Our Community Under Siege

Newspaper readers are not mobsters.

How in the hell did freedom of the press and the First Amendment become such fragile doctrines?

The staff of this newspaper determined it must examine the sad logic of the outrageous subpoenas.

The month before my arrest, I happened to visit Dachau, a very short drive for the residents of Munich, Germany. The second floor of a nearby housing development looks out upon the assembly field of the infamous camp. A McDonald's, with its happy meals, is but a few hundred yards from Dachau's gate.

Dachau evolved into a concentration camp, but in the beginning it was merely a resettlement station for communists and other political malcontents; in fact, this effort to maintain order in fractious Germany was considered so banal that the New York Times covered the opening of Dachau. The Red Cross gave it passing marks.

It was in Dachau that I found the memory of poet and pastor Martin Niemoller. He survived the concentration camp, and his words written after the war survived him.

If you don't recall his name, you will recognize his work.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent;

I was not a communist.

Then they came for the sick, the so-called incurables, and I didn't speak up,

Because I wasn't mentally ill.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up.

Because I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

Niemoller's elegant critique was on my mind again after I walked out of jail and met with the writers and editors of New Times.

I suggested that what appeared to be a stunningly arrogant subpoena aimed at our readers was not simply a high-risk tactic that suddenly turned the Constitution on its ear; this challenge of the First Amendment evolved gradually after years of abusing the rights of others.

Our series of articles undertook the prosaic: Let's look at those others.

And so we examined the County Attorney and the Sheriff's assault upon the rights of prisoners, political opponents, journalists, migrants and judges. The hostilities took shape over 14 years. They did not begin with judges, but by the time Thomas, Arpaio and Wilenchik arrived at the courthouse with their dark accusations in October, who but the jurists was shocked? When law enforcement subsequently stumbled upon readers as a target of secret writs, the authorities had little reason to reflect.

And please, despite acknowledging Niemoller, do not for a second think that I am making some puerile, dorm-room allusion to the horrors of fascism. I am not. But the pastor's insight into our bond with society's others is apt.

Others. Such a simple thought for writers; it is not so simple for the community.

Who are the others; must we deal with all of the others?

The isolation of others in Phoenix began with prisoners in Arpaio's jails. He built unprecedented political popularity promising to treat them harshly.

Clearly the community has spoken, repeatedly: What do these inmates have to do with us?

Even Niemoller's work, with all that informed it, generated unsettling questions about who was, or was not, part of the community. In some versions of his poem, the mentally ill are left out as a class in favor of social democrats. There are charming reports that, during the McCarthy era, the communists were dropped from the poem when Niemoller was invoked.

Those of you scanning these words will decide who are members of the community. But it is plain: what began with the sheriff's inmates ended with this newspaper's readers.

For two years, I spent not enough Sundays on a pew inside Sacred Heart church in Galveston, Texas. In 1900, this Gulf Coast community was all but wiped off the map by a hurricane that killed about 8,000 men, women and children. The 16-foot storm surge and 140 mile-per-hour winds flattened everything in their path; it stands today as the deadliest natural disaster in the history of America.

At the end of every mass at Sacred Heart, the congregation prayed, without embarrassment, to the Virgin Mary to spare them from such torment ever again.

In a secular world, such an invocation is almost quaint.

Today, we rely not upon divine intercession but rather upon government for protection. (And the practical citizens of Galveston, not trusting entirely in Catholic supplication, demanded that City Hall rebuild with the protection of a stout sea wall).

But where do we turn when government — in this case, law enforcement — threatens its citizens like a grim force of nature?

Of course, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights offer refuge, but the reality is that they are Olympian ideals that grow suddenly distant when most needed. Arizona's prisoners' rights lawsuit, Hart vs. Hill, is 30 years in the courts with no resolution is sight. This paper's brief act of defiance cost us a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees, hardly a viable option for most. The federal government failed to pass laws that address the very real problems associated with illegal aliens. A vacuum ensued. Race-baiters, Thomas and Arpaio, filled the void and cater now to an angry mob, despite the fact that migrants enjoy the same Constitutional rights as the rest of us.