on U.S. soil since the Patriot Act." President Joe Biden then signed the bill into law later Saturday.
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Privacy advocates also criticized how the vote was forced through, as the Biden administration and Senate leaders including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Mark Warner (D-Va.) had emphasized that Section 702 was set to expire on Friday and raised alarms about what would happen to national security if the Senate allowed this to happen. However, as The New York Times pointed out, a national security court ruled this month that the program could run for another year even if the law expired.
"The headlines of state-aligned media screech and crow about the nefarious designs of your fellow citizens and the necessity of foreign wars without end, but find few words for a crime against the Constitution."
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Goitein used similar language to condemn the vote.
"This is a shameful moment in the history of the United States Congress," she said on social media. "It's a shameful moment for this administration, as well. But ultimately, it's the American people who pay the price for this sort of thing. And sooner or later, we will."
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden added, "America lost something important today, and hardly anyone heard. The headlines of state-aligned media screech and crow about the nefarious designs of your fellow citizens and the necessity of foreign wars without end, but find few words for a crime against the Constitution."
Schumer announced a deal late Friday to vote on a series of amendments to the bill clearing the way toward its passage, according toTheHill. However, all five amendments that would have added greater privacy protections were voted down, The Washington Post reported.
"If the government wants to spy on the private comms of any American, they should be required to get approval from a judge, as the Founding Fathers intended."
These included an amendment from Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) to require a warrant and another from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to remove the House language expanding the entities who could be forced to spy, according to Roll Call. The amendments were rejected 42-50 and 34-58 respectively.
"Congress' intention when we passed FISA Section 702 was clear as could be—Section 702 is supposed to be used only for spying on foreigners abroad. Instead, sadly, it has enabled warrantless access to vast databases of Americans' private phone calls, text messages, and e-mails," Durbin posted on social media.
"I'm disappointed my narrow amendment to protect Americans while preserving Section 702 as a foreign intel tool wasn't agreed to," Durbin continued. "If the government wants to spy on the private comms of any American, they should be required to get approval from a judge, as the Founding Fathers intended."
Wyden said in a statement: "The Senate waited until the 11th hour to ram through renewal of warrantless surveillance in the dead of night. But I'm not giving up. The American people know that reform is possible and that they don't need to sacrifice their liberty to have security. It is clear from the votes on very popular amendments that senators were unwilling to send this bill back to the House, no matter how common-sense the amendment before them."
Wyden was not the only one who pledged to keep fighting government surveillance overreach.
Vitka praised Durbin and Wyden, as well as other legislative privacy advocates including Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), saying the lawmakers had "built a formidable foundation from which we will all continue to fight for civil liberties."
Goitein also said the opposition of outspoken senators and concerned citizens were "silver linings."
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The American Civil Liberties Union also responded to the vote on social media.
"Senators were aware of the threat this surveillance bill posed to our civil liberties and pushed it through anyway, promising they would attempt to address some of the most heinous expansions in the near future," the organization said. "We will do everything in our power to ensure these promises are kept."
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The union's win comes despite the opposition of Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.
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However, Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones (D-52) celebrated the win.
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More Perfect Union said the victory would "change the auto industry, and the future of American labor," and the campaign organizers themselves are aware of the importance of what they've accomplished.
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