Press Release
For Immediate Release: Contact: Edward Jackson
February 26, 2004 (202) 544-0200 x302Amnesty International USA and "Diverse" Coalition of Organizations Unite to Pass Resolution Rebuking the USA PATRIOT Act
Dallas City Council Says "No" to Racial Profiling and Rollbacks in Civil Liberties(Dallas, TX) – Amnesty International USA applauds the Dallas City Council's passage of a resolution strongly rebuking the USA PATRIOT Act because it is both a violation of civil liberties and because it encourages racial profiling. Dallas, the nation's eighth largest city, joins more than 257 cities, towns, and counties that have passed similar resolutions.

Amnesty International USA Board Member Chip Pitts said, "During the passage of this resolution we witnessed everything that is great about the US coalesce to protect everything that makes the US great. In President Bush's backyard, a coalition emerged and worked together with no regard to race, religion, political affiliation or class to renounce race-focused law enforcement practices and to insist on protections for our most basic civil liberties."

The resolution, which was passed on Wednesday, February 25, 2004, reaffirms the Dallas Police Department's commitment not to use race, religion or ethnicity as a proxy for criminal suspicion. It also requires public libraries in Dallas to post signs notifying users that librarians are not allowed to tell them whether federal agents have accessed records of the books they have borrowed and their activities on library computers.

It also calls on the federal government to release the names of all detainees being secretly held in the Dallas area and calls on the Dallas area's Congressional representation to vigilantly monitor activities authorized under the USA PATRIOT Act and to repeal the provisions that infringe upon individual civil liberties.

The portions of the resolution dealing with post-9/11 detentions were especially relevant to Jana Zeeb, who provided some of the most compelling testimony to the Dallas City Council. She is the US-born wife of a pilot and flight school owner who is an Algerian non-citizen resident. She testified that her husband is languishing in a detention center outside Dallas. Ironically, among her husband's previous passengers was gubernatorial candidate George W. Bush. Her husband donated the use of a corporate jet to the Bush campaign.

Building on the national racial profiling hearing held by Amnesty International in Dallas during the fall of 2003, organizations as diverse as the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the League of Women Voters, and the ACLU launched a public education campaign to generate support for the resolution. The coalition was referred to several times during the Dallas City Council's debate on the resolution as "perhaps the most diverse coalition in the history of the city." Other members of the coalition included the county and state Libertarian Party, the Republican Liberty Caucus, the NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, along with faith-based organizations and representatives from all of the major religious denominations.

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