TSA Opt-Out Day

Fact Sheet: Know Your Passenger Rights on TSA Opt-Out Day

By: Jane Hamsher Monday November 22, 2010 9:42 am

The idea of an Opt-Out day has been picking up steam, and many airline passengers will be refusing to submit to the TSA’s whole body imaging scanners on Wednesday, November 24.  But in the wake of conflicting messages coming out of the TSA, travelers are going to be confused about what to expect at TSA security checkpoints. So FDL has put together  a handy flier about the scanners and the “enhanced” patdown procedures, which explains your risks and rights in the airport:

I’ve talked at other sites about a Serf Strike and while I don’t want to inflict any personal inconvenience on you I equally urge non-violent direct action of the type Martin Luther King practiced–

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

Now I’ll never fly again unless absolutely necessary, simply because even before 9/11 I found it an unpleasant and tedious waste of time.  I can only imagine how horrible it is today.  And it’s not that I flatter myself that I have much of an audience, yet I’m irresistibly tempted to encourage this endeavour simply because of the Versailles Villagers begging people not to.

Incoming House Transportation chief against ‘Opt-Out’ Day in TSA protest

By Kevin Bogardus, The Hill

11/21/10 10:25 AM ET

Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) urged airline passengers Sunday to not purposefully slow down airport security lines by refusing to go through body scanners.

Likely the next House Transportation Committee chairman, Mica said he could not support what has become known as National “Opt-Out” Day. During the busy Thanksgiving travel period, passengers may opt-out of the body scanners, which take naked body images, and instead choose to go under invasive pat-downs as an act of protest. That will then likely slow down security lines.

Good.  That’s what it’s supposed to do.

John Pistole, TSA Chief, Pleads With Travelers Against Full-Body Scan Boycott

RAY HENRY, Associated Press

11/22/10 11:13 PM

ATLANTA – The nation’s airport security chief pleaded with Thanksgiving travelers for understanding and urged them not to boycott full-body scans on Wednesday, lest their protest snarl what is already one of the busiest, most stressful flying days of the year.

Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole said Monday that such delaying actions would only “tie up people who want to go home and see their loved ones.”

…

“Just one or two recalcitrant passengers at an airport is all it takes to cause huge delays,” said Paul Ruden, a spokesman for the American Society of Travel Agents, which has warned its more than 8,000 members about delays. “It doesn’t take much to mess things up anyway.”

Well, since it’s coming up on Thanksgiving Day anyway-

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints.  And the only reason I’m singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there’s only one thing you can do and that’s walk into the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say “Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice’s restaurant.”.  And walk out.  You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t take him.  And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an organization.  And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singing a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out.  And friends they may think it’s a movement.

And that’s what it is , the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come’s around on the guitar.

With feeling.