The National League of Cities passed a resolution highly critical of the Patriot Act. In addition 371 municipalities (and four states) have passed resolutions like the one we are presenting.

Here's how the Patriot Act affects us in Columbia.

Under the Patriot Act, federal authority is encroaching on our city. The federal government can access your church's records and your children's school records without your consent or knowledge and can even conduct autopsies. The FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force swears in local police to do their job thus taking away local control over the police. We won't know what they are doing so we won't be able to question the wisdom or legality of their actions.

Cities are being asked to enforce many provisions of this law without training or funding. These are unfunded mandates. For example, the FBI has asked local law enforcement to report activities they consider "suspicious" to the FBI's counter-terrorism units. These so called "suspicious" acts include: rehearsing for demonstrations, raising money via the Internet, and acquiring a gas mask. Under the Patriot Act City of Columbia law enforcement may, as in other cities, be asked to be immigration officers without training or funding. Training for this takes 13 weeks! Our city has enough to do without having to enforce these new laws.

The Patriot Act's new definition of "domestic terrorism" stifles political debate in our community, exposing political organizations to surveillance, wiretapping and criminal action for political advocacy. Such provisions deny freedom of speech and assembly to our citizens, freedoms that are being exercised locally every day —right here in our city.

The Patriot Act authorizes new secret searches which local law enforcement can participate in, often without the knowledge of their superiors. The FBI can now have access to highly personal records: medical, financial, mental health and student records. Under the Patriot Act the Richland County Public Library or any of the many privately owned bookstores in Columbia could be forced to release your borrowing or buying records to the FBI and you will never know. The National Library Association and the South Carolina Library Association have criticized these provisions of the Patriot Act and many libraries are spending extra time and money to shred, delete, and or erase borrowers' records as soon as materials are returned in an effort to safeguard the public's right to read without intimidation.

The Patriot Act is being applied in a discriminatory manner, encouraging racial profiling.

Provisions of the Patriot Act allow residents of our city who are non-citizens to be jailed based on mere suspicion and denied re-entry into the US for engaging in free speech. We need to safeguard the rights of everyone, including the growing Hispanic population in the midlands and foreign students who enrich our many universities. Once we take away rights from a group, there is a precedent for doing it again, to citizens.

The Patriot Act diminishes the cultural diversity that so enriches our community. Columbia is a university town, with many campuses. Colleges and universities have had to hire new people and create new procedures to satisfy new demands for records. The number of foreign students is dropping because those who leave may not be able to come back and others find it more difficult to come in the first place. These new immigration provisions mean we lose the positive experience of being in the United States that these students take back when they return home.

The Patriot Act leads to lost income from foreign students and other immigrants, lost opportunities for foreign owned companies to locate here, lost expertise in the "cluster" areas we are trying to encourage which will make Columbia a leader in innovation, key to its future economic growth.

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