Criminal background checks now required for housing aid

By Elizabeth Allen

Asheville, North Carolina, Sept. 17 (AGR)— Families receiving Section 8 housing vouchers are now required by federal law to have criminal background checks done by the local public housing authority (PHA) or the owner of the residence they are attempting to rent. The screening process is to prevent a family from receiving aid if any member of their family has a history of either drug-related or violent criminal activity. The PHA can decide if the record or incident warrants assistance, denial or eviction. According to Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulations eviction can occur if the “preponderance of evidence indicates that a family member has engaged in such activity, regardless of whether the family member has been arrested.”

Section 8 housing vouchers are a type of federal assistance given to eligible needy families to allow them to rent a private residence and pay about 30% of their income, with the remainder being paid by the PHA. Criminal records checks raise concerns over the rights of those who are seeking housing assistance. The right to privacy is an issue because the histories of the families seeking assistance are brought to the attention of the property owners, the police and the PHA for no reason other than they have asked for help. In Tucson, Arizona, consumer advocate Willy Bils feared that search warrants will be easier to obtain and individuals easier to profile. Locally, homeowners considering renting to Section 8 families are encouraged to conduct home visits and to require a credit check, a criminal check, and landlord references.

Homeless families are of first priority for receiving aid, but may be denied due to previous criminal records. In 1987 a study conducted by the Urban Institute demonstrated that one third of the homeless population had spent time in alcohol or drug treatment and 29% of single homeless men had spent time in prison. Although dated, the study demonstrates that a large quantity of the homeless population has problems with drugs or has a criminal record. Also significant is that the study only showed how many homeless people had received treatment for drug problems, not the percentage that were dealing with drug problems. In order for people with histories of drug problems to qualify for Section 8 housing, they must be able to prove that they were addicted to a substance and have recovered, and may be required to prove they have been involved in a treatment program.

Angel, a homeless resident of Asheville commented, “By doing criminal background checks they are denying people who want to change their life … and then they end up in jail. I just think it’s dumb man, they are denying people who need it.”

John Smith, who is disabled and sleeps in a car, continued, “Hillcrest has fifty or more apartments empty, and they [the residents] are getting put out for no reason, minor things…. Too many people out here living in the streets when they should be living in a place.”

Cheri Honkala of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, said the drug screening has become a major obstacle for families trying to obtain housing. She pointed out that entire families are rejected and forever ineligible because one of the family members has chosen to sell drugs out of necessity, it being the highest paying job available and a particular temptation for youth. In his book Down and Out in America: the Origins of Homelessness, Peter Rossi describes the loss of industrialized, unionized employment in the US in the 1980s as leading to increasing numbers of individuals and families unable to afford housing. The KWRU is dealing with the problem by putting families in abandoned “hot” houses, where they are living day by day.

For Honkala, lack of access to housing rather than invasion of privacy is the most pressing issue.

“For poor people, our lives are about nothing but scrutiny, we are really used to constant invasion of privacy,” she said.

Her statement is reflected in the surveys conducted in 1969, 1980, and 1990 by James Klugel and Elliot Smith, which showed the overwhelming majority of US citizens polled as holding individualistic explanations for poverty such as poor morals, work skills, or lack of effort or ability as opposed to structural explanations like lack of adequate schooling, low wages or lack of jobs. “As a result,” explained French social scientist Robert Castel in 1978, “the politics of welfare center around the management of individual deficiencies.” In other words, rather than dealing with the causes of drug addiction, individual families are refused housing as punishment for drug-related activity. This denial of housing contradicts the statement found in the Asheville Housing Authority’s Tennant Handbook, which claims: “As a US resident you are entitled by law to safe and decent housing.”

The policy of evicting tenants whose family members or guests participated in “drug-related criminal activity” was challenged by four residents of public housing in Oakland, California who where evicted when their children, grandchildren, or hired caretakers where caught with drugs. They claimed they had no knowledge of the activity and asked if the statute requiring eviction included an “innocent owner” defense and if it does not, then it is an unconstitutional violation of Due Process rights. The statute in question was the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 which states that each “public housing agency shall utilize leases… provid[ing] that any drug related criminal activity on or off [federally assisted low-income housing] premises, engaged in by a public housing tenant, any member of the tenant’s household, or any guest or other person under the tenant’s control, shall be cause of the termination of tenancy.”

After state court eviction proceedings, the cases were appealed to the 9th Circuit District Court of Appeals which decided that the “innocent owner” defense was part of congressional intent and the tenants where entitled to housing. The cases were then appealed to the Supreme Court and decided in March of 2002 in HUD v. Rucker. The Court opinion was delivered by Chief Justice Rehnquist, which all other members joined with the exception of Justice Breyer who took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. The Court overturned the 9th Circuit Court’s decision saying that the inclusion of the word “any” in the statue meant all drug-related activity “regardless of whether the tenant knew, or had reason to know, of that activity,” is grounds for eviction. They went on to state that the statute is not a violation of Due Process; unjustly depriving a person of their property, because the government is acting as a landlord, invoking a clause in a lease which Congress has required and to which both parties agreed. In addition it’s “not attempting to criminally punish or civilly regulate respondents as members of the general populace.” This statute and decision has laid the groundwork for the legality of background checks and Section 8 housing regulations. Locally, Section 8 applicants are put on a twelve- to eighteen-month-long waiting list to receive assistance and the background checks ensue once their name comes up. About 2 to 3 percent are rejected due to drugs, according to Section 8 caseworker Marjorie Scavella.

The wait itself hurts applicants because of the sheer length of time it takes. An Asheville resident, who didn’t want his name disclosed, explained that people with children in Department of Social Services custody are depending on housing in order to get their children back, and subsequently end up having to wait over a year just to get off the waiting list. Homeless applicants also have to deal with the wait while living on the street or in shelters.

Another homeless Asheville resident who wished to remain anonymous told about an incident with the Salvation Army shelter, which charges $60 a week. “After I paid they told me to take a drug test, and when I wouldn’t they kept the $60 and kicked me out. I went to Wal-Mart and bought a tent and sleeping bag and am staying in them. At least nobody can kick me out.”

White supremacist Matt Hale protested in Massachusetts

Compiled By Shawn Gaynor

Sept. 18 (AGR)— Violent skirmishes erupted in Wakefield, MA Saturday as the World Church of the Creator (WCotC), a group of white supremacists with a history of violence, held a speech at a public library given by self-proclaimed “church” leader Matt Hale. The event at the Wakefield Public Library forced Main Street to be closed down for three blocks. Over 200 police officers, drawn from throughout the area and brandishing plastic shields, were lined up in menacing riot-control formations and perched upon downtown buildings to keep tabs on the crowd that gathered in opposition to Hale.

One of the white supremacists who was stuck by anti-racist protesters

“It’s really scary,’’ said an 18-year-old Wakefield High School student. “They’re allowing them [the supremesists] to have freedom of speech, but they’re not allowing us the same thing. It’s our community also.’’

Supporters of Hale were shouted down with obscenities by over 600 angry townsfolk who had come out to express their opposition to this hate group.

As “church” supporters began to arrive in the area, the crowd confronted them, throwing pebbles, and spitting at them. One white supremacist was hit on the head with a stick, as some townspeople screamed, “You fuckin’ deserve it.”

Blocked from following the “church” members into the library, a throng of young protesters pressed in on police barricades, chanting ‘’Let us in.’’ Police first said the room’s 75 seats were full, but eventually found room for a handful of Hale’s opponents.

Several protesters inside the library disrupted the meeting, as roughly 40 “church” members chanted Nazi slogans and performed Nazi salutes. Opponents of the “church” chanted, “Smash the Nazis; we must unite.’’ Two disruptive protesters were removed from the meeting by police.

During the speech Hale said, “The World Church of the Creator hates in self-defense.’’

Fighting broke out a second time as “church” supporters emerged from the library. Several anti-racist protesters snuck up behind one of the white supremacists and smacked him over the head repeatedly. The burly neo-nazi crumbled to the ground with a whimper, yelping “Help, police!”

A young woman from Wakefield was one of the loudest opponents, getting in the face of several Hale supporters.

“The last thing I’m going to do is let somebody make me fear where I live,’’ she said.

Wakefield police said four people were arrested on disorderly conduct charges and onlookers reported scattered fights and several minor injuries. Edward Harris, dispatched by the US Justice Department to Wakefield as a conciliation specialist to assist police, said, “If folks are not obeying, if they’re violent by throwing rocks or [other means], they’re going to get arrested. And that’s exactly what happened.”

Another Wakefield woman and her husband brought their two boys, 10-year-old Nicholas and 7-year-old Maverick, to hear Hale and his hateful disciples.

“It’s crazy that they would even come here,’’ she said. “I don’t want my sons to grow up thinking hate is OK in any way, shape or form.’’

The World Church of the Creator gained notoriety in 1999, when member Benjamin Smith shot two dead and injured nine others in a Midwest killing spree. Since then, Hale says his organization’s membership has grown. Erica Chase, recently convicted in Boston in a bomb plot with her neo-Nazi boyfriend, Leo Felton, was a member of the church.

Several recent WCofC meetings have been disrupted by outraged citizens, most notably in January of this year in York, Pennsylvania, where white supremacists and crowds of anti-racists clashed in running street fights. During that incident a white supremacist fired shots from a pistol in a parking lot altercation, and another hit several protesters with his pick-up truck.

Jonathan Crowell, an anti-racist who was accused of assaulting a police horse at that event, was found not guilty this week by a York jury. Trials are still pending for several anti-racists facing lesser charges.

Sources: Boston Globe, Boston Herald. additional information from AGR staff

Relatives of Sept. 11 victims reject more violence

By Katherine Stapp

New York, New York, Sept. 11 (IPS)— When US President George W. Bush addressed the nation from New York’s historic Ellis Island on Wednesday, dozens of families who lost loved ones last Sept. 11 tuned out. They were holding their own vigil to honor the dead - and to denounce the administration’s “war on terror.” “My brother Jim died on the 95th floor of the North Tower,” said David Potorti, a member of ‘September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows’. “This is a really emotional time.”

But Potorti, and about 40 other relatives of those killed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, strongly believe that US military action - in Afghanistan, the Philippines, and imminently against Iraq - will only cause greater suffering.

“Sept. 11 must not continue to be used to promote more war and violence,” said Colleen Kelly, whose brother William perished at the World Trade Center that day, one year ago.

The group is now on a national speaking tour in hopes that their coming forward will inspire Americans to question the Bush administration’s response to the catastrophe. Their name is taken from a quote by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in which he says “wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”

When September 11 Families formed in the weeks following the attacks, and publicly condemned the invasion of Afghanistan, “there was tremendous fear and anger,” Potorti said. “Speaking out at that time was a very brave act.”

While the administration has not altered its initial stance of “with us or against us,” Potorti said his group has found a groundswell of support here and abroad.

“Thousands of Americans are deeply concerned about where our country is heading,” he said.

Rangina Hamidi, an Afghan-American touring with September 11 Families, pointed out that the vast majority of events to commemorate the attacks ignore the civilian casualties incurred during the ouster of the repressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

“We are also approaching the anniversary of the bombing of Afghanistan, in which thousands of people lost their lives, probably at least 10,000, although we will never know exactly how many,” she said.

September 11 Families is pressuring Bush to create a $20million fund to aid Afghan families who lost members in the war. So far, the president has refused to meet with them. On their own, they have collected and distributed $7,000.

They say they have also found some measure of solace.

For others, especially those injured in the attacks, just getting through the day is an achievement.

Gary Smiley, a veteran paramedic from Brooklyn, lay pinned under the smoking ruins of the South Tower for at least two hours before an unknown fireman dug him out. He was certain he would die.

Smiley lost 27 friends and colleagues that day. Two fire chiefs were killed within inches of him. He managed to carry out several people before being buried in a blizzard of debris.

When Smiley got out of the hospital, he immediately went back to ground zero and delved into the hellish task of sifting through the rubble in search of survivors, then bodies. He found many, maybe some of them people he knew. Paradoxically, it was the only place he felt safe.

A year later, he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The city is giving him a prestigious “rescue survivor” ribbon next month, but it means little, he says.

“I’m not reconciled at all with what happened,” said Smiley, who has continued to work as a paramedic. “They keep telling us to just get over it. Well, I can’t get over it. My greatest fear is that after it’s all said and done, they’ll forget about us.”

He feels left out of the vast web of relief efforts, most of which are directed at relatives rather than rescue workers who were on the scene.

“The biggest problem is that there’s nothing for the survivors,” he said. “The firemen have the firehouse to go to. But we’ve been getting the run-around from almost every group.”

Timothy Cusack, also a long-time New York City paramedic, agreed that emergency medical technicians and paramedics have been sidelined. This may be due to the cold arithmetic of attrition -- 343 fire-fighters, 23 police officers and eight emergency medical services workers perished at the World Trade Center.

Still, “everybody’s bitter about it,” he said. “It’s not like it’s a year later and the city is remembering what we did. Morale is at rock bottom.”

What will be done with the site - now a raw hole in the ground - is uncertain. The city just rejected six proposals for rebuilding due to overwhelming public antipathy, and reopened bidding to US and international architectural firms.

As the anniversary looms, average New Yorkers -- those who neither lost someone nor were at the towers -- are marking the date in different ways.

Stephanie, a high school teacher in Brooklyn, said her school had nothing formal planned for Sept. 11. “Different teachers are doing what’s right for them,” she said. “We don’t want to traumatize the kids by talking about it every single period. I’ll probably have my kids write an essay.”

“The main thing I learned is that what I believe is not always right,” said Stephanie, who did not want her last name used. “When (former New York mayor) Rudy Giuliani -- who I loathe -- came on television, I said, ‘thank God, this megalomaniacal demagogue will protect us’.”

Stephanie was lucky. Her brother was at the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, and describes it as one of the worst days of his life. He says he will never forget watching scores of people jump from the burning South Tower.

“First it was one at a time, then two, some holding hands, then four, then six, then one and two again,” he recounted. “Men and women were weeping, holding each other up as the emotional pain was too much for many of us. They would not stop coming out of that building. I stopped counting the jumpers at 30, it became too painful.”

It was then, he said, that the rest of the South Tower “sheared off and came down.”

For the September 11 Families, the events of that day are “something from which we will never recover, not in one year, not in a lifetime.”

But “responding to violence with violence only escalates the suffering, creating fresh wounds and breeding more resentment,” Potorti said.

Norton found in contempt for handling of trust fund

Sept. 17— A federal judge today held Secretary of Interior Gale Norton in contempt of court for her handling of the Indian trust fund.

Secretary of Interior
Gale Norton

US District Judge Royce Lamberth in a 265-page opinion found Norton guilty of concealing information from the court, providing false and misleading information to the court and failing to protect the assets of 500,000 American Indians. Also held in contempt was Assistant Secretary Neal McCaleb, head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Norton and McCaleb, the opinion states, are “unfit to be trustee-delegates.” “The Department of Interior has truly outdone itself this time,” Lamberth wrote. “The agency has indisputably proven to the court, Congress, and the individual Indian beneficiaries that it is either unwilling or unable to administer competently the IIM trust.”

The decision comes after a several-month wait. Lamberth wrapped up proceedings in February after a grueling trial which delved into nearly two years of history under both the Clinton and Bush administrations. The complexity of the issues was reflected in Lamberth’s lengthy ruling. He specifically found Norton and McCaleb in contempt on four of five charges they faced.

On the first charge — the failure to start an historical accounting of funds owed to Indian beneficiaries — Lamberth found litigation misconduct. The next three charges related to the failure of the Department of Interior to provide information about the accounting and the status of a $40 million software accounting system.

The final charge concerned the dismal computer security protections of the Indian trust. Lamberth found that hackers can easily break into the system and steal money belonging to Indian people without leaving a trace. Despite the slam-dunk decision, Lamberth will not appoint a court receiver to oversee Indian assets. But in a significant rejection of the Bush administration’s position, he found that he has the constitutional authority to do so.

Lamberth also increased court oversight of the Interior, which the administration has also resisted. He increased the role of court monitor Joseph S. Kieffer, a former military intelligence specialist whom Norton wants removed from the case.

Attorneys for Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in the case, were elated. They plan to ask for court fees and move forward with the landmark class action in hopes of settling the trust accounts.

John Wright, a spokesperson for the Interior said the department would comment shortly.

Source: Indianz.com

Hundreds rally at Justice Dept.

Hundreds of protesters marched to the Department of Justice Friday, Sept. 13, accusing the attorney general of using racial profiling.

Demonstrators feel Attorney General John Ashcroft has a closed-door policy and ignores the rights of those accused, including those put into custody during the “war on terror.” “We have people who are being held today, we don’t know who they are [and] we don’t know where they are,” said James Zogby of the Arab American Institute.

“We and they don’t know the charges against them and they don’t have the right to an attorney. In some cases, people have been deported without their families even knowing where they are.”

People came from as far as Atlanta, GA and many were part of larger organizations such as the NAACP, National Organization of Women, and the ACLU. (www.nbc4.com)

Jackson dismisses Founding Fathers

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Sept. 15 told about 600 Michigan State University students that US democracy was 37 years old, not 200-plus, and that “democracy as we know it did not begin in Philadelphia, where a bunch of white men wrote the laws.”

“These men’s wives were not allowed [to vote], these laws were made at a time when only white men had the right to vote,” Mr. Jackson said, noting that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was the commencement of “true democracy.”

Any military action in Iraq, he said, at this point would violate UN and international law. He also noted that the US has a history of supporting political despots. ”We supported the shah of Iran, and we drove the Islamic revolution into being,” Jackson said. “They saw us as allies of oppression.

We supported the Taliban. We gave $6 million to the Taliban. The Taliban was our ally until Sept. 11.” (Washington Times)

SOA Watch activists begin federal prison term

On Tuesday, Sept. 10, 23 human rights activists reported to federal prison. They were among the 37 who went to trial in July for civil disobedience at the School of the Americas (renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) in Columbus, Georgia. The 37 were among 10,000 who gathered in a massive protest last November to demand the closure of the school. The defendants peacefully crossed onto Fort Benning, the site of the school. Thirty-six of the defendants were convicted of trespass, with sentences ranging from six months probation to six months in federal prison and $5000 in fines. (www.soaw.org)

Nuke plant workers may discuss exposure to harmful materials

The federal government announced in a Pentagon report released Sept. 16 that former employees at a nuclear weapons plant in Iowa will be allowed to talk to doctors and researchers about their exposure to harmful materials, despite an oath the workers took not to discuss details about their jobs. The oaths have been a hurdle for thousands of employees seeking medical care or federal benefits, or who want to take part in health studies.

Workers will be able to say which harmful materials they worked with, but not how each substance was used.

From the late 1940s through the mid-1970s, the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in Middletown assembled and test-fired nuclear weapons components. It continues to produce conventional weapons. The employee letter says workers may have been exposed to silica, beryllium, solvents, explosives, epoxies, and heavy metals.

The report also identifies more than 38,500 workers who are eligible for a new study on the health effects of exposure to radioactive and hazardous materials, and says the government has identified nearly 4,000 who were assigned to the section where nuclear components were assembled and test-fired. (AP)

Decades-old surveillance files surface in Portland

A former Portland police officer decades ago removed more than 30 boxes of police surveillance records and photos on political activists and groups from the 1960s to early 1980s that, by state law, should have been destroyed in 1981.

The records were discovered 15 years after the officer’s death in 1987.

But the passage of time has not lessened the concerns of local activists, but it has fueled their frustrations with law enforcement. With a hearing scheduled Thursday on whether the City Council should renew Portland police participation in the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force, critics plan to use the files as fodder for arguing for stronger oversight of police intelligence gathering.

The records — including files on Mayor Vera Katz, American Civil Liberties Union members and former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt — were discovered 15 years after the officer, Winfield Falk, died in 1987.

One of the two sets of “subversives” files kept by the Portland Police Bureau dealt with suspected communists and labor radicals, or “Wobblies,” between the first and second World Wars. The second set of files dealt mostly with Vietnam-era activists of the 1960s and 1970s ranging from civil rights protesters to members of radical movements such as the Black Panthers.

In the 1970s, when the bureau handed over intelligence gathered on the ACLU to the organization, it maintained the information represented virtually everything the bureau had, said Dave Fidanque of the ACLU of Oregon.

But the file on the ACLU that Falk held onto included intelligence gathered as late as 1982 or 1983, he said. It contained newspaper clippings, ACLU newsletters, and membership lists.

“The assurances have been unequivocal that this activity stopped in the ’70s” Fidanque said, “but we know that isn’t true.”

A 1981 state law prohibits police from collecting or maintaining information about the political, religious or social views of any individual or group unless the information is part of a criminal investigation and involves criminal conduct. Any state records that did not comply with state law were to be purged. (Portland Oregonian)

Man takes pot shots at drug chopper

A Missouri National Guard helicopter on a marijuana eradication mission in the southwest Missouri Ozarks was brought down by gunfire on Sept. 3. The chopper was disabled, but the pilot brought it down safely and neither he nor his passengers were injured.

Missouri police charged Jimmy Leroy Shriver with twice shooting at the copter as it flew over his property. A search of his property turned up no drugs, but two stolen shotguns. He was also charged in federal court with being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was convicted of possession of a controlled substance in 1998. (DRCNet)