by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
On Monday, July 28th, 2008 (more than a decade ago), I used this space to recount the story of a litterbug. In a piece entitled "Jesus Would Litter" I told the tale of Daniel Millis, then a 29-year-old Spanish teacher at a public high school in southern Arizona. Daniel was doing volunteer work for a group called "No More Deaths." His specific assignment was to leave full one-gallon water jugs out in the Sonoran Desert to save lives of undocumented migrants who were crossing the desert on foot in an attempt to reach sanctuary and economic salvation in the promised land.
As Daniel left his life-saving jugs of water in the desert, he also picked up litter along the way.
But our federal government was not in a mood to tolerate a good Samaritan, and Daniel was arrested and charged by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Commission with littering - the "litter" of course being the jugs of water that he was leaving behind.
Two months later (September 24th, 2008) I was able to report in this same space that a federal judge had found Daniel Millis guilty of the littering charge, but had then promptly suspended any sentence. The teacher had done the crime, but there would be no punishment.
Now, in the year of our lord 2019, nearly eleven years after the case of the litterbug school teacher, the federal courts are again focused on essentially the same "crime." Humanitarians are once again standing before a judge defending themselves for providing food and water to travelers in need of sustenance and Christian charity.
This time a federal judge has found Natalie Hoffman, Oona Holcomb, Madeline Huse, and Zaachila Orozco-McCormick guilty of multiple charges of providing aid to undocumented border-crossers. The four women were working for "No More Deaths," the same group that had sponsored the work of Daniel Millis in 2008.
What an outrage - giving food and water to the hungry and thirsty! Do these low-life Christian scum have no sense of decency? It's a good thing Christ himself wasn't around, or Trump's goons would have had his scraggly ass in jail too!
Citizen Journalist
On Monday, July 28th, 2008 (more than a decade ago), I used this space to recount the story of a litterbug. In a piece entitled "Jesus Would Litter" I told the tale of Daniel Millis, then a 29-year-old Spanish teacher at a public high school in southern Arizona. Daniel was doing volunteer work for a group called "No More Deaths." His specific assignment was to leave full one-gallon water jugs out in the Sonoran Desert to save lives of undocumented migrants who were crossing the desert on foot in an attempt to reach sanctuary and economic salvation in the promised land.
As Daniel left his life-saving jugs of water in the desert, he also picked up litter along the way.
But our federal government was not in a mood to tolerate a good Samaritan, and Daniel was arrested and charged by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Commission with littering - the "litter" of course being the jugs of water that he was leaving behind.
Two months later (September 24th, 2008) I was able to report in this same space that a federal judge had found Daniel Millis guilty of the littering charge, but had then promptly suspended any sentence. The teacher had done the crime, but there would be no punishment.
Now, in the year of our lord 2019, nearly eleven years after the case of the litterbug school teacher, the federal courts are again focused on essentially the same "crime." Humanitarians are once again standing before a judge defending themselves for providing food and water to travelers in need of sustenance and Christian charity.
This time a federal judge has found Natalie Hoffman, Oona Holcomb, Madeline Huse, and Zaachila Orozco-McCormick guilty of multiple charges of providing aid to undocumented border-crossers. The four women were working for "No More Deaths," the same group that had sponsored the work of Daniel Millis in 2008.
What an outrage - giving food and water to the hungry and thirsty! Do these low-life Christian scum have no sense of decency? It's a good thing Christ himself wasn't around, or Trump's goons would have had his scraggly ass in jail too!
3 comments:
I can't believe this is a true story. What the hell is going on?
It's true, alright. Just another day in Trump's America!
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1983 (RFRA), while having been declared unconstitutional as applied to the states is still the valid law to be applied against the federal government. Codified at 42 U.S.C. Section 2000bb, the Congressional findings and declarations of purpose are an important read; especially the last sentence, (b)(2), for this discussion. The bill resulting in this law was introduced by Representative Chuck Schumer in in the House with a companion bill introduced into the Senate by Ted Kennedy.
The bills were prompted by adverse decisions in two cases by the Supreme Court against Native American rights. One case, Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, found against claims that certain lands were sacred and used extensively for religious purposes. The other case was Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, where the Court said a person could be fired for using peyote in a religious ceremony.
Of course, the last sentence of the opening section of the law is illustrative because it provides that RFRA may be used as a defense.
(a) FindingsThe Congress finds that—
(1) the framers of the Constitution, recognizing free exercise of religion as an unalienable right, secured its protection in the First Amendment to the Constitution;
(2) laws “neutral” toward religion may burden religious exercise as surely as laws intended to interfere with religious exercise;
(3) governments should not substantially burden religious exercise without compelling justification;
(4) in Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990) the Supreme Court virtually eliminated the requirement that the government justify burdens on religious exercise imposed by laws neutral toward religion; and
(5) the compelling interest test as set forth in prior Federal court rulings is a workable test for striking sensible balances between religious liberty and competing prior governmental interests.
(b) PurposesThe purposes of this chapter are—
(1) to restore the compelling interest test as set forth in Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963) and Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972) and to guarantee its application in all cases where free exercise of religion is substantially burdened; and
(2) to provide a claim or defense to persons whose religious exercise is substantially burdened by government.
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