Thursday, February 24, 2011

Alaska Legislator Who Refused TSA Grope to Arrive in Juneau This Morning - by Ferry Boat

After her mastectomy padding showed up in the invasive full-body X-ray scan at Sea-Tac Airport on Sunday, Alaska Representative Sharon Cissna (D - District K Anchorage) refused to go through a highly invasive pat-down. Unlike some who have refused this insulting procedure, Cissna was allowed to leave the airport. She had been searched before. After telling her husband she would never submit to such indignity again, she kept her word.

Apparently, Cissna went from Sea-Tac to British Columbia, where she caught a plane to Prince Rupert, where the Alaska Ferry MV Matanuska was scheduled to dock early in the week, as it worked its way north from Bellingham, Washington to Juneau, Haines and Skagway.

From Prince Rupert, before boarding the ferry, which doesn't have wifi, and only intermittent cell phone coverage, Cissna wrote a letter to constituents:
The evening of the 20th of February 2011 started with relief, as I was anxious to get back to the important work of the Alaskan Legislature. Heading into security after time with the line of passengers, I felt upbeat. I'd blocked out the horror of three months earlier, but after the pleasant TSA agent checked the ticket and ID, I suddenly found myself directed into scanning by the Seattle Airport's full-body imaging scan. The horror began again. A female agent placed herself blocking my passage. Scan results would again display that my breast cancer and the resulting scars pointed a TSA finger of irregularity at my chest. I would require invasive, probing hands of a stranger over my body.

Memories of violation would consume my thoughts again."

"Being a public servant and elected representative momentarily disappeared.

Facing the agent I began to remember what my husband and I'd decided after the previous intensive physical search. That I never had to submit to that horror again! It would be difficult, we agreed, but I had the choice to say no, this twisted policy did not have to be the price of flying to Juneau!"

"So last night, as more and more TSA, airline, airport and police gathered, I became stronger in remembering to fight the submission to a physical hand exam.

I repeatedly said that I would not allow the feeling-up and I would not use the transportation mode that required it."

"For nearly fifty years I've fought for the rights of assault victims, population in which my wonderful Alaska sadly ranks number one, both for men and women who have been abused. The very last thing an assault victim or molested person can deal with is yet more trauma and the groping of strangers, the hands of government 'safety' policy."

"For these people, as well as myself, I refused to submit."

Wednesday, the Alaska House of Representatives took a "Sense of the House" vote in support of Rep. Cissna in a resolution:
"that efficient travel is a cornerstone of our economy and our quality of life especially here in Alaska, and that no one should have to sacrifice their dignity in order to travel.”

The House voted 36-2 to adopt that sentiment. Reps. Bob Lynn, R-Anchorage, and Dan Saddler, R-Eagle River, voted “no.” Cissna and Rep. Anna Fairclough, another Eagle River Republican, were absent.

Representatives Lynn and Sadler are the legislature's most ardent supporters of the most intrusive and ridiculous aspects of our mismanaged, stupid "war on terror." Lynn denounced me in a 2004 joint session of the legislature as an enemy of the State.

Anchorage blogger Steve Aufrecht, who is in Juneau for part of the ongoing legislative session, visited Rep. Cissna's Juneau office yesterday, where he photographed a pile of copies of emailed letters of support for the legislator. Steve wrote "Cissna's office has been inundated with supportive emails from around the country."

Alaska U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, the sole member of Alaska's national congressional delegation to vote for the extension of Patriot Act provisions last week (Rep. Don Young (R) and Sen. Mark Begich (D) voted against the extension), is supporting Cissna. She wrote to the TSA yesterday:
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, today sent a letter to Transportation Security Administration Administrator John Pistole requesting the TSA immediately clarify it’s screening policy for airline passengers with special medical conditions.

“This kind of invasive probing should not be the price of travel,” Murkowski wrote in the letter. “I appreciate that the TSA has a difficult task in keeping air transportation safe…. However, this incident highlights specific privacy concerns that must be addressed. I am concerned there is an imbalance between safety requirements and overly invasive procedures targeting air travelers who have undergone mastectomy surgeries or use prosthetics.”

“Air travel to Alaska should never require submission to a stranger’s intrusive touching of one’s sensitive body area,” Murkowski wrote.

Hundreds of people are expected to meet the MV Matanuska when it docks at the Auke Bay terminal north of Juneau this morning. Progressives in the state capitol are already mobilized this week, having been demonstrating outside the legislature in solidarity with Wisconsin union workers.

Air travel is more important to Alaskans than to residents of any other state. Most Alaska communities are not accessible by road. For instance, my wife is having to take two 737 flights and four Piper Navajo flights this week, merely to go from one job site (mentoring first-year Alaska bush teachers) to the next.

13 comments:

womanwithsardinecan said...

Add my virtual presence to those meeting the ferry this morning.

Anonymous said...

I'm interested in what change Cissna/Murkowski propose. Eliminate pat down entirely or implement a pat down free list?

Suzanne said...

This is probably the one issue conservatives and liberals can agree on. Don't forget Hawaii is also heavily dependent on air travel. I hope this incident with Rep. Cissna is a tipping point all over the country for ending TSA's ridiculous tyranny, because according to TSA's web site, they intend to infiltrate all train, subway, bus, & sea travel, as well as large sports arenas. How many people are aware TSA was at the SuperBowl this year, staking its territory for stadium body scanners next year? They will be at the NBA all stars game, too. We will have no public place left free of them. They are even testing street mobile units to x-ray us in our cars wherever we go. This is a big money bureaucracy with every intention of running amok. As long as the payoffs from the body scanner companies last.

Next year, the ferry will likely not be available to Rep. Cissna without the TSA grope-down. Will even dog sled be available to her? Afterall, TSA has been recruiting at the Iditerod.

Anonymous said...

I am so very proud of Rep. Cissna for refusing to allow a stranger to violate her body! I will never submit to the TSA's reign of sexual abuse - they have no right to force me to pose for naked pictures or to shove their hands up in between my legs. What the TSA is doing is absolutely disgusting and does NOT make anyone safer. This kind of physically violent threat against our bodies makes us much less safe, especially if we decide to drive rather than be degraded and humiliated.

Anonymous said...

Please let this be the start of the end of the TSA. This should be easy Bi-Partisan issue.

Independent said...

Here is the solution. Go back to the LEGAL means of metal detectors ONLY, which have worked for 7 Billion passengers and 63 million US domestic flights.

It's just that simple!

No airline passenger has actually blown up a bomb on a US flight since 1962. With the hardening of cockpit doors, there have been no hijacking of US flights since 9-11. Basically, there is an infinitely small risk of airline passengers causing a problem. The naked scanners do not substantially increase security as there have been 0 passenger bombs in 48 years that worked. Today, they don't have naked scanners everywhere, so if you think naked scanners are needed, you should understand someone can already bypass them.

Again, the risk is less than you getting killed shopping at a grocery store in Phoenix, for example. Yet, no one outlaws guns because it is against the constitution, just like naked scanner are unreasonable, warrentless searches.

Anonymous said...

I Wish I were Alaskan so I could vote for Rep. Cissna.

Anonymous said...

I often disagree with your positions, but this is one we should be able to find bipartisan agreement on.

I just wrote Rep Saddler and explained my disappointment in his vote.

Rowland Scherman said...

A guy with four-inch high sneakers, with a fuse coming out of them was apprehended once upon a time. Now everyone, including little old ladies in flat shoes with their toes sticking out have to take off their shoes in airports. Not one grain of explosive matter has been found since.

Chertoff becomes TSA czar, and implements a compulsory full body X-ray scan which has unknown long term effects. It turns out that Chertoff's own company makes the machines. If you opt out of being X-rayed, there is a mandatory "pat down", which, to those who have had it, is deemed "insulting" and "invasive".

The shoe thing has been abandoned in Europe.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to be contrary, but I have never seen the issue here. Perhaps my status as a mother of four children (been poked and prodded in the most unseemly ways, all to the good end) and my sensibilities as a practicing artist (give me a naked person and hunk of charcoal and I'll tell ya what I see) makes me tougher than the average bear regarding Puritan ideas about the human body and privacy. Doesn't bother me one whit. Certainly not enough to spend the extra time and money to take a ferry. Totally enough to have this done to me so that I can board a plane in safety, knowing that this has been done to others, SO THAT I MIGHT LIVE and my children and grandchildren will still suffer my presence.

Touch my junk, who cares? I am not Paris Hilton, and my suitcase is far more interesting than my body. Grow up, kids. Get on the plane, arrive home safely. What is more important than that?

Micmac

Anonymous said...

MicMac, some of us have had children and we still regard our bodies as private. Some of us have excused nurses from our birthing rooms for saying, "Honey, we're all girls here, no need for modesty!" and refusing to allow them entry again. While I, too, am an artist, I only draw people who willingly pose naked.

BTW: Doctors do not "poke"-- they examine. It's very different.

Anonymous said...

micmac, how can you not understand the issue? By allowing this to happen, you're placing yourself in the same group of people who hate America. No law abiding Citizen should have to suffer this level of indignity. The focus should be on people who are traveling to America from regions in which the people who live there have repeatedly demonstrated the intent to attack America.

If you don't object to your children being groped, that's your choice, but you don't have a foundation to speak for anyone else.

alaskapi said...

Getting sorta tired of being told to grow up Micmac-
Actually very tired of it.
I do not accept your idea that I am safer flying because a bazillion everyday people just like me are treated like real or potential criminals.
Most ARE just like me- just passengers trying to get to business meetings, visit family and friends, and get to medical treatment Outside or get home.
Accepting ill treatment of all for an illusion of safety (and it is an illusion) violates more than personal privacy.
There's a lot of talk in this country about personal responsibility and most of it is horsepunky.
Asking the general populace to step up and take "personal responsibility" in the face of the failure of our govt to do it's own damn job is more horsepunky.
I feel no responsibility to you or the govt or anyone else to put up with being presumed to be guilty of being a ne'er do well until proven otherwise every dang time I want to visit my grandchildren or ailing elderly parents. Pffft!!!


alaskapi