Freedom Vol. 47 Issue 5

Baltimore: a search for justice

June 2015—Vol. 47, Issue 5

p. 22

Published by the Church of Scientology International

A SCAN OF ‘NET NEUTRALITY,’ THE COMPLICATED ISSUE OF REGULATING BROADBAND INTERNET ACCESS

Net nuances P. 14 Supporters of an “Open Internet”—so-called Net Neutrality—gathered outside the White House earlier this year to put their message in lights. Preserving “open access” to the contents of the Net, advocates argue, is of vital public importance. Perhaps. But balancing government regulation of the Net with the rights of private interests to realize value from their multibillion-dollar investment in Internet infrastructure remains a hotly contested issue. A major ruling in February by the Federal Communications Commission endorsing Net Neutrality, over industry objections, is now the subject of legal challenges.

[FEATURES] INSPIRED YOUTH The global imperative of protecting human rights draws Youth for Human Rights delegates from around the world; they come to learn —and leave to teach in their own lands.

BY DAN LUZADDER

IN THE MIDDLE In Switzerland, where beauty and perfection seamlessly interweave, the nation’s first Ideal Church of Scientology opens in Basel, the trinational city on the Rhine.

BY JOHN F. SUGG

A TANGLED WEB Net Neutrality—a popular concept suggesting the Internet should remain “open” to all—is under the microscope following its endorsement by the Federal Communications Commission. What will it mean for technology, communications and the public?

BALTIMORE’S DILEMMA Both violent and peaceful protests gripped Baltimore following the police-custody death of Freddie Gray; now citizens are looking into what it means to be a minority in a city where the roots of racism run deep.

BY RAY RICHMOND

previous page: george frey/getty images

BY PRICE COLMAN

[DEPARTMENTS] Media & Ethics The recent events in Baltimore aren’t new or inexplicable. John Sugg takes us back 50 years, to Gainesville, Florida, to shake the American public, and the media, out of their cultural amnesia.

BY JOHN F. SUGG

Profile April Burrell, the “Mother Teresa” of Baltimore, learned the lessons of life on the streets by helping others.

BY RAY RICHMOND

L. Ron Hubbard Essay Riots

What is Scientology?

Confront

Editorial Net Freedom

Talk Back Letters from our readers

News Briefs Patriot Act: Section 215 drama; app makes cell phone videos police-proof; Rolling Stone sued for rape story; Medicaid mismanages kids’ drugs; complaint charges Harvard bias; America’s religion shifts; and more.

Freedom Magazine

Investigative reporting in the public interest, published by the Church of Scientology International

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ON THE COVER:

Illustration by Carl De Torres

DITORIAL

Net Freedom AN OFT-REPEATED TRUISM is that technology

is accelerating. No doubt.

For millennia, men killed each other with clubs, spears and swords. Then for a few hundred years, they blasted at one another with cannons and guns. When World War II began, early battles involved horse cavalry and flimsy biplanes. The conflict ended when scientists split the atom and obliterated two cities. Many feared—and many still fear—the accelerating technology of death may end the cosmic experiment of life on this planet. That’s called progress.

Equally dramatic, although not so obviously lethal, were the techno advances involved in the manipulation of ones and zeroes. The earliest computers date from the 1830s and the “difference machine” of Englishman Charles Babbage.

Another Brit, Alan Turing (made a household name in the 2014 film The Imitation Game) cracked the Nazis’ Enigma codes and ushered in the modern digital age of computers. It then took four decades after World War II for computers to shrink from warehouse-size collections of vacuum tubes to, well, those immensely more powerful gadgets called tablets and cell phones.

Sad that Turing, Babbage and their contemporaries never saw an iPhone. (Would they have rejoiced or burned their plans?)

Conflated with the history of computers was an equally accelerating technology, the Internet. Who wrote this: “The improved ‘limitless-distance’ telephone was presently introduced, and the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody, and audibly discussable, too, by witnesses separated by any number of leagues.”

A young Steve Jobs or Bill Gates? Nope, it was Mark Twain, in a bit of science fiction he penned in 1904. Note that not only does he nail the Internet, but he also prophesies social media.

There were many other sci-fi writers—Douglas Adams, William Gibson, Isaac Asimov, John Brunner—who foresaw a global, easily accessible network of information. Although the Internet is so utterly ubiquitous today, it was only a little more than two decades ago that we watched our first World Wide Web pages crawl across a monitor in painful slowness. True, the U.S. military had been tinkering with ARPANET since the 1960s, but it was the civilian “web,” with graphics, hyperlinks, streaming and so, so very much more that turned civilization on its head.

Science has truly been transformative. The Internet is so essential, life without it would be like losing one of your senses.

The next frontier is likely to include a direct interface between the Net and your mind, and forget those archaic relics called computers and cell phones.

So, let’s shift gears, or paradigms, and talk about justice. If all people need commonly available commodities to function in society—water, electricity, phones—there has developed a social contract in most of the industrialized world that mandates fair, 4

accessible, regulated service. Picture, if you will, the electric company charging such high rates that only the very wealthy could light up their homes, while the teeming masses would only get a few volts.

Outrageous, you say. How could society function if most people couldn’t afford those teensy electrons powering TVs and toasters?

That’s essentially the argument in the cover article of this issue of Freedom. The topic is “Net Neutrality.” It’s one of those terms that crest on the tsunami of accelerating technology. Quite likely, by the time we completely understand it, the next techno tidal wave will have rendered it obsolete.

But for now, Net Neutrality is a hot-button item. On one side, people and companies that have invested gazillions in building the Internet and its delivery technology are clamoring to recoup their ante by charging premiums for some information and for the speed at which it is transmitted. Facing off against them, many groups—across the political spectrum—demand an egalitarian Internet.

Journalist Price Colman untangles the conundrum about Net Neutrality in his story “A Tangled Web.” Although the Federal Communications Commission this year ruled in favor of Net Neutrality, it’s a battle that will continue. It’s a fascinating smackdown of ideas, not just legalities, and paramount is the concept of justice. Is it justice to deprive AT&T, Verizon and other tech giants of profits to recoup their billions invested in research and development? Is it justice for all people to have equal access to a robust, interactive Internet? Will people see what they want on the Internet, or will some company or group pay to ensure that their message is the most easily available? Whose rights should prevail? In all such discussions, the importance of freedoms as enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights must be paramount.

In this issue of Freedom you will read other articles on justice: Baltimore. Senior Writer Ray Richmond, who in our October 2014 Freedom reported from the ground on the thorny issues in Ferguson, Missouri, adds another chapter on how America can, with justice, deal with race, poverty, violence and law enforcement. Also, Freedom’s Florida-based editor, John Sugg, drills down in on the press role in creating amnesia about civic strife.

Plus, Freedom profiles Baltimore’s “Mother Teresa” and listens to young people who are actively furthering human rights, with an impressive grasp of issues that belies their youth.

And finally, we visit the dedication of the new Ideal Church of Scientology in Basel, Switzerland, and take a look inside this first for that country.

A lot to enjoy and think about!

—The Editors

ALK BACK

LETTERS to the Editor Patriot Games May 2015

“Your article, ‘Patriot Games,’ spoke directly to my personal angst and anger at the NSA’s bulk surveillance. I believe they and their secretive ilk are running amok with our personal currency—our private data, if you will—and if left unrestrained would use it for what, exactly? Maybe it works for a political roundup at the orders of a tyrant wanting to wipe out opposition? This citizen simply does not trust these people or programs.

“Ben Franklin said it most eloquently: ‘Those willing to sacrifice essential liberty to obtain temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ The dangers of Ben’s day were not unlike those we face today. The British knew where he lived, and weren’t afraid to come knocking. We know the feeling, Ben.” M.N., Lititz, PA

Pictures of Inspiration May 2015

“It put a lump in my throat and nearly brought tears to my eyes. … It is an article that everybody should read, a piece of history that everybody should know about. And it chronicles a spirit that everybody should have the opportunity to share.”

C.G., Clearwater, FL

Media & Ethics May 2015

“The supposed watchers at freedom’s gate, the ‘journalists,’ do not learn in places like Columbia J-School how to craft a credible story with unvarnished facts. Today’s media pushes a collectivist agenda that erodes our great nation’s underpinnings.”

O.P., Atlanta, GA

Tool of the Trade May 2015

“The President allows members of Congress to be alone in a room with a 2,000page document, but no paper, pen, camera or anything else that might capture and leak details.

Not exactly the ‘most transparent administration.’”

Q.R., Cheyenne, WY

Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

Online Edition “I struggle watching people put their children on behavior-modifying medication when there is a long history of the horrible consequences of this. I admire Scientologists for saying there is a better way, that you don’t need drugs.

It inspires me to want to be a better person.”

A.P., Lakeland, OH Send letters to info@freedommag.org

www.freedommag.org | 5 5

EWS BRIEFS

Fate of Domestic Surveillance Left to the 11th Hour Efforts in Congress to retain the federal government’s mass surveillance powers took a setback on May 23 as a group of Republican senators blocked legislation aimed at extending three key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, just eight days before the clauses were scheduled to expire.

The senators, led by Rand Paul of Kentucky, helped defeat a bill whose Section 215 would have extended provisions of the Patriot Act that allow federal agencies to indiscriminately collect bulk data on the phone records of Americans.

This in addition to conducting warrantless spying on non-U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism, and, without ever having to identify them by name, wiretapping their phone lines, mobile communications devices or Internet connections.

The bill, backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, also from Kentucky, sought to extend those surveillance programs for two months beyond their June 1 sunset. The bill was defeated 57-42 on a procedural vote that fell three votes short of the 60-vote threshold required for its passage.

Immediately before the bill’s defeat, the Senate also rejected a bipartisan measure— the USA Freedom Act—that was approved by the House of Representatives on May 13. The legislation seeks to change the Patriot Act by ending the government’s mass collection of Americans’ phone records while still allowing federal agencies to access the information from phone companies on a case-by-case basis.

The measure fell three votes short of the 60 votes it required to succeed in the Senate, with 12 Republican senators

voting for it. The 57 to 42 vote tally followed a vigorous debate and intense lastminute pressure from senior Republican leaders. But those efforts ultimately proved ineffective in the face of stiff opposition from a group of relatively younger libertarian-leaning Republican senators led by Sen. Paul.

A candidate in the 2016 presidential election, Paul has long opposed extending Section 215 of the Patriot Act by even a single day. On May 20–21, he spoke in the Senate against the provision for over 10 hours, arguing that Section 215 is harmful to liberty and privacy—a stand that the American Civil Liberties Union has also taken since the Patriot Act was created in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. (On May 7, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the ACLU in a case against the government over Section 215.)

The back-to-back votes in the Senate, which came minutes before lawmakers broke for recess following a six-week session, were interpreted by media as a major embarrassment for Sen. McConnell. Just hours earlier, McConnell had been cheered by the successful passage of a “fast track” trade promotion bill related to the TransPacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade alliance opposed by a variety of public interest and human rights groups, partly because it has been secretly negotiated.

In hopes that lawmakers might still come to an agreement over the Patriot Act, McConnell said he would reconvene the Senate on May 31, just hours before the midnight deadline to extend the law’s key provisions.

ACLU’s New App ‘Protects’ Cell Videos of Police Abuse “Mobile Justice,” a free smartphone app from the American Civil Liberties Union, allows users to capture exchanges with law enforcement and automatically transmit the video to ACLU chapters in various states—preserving it even if the phone is seized or destroyed. The app, which can be used on Android and iOS phones, also provides information on individual rights.

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Illustration by Chris Koehler

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Reports Misuse of Antipsychotics on Medicaid-Enrolled Children

document “eramo v. rolling stone”; rena schild/shutterstock.com

A study by the Department of Health and Human Services on the use of antipsychotic drugs among children enrolled in Medicaid found quality-of-care concerns in 67 percent of the 687 cases reviewed.

The study, released in March, found evidence of poor management of drug regimes in 53 percent of cases, and that 41 percent of patients received the wrong treatment, 34 percent took prescribed drugs for too long, 23 percent got the wrong dose, and 37 percent took too many drugs.

Even very young children were prescribed multiple drugs: In one case, a 4-year-old diagnosed with ADHD and a mood disorder was given four psychotropic drugs. And, in California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas, 92 percent of Medicaid claims showed antipsychotics were prescribed without “medically accepted pediatric indications,” according to the study.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that children on Medicaid are prescribed antipsychotics four times more often than those with private insurance.

46%

of the time, peaceful protest was effective against government repression, according to new research, which also found that non-violence tended to foster democracy.

Rolling Stone Sued for Defamation Associate Dean Nicole Eramo of the University of Virginia has sued Rolling Stone magazine over its retracted campus rape story, claiming she was defamed. The suit seeks $7.5m in damages.

Illustration by Roy Huerta

7

EWS BRIEFS

Harvard Admissions Complaint Claims Bias Against Asian-Americans Harvard University faces new allegations of racial discrimination in admission policies, according to a complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights office last month.

A coalition of 64 Asian-American organizations filed the allegations, contending Asian-American students are routinely discriminated against by admissions policies that are highly subjective. Harvard denied the allegations. Robert Iuliano, the school’s general counsel, said in a statement: “The College’s admissions policies are fully compliant with the law and are essential to the pedagogical objectives that underlie its educational mission.”

He noted an earlier complaint, similar to the new filing, was examined by the DOE’s civil rights investigators who concluded Harvard’s admissions policies were within the law.

The complaint claims Asian-American students had to score 140 points higher on SAT tests than white students, and 450 points higher than African-American students, to be considered for admission. It calls for immediate cessation of discriminatory practices and seeks a federal investigation.

A Case for Troubled Economies to Go ‘Cashless’ A troubled economic system in Argentina, complicated by low confidence in the nation’s currency, is prompting suggestions that the country go cashless, instead using some form of electronic currency (such as Bitcoin). Technology/emerging markets blogger Pablo Valerio wrote in April that going “cashless” could help reduce bribery and other public corruption, help Argentina and similarly struggling economies deal with black market exchange rates for U.S. dollars, address debt, and prepare for a more stable currency.

Valerio worries that “tinkering” with Argentina’s failing currency could render the nation’s paper money worthless—as happened in Venezuela—and that lifting existing currencyexchange restrictions to allow Argentinians to buy U.S. dollars could cause a run on the country’s banks.

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Micronations Claim ‘No Man’s Land’ in Europe So-called ‘micronations’—one as small as a garden plot—are popping up at an increasing rate, attracting potential “virtual” citizens. The most recent is the Kingdom of Enclava, proclaimed April 23 on a small parcel of land on the Croatia-Slovenia border, citing terra nullius (no man’s land).

According to Enclava’s official website, founders are drafting a constitution and have plans to create a tax-free community of like-minded people who will be able to choose from five official languages—English, Polish, Slovenian, Croatian and Mandarin Chinese. By mid-May, more than 5,000 people had applied for citizenship.

The Free Republic of Liberland, another European micronation, sits on the west bank of the Danube at the Croatia-Serbia border. Like Enclava, Liberland has no official recognition from any world government but has drawn more than 300,000 applicants.

Feds Approve U.S.-Cuba Ferry The Obama administration has granted licenses to four companies planning ferry service between Florida and Cuba—for the first time in 50 years. Leonard Moecklin Sr., managing partner of Havana Ferry, called the development a “… [historic] event” in relations between the U.S. and Cuba, the Florida Sun Sentinel reported. The move follows the President’s December 2014 announcement that the U.S. and communist Cuba would restore diplomatic relations after a long estrangement brought on by the Cold War.

Spending for ‘Experience’ Makes People Happier Than Buying ‘Things’ People who spend their money on “experiential purchases”— travel, adventure, a class or workshop, a visit to a museum, or even a nice meal in a restaurant—net more lasting happiness from those expenditures than they would from buying material things like new shoes or a dining room set, according to a study by Cornell University professor Thomas Gilovich.

Gilovich told Fast Company that in 20+ years of study on the relationship between money and happiness, he consistently found that satisfaction from purchasing material goods fades faster and produces less anticipatory joy than money spent on experiences—the opposite of long-held conventional wisdom on the subject.

America’s Shifting Religious Landscape Religious affiliations among America’s millennial generation “… display much lower levels … than older generations,” including declining connections to Catholic and mainline Protestant churches, a Pew Research Center study found.

Illustration by Afu Chan

“Between 2007 and 2014, the Christian share of the population fell from 78.4 percent to 70.6 percent,” the study released in May reported. “By contrast the size of the historically black Protestant tradition has remained relatively stable … [and] evangelical Protestants, while declining slightly as a percentage of the U.S. public, probably have

grown in absolute numbers as the overall U.S. population has continued to expand.”

Americans of non-Christian faiths rose from 4.7 to 5.9 percent in the study period, while those who said they were unaffiliated—defined by Pew as “atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular’”—showed the sharpest increase, from 16.1 to 22.8 percent.

EDIA & ETHICS

Why Words Matter

BY JOHN F. SUGG IN 1968, THE COLLEGE TOWN of Gainesville,

Florida, like most of the nation, was roiling with racial unrest, and more fuel was being splashed on the discontent by an unpopular war in Vietnam. Gainesville was the South, after all, and the local 10

newspaper, The Sun, teamed up with the white law enforcement establishment to silence any inquiry into racism, poverty and, as the black community saw things, the white police occupation of AfricanAmerican neighborhoods. State Judge

J.C. Adkins shut down Black Voices, the only newspaper in the town with an African-American perspective, declaring in the fine Southern tradition of wiping his feet on the U.S. Constitution that the journal was a “clear and present danger.”

Federal judges would later slap down that affront to the First Amendment.

But before the federal jurists ruled, other events swept the nation into a maelstrom. The Kerner Commission, created

by President Lyndon Johnson, tried to examine the causes of race riots that had ravaged large swaths of American cities the year before. On April 4, barely a month after the commission’s weak-tea report was Illustration by David Stuart

released, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis.

Scores of American cities erupted. The anger raged higher when still another assassination occurred: Robert F. Kennedy on June 6.

In Gainesville, two young black girls had been molested while in police custody, and an all-white grand jury whitewashed the cops. Skirmishes began on the streets. Judge Adkins craftily marginalized anyone who supported civil rights as “white beatniks” and “Black Power.”

The judge then made a not-subtle clarion call: “If I ever get my hands on [the demonstrators], I hope they get to

the court without a lynching.” Hint, hint.

I wrote about those events as a young journalist for what was then called an “underground” newspaper. Even then I realized the power of words and the media.

Judge Adkins couldn’t officially endorse lynching, but he brought up the idea and implicitly made it a reasonable reaction for white citizens. The local daily newspaper amplified the fear and hatred among the white, middle-class citizenry.

Almost four decades later, in 2006, I wrote about the centennial of the Atlanta Race Riot. Oh? You haven’t heard about that terrible conflagration in 1906? You’re not alone. Almost no

one in Atlanta had been told the story.

One reason was a dearth of information from the daily newspaper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which, along with the business elite in the city has steadfastly tried to bury their own roles in many racist events.

A century earlier, there were three newspapers, including the then separately owned Constitution and Journal. Top bosses at the two newspapers were vying to become governor, and they each competitively fanned racial hatred as the preferred Southern way to political success. Running newspapers gave them the ultimate soapbox for demagoguery. www.freedommag.org | 11

One Journal headline screamed: “BLACK FIEND.” The Constitution retaliated with lurid claims of black men stalking white neighborhoods and raping girls—with never a bit of facts in the accusations.

My youthful articles in 1968 targeted one major flaw with the Kerner Commission: It wasn’t exactly race at fault for the riots; it was institutionalized poverty. A member of the Commission, former U.S. Sen. Fred Harris of Oklahoma, had the same worry in 1998: “[T]hirty years after the Kerner Report, there is more poverty in America, it is deeper, blacker and browner than before, and it is more concentrated in the cities, which have become America’s poorhouses.”

Cut to Baltimore, Maryland, circa now.

When Freddie Gray died April 19 from spinal injuries while in custody of Baltimore police, the ensuing events in the city had exactly the same root causes as riots in Detroit and Newark in 1967, with one techno twist: today’s ubiquitous presence of cell phone recordings, which spreads anger and response much faster than a half century ago.

Freedom Senior Writer Ray Richmond has covered the traumatic civic convulsions in Ferguson, Missouri, and in this issue of the magazine he scrutinizes Baltimore. Among many strong analyses in his report, Richmond notes that the media was largely absent when a man was killed while in police custody and when demonstrations were non-violent. Only when a tiny fraction of demonstrators started looting and burning did the media swarm in.

Here’s what most media did not report: Nationally, white family net worth is 13 times that of blacks; in constant dollars, white household net worth increased 11 percent since 1984, while black household net worth plunged 10 percent.

In Baltimore, 23 percent of the citizens live below the poverty line, and almost all of them are people of color. There is a 20year difference in life expectancy between the wealthy white areas of Baltimore and the black ghettos. White and black Baltimore citizens smoke marijuana at the same rates, yet 92 percent of the arrests are for African-Americans. Since 2011, $5.7 million has been paid out in about 100 police brutality claims in Baltimore.

With these statistics readily available, a perceptive, nuanced look would be 12

in order. It seldom comes. As political columnist and writer Gore Vidal once observed, we live in the “United States of Amnesia.” The mainstream media— and politicians—used racial dog-whistle signals to identify “thugs” burning property during “riots.” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer adamantly would not let people assert that a broken spine was more awful than broken windows. U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky blamed events in

Most of America —white America— believes that urban riots are a black thing.

By any standard, that’s tragically hilarious.

Baltimore on “lack of fathers.” Poverty?

Generational hopelessness? Property rights over human justice? Forget it.

Part of the cultural amnesia is that most of America—white America—believes that urban riots are a black thing. By any standard, that’s tragically hilarious.

Historian Gregory Downs has written that “more than 50,000 African-Americans were murdered between emancipation and 1887.” Most of those were killed by white mob violence. There were scores of white-on-black race riots in the early part of the 20th century, plus more

than 4,000 lynchings that continued well into the 1960s. You can’t condone violence, but the events since the 1960s, including Baltimore, have real reasons and many of those reasons are the voting disenfranchisement, predatory economics aimed at minorities, and physical attacks on blacks that were seldom addressed or even acknowledged in earlier generations.

There’s another word to explain the riots: Injustice. Economic poverty in itself doesn’t often erupt in riots. The lack of justice—spiritual poverty—is a more accurate predictor of riots and revolution.

L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology’s Founder, makes that point in a column on the last pages of this magazine. We are courting national self-immolation if we tolerate a society in which many people are deprived of justice, whether economic, social, marital or with police and courts.

To that list of human behaviors demanding justice, one more is essential: Religion. Although a cornerstone of the United States is religious liberty, we are at a time when denigration of faith is a popular pastime, especially with some members of the press. Yes, it is quite proper to criticize radical, violent offshoots of a religion. But criticism morphs into bigotry when entire faiths are scapegoated and slimed.

For our society to survive—to prosper in happiness—all citizens must know they are treated justly. Justice must apply in courtrooms and with cops, in schools and workplaces, at places of worship and religious study. Tolerance is the first step in achieving that.

The alternative to justice and tolerance was witnessed in the horrible events in Baltimore. Personal actions—by civilians or the police—can’t be excused. But the language used in depicting the events is precisely the lingo of amnesia. The media don’t remember what happened 50 years ago, or why. The press sees Baltimore as something new and unexplained.

And thus we condemn ourselves and our society to intellectual nothingness.

Hatred and injustice prevail. n John F. Sugg, Freedom’s editor in Florida, has received more than three dozen journalism awards for work in The Miami Herald, Tampa Tribune and the Creative Loafing group of alternative newspapers.

How do you link human rights ideals to everyday reality?

©2014 United for Human Rights. All Rights Reserved.

Digital human rights post-secondary curriculum Program resources include:

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The Story of Human Rights award-winning documentary film

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The Story of Human Rights booklet, including the full text of the Universal Declaration

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humanrights.com info@humanrights.com • (323) 661-1144

RONT PAGE

A Tangled

Web

by Price Colman

The concept of an “Open Internet”—known as Net Neutrality— attempts to classify broadband services as a regulated “public” utility, like those that deliver electricity or water. But the Net is a different sort of common carrier, and while the public’s interest is important, Internet users can’t ignore the billions of dollars in private investment that made the Internet possible. The builders generally oppose regulation in favor of competition. But what is fair to both sides? Should affluent Internet users be ushered onto the fast lanes while others are relegated to crowded, often stalled slow lanes? Freedom Magazine explores those and other issues in an attempt to help readers understand what “Net Neutrality” means for everyone involved.

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ON A COLD, SNOWY DAY in late February, as demonstrators chanted and waved signs

outside, the hearing room of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C., filled with people sensing history about to be made.

They were waiting on the outcome of a vote over a somewhat obscure concept called Net Neutrality—the idea that the Internet, an ever more important communications tool on which the public depends—will remain open to everyone, equally.

Before the commission were tough, new rules, largely opposed by major players in the cable industry and other service providers who say they fear the rules will dry up future investment. When the three commissioners supporting the rules—a majority—came into the room before the vote, the crowd erupted into a spontaneous standing ovation, which echoed through the room four more times as commissioners approved the FCC’s Open Internet Order of 2015 on a 3-2 vote.

“I’ve been to a lot of FCC hearings over the years and it was a scene unlike anything I’ve ever seen at the FCC before,” said Craig Aaron, president and CEO of Free Press, an advocacy organization on the leading edge of the Net Neutrality effort.

“There were hugs on the floor of the FCC, which is not a normal thing. It was a celebration on Feb. 26.”

Not everyone was celebrating the new rules, of course.

While the order is set to take effect June 12, barring a legal stay, unresolved questions remain over whether regulation of Internet service providers will make the Internet more egalitarian or simply stifle its development by imposing new industry burdens.

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Net Neutrality or Net Profits?

For more than a decade, the FCC had been bouncing back and forth between answers to the fundamental question of whose “Net” is it anyway? Does it belong to the public who use it, or to the private industry that built it? And, as such, should it be government-regulated, or not?

Even current FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler changed his tune in the space of a year. The former National Cable and Telecommunications president “evolved” from saying Internet regulation was a “non-starter” and favoring paid fast lanes, to championing what he calls “the most stringent and expansive open Internet rules in history.”

Ten years of skirmishes preceding February’s vote had drawn clear battle lines: AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and other broadband Internet access providers lined up against proponents ranging from President Obama to public interest advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Press, and even digital giants Amazon, Google and Netflix.

Caught in the middle were 280 million Americans with Internet connections, along with the libraries and public schools that serve them. For each of them, the Internet’s evolution into an indispensable tool for commerce, education and communications itself changed the rules of the game.

But until the FCC ruling, proponents contended they faced the very real possibility that the information superhighway might morph into a metered toll road, where the affluent could travel at any speed and those on the margins face traffic jams and closed roads.

That such scenarios might play out was suggested in 2003 when the FCC began tinkering with “guidelines” for ISPs under then-Chairman Michael Powell. Some of those ISPs, the FCC observed, tilted the playing field in their favor by pushing their own proprietary content to the head of the line.

Today, even in an era of unprecedented political polarization and divisiveness, Net Neutrality—a term coined in 2003 by Columbia University law professor Tim Wu—has inflamed passions on both sides. Its guiding principle is that all legal data on the Internet should be treated equally, and

that companies controlling the infrastructure over which that data is delivered should not discriminate among data providers—or end-users.

The ability to favor proprietary content can translate into major financial gains for an ISP. So it’s of little surprise that almost immediately in the wake of the order, deep-pocketed opponents of the new rules deployed an army of lawyers and began lobbing lawsuits—and lobbying Congress—to overturn the order.

The lawsuits claim the FCC used outmoded provisions in the Communications Act of 1934 to impose Net Neutrality.

At their foundation, the suits contend the order will smother innovation and investment in the Internet, the very things responsible for its buildout.

In the order, Net Neutrality translates into three key “brightline” rules: Rule 1: No blocking of lawful traffic. In other words, an ISP is prohibited from preventing an Internet user’s access to any legal sites. The rule specifically allows ISPs to refuse transmission of unlawful traffic, including material that infringes on copyrights, or child pornography.

Rule 2: No throttling. The order defines that as “…impairing or degrading lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, application, service, or use of a non-harmful device.”

Rule 3: No paid prioritization. That means an ISP is prohibited from establishing a fast lane for traffic from a company willing to pay to put its content on that lane.

Moreover, the order includes a so-called “transparency clause.” Ever notice a slowdown in your Internet connection?

Maybe it’s just a traffic jam. Or maybe your Internet service provider is playing traffic cop, and you got shunted to the slow lane. Under Net Neutrality, ISPs are required to disclose the reason for the slowdown.

It’s worth noting that the order does not prohibit ISPs from offering different speeds of service, at a different cost. However, the terms of so-called “tiered services” must be clearly spelled out per the transparency clause. www.freedommag.org | 17

Good, Bad and Ugly It’s tempting to paint Net Neutrality in stark terms, a battle of good v. evil. But it’s not that simple.

Many of the companies offering broadband Internet access spent billions to build the digital superhighway. Absent their investment in increased capacity, companies such as Netflix might not be able to deliver their content effectively, and so might not exist.

Many in the tech sector are leery of government and regulatory intrusion. While they endorse the “bright-line” and transparency rules, they have reservations about other aspects of the order.

“I think the order did the right thing,” said Corynne McSherry of Electronic Frontier Foundation, a longtime advocate of Net Neutrality and the protection of personal privacy on the Net. For the EFF, Net Neutrality is “pretty fundamental,” McSherry said. “Think of all the ways in which we use the Internet—to organize, communicate, get jobs, get educated. We depend on the Internet for so many things. That means we need a fair Internet.”

But, she says, the order gives the FCC leeway to crack down on ISPs’ practices that violate the spirit of the order, but aren’t specifically addressed in the order. That worries her.

“It seems like [the FCC] has given itself a bigger window for overregulation. The signal to us is that we have to pressure the FCC to do the right thing.”

Before David J. Farber was chief technologist at the FCC from 2000-01, he was, literally, one of the people who laid the groundwork for today’s Internet. If Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn are considered fathers of the Internet, then Farber is the grandfather. He’s also among those who think the FCC got it wrong.

“There’s been a huge amount of hype, basically predicting the end of mankind, if nothing was done,” Farber says.

“There’s no sign there’s much truth to that. The FCC has totally adequate tools. They didn’t need pronouncements from on high to do that.”

Farber has a uniquely deep and informed perspective. After an 11-year career at Bell Labs, where he designed the first electronic switching system and created the SNOBOL programming language, he went on to the University of Delaware where he was instrumental in creating the National Science Foundation Network, Computer Science Network, and National Research and Education Network, precursors to today’s public Internet.

He is currently Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

He considers the 2015 order a classic case of FCC overreach.

A key component in the order is the reclassification of broadband as a telecommunications service, in effect, a common carrier under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934.

Under Title II, the FCC has much broader power to regulate.

As a consequence of a key 2014 appellate court ruling in 18

Verizon v. FCC, the FCC was forced to change strategies on Internet regulation. Previously, the commission had classified broadband Internet access services (BIAS, in the FCC lexicon) as a telecommunications and information service. Under its own self-imposed strictures, the commission was prevented from imposing tough Net Neutrality rules on an information service.

“The headache is Title II comes with a huge amount of baggage,” Farber said. “There’s a lot of stuff enabled by Title II the commission says it will forbear. That’s not a legal term. It doesn’t bind the FCC to anything. In two years, a new president will probably appoint a new chairman … and then the new commission can do whatever it wants. That’s a dangerous place.

You may trust the current commission but have no reason to trust the following one.”

The Net Landscape So what is the Net—information or telecommunications service?

Although the line blurs as many broadband providers also offer proprietary content, a few data points may help clear the lens: —In 1993, shortly before Tim Berners-Lee launched the World Wide Web, the Internet accounted for only about 1 percent of two-way telecommunications globally, according to a research report published in 2011 by Science Express. By 2007, that number had risen to 97 percent; —Landline phone service in the U.S. has declined steadily, from about 193 million in 2000 to about 135 million in 2013, according to the International Telecommunication Union, based in Geneva, Switzerland; —Internet users in the U.S. now number nearly 280 million, or about 87 percent of the population, according to the website internetlivestats.com, defining the word “ubiquitous.”

Those statistics suggest that broadband has become the de facto telecommunications service in the U.S. Advocates of an “Open Internet” say it’s pretty clear, then, who wins if the key provisions in Net Neutrality are eliminated or watered down. ISPs, including cable and telcos, have the most to gain, they say.

If so, who loses?

A Tale of Two Libraries How “neutral” the Internet will be is a fundamental question for everyone.

But for some—including the disadvantaged who have a tenuous grasp on access to the Net—the question resonates.

Just as Andrew Carnegie invested heavily in public knowledge by building libraries, the nation’s libraries now find themselves invested in protecting the public’s access to online information.

Former President Clinton highlighted America’s “digital divide” in a speech at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998: He warned that affluent schools and libraries would have an advantage in deploying technology and providing high-speed Internet access.

That led to the establishment of a program overseen by the FCC for funding less-affluent schools and libraries in hopes of upgrading their technology infrastructure, including broadband Internet access services and Wi-Fi. This FCC Universal Service Fund is supported by fees levied on regulated telecommunications providers. Should Net Neutrality rules be overturned in court, it remains to be seen if libraries could continue to afford to offer bandwidth-dependent services—affecting libraries large and small.

In Mancos, Colorado, population 1,320, the public library is a case in point.

An online clinic at the library for people who can’t afford an attorney but need legal guidance has become richly popular in this rural farming and ranching community, where home Internet access is spotty at best.

Ric Morgan, a lawyer based six hours away on Colorado’s Front Range, developed the clinic. He saw its significance spelled out in a recent memorable case.

“There was a young woman with two small children who’d been beaten by her husband,” Morgan recalled. The clinic helped her find legal options that enabled her to get out of the abusive situation.

“Libraries are where people come for information,” Morgan observes. “Libraries should be the hub for people seeking information of every stripe.”

DAVID J. FARBER

The problem: There is now a waiting list to get a seat at one of the library’s few Internet-connected computers.

Some 1,600 miles away, the Detroit Public Library is everything its modest country cousin is not. Its main library, built in early Italian Renaissance style, is enormous, ornate, decorated with murals and capped by cathedral ceilings that give the building the feel of a European church.

But like its tiny counterpart in Mancos, the massive Detroit Public Library shares a similar profile. People come for the Internet. The American Library Association notes that 97.5 percent of the country’s libraries have wireless access that is free to users.

In 2013, when the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project surveyed 2,252 Americans 16 or older on their library habits, they found that 26 percent used computers or Wi-Fi connections to do everything from research for school or jobs, to taking an online class or completing an online certification (16 percent).

The message seems clear: fair and equal access to information is important for all people, no matter where they find it.

www.freedommag.org | 19

“We see people coming into the library with their laptops and setting up their businesses,” Ibegbu says. “We’ve seen a whole lot more people doing web conferencing from the library.”

As the need for more bandwidth-intensive services emerge at libraries, Ibegbu says, they may be forced to either pay more or opt out of certain services—or both. That’s where the debate over Net Neutrality hits home for public libraries.

“We are providing service to people who may or may not be able to afford service,” Ibegbu says. “We would lose everything we’re trying to achieve without Net Neutrality.”

e-Vox Populi The Demographics of Access Tellingly, African-Americans and Hispanics are more likely than other groups to use new Internet-connected library services, according to the survey. U.S. lending libraries were birthed in the inventive mind of Benjamin Franklin. It is hard to imagine a more egalitarian institution in the U.S. Like many others, the public libraries in Mancos and Detroit have experienced their own renaissance, thanks to the Internet.

In Detroit today, people come to the library for virtually every informational need under the sun: education, entertainment, business, and self-betterment—a refuge in a city that, in many ways, has been in decline for decades.

Victor Ibegbu, head of the IT department at Detroit’s library, says Internet access at the library “…is at the core of everything we do. What we’re seeing over the years is greater demand for Internet bandwidth for the library community.”

To that end, the Detroit library recently boosted broadband speeds from 3 megabits per second to 20 mbps, thanks to the addition of a fiber-optic cable. In Mancos, a 10-gigabit fiber cable was just installed near the library. Once connected, download speeds there will be substantially faster. But neither will be as fast as the 25 Mbps that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler calls “table stakes” in broadband Internet access services.

For some library Internet users, that comes with economic considerations.

A 30-year award-winning journalist, Price Colman covered technology and communications for Colorado’s Rocky Mountain News from 1989 to 1996. He was Denver bureau chief for Broadcasting and Cable magazine from 1996 to 1999 and since then has written for publications throughout the Southwest.

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In the lead-up to the FCC releasing its order of February 26, 2015, millions of people on both sides of the Net Neutrality debate contacted the FCC to express their views. Not surprisingly, many of the comments came via the Internet.

Net Neutrality supporters often cite the potential for certain demographic groups to be disenfranchised or marginalized in the absence of strong open Internet rules.

Net Neutrality critics, including seven plaintiffs suing to overturn the rules, contend they will stifle innovation and investment in the Internet.

Those plaintiffs include AT&T, Alamo Broadband and CenturyLink, along with trade groups—National Cable & Telecommunications Association, American Cable Association, United States Telecom Association and CTIA-The Wireless Association (formerly known as the Cellular Telephone Industry Association).

So far, fears of negative business impact have yet to play out.

Though many factors influence the stock market, an analysis by SNL.com found that stocks of key large- and small-cap publicly held communications companies actually ticked up following the FCC’s February announcement of the new rules.

Former FCC attorney Kevin Werbach rejects the notion that Net Neutrality is a business killer.

“I’ve never seen convincing evidence that Net Neutrality rules per se stifle innovation and growth,” he says. “Certainly companies figure the regulatory environment into their business decisions, but the biggest factor in network investment is competition. I assume that’s why Comcast is rolling out 2 gigabit service months after the FCC Open Internet order.”

One of the FCC’s mandates from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, however, is to encourage growth and competition in the ISP sector. Statistics tell a mixed story, but in much of the U.S., consumer choice is now limited. Cable companies dominate in the high-speed arena and where there is choice, it’s typically among high-priced services. These incumbents may be a step shy of a strict monopoly, but they have a de facto monopoly and, as the FCC order notes, companies in such a position seek to guard their turf.

The ‘Haves and Have-Nots’ Of the world’s 7 billion population and counting, less than half are tapping into the Internet, according to internetlivestats.com.

It’s higher in the U.S., where roughly 88 percent of the population is plugged into the Net. Seems reasonable, given American technological strength. What’s surprising is how far the U.S. is behind the rest of the world in Internet speed and costs, ranking 16th overall in Internet speeds, according to Akamai Technologies’ 2014 State of the Internet report.

“If we had competition, we might not have needed the FCC to come in here,” says EFF’s McSherry.

Little wonder that this phenomenon—in many ways similar to the human brain’s network of neurons and synapses—has become a focal point for public policy.

Publicly, FCC Chairman Wheeler expresses confidence that Net Neutrality will withstand legal challenges. But it may be several years before there’s a definitive answer. n

www.freedommag.org | 21

ATION

There was nothing about Freddie Gray that was considered particularly remarkable before his life was cut woefully short at 25 this past spring. The lifelong Baltimore resident had two sisters (one of them his twin), with whom he was living in the destitute Sandtown-Winchester area. He was reportedly unemployed at the time of his death—like roughly half of the adults in the neighborhood. He carried a sizable criminal record, mostly for drug charges and petty crimes, and served time for narcotics possession.

Gray was just your average inner-city cautionary tale in progress, a young African-American male well on his way to amounting to little, a bleak product of a bleaker environment.

But then fate intervened.

Arrested for possession of an illegal switchblade on April 12, Gray suffered a fatal spinal cord injury while in police custody—shackled but unrestrained and allegedly tossed around like a rag doll during transport in the back of a police van. He died April 19, sparking a wave of disruption and dissent that entangled Baltimore in violent protests and civil unrest for two tumultuous weeks, marked by heated demonstrations and wall-to-wall news coverage.

The uprising culminated May 1 when Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby filed criminal charges against the six officers involved in Gray’s arrest and subsequent death (ruled a homicide by a medical examiner), including for seconddegree murder and manslaughter. Three of those officers are black.

A formal grand jury indictment on similar charges followed 20 days later.

On the heels of the initial criminal charges, tension in the city quickly evaporated, even though the systemic racism in Baltimore that helped ignite the powder keg in the first place remained utterly unchanged.

While it seems clear that the life of Freddie Carlos Gray Jr. may rightly be perceived as a tragic waste—and his 22

B A L T

I M O R E' S

by Ray Richmond

andrew burton/getty images

www.freedommag.org  | 23

death that of a martyr—it may prove to be anything but in vain.

However, several questions remain.

Chiefly: Where does Baltimore go from here? What connection, if any, did the uprising have to the turmoil last summer in Ferguson, Missouri, that followed the police killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown? Are we witnessing the roots of a genuine social justice movement? And what role is the faith community playing in uniting and helping to heal a shattered region?

There are, perhaps, no easy answers.

But the single area of agreement among clergy, community leaders, activists and educators is that the culture of minorities (both black and brown) feeling disenfranchised, marginalized, despairing, voiceless, profiled and targeted must change or there will be innumerable Fergusons and Baltimores in America’s future.

“This is about getting justice in America,” stresses DeRay Mckesson, a former school administrator who has used social media and a newsletter called This Is the Movement to galvanize interest. “The police shouldn’t be killing people, and it shouldn’t take this much energy to get them to stop,” he says.

Mckesson maintains that what he is fighting for is simple: “A world where you shouldn’t be afraid of the people who are supposed to protect and serve.”

Certainly, the movement has taken flight in specific response to law enforcement’s

D

I

L E M M A

killing of unarmed black men, dating to the February 2012 death of teen Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, at the hands of George Zimmerman (who was not a cop but a neighborhood watch volunteer); the July 2014 death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, after being placed in a police chokehold; Michael Brown’s shooting death by a police officer in August 2014 in Ferguson; then, in quick succession, the killings of Freddie Gray and Walter Scott, shot repeatedly in the back by an officer while fleeing, in North Charleston, South Carolina.

24

Besides their lack of weapons and the color of the victims’ skin, what most of these cases share is the presence of cell phone video (documenting three of the killings) and the use of online social media to trigger and sustain interest— provoking protests on a far wider scale than the country had seen before.

No longer is the revolution only being televised. It is also being tweeted by smartphone soldiers such as Mckesson to his 125,000 followers—vowing to continue the fight “until we consistently both see justice for those who are targeted in the trauma and accountability for those who perpetrate it.”

Like the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, the present activism is spearheaded by young people.

Mckesson is just 29. And in the cases of both Baltimore and Ferguson, the catalyst driving the demand for reform is infinitely more complex than a single incident.

Perhaps at the source of it is the vast disparity between the haves and the have-nots—which in Baltimore means a privileged white class and an AfricanAmerican underclass in a town that’s 62 percent black, much of it subsisting below the poverty line.

Frederick Opie, a history professor at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and author of the book Upsetting the Apple Cart that looks back at black-Latino coalitions in New York City from the 1960s through the ‘80s,

believes Baltimore’s deep racial divide is no accident.

“Behind the uprising in Baltimore, Ferguson and other cities, there has been a systematic and successful attempt to keep African-Americans out of certain neighborhoods, marginalized and locked into ghettos,” he said.

“We’re talking about charging people exorbitant prices for inferior housing, medicine and food, and trapping them in a situation where there’s no escape. If you not only neglect a community but then on top of that take away their hope,

it’s eventually going to explode. That’s what happened in Baltimore.”

Television networks—CNN, Fox News, MSNBC—raced into Baltimore in late April only after some of the protests had deteriorated into riots and looting, to capture the sensationalist spectacle.

What they appeared to have less interest in covering was the overwhelming majority of demonstrators marching and protesting peacefully—and even forming a human line to protect police from instigators and rowdies.

Indeed, the TV cameras were drawn to

mazzy bell/flickr

where the action was in Baltimore, even if that action was hardly indicative of the protests’ true nature. Night after night, they captured the chaos of a few dozen agitators hurling rocks, burning patrol cars and busting into stores to loot whatever their arms could carry—including targeted break-ins of pharmacies to cart away drugs.

A few blocks away, while some 10,000 boisterous but lawful citizens marched for peace—peacefully—the mainstream media’s lenses were conspicuously missing. The squeakiest wheel got the grease, and the attention.

“You had thou- Thousands of Baltimore young people marched enforcement for sands of good, peacefully April 29, two days before criminal harassment and law-abiding people charges were filed against six police officers in brutality is “one of participating peace- the death of Freddie Gray. “Maybe 1 percent” the things that has fully,” said Bishop created mayhem, said a local clergyman, who to change,” Bishop Keith Allen, senior objected to media showing only violence.

Allen said. “The pastor at Rehoboth police department Church of God in Baltimore. “That was must reform its strategy in dealing with one of the positive things to come out of a black community filled with poverty this situation.” There was “maybe 1 per- and unemployment, and with a lack of cent creating mayhem.” sound education and good nutrition for That those same good people are among its children.” members of the black community unfairly In early May, in response to the and disproportionately targeted by law unrest in Baltimore and its spread to www.freedommag.org | 25

nearby Washington, D.C., the Church of Scientology joined in a multifaith meeting involving some 100 clergy and private citizens to vow solidarity in working toward nonviolent protest solutions.

Grassroots efforts continue going forward to bring Baltimore back together,

by Bishop Allen and many others including the Rev. Michael Parker, a 31-year-old pastor of the United Methodist Church in Baltimore who graduated from seminary only in May. Parker grew up next door to Freddie Gray and his family, playing with Freddie and the Gray children as a youngster. It has made the situation for him, perhaps, even more fraught with emotion.

“Now that CNN and MSNBC are gone,” Rev. Parker said, “it’s left to us to deal with, and try to make some sense out of, everything that has transpired.”

Rebuilding the trust between Baltimore residents and the city where they reside is a big part of that, Parker believes. It concerned him that even his own church wasn’t calling the community together in prayer in the wake of Gray’s death and the subsequent unrest. So he did it himself.

That included sitting down in his sanctuary with 20 gang members to talk, pray and together find light at the end of what was a very dark tunnel.

“Faith leaders need to carry a very active role in this situation,” Rev. Parker insisted.

“It’s simply not an option to remain silent and not speak truth to power. In times of trouble, people still look to the church. We need to be a tangible handson source of relief and assistance to the communities where we sit and worship.”

Part of the difficulty in organizing the current movement is the lack of a respected, charismatic leader to carry the torch, Bishop Allen noted. “We need someone who can drive reform and unite the different factions as the Rev. Martin Luther King did in the 1960s. A figure like that comes along once every generation.

But this is, after all, a new generation.”

Where there remains plenty of unity is in the widespread belief that racial profiling and abuse by police is a driver of much of the rancor. This is typified by the response of Mckesson when asked how long and sustained he believes the protests will remain in the aftermath of Baltimore.

“The police haven’t stopped killing people,” he offered, “and because they 26

haven’t stopped killing people, people haven’t stopped protesting. I think people will protest as long as that continues.”

Of course, the occasional need to use lethal force has always gone along with the dangerous job of being a cop. The issue surrounds the key word “need”— and the role that ethnicity might play in that equation.

After a notorious and deadly May 16 shootout at the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas, reportedly involving brawling white bikers, there was initial skepticism as to why the media posted photographs of the motorcycle gang members calmly sitting on the curb outside the eatery while police milled about.

Mckesson pointed out, “When there

is the threat of black people assembling, it quickly grows to become a literal state of emergency. It’s different when white people do it.”

But to demonstrate that law enforcement doesn’t always discriminate according to race, there were early reports that police may have fired indiscriminately into the biker crowd. It was alleged that all nine of those killed were shot by police officers rather than each other, as were all 18 of those injured. The situation remained under investigation at press time, and the 177 participants/witnesses arrested were being held on million-dollar bonds.

It all leaves the perception with some that police officers have become an enemy to be feared rather than society’s

patrick smith/getty images

civilizing protectors. More than anything, especially in minority neighborhoods, the police are seen operating with something resembling rogue impunity.

There are those, however, who do not agree that it’s that simple. Among them is Professor Opie, who said he wonders if we should be looking at the politicians who got elected on tough-on-crime initiatives—and then put pressure on sergeants and lieutenants to carry them out—rather than indicting police officers tasked with fulfilling them.

“I really do feel for the police officers,” Opie said, “because one or two bad apples in a precinct really messes up everybody.

And we’re asking these people to go into a hostile environment. They’re forced to

maintain law and order in communities consumed with anger and poised to explode, when it was the federal and state government and years of neglect and systemic marginalization that fueled the fire.”

The professor said he also wonders, in the case of Freddie Gray, which of the six Baltimore officers charged in his death was directly involved and which may have been bullied and intimidated into going along with it.

Adding a decidedly blunt voice to the debate is Jonathan Farley, a controversial professor at the predominantly black Morgan State University in Baltimore, who believes the African-American community has only itself to blame for its heavy policing and perceived law enforcement persecution.

“ I f A f r i c a n - Two days after Americans don’t authorities released want negative in- a report on the death teractions with the of Freddie Gray, a police,” he stressed, young boy runs past “they should clean a mural in West up their own house. Baltimore by Kids on Much of the crime the Hill, a community in Baltimore can’t art mentoring be solely blamed program. on the lack of jobs.

There are poor people in Ethiopia and you don’t see the same crime rate.”

Farley pins much of the problem on households run by single mothers and children raised without values—or fathers.

“The riots are not the beginning of a new civil rights movement,” Farley www.freedommag.org | 27

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Freddie Gray flanked by 1960s civil rights marchers was painted in Sandtown, the center of Baltimore turmoil in April, by street artist Nether who calls it “an attempt to reclaim and recycle the tragic landscape.”

believes, “but they portend the end of white America’s patience with black Americans blaming their problems on racism.”

Eddie Conway sees things far differently. A former member of the revolutionary Black Panther Party founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966, he served nearly 44 years in the Maryland prison system for a crime he says he didn’t commit. He says he was incarcerated as a political prisoner and framed by the infamous FBI Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO).

Yet Conway harbors no bitterness and has, in fact, become a force for positive change since his release in March 2014, speaking at colleges and universities and working as a community organizer for the Quaker peace and justice-striving American Friends Service Committee.

Conway finds many differences in America today compared to 1971 when he went to prison. And it’s not just computers, cell phones and the Internet.

“Unfortunately, the conditions I’m seeing in Baltimore are far worse than those when I went in,” Conway observes. “It’s a tale of two cities, really. Some segments of the community have made great advancements, but the majority is steeped in poverty that’s significantly more severe than 40 years ago.”

One doesn’t need to have been incarcerated for the whole of his adult life to be struck by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu in all of this. History is repeating itself in the fight for African-Americans to overcome a stacked deck and navigate a path strewn with pitfalls, taking their turns at bat with two strikes already against them.

Too, in the current protest wave, there appears to be a kind of inevitability at work. This is the view of Steven Radil, professor of geography at the University of Idaho, whose research suggests an inherent discontent not just among the populace in the United States but globally—and not merely based on racial inequality but something far broader.

“We’ve noted a 50 percent increase in the total number of protests around the

world since 2006,” Radil said, “which is unprecedented since the late 1960s. And interestingly it’s in the places where we’ve seen the most progress in the human condition, where we find the largest emergence of discontent as well. If we’re going to paint with a really broad brush, it could well be simply about justice.”

Justice—or the lack of it—surely appeared to be at the heart of what spurred the eruption in Baltimore. Ex-Panther Conway calls it at once “disheartening and encouraging” to see young people finally stand up and say “Enough!” to what they perceived as an unconscionable wrong. And he said he believes that same dynamic is poised to be repeated in cities across the country, all of which would be wise to gear up in anticipation.

“It’s a movement as surely as civil rights was a movement in the ’60s,” Conway emphasized. “This is about young America taking back control of their country. It’s about the relationship of young people— and the older people who support them— to their future, to jobs, to the health of the planet, and to the culture.”

Why would a man who was a member of the Black Panthers—a group notorious for standing up and fighting for AfricanAmerican rights by any means necessary, violent or otherwise—suddenly embrace peaceful dissent?

“The Panthers were all about peace, too,” insisted Conway. “We just felt that in order to have peaceful protest, we needed to protect ourselves at the same time from those who aimed to abuse and dehumanize us, to attack and shotgun and bomb us. But this is a different time.

We didn’t have social media back then.”

Today, opportunity is nonetheless at hand to rouse something transformative and sustained, to coalesce the grassroots power of people collectively frustrated by injustice and inequality.

“There is a feeling in the air, after Ferguson and Baltimore, that we suddenly control our own destiny,” said Kamau Franklin, the South Region director of American Friends Service Committee.

“We now have the ability to organize simultaneous marches around the country. All we have to do is use the communication tools we have at hand to change our lives. It’s really up to us to seize the moment.” n

nether street art/flickr

www.freedommag.org | 29

ROFILE

IF YOU WALK DOWN the streets of

Baltimore and you see a woman surrounded by strangers in need of a home, a meal, a job, or just a place to cool their heels until trouble subsides, it’s probably April Burrell.

“People just seem to gravitate to me for some reason,” Burrell says. “They just walk up and start telling me their life story. Don’t know why. Guess they just feel safe.”

What they likely feel is a kindred spirit.

Burrell has been where they are. A product of the hardscrabble streets of Baltimore 30

Baltimore’s ‘Mother Teresa’

APRIL BURRELL

BY RAY RICHMOND

who rose above her roots to not only survive but thrive, Burrell said she was a mother at 16 with no education, nowhere to live, and nowhere to turn, aside from the wrong places.

But she was also a survivor who is now giving back to the city that in the month of April became a national flashpoint for African-American rage and despair in the wake of the killing of 25-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custody.

(The six officers allegedly responsible were charged in his death May 1 and formally indicted May 21.)

Illustrations by Olivia Wise

“It feels sad because we destroyed our own community,” Burrell, 44, says of the riots and looting that accompanied the protest. “But at the same time, I understand. That’s what youth do when they have no other outlet. You take away recreation, you take away jobs, you take away hope, then you start killing them, what are we expecting them to do?”

Burrell was referring not only to the destruction from the unrest but the fact that Baltimore has only three community recreation centers still in operation to serve the entire city. And the jobs for unskilled youngsters, she notes, are few and far between. Left without sports and employment options and out on the street, young people turn to drugs and mayhem in an area that appears largely to have abandoned them.

This is where The Power of One (or in this case, perhaps Two) comes into play, because April Burrell wasn’t about to stand by and watch kids flounder in their community without doing everything she could to change it.

Burrell and her husband of six years, Donald, made a decision five years ago that if Baltimore wasn’t going to give opportunity to the underprivileged youth population, they would. They organized fundraising car washes. They formed a carpet cleaning philanthropy that provided jobs and taught skills and responsibility to teenagers while also providing a valuable service to seniors on a fixed income.

Then they were able to start their own business. Broke but motivated, April and Donald Burrell were given the opportunity in 2012 to purchase their own property restoration franchise: 911 Restoration Baltimore.

“Now we’re able not only to make a living but provide jobs for eight different families and several subcontractors,”

After Freddie Gray, youth need someone to guide them in the right direction…

You show kids the way, they do the right thing.

Donald Burrell says proudly. “Because of the start they gave us, we’re able to put food on a lot of tables.”

They’ve also kept a lot of juveniles out of trouble. The couple used their new business to form the outreach organization Second Chance Restoration, which sponsors food and clothing drives and uses their company’s expansive warehouse to—among other things—give a local marching band a space to practice.

For April, it’s all about opening up her heart. Not that it was ever closed. In fact,

April Burrell is renowned in these parts as the ‘Mother Teresa’ of Baltimore. In the way that some people can’t turn their back on a puppy or kitten, Burrell has empathy for people—particularly young ones.

Burrell has been aiding people in need ever since she got a roof over her head for good at 19, for the past 25 years. She estimates that she’s taken in more than 400 people for varying periods during the past quarter-century.

They may need a set of clothes. A job.

A decent meal. A roof over their head. A place to hide out from gang members.

Sometimes, they just need someone to talk to. Burrell never turns anyone away.

“Wherever I go, people tell me, ‘Thank you Miss April, you rescued me, you fed me and kept me out of jail,’” she said.

Burrell never had it easy herself and still doesn’t. She was raising three daughters on her own by the age of 20 but earned her high school diploma at 23. She struggled to make ends meet, working in a group home, doing mentoring work, breeding pit bulls, selling candy, anything to earn her keep. But she never accepted federal assistance from welfare or food stamps, insisting on making it on her own every step of the way.

Burrell remains dedicated to restoring her city and giving Baltimore’s young people a sense of mission and purpose.

“We have 16,000 abandoned, vacant homes here in Baltimore,” she points out. “Do you know how many jobs we could make, how many opportunities we could create by tearing them down and rebuilding? That’s what we need to be doing. It’ll help turn all that negative energy into something positive.

“Because after Freddie Gray, youth need someone to guide them in the right direction, to help express themselves.

You show kids the way, they do the right thing.” n www.freedommag.org | 31

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Illustration by Olivia Wise

ORLD

INSPIRED

34

D

Youth

by Dan L uzadder

www.freedommag.org | 35

lear n.

THEY CAME

to

THE LESSONS ARE ABOUT TOLERANCE, peace,

dignity and human rights for all.

The students are participants in Youth for Human Rights International—a Church of Scientologysponsored program initiated in 2001 through the seminal work of human rights activists who stood behind the creation of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization.

Since its founding nearly 15 years ago, the program has attracted the interest and support of thousands of young people worldwide. Many of those have gone on to help promote the important concepts set out in 1948 in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They bring that message home to make a difference in their local communities, through education.

Delegates to the 2015 Youth for Human Rights Summit—to be held later this summer in New York City—are being selected from applications of individuals who have a strong interest in human rights projects and who have already been actively engaged in such efforts on their own.

Those accepted to attend the organization’s annual international summits must demonstrate a deep commitment to the rights of others and a willingness to apply what they learn when they return home.

The program has drawn laudatory comments from United Nations affiliate organizations and their leaders around the world, recognizing the importance of distributing educational materials on human rights in more than 150 countries. The annual summits have also inspired dozens of corollary programs and activities in support of human rights.

This month, Freedom recognizes several young men and women whose commitment to human rights has made a difference in the lives of individuals around the world.

Each has carried the message of an imperative for global reforms needed to promote and protect the inalienable rights of human beings: to help people live in an atmosphere of dignity and respect, to participate equally in society, to be free from abuses, and to enjoy such inherent rights as freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion.

36

BRUSSELS

Since 2003, youth delegates from dozens of countries have convened annually with U.N. officials, human rights advocates and religious leaders at international summits in New York, Geneva and Brussels. They leave with renewed dedication to advance human rights at home.

thorsten overgaard; sam butler; freedom archives

NEW YORK

GENEVA

www.freedommag.org | 37

Niko Papaheraklis

Niko Papaheraklis’ journey into the realm of human rights has carried him far—around the world in fact.

The former director of the Washington, D.C., chapter of Youth for Human Rights has traveled to Australia, Taiwan, Panama and throughout the U.S. “I have always wanted to help and I thought the most fundamental way would be teaching people about their human rights,” he said. “It’s very important for the young generation to know what they are, and to actively support them.”

He often hears about the impact of YHR’s programs. At a National Education Association convention, for example, he recalled, “A teacher from Alaska said that after teaching the lessons from YHR, her kids were telling her that human rights couldn’t be abused. It would never have happened if she had not been involved with the program.”

Today he remains active in the cause, promoting freedom, equality, justice and the importance of knowing one’s rights.

Demme Durrett

Demme Durrett was 14 when she first began to explore human rights education, both at home and abroad, as part of a Girl Scouts project.

A year ago, at 17, she was awarded a Presidential Volunteer Service Award in recognition of her work in raising awareness of human rights issues in her community of The Woodlands, Texas—hosting the annual Walk for Human Rights and Festival. That effort became international when a team from Luxembourg contacted her for advice on how to utilize her human rights walk program.

“My activism through Youth for Human Rights has provided me with countless opportunities,” she said. “In addition to being able to attend an incredible international summit for the past three years, I’ve been able to help many, many people. I decided that my responsibility was to set up something sustainable that would forge a new generation conscious of the global impact of human rights violations.”

38

Sophia Khalid’s introduction to Youth for Human Rights came when she stumbled upon a Facebook notice for the group’s international summit in Brussels. She applied, was accepted, and it changed her life.

“YHR has inspired me in so many ways,” she told Freedom, describing her experiences as a YHR ambassador and noting that she recently completed a master’s degree program in human rights, globalization and justice.

In 2014 she delivered a human rights speech before the British House of Lords. She has carried the message of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to many young people in her hometown, Stoke-on-Trent.

In particular, she enjoys mentoring others: “I was recently invited back to my old school to talk to the students about the work I have done… to raise their aspirations and be a positive role model to them. As I progress, I would like to do more mentoring.”

Sophia Khalid Rahul KC

Rahul KC is Nepal’s president of Youth for Human Rights, and while that title is one of respect, he carries another that reflects an even deeper honor: Hero. He was awarded the Human Rights Hero Award at the YHR International Summit in Nepal in September 2014, recognizing his missionary-like zeal in advancing human rights education in his country. In a recent interview published on the web, the native of Katmandu said he now spends most of his time educating people on human rights.

“As human rights conditions [are] not good in Nepal,” he said “I swore to myself to [make changes].” His team has reached some 30,000 students, conducting four educational sessions each week at schools and universities.

“In Nepal, human rights violations have increased substantially since the escalation of civil conflict in 2000,” he said.

To help mitigate those issues, YHR Nepal provided human rights literature to 25,000 members of the Armed Police Force.

THEY LEAVE

to

teach. www.freedommag.org | 39

CIENTOLOGY NEWS

New Ba

sel Chur

ch Embr aces Thr ee Natio

ns With

40

a Free-F

rom-Dru g

s, Tolera

nce Miss

ion

IN THE

MIDDLE

by John F. Sugg

“Bravo für dieses wunderschöne Gebäude!”

If your German is a little rusty, that sentiment translates to “Bravo for this beautiful building!”

With those spirited words, Swiss Federal Justice (Ret.), Robert Mesey congratulated Scientologists and well-wishers attending the April 25 opening of the Ideal Church of Scientology in Basel, Switzerland.

Officiating the dedication of the newest Ideal Church was Mr. David Miscavige, Scientology ecclesiastical leader and driving force of the program that has built 41 major new Churches in cities around the world in the past decade.

In his address to the Scientologists, government officials, religious leaders and academics who gathered for the ceremony, Mr. Miscavige said, “We come to a long-anticipated turning point in European history—a moment when a ribbon falls on a new Ideal Org—and so signals a new era of tolerance, brotherhood, compassion and spiritual power.”

The enthusiasm—the exhilaration—for the significance of the accomplishment of the long dreamed-of goal spread through the thousands in attendance.

Basel is a strategic city—for Europe and for the Church of Scientology. Tucked into the northwest corner of Switzerland, Basel sits astride the Rhine just minutes from both France and Germany. While the city is the nexus of a trinational region, it is equally part of vast social changes sweeping Europe. Home to major chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerates, Basel bears the dubious record as the city where the hallucinogen LSD was first produced.

Such facts did not go unmentioned at the opening event.

“We have sunk in society to a point where we say a doctor is not treating us 42

Photographs by Scientology Media Productions

Thousands of Scientologists from across Europe gathered in Basel on April 25 to inaugurate the first Ideal Church of Scientology in Switzerland. Mr. David Miscavige, Scientology ecclesiastical leader, officiated.

correctly if he fails to give out a prescription,” Johann Bauer, medical doctor at Ludwig Maximilian University, said in his address. “So it is I’ve been fighting against psychiatry. I’ve been pushing against the tide, against the vested interests and so refusing to slide into the black hole of ignorance. And I soon learned I was not alone, because I next found CCHR.” When Bauer found that Scientologists, through Citizens Commission on Human Rights, were uncovering and broadly reporting important information about psychopharmaceuticals, he was struck by the signs on their public information displays. “They said, big, ‘Psychiatry Destroys Lives,’ and I said to myself, ‘They think and talk like I do, so I wanted to talk to this CCHR.’ And so I did, and I saw how you don’t back down when it comes to fighting for freedom and justice.”

Some of the major issues facing European nations stem from the influx of large numbers of refugees from other regions of the globe, at times resulting in religious and ethnic antagonism.

Countering such potential strife, and rising to provide solutions, constituted a theme at the Basel Church’s inauguration.

“Basel is a multicultural city,” Ayhan Seker of the Basel Muslim Commission said to the gathering. “Our many religious communities practice their beliefs freely and cooperate well together. That is why I like to live here, in this center of tolerance.

“Your Founder, L. Ron Hubbard, once spoke of a road to strength, and that ‘To love in spite of all is the secret of greatness.

And may very well be the greatest secret in this universe.’ Well, let this Church stand as a symbol of tolerance and peace, and thus embody those prophetic words.”

Justice Mesey addressed the impact of one of the Church’s broad-based initiatives, Youth for Human Rights International.

“During your Youth Summit in Brussels in 2013, I spoke of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and how they should be introduced into the curriculum … at the earliest age and across the world. I know that Youth for Human Rights, supported by the Church of Scientology, has already accomplished immense work in this regard.”

Sirio Balmelli, Swiss Scientologist and technology entrepreneur attending the Basel Church dedication, spoke of www.freedommag.org | 43

the importance of the new Church in forwarding the religion’s human rights and drug education programs.

“Our presence in Basel is a major step for the community and for our religion,” he said. “Basel is home and operating center for elements that are busy perpetuating some of society’s faults, so it represents a significant place to plant the flag. Our Church and its community programs will play a vital role in the future of this city and this nation.”

The international Church’s global drug education campaign, now reaching millions, has its roots in Switzerland where it was created by Scientologists more than two decades ago.

Basel’s new Ideal Org stands on the city’s Burgfelderstrasse just blocks from the Swiss-French border in the district of Great Basel-West. The 50,000-square-foot facility is Swiss-Modern in style.

Juerg Stettler, Church spokesman in Switzerland, characterized the Basel Ideal Org as “yet another major step forward” for the religion. “Switzerland is a small country in population, just over 8 million people, but it is a nation of enormous influence,” he said.

“We now have a place where we can truly show Scientology at work, a facility to bring energy to our human rights, drug education and other social programs.”

He said Scientologists across the country are now turning their sights to transforming the other Churches in Switzerland into Ideal Orgs—in Bern, Lausanne, Zurich and Geneva.

Stettler described Ideal Orgs as meeting the highest standards for a Scientology Church, providing ample space to deliver not only the full range of Dianetics and Scientology services to parishioners, but also, and just as significantly, serving as a center for the Church’s humanitarian initiatives and community programs.

Scientologist Elena Chiancianesi, who started a Scientology Mission in Lugano, Switzerland, described what she expects to happen when people—Swiss, French and German—see the activities and impact of the Basel Church. “It definitely means expansion,” she said. “When you establish an Ideal Org in an area, the expansion rate accelerates for the entire country. It is the most meaningful experience for a Scientologist.” n 44

www.freedommag.org | 45

RON HUBBARD ESSAY

Riots

by L. Ro n Hu bba r d RIOTS ARE NOT ALWAYS CAUSED BY ECONOMIC

DEPRIVATION. The bulk of American riots are caused by injustice.

Only the wealthy can afford justice. It may say there must be justice in the Constitution, but it can only be obtained in upper courts.

The little fellow doesn’t have a hundred thousand dollars to fight the unjust actions of those in power.

Until there is justice for the little people, not just for the rich, there will be riots. And these riots can easily swell into complete raw, red revolution.

A black person can be innocently standing on a street corner. Can be grabbed, beaten, thrown in jail and worked at hard labor all on some imaginary charge. It may say it can’t be done in the law books, but where’s his $100,000 to take it high enough for action?

I have seen a Filipino university professor hauled in for nothing, his jaw broken, held without bail, all because he was a Filipino in a white U.S. community (Port Orchard, Washington).

I have seen jails full of men who could not even say what the actual charge against them was—but they worked like dogs every day as convict labor.

As a minister, going amongst the people, I have witnessed enough injustice to overturn a state, only waiting for a spark to ignite the suppressed wrath into revolution.

Until justice applies to all, until a person is really assumed innocent until proven guilty, until it no longer costs a tenth of a million to get to an upper court, the government is at risk.

They may be very big, their sweat may have no odor, their arrogance may put them above all others, but the leaders of a nation who, for one instant, tolerate injustice to their poorest citizens today should have their heads ready for the basket.

Another 1789 is boiling up, only waiting for one big spark to flash across the Western world.

Injustice is not something in which any man with power should ever trade. It is not just a sin. It is suicide. n

www.freedommag.org | 47

HAT IS SCIENTOLOGY?

Confront

CONFRONT: to meet something

face to face, especially an obstacle that must be overcome.

That which a person can confront, he can handle.

The first step of handling anything is gaining an ability to face it.

It could be said that war continues as a threat to Man because Man cannot confront war. The idea of making war so terrible that no one will be able to fight it is the exact reverse of fact—if one wishes to end war.

The invention of the longbow, gunpowder, heavy naval cannon, machine guns, liquid fire and the hydrogen bomb add only more and more certainty that war will continue. As each new element which Man cannot confront is added to elements he has not been able to 48

confront so far, Man engages himself upon a decreasing ability to handle war.

We are looking here at the basic anatomy of all problems. Problems start with an inability to confront anything.

Whether we apply this to domestic quarrels or to insects, to garbage dumps or Picasso, one can always trace the beginning of any existing problem to an unwillingness to confront.

Let us take a domestic scene.

The husband or the wife cannot confront the other, cannot confront marriage consequences, cannot confront the economic burdens, and so we have domestic strife. The less any of these actually are confronted, the more problem they will become.

It is a truism that one never solves anything by running away from it. Of course, one might also say that one never solves cannonballs by baring his breast to them. But I assure you that if nobody cared whether cannonballs were fired or not, control of people by threat of cannonballs would cease.

The more the horribleness of crime is deified by television and public press, the less the society will be able to handle

crime. The more formidable is made the juvenile delinquent, the less the society will be able to handle the juvenile delinquent.

The world is never bright to those who cannot confront it.

Everything is a dull gray to a defeated army. The whole trick of somebody telling you, “It’s all bad over there” is contained in the fact that he is trying to keep you from confronting something and thus make you retreat from life. Eyeglasses, nervous twitches, tensions, all of these things stem from an unwillingness to confront.

When that willingness is repaired, these disabilities tend to disappear. n

The CHURCH of

SC I E NTOLOGY works with over

50,000 SCHOOLS

GOVERNMENTS

BUSINESSES

VOLUNTEER ORGANIZATIONS

EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS

COMMUNITY GROUPS

CHURCHES

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MILITARY

LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES

TO MAKE A REAL DIFFERENCE

Š 2015 Church of Scientology International. All Rights Reserved. Grateful acknowledgement is made to L. Ron Hubbard Library for permission to reproduce selections from the copyrighted works of L. Ron Hubbard. Scientology, Hubbard, the Scientology symbol, the Dianetics symbol, the Scientology cross and Freedom are trademarks and service marks owned by Religious Technology Center and are used with its permission. Scientologist is a collective membership mark designating members of the official churches and missions of Scientology. Printed in USA.

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