Democracy is the only form of government in which people get what they deserve.
—Lester Smith
From: Jonathan Penton
To: Border Peace Presence
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 10:21 PST
Dear peace lovers,
As you might know, the United States Transportation Security Administration maintains two security lists. The first is a list of people who are not allowed to fly on U.S. flights, the “no-fly” list. The second is a list of people who are to be searched every time they fly, the “selectee” list. I can now say with some certainty that I am on the selectee list, and have been there since at least December ’04.
In December ’04 I flew to Atlanta, to see my son during his school break. I had initially planned a side trip to see a friend in Washington, D.C., and booked a flight pattern that took me from El Paso, to Washington, then to Atlanta. Plans changed, and I cancelled the Washington trip, and flew directly from El Paso to Atlanta. When I arrived at the El Paso airport, I was informed that I had been selected for additional screening. I didn’t think much of this; it could have been random, or it could have been because I had cancelled a trip to Washington. I was “patted down,” and then two officials searched my carry-on luggage. I was struck, however, by the way one official finished his work. As he realized there was no contraband in my luggage, he turned to the other official, and said in annoyance, “there’s nothing here.” He then began to question me about my occupation and nationality, as if he were trying to ascertain why I was being searched.
In January, I took a bus back from Atlanta to El Paso. Last week, I flew from Atlanta to Oakland. I had booked a flight through Delta, with a layover in Salt Lake City. This time, when I approached the Delta ticket counter and gave my ID and e-mailed ticket to the woman behind the counter, she turned to her supervisor, without looking at her computer, and said, “Mr. Penton is here.” The supervisor shot her a blank look, and the woman with my ID told me that my flight had been delayed, but I would be put on a Southwest plane instead. She then left for the Southwest ticket counter. As I waited, another person bound for Salt Lake City approached the counter. Another woman took his ID, punched it in the computer, and told him the flight was delayed. She did not appear to be expecting him.
Needless to say, I was searched again. When it was time to board the plane, a Southwest employee scanned my boarding pass into their computer, and the screen immediately flashed red and made a warning sound. The words “ADDITIONAL SCREENING” came up; the Southwest employee touched the screen and they disappeared. I was able to fly to Oakland without any further difficulty.
A bit of Internet research turned up a few things about the selectee list. In the past, people have filed Freedom of Information Act requests trying to find out how the list works, and why they were placed on it. They have been unsuccessful. The TSA will not reveal who is on the list, nor will they reveal why people are put on the list in general, let alone why specific people are put on the list. See http://www.epic.org/privacy/airtravel/foia/watchlist_foia_analysis.html and http://cbsnewyork.com/topstories/local_story_036144559.html for more information. Here are a few possible factors, in my case:
1. I have been attending protests, put on by the Border Peace Presence, since March of 2003.
2. I acted in a “leadership” role of the loosely-organized BPP from the summer of 2003 to the summer of 2004.
3. I was a not-very-active but dues-paying member of the Georgia Green Party from mid-200 to March 2003.
4. I have been a more active member of the El Paso County Green Party from March 2003 to the present. I acted as a delegate to the Texas Green Party Convention in 2003.
5. I have written several articles critical of the Bush Administration, which have been published in the U.S. and U.K.
6. I have written various fiction and non-fiction pieces describing the commission of crimes, which are in no way related to air travel. I have written non-fiction about committing misdemeanors; I have also written serious crime fiction, but it is obviously fiction. Some of these stories have been published in the U.S. and U.K.
The inconvenience I have experienced as a result of these searches is minor, and I have not been harassed in any other way. However, it seems likely that my affiliation with the BPP is the primary reason I am on the selectee list, and I wanted to make others affiliated with the BPP aware of this. I am still in the Bay Area, and plan to fly back next week.
Paz y salud,
--
Jonathan Penton
http://www.unlikelystories.org
One thing I didn't feel obliged to mention to my fellow El Pasoan peaceniks, as it would have nothing to do with being searched on my way into Oakland, was the fact that I had spent Saturday at San Francisco's 10th Annual Anarchist's Book Fair. I'd love to tell you who I was with, as they were fairly prominent-types, but as the spooks are likely reading this (hi guys!) I guess I'd better not. I was dead broke, and was only able to go inside for three hours of the fair, but I was able to trade my chapbooks for a number of fun things, and a number of other fun things were being given away free. I haven't had time to go through everything yet, as I have spent many of my days in San Franciscan used book stores, weeping with Texan jealousy at the awesome selections, but highlights of the stuff I've read so far include:
- A PG-13 rated humor 'zine called Legal Underage Pornography
Some "Mission S.F." comics that have no author identification (hard to follow Legal Underage Pornography, isn't it?) - An angry bohemian-woman comic called Bitter Pie (also not Legal Underage Pornography)
- The Anarcho-Snugglist Platform (it matched my nails)
- A punk CD-5 from Strawman
- The current issue of MIM Notes: The Official Newsletter of the Maoist International Movement. Almost the entire front page of MIM Notes is dedicated to whether or not Ward Churchill is a real Cherokee. (No mention was made of whether or not Wolfowitz is a real Eichmann. [Or maybe there was, I didn't actually read it. Just trying to be funny, it won't happen again.]) Churchill was at the book fair, and I signed some petition opining that he's a swell guy or some such. He spoke, but the room was far too crowded for my comfort.
- The Winter 2004 issue of Reclaiming Quarterly: Witchcraft and Magical Activism. I didn't have a clue what magical activism was, but I was very keen to find out. The first article featured a bunch of people at a major San Franciscan peace march calling themselves "Witches Against War," carrying brooms, and wearing pointy black hats and tacky black dresses. At first, the idea that there was a group of people so stupidly self-absorbed that they thought it was cool to fuck up a peace protest thusly knotted my stomach. However, upon closer inspection of the photos, I saw that, in a peace protest of thousands, there were only about a dozen of these morons (twirling their brooms and making spooky faces to make themselves look more prominent, assisted by the photographer). Furthermore, the real peace protestors behind them looked highly amused. Perhaps these imbeciles did serve a positive purpose. There weren't that many of them, and they did allow the other protestors to laugh at them. Entertaining the troops, as it were.
- The coolest thing I acquired was a folded-over piece of paper on which cartoons and text explain "DIY [do-it-yourself] BEER: MAKE YOUR OWN…. CORPORATIONS THAT BREW BEER SUCK!!!" The pamphlet is credited to Julie and Sarah and has a Copyright symbol scratched out, declaring "capitalizing info is for greedy bastards," so when I get back home I'll scan it and put it on this site for the mid-month update. On the back of this pamphlet, Uncle Sam is handing food stamps to a woman, who is saying "Don't support the gov't by paying taxes on beer, make the gov't support your alcohol consumption with food stamp ale!"
In case you weren't entirely clear on the earlier implications of this article, if you are an American taxpayer, you are now paying someone to search me every time I enter an airport. I am not entirely certain that I am grateful, but I am flattered by your attention. It also seems likely that you are paying a government official to read this site, which I really do appreciate.
Today (it is Tuesday, March 31st), I finally got a hold of Clergyman X, another member of the Border Peace Presence. I have talked to a few members of the BPP in an effort to find out if they were also being searched. No one had reported similar encounters, although many had not taken U.S. flights recently (remember, this is a Chicano border community, so many of us do most of our flying south of the U.S. border). Clergyman X, on the other hand, has recently taken U.S. flights into and out of the country, and has experienced no difficulties. At this point, I have to seriously consider the possibility that it is UnlikelyStories.org, along with a few acerbic (but nonviolent) articles I've written for other web-journals, that put me on the selectee list.
While this is terrifying, it is perhaps less frightening than the next logical possibility. "You haven't done anything," a friend opined today. "There is no rhyme or reason to it. It's a huge list, and people are going on with no discernable pattern. That's why they're keeping their methodology a secret. They don't know what they're doing."
Every American can tell a story of such incompetence from our local police departments (and I've had many encounters with competent and compassionate cops, as well, though the fuck-up cops are more entertaining). We choose to tell ourselves, however, that federal cops are more together, that they are the best-trained investigators in the world, that while they can't predict every danger to the American people, they can at least prevent a small group of people from flying planes into the World Trade Center, or, if not, prevent Buffalo Bill from making a dress out of senatorial genes. As our federal government is increasingly blunt about its compulsion to declare war on its citizenry, this faith quickly transforms into paranoia. I've seen that woman on the plane before. One must at least consider the possibility, however, that they really don't have a clue what they're doing, and the chaos and confusion in the peace movement and American Left is the result of inept and foolish peaceniks and Leftists, many of whom seem convinced that they singlehandedly invented the idea of mistrusting the American government, and therefore studying the history of the American Left is wholly unnecessary.
Worse is the odd combination of cynicism and naïveté of the American literary community. In case you've forgotten, the U.S. Congress passed the wholly unconstitutional Patriot Act II a few hours after Saddam was captured. I was hanging out with a couple of poets when the news hit my laptop, and expressed sorrow to them.
"What's the 'Patriot Act II?'" they asked me, and I told them.
"The government has always been out to get us. No government is trustworthy. They're always breaking laws in order to monitor people they don't like."
Well, sure, to some degree or another. Understand this, though, you pseudo-Leftist, self-assured members of the literary community: they are now, specifically, watching me. We aren't allowed to know why, but I strongly advise you to bear it in mind the next time you were thinking of sending me an e-mail stating that we have to fight the Man by shooting smack in an In-and-Out Burger. I, like Ammiel Alcalay, Amiri Baraka, and a zillion authors with smart mouths who aren't any more famous than I am, have attracted their attention. I am not the first, and I will not be the last.
Hopefully, as their myopic eyes spread further through the Internet literary community, we'll all be saying something more important than we have so far.
Jonathan Penton is the Editor-in-chief of Unlikely 2.0. Check out his bio page.