Citizens protest USA Patriot Act

"Stand up, we've had enough!" and "2-4-6-8, we don't want your police state!" echoed between buildings Wednesday evening as about 200 students and residents marched from the Bloomington Courthouse to the local FBI office.\nThe protest voiced citizens' apprehension concerning the first Uniting and Strengthening America Act, also known as the USA Patriot Act and a possible sequel, the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, unofficially dubbed "Patriot Act II."\nPassed almost unanimously in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the USA Patriot Act gave law enforcement officials broader authority to conduct electronic surveillance and wiretaps and tightened the oversight of financial activities to prevent money laundering and "diminish bank secrecy in an effort to disrupt terrorist finances," according to the Center for Public Integrity.\nThe Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, drafted by Attorney General John Ashcroft's staff, has not been officially released by the Department of Justice. It will allow the government to have broader power in order to increase "domestic intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information."\nJeff Melton, a former Green Party candidate for Congress and member of the Peace Action Coalition, helped coordinate the street theater protest to express the severity of the issues. Street theater is a protest technique where members dress up in costume and act out a skit or situation. The protest's plot line portrayed various people who have been detained by or had rights violated by the FBI over the past few years.\n"These are very serious issues and attacks on our constitutional rights that have been going on since Sept. 11, 2001," Melton said. "We wanted to have a sense of humor about it, while at the same time making some very serious points about the way our liberties have been slowly taken away. We wanted to increase people's awareness of what actually is happening."\nBob Kendall, one of the initial organizers working on behalf of the Coalition for Civil Liberties, a coalition of several organizations, wanted to make people aware of what has happened on the home front while everyone has been concerned with the events unfolding overseas.\n"We all came together with the recognition that while we have been fighting the war in Iraq, our civil liberties have been stripped from us," Kendall said. "By the time the public wakes up, this war is over, and people are going to come around realizing that these laws have been enacted, and it's going to be far too late."\nKendall said speaking up about the Patriot Act is one way Americans can support the soldiers.\n"I feel that if the people in this country want to do justice to their friends over there ... they will stand up and make sure that the county that these people come back to is the country they left thinking they were fighting for," he said.