In October 2001, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act setting aside many of our individual freedoms for the sake of fighting terrorism. Since then, I've worried about what's happening to democracy.

Do we understand the threat USA PATRIOT poses to our civil liberties? Or are we willing to give up our rights and freedoms in return for a promise of safety, and shrug off the danger to democracy from an unaccountable government?

I'm not worried anymore.

By last week, 132 cities and counties and three states had passed resolutions stating their intention not to cooperate with some provisions of USA PATRIOT. Elected office-holders in these communities have publicly declared that they will not abide by federal laws and orders that would compel them to accord the people in their jurisdiction less than full rights and protections guaranteed to all persons in the US Constitution.

These resolutions have happened because of people who care about civil liberties. Groups of citizens in each of these communities have conducted public forums, met with elected office-holders, sought endorsements, drafted resolution language, canvassed neighborhoods getting signatures on petitions, given countless talks about threats to the Bill of Rights, and brought out standing-room-only crowds for public hearings and votes.

Who are these people who have convinced so many local lawmaking bodies to openly oppose federal law?

If they're anything like the Bill of Rights Defense Committees in Minneapolis and St. Paul, they are folks from all walks of life, all income levels and all points on the political spectrum.

Teachers. Consultants. Environmentalists. People who voted for George Bush. People who voted for Ralph Nader. Engineers. Unemployed people. Civil rights attorneys. Minimum-wage workers. Retired persons. Students. Supporters of the war on Iraq. People of faith. And a large minority from the arts community, people to whom freedom of expression is as dear as life itself.

And many, if not most, are involved for the first time in civil society political activism.

What they have in common is a conviction that the rights, freedoms and protections guaranteed in the Constitution are at the very core of what it means to be an American. They view the Bill of Rights as a precious heritage from our ancestors who struggled for generations to ensure that these freedoms would be for all people, not just a certain class. And they are unwilling to part with these cherished rights and freedoms in return for an empty promise of safety from terrorism.

As a participant in the Minneapolis Bill of Rights Defense Committee, which successfully urged the Minneapolis City Council to pass a resolution in April, I was interviewed for two recent mass-media stories on this effort, one in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and one on National Public Radio. In these and all other media coverage I've seen, journalists have missed the real story by framing it as a contest between proponents and opponents of USA PATRIOT.

The significance of resistance to USA PATRIOT and similar acts is not who's 'right' and 'wrong' about how much they erode civil liberties, or whether that erosion is justifiable.

The real story is that people in communities that now total more 16 million in population have persuaded their city councils to pass, often unanimously or near-unanimously, resolutions in direct defiance of federal legislation. And if the other cities and states with active citizen groups urging similar resolutions also pass them, the total number of people living in civil rights-protective communities could rise to more than 45 million.

This is the real story -- that the Bush administration's efforts to launch the most direct assault on individual rights and protections since the Alien and Sedition Acts in the early days of our nation, have sparked in response the most open and defiant assertion of local democracy ever seen.

There's no doubt that as a society we take our freedom for granted. Most of us likely could not recite all the rights guaranteed in the Constitution. And there are many who never learned about those rights and don't value them.

But this grassroots uprising in defense of the Bill of Rights involving people in hundreds of communities and of all ages, careers and political persuasions -- and the willingness of local and state elected office-holders to stand up in opposition to federal efforts to curb civil liberties -- convinces me that the Bill of Rights is still for many, many Americans a living heritage worthy of immense effort to protect.

I know of nothing more hopeful than this for the future of democracy and freedom.

Betsy Barnum is a member of the Minneapolis Bill of Rights Defense Committee and is also founder and executive director of the Great River Earth Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She can be contacted at betsy@greatriv.org.

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