+== TIME-OUT PROJECT ==+

Readers of this ezine will remember that in October 2000, ProjectUSA erected a billboard at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City reading, “Immigration is doubling US population in our lifetimes.” It pictured two children and cited the Census Bureau as its source.

The board lasted just thirteen days. The owner of the property on which the billboard sat, the Port Authority of NY/NJ, ordered the board removed after, according to the New York Times, “an authority employee noticed it and told his superiors.”

That the Port Authority would force down a simple Census Bureau statistic linking immigration and population growth is extraordinary, really — a blatant abuse of government power to suppress free speech.

In response, ProjectUSA filed suit on First Amendment grounds in July 2001. Now, just in time for Christmas, a chastened Port Authority has paid an out-of-court settlement to ProjectUSA.

Immigration moderates should savor this victory as yet another example of the new and encouraging climate in the United States on immigration.

The Port Authority’s removal of ProjectUSA’s fact-based billboard about population growth (and the media’s almost complete silence about this outrageous attack on the First Amendment) was motivated, of course, by the dictates of “political correctness” - a (thankfully dying) ideology that suffocates free and open democratic debate about over-immigration.

Since its launch in 1999, ProjectUSA has warned of the dire environmental and political consequences if Americans were not permitted to openly have their voices heard on immigration policy. And, even before 9/11, our warnings included the threat from foreign terrorists posed by our government’s laissez-faire approach to national borders and immigration law enforcement.

Perhaps if we and others like us had been allowed to openly and reasonably talk about the perils of our nation’s reckless immigration policy — without being shouted down as racists, xenophobes, and haters of the Statue of Liberty — the chaos and stupidity that led to the September attacks might have been avoided.

Before 9/11, through name-calling and threats, the establishment had all but completely shut down democratic debate on immigration, and by forcing down our innocuous billboard at the Brooklyn Bridge, the Port Authority of NY/NJ actively contributed to this climate of political oppression.

But here is the real irony to this story: the Port Authority was also the owner of the World Trade Center. In other words, the largest institutional victim of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 actively participated in the very oppression that helped enable those attacks in the first place.
____________________________
Billboard Foes Yearn to Breathe Free without Its Presence (New York Times)
(With picture of the billboard)
http://projectusa.org/press/oct00/nytimes-10-23-00.html

NYC slapped with free speech suit (July 22, 2001)
http://projectusa.org/Ezine/ezine-Jul-01-Sep-01.htm#072201

Attorney Andrew Moskowitz for ProjectUSA
http://www.ammlawoffice.com

+== TAKE POSITIVE ACTION ==+

The good news for immigration moderates is that with this win against the Port Authority of NY/NJ, the taboo against open and reasonable debate on immigration is further broken. Just think how far we’ve come.

ProjectUSA erected its first billboard back in 1999, and we were immediately subjected to the modern version of an auto-da-fe. Even though our billboards were factual, editorialists and journalists around the country denounced ProjectUSA in really harsh and unfair terms. Politicians in New York City, alluding darkly to the growing menace of Nazism (!), scrambled to hold demonstrations in front of our billboards. The New York City Council voted 43-2 to condemn ProjectUSA and, in the press conference after, Councilman Guillermo Lanares linked ProjectUSA with the shooting of Jewish children in Los Angeles. Politicians and government agencies threatened the billboard companies ProjectUSA hired with financial retaliation if they continued to do business with us, and the company that leased us the space at the Brooklyn Bridge location lost the lease there permanently. (Where IS the media, on this, by the way?)

Looking back, however, our attackers only seem foolish, and our win against the Port Authority symbolizes the progress the immigration reductionist movement has made.

But there is one more side to this story: Even though ProjectUSA asked it for support three times, the American Civil Liberties Union, the self-described “tireless defenders of the First Amendment,” declined to help. ACLU spokespersons told reporters the reason was that ProjectUSA had “no case.” Our settlement from the Port Authority shows that, on the contrary, we did have a case.

In our opinion, the real reason the ACLU would not help is that the agenda of the ACLU is not really “defending the First Amendment” at all. It is remaking America along the lines of some kind of universalist anti-cultural ideal. (One ACLU staff attorney, who was more honest than the ACLU spokespersons, told us privately that the ACLU would have a hard time taking our case because “there is a large and growing immigrants’ rights faction within the organization.”)

Please contact the office that rejected ProjectUSA’s plea for help, and take some satisfaction that they have been exposed as the phony ideologues that they are.

NYCLU: 212 344 3005
http://www.aclu.org/feedback/feedback.cfm

Tags:   ACLU · billboards · immigration · Port AuthorityNo Comments