Politically Inspired Fiction: The Patriot Actor

By Stephen Elliott, AlterNet. Posted April 22, 2003.

Politically Inspired is fiction inspired by current events. A new short story will appear weekly on AlterNet.

Any right of privacy possessed by library and bookstore patrons in such information is necessarily and inherently limited since, by the nature of these transactions, the patron is reposing that information in the library or bookstore and assumes the risk that the entity may disclose it to another.
-- Daniel J. Bryant, Assistant Attorney General

I'm talking to Apple Computer when I first hear it. My phone clicks, then a wave of static crushes through the receiver, then passes. I was talking about my printer, about how my computer wasn't printing.

"Did you hear that?" I ask the technician on the other end.

"I didn't hear anything," he says. Then he tells me to insert my re-install disc, hold down the C key, and reboot. "We're going to start from scratch."

When the first PATRIOT Act was signed by President George W. Bush on Oct. 26, 2001, I read the entire text as posted on the New York Times website. There was a photograph of Attorney General John Ashcroft, standing in front of a curtain that had been draped across a naked statue. He looked like an angry, unforgiving father. Sixty-six Congress members voted against the PATRIOT Act; 357 voted for it. It passed the Senate overwhelmingly. The government was going to listen in and watch anyone they wanted.

I had just broken up with my girlfriend. My father was calling constantly, insisting on giving me his opinion of the current crisis. The administration asked me to take a cut in pay from the university where I teach. They said they wanted to bring in some new talent. I realized that I was nobody's best friend. And it felt as if in all the world nobody was listening to me. And why would they? There were bombs destroying entire mountains in the Middle East.

"When you shaved my head it really fucked me up," I say to my father. I'm lying on my wood floor, my head against the end of my mattress. I'm staring at the pigeons outside perched on the roof of the chocolate factory.

"I didn't shave your head. I gave you a haircut. Why are we talking about this? That was twenty years ago."

"You were hitting me while I was sleeping. I woke up and you were punching me and then you dragged me into the kitchen and shaved my head. I looked like a mental patient. You told the pharmacy on Pratt and California not to sell me any razors blades so I went to the Walgreen's."

"This isn't like you to rehash all of this old shit. I was an imperfect parent. Look, I said I was sorry. What more do you want? Isn't that enough?"

"No," I say. "It isn't."

When my father hangs up the phone I whisper into the headset. "Did you hear that? Are you listening?"

When Sami Al-Arian was arrested for supporting Islamic Jihad I sent $20 to the department of engineering at the University of Florida where he teaches. I checked out Fahrenheit 451, The Bomb, and the Journal of Irreproducible Results from the San Francisco Public Library, where I was informed by a sign that the federal government has access to my library records. I joined the Free Palestine mailing list and hung anti-war posters from my windows. I went to rallies sponsored by Global Exchange and cheered for Medea Benjamin as she brushed her straight golden hair from in front of her eyes and told the crowd, "Regime change begins at home." When the Workers World Party asked me if I wanted to volunteer I said yes.

On Feb. 16, 2003 at the Civic Center they estimate 200,000 people show up to protest the impending war. I help build the stage. The volunteers organize behind the shell and then pass out flyers. The flyers state that when war starts people should walk off their jobs and meet at Fifth and Powell in a giant uprising.

Five days after the protest the San Francisco Chronicle runs an article using aerial photography to prove there were only 65,000 marchers at the protest. I tape the newspaper photographs to the wall of my apartment, the people, tiny dots filling up the streets, the airplanes watching, documenting the evidence. Soon it comes out that it wasn't just the newspapers. The police had spies in the crowd with tape recorders; they were filming everything. They want to use the film in court to prove an officer's innocence. The officer has been accused of brutality. The ACLU is demanding the police department destroy the tapes. The chief of police resigns. Everything is starting to make sense.

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