Masked protesters fight face scans

Masked protesters look up at one of the Face-It cameras Saturday night on Seventh Avenue in Ybor City. They were there to protest the invasion of privacy they say the cameras present.

By Linda Gibson

Tampa, Florida, July 15— There was no telling who was under that Canadian Air Force gas mask, and that’s just the way 40-year-old Matthew Garvey wanted it.

Garvey, of Lutz, was one of 100 or more protesters who donned masks, bandanas, Groucho Marx glasses and other face-obscuring gear to show their displeasure Saturday night with the Face-It scanning system police use in Ybor City.

The 36 cameras linked with a software program compare faces of people walking along Seventh Avenue to a data base of mug shots of wanted felons and missing children.

May Becker, 29, a doctoral candidate in marine biology at the University of South Florida, wore a bar-code sticker on her forehead and carried a sign: “We’re under house arrest in the land of the free.”

“Being watched on a public street is just plain wrong,” Becker said. “We shouldn’t be treated as criminals.”

The protest was organized by the Tampa Bay Action Group, a consortium of various church and activist organizations. Led by a man banging a bongo drum and encouraged by shouts through a bullhorn, protesters marched past the cameras.

One man held up the classic, one-fingered sign of disrespect and yelled, “Digitize this!”

If a match pops up between a mug shot and a face on a camera, officers can be sent to make an arrest. But so far, no arrests have been made from a match in the system, police spokesman Joe Durkin said Saturday night.

The use of cameras and face-scanning software has caused controversy since Tampa police used it to scan the Super Bowl crowd at Raymond James Stadium in January.

More than 100,000 people at stadium events that week unknowingly were part of virtual lineups, as their faces were compared to mug shots of con artists and terrorists. Police made no arrests as a result of the technology.

Tampa’s crime-fighting approach at the Super Bowl attracted a lot of criticism nationwide.

But two months ago, the City Council approved a one-year trial period of the $30,000 technology in Ybor City. The city won’t have to pay for it unless it chooses to keep it.

“It’s a worthwhile experiment,” Councilman Bob Buckhorn said Saturday evening. He has received 30 e-mails opposing the use of the technology, but said 25 of those were from people outside of Florida.

Councilwoman Linda Saul-Sena said Saturday that she had asked that the face-scanning system be put on the agenda for the council’s next meeting, on Thursday.

She questioned whether the system was a response to a problem or just a fishing expedition.

“I don’t think we should be using these cameras in the way we are,” she said.

Groups call for economic sanctions against Cincinnati

By Sean Marquis

Cincinnati, Ohio, July 16— At a Saturday morning press conference, the Coalition for Justice and Equality (a coalition of Cincinnati-based community groups) announced a call for an economic boycott against the city of Cincinnati. The boycott was called in response to the city’s failure to enact community- proposed solutions to the continuing underlying problems that sparked April’s rebellion.

In a prepared statement, Rev. James W. Jones spoke for the Coalition. He said that since April’s unrest the city has made and broken promises and that “no meaningful effort has been made to meet the needs and demands of the poor and African American communities in Cincinnati.”

He said the Coalition was therefore invoking “an international boycott” and called for “international economic sanctions against the Greater Cincinnati area.”

Rev. Jones also read off a list of community-proposed solutions that the city has so far ignored, among those: a citizen’s review panel (for the police department) with direct subpoena power, firing of the Police Chief and the City Manager, changes to the City Charter in relation to the hiring and firing of the Police Chief and police officers and that neighborhood development be integrated into the City Charter.

Addressing those that say community leaders are being too impatient, Rev. Jones said, “Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the full weight of oppression, racism, or segregation on their shoulders to demand that we wait….”

“But,” he continued, “when you see the vast majority of African Americans, Hispanics and poor whites smothered in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society, when you are forever fighting an economic war just to keep your head above the waters of a degenerating sense of nobody-ness and social deprivation… then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.”

Rev. James stated flatly, “we are tired of Cincinnati Apartheid.”

The Coalition is made up of various local and national groups including: Inter-Denominational Ministerial Alliance, Cincinnati Radical Action Group, United Farm Workers, March for Justice Steering Committee, African American Cultural Commission and many others.

At a separate press conference, the Cincinnati Black United Front (CBUF) also called for economic sanctions against the city and presented a list of demands.

Juleana Frierson, CBUF Chief of Staff, spoke in front of the New Prospect Baptist Church. She said, “the city of Cincinnati has demonstrated an arrogant, non-caring and racist attitude,” and that, “city leadership does not understand or accept the legitimate problems underlying April’s unrest and therefore they are not serious about change.”

Frierson said, “The city attempted to pacify our community with the promise of 3,000 youth summer jobs, then reneged on that promise, the city gave millions of dollars to downtown businesses and withheld developmental community funds. It is obvious the city is determined to go back to business as usual as stated by the mayor, that is unacceptable.”

While calling for international economic sanctions and a local selective buying campaign, the CBUF presented demands similar to the Coalition for Justice and Equality including City Charter amendments, neighborhood development funding, elimination of racial profiling and a demand for amnesty for all those arrested and jailed during April’s rebellion.

A corporate media reporter was disturbed by the call for amnesty (including those who committed violent acts against other people). The reporter asked repeatedly, “don’t people need to be held accountable for their actions?”

A community activist responded, “what we need in this community is healing. The people in jail need to get out, sit down with the people they hurt, talk, and with mediation reach an understanding and personal solutions. Putting people in jail does not help the community to heal, it simply splinters it further apart.”

William Kirkland, a community activist and organizer, pointed to many problems in the city and specifically, “police and prosecutorial misconduct.”

Kirkland said that while pressuring the city to take action, the people needed to take care of themselves as well. He said, “we are here to re-negotiate our relationship as a family, we all stand and fight together, or we fall.”

Nancy Bothne represented Amnesty International at the press conference. She said that although Amnesty cannot endorse a boycott, they were in support of community efforts to end discrimination and police abuse.

Bothne said that Amnesty was in town for an official inquiry into police abuse, the prosecutor’s office and the jail system in Cincinnati.

According to Bothne, Amnesty is looking at Cincinnati in the light of human rights violations. She said, “these are not just civil rights violations, but human rights violations. It is a problem for the city of Cincinnati, for the State of Ohio, for the United States and internationally.”

Amnesty International says that because the US is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the US government can be held accountable in international settings for the actions of the city of Cincinnati.

For continuing information on Cincinnati and the boycott: www.cincyboycott.org

Bush energy plan could increase air pollution

By Cat Lazaroff

Washington, DC, July 10 (ENS)— The Bush administration’s energy plan would boost levels of dangerous air pollutants at a time when respiratory diseases such as asthma are at an all time high across the nation, environmental and public health groups charge.

The number one loser under Bush’s energy plan is “the American people,” said David Nemtzow, president of the Alliance to Save Energy. “By putting its primary focus on increasing energy supplies by using more fossil fuels, the Administration’s energy plan would unnecessarily hurt our environment — the air we breathe and perhaps our very climate.”

The Bush plan calls for increased reliance on fossil fuels, including oil, coal and natural gas, and cuts the budget for energy efficiency research and alternative power sources. Groups say the plan will lead to increased emissions of smog causing nitrogen oxides and tiny soot particles that have been linked to respiratory and heart ailments.

“It’s important for people to examine the policy’s fine print, because it could lead to a rollback of clean air protections,” said Frank O’Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust. “It could ultimately mean higher polluting electric power plants and factories, and more toxic gasoline.”

The Clean Air Trust has learned that at least 25 states have already experienced levels of pollution greater than the public health standards for ozone, or smog, so far this year, said O’Donnell.

“Literally tens of millions of people have been exposed to dirty air,” noted O’Donnell. “This should be a warning that we need to consider the impact on air quality of any new energy strategy. We should not retreat from a battle not yet won.”

When President George W. Bush unveiled his energy plan on May 16, it also included a directive for US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Christie Whitman to review the Clean Air Act’s vital “New Source Review” (NSR) provision. NSR requires companies, when expanding or modifying their facilities, to either offset any pollution increases with reductions in other sources at the same plant site or obtain a permit demonstrating that best available pollution control technology has been installed.

Power plants built between 1940 and 1970 emit four to ten times more pollution than modern plants, according to EPA data. One example is coal fired power plants that emit sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and mercury.

These pollutants have been found after repeated exposure to cause as much damage to human lungs as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

High smog levels in the eastern United States cause 159,000 trips to the emergency room, 53,000 hospital admissions, and six million asthma attacks each summer.

This NSR provision of the Clean Air Act has been instrumental in regulating refineries and power plants, which pump millions of tons of pollution into communities. The EPA and several states have successfully sued a number of large utilities for violations of the NSR provision, winning millions of dollars in penalties and commitments to cutting millions of pounds of air pollutants.

Because this enforcement tool has been so effective, electric power companies, coal companies and major oil companies such as Exxon-Mobil have sought to stop the enforcement, relax the rules, and pardon the polluting power plants. The Bush administration has responded by ordering a review of all enforcement actions under the NSR rule -- including settled lawsuits.

On June 27, the EPA finished the first part of its review and issued a background paper on the NSR, summarizing the data that they have found thus far. The EPA is now soliciting comments on this paper as well as on other information relevant to the NSR review, and will hold public hearings in several US cities.

“It’s not a choice between a polluting smoke stack and energy production -- we can have clean air and sufficient energy together,” said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. “President Bush’s invitation to weaken these pollution controls is an invitation to increase asthma and other health problems triggered by power plant smog.”

The Sierra Club is mobilizing its members and running radio ads around public hearings held by the EPA to discuss the clean air hazards of President Bush’s energy plan. Members will be commenting at Congressional hearings to call on President Bush to uphold Clean Air Act pollution safeguards on old power plants and refineries.

“If we increase efficiency, invest in renewable clean energy and increase energy supply responsibly we’ll have healthier children, a bright future, and plenty of energy,” said Pope.

The Sierra Club will run radio ads around the hearings in Cincinnati, Ohio, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Sacramento, California, and mobilize members in those cities as well as in Boston, Massachusetts.