[Politics] member of Quakers' group singled-out for special airport searches

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jim Warren <jwarren () well com>
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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