Red cards
Recently I’ve been involved in a campaign to distribute red cards around the region, which I’ll talk about in this post.
What are red cards?
“Know Your Rights” Red Cards are ID-sized cards that say the following on one side:
I do not wish to speak with you, answer your questions, or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution. I do not give you permission to enter my home based on my 4th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution unless you have a warrant to enter, signed by a judge or magistrate with my name on it that you slide under the door. I do not give you permission to search any of my belongings based on my 4th Amendment rights. I choose to exercise my constitutional rights. These cards are available to citizens and noncitizens alike.
And, on the other — often translated into a different language — this:
You have constitutional rights:
• DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR if an immigration agent is knocking on the door.
• DO NOT ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS from an immigration agent if they try to talk to you. You have the right to remain silent.
• DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING without first speaking to a lawyer. You have the right to speak with a lawyer.
• If you are outside of your home, ask the agent if you are free to leave and if they say yes, leave calmly.
• GIVE THIS CARD TO THE AGENT. If you are inside of your home, show the card through the window or slide it under the door.
For obvious reasons, it’s been increasingly popular to give these cards out to noncitizens, even if they’re in the US on a visa or a green card. City Council passed a resolution supporting a “Know Your Rights” campaign at our April 8th meeting, though it would need to be the Mayor who executes it. Separately, a member of the Medford Democratic City Committee (on which I serve as their Secretary and Ward 8 Chair) brought up the idea of buying these red cards to distribute them around the community. We need to do something, after all. The City Committee has a limited amount of campaign funds to spend, so, in a special meeting on April 7th, we voted to allocate funds to purchase up to 8000 of these cards. One of the Co-chairs called OCPF, who told us that, since these are campaign funds, we can only donate these cards to nonprofits in a charitable capacity. So, I put together a Google form, and, on April 28th, sent out requests for recommendations to a few Facebook groups and the Medford subreddit.
The Media Cycle
A few hours after I posted that, I received a request from WBZ Radio for an interview. I did the interview at 9AM the next day, and the story was posted before 12 PM. Then a reporter from Boston 25 reached out and I gave an interview before a City Council meeting that evening, which aired that night. The next morning Boston.com, NBC Telemundo (Spanish language news), and Fox Digital reached out, all of whom I replied to or interviewed with (though I couldn’t find Telemundo’s story online). A few other sites reposted the story after that. The Patch also covered it briefly. (Note: the Patch misreported that it was the City that purchased these; interestingly, with the Know Your Rights campaign, Medford could very well purchase red cards at some point, but that’s untrue for the initial batch of 4000, which were funded by the Democratic City Committee’s campaign funds.)
I’m a local politician entering campaign season, so I’m not going to refuse free media, but the interest did surprise me. When the Invest in Medford volunteers were working our teeth out for months to pass the overrides, we got some coverage from the Globe near the end of the campaign, and that felt hard-earned. But a Reddit post to distribute cards that tells people about two Constitutional amendments made regional and even national news so, so easily.
I see a campaign to tell people about their constitutional rights as a very straightforward, legally and morally cut-and-dry issue, but I nonetheless received some pushback on it. This is most eloquently summarized with the back-and-forth I had over email with the Fox reporter, which I’m going to repeat here in a Q&A format (the text of the questions and answers is verbatim copied and pasted from the email, though for brevity I’m not posting the full text):
Q: Why do cities like yours seem to be going down the red card route, rather than PSAs or other means of communicating similar messages?
A: We are — City Council voted to endorse a "Know Your Rights" campaign at our April 8th meeting, while community members are organizing protests. The Red Card initiative from the Democratic City Committee just received more attention from news outlets. (https://medfordma.portal.civicclerk.com/event/374/files/report/1067)
Q: The cards cite holders' Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights -- critics might argue that people living in the U.S. illegally don't have the same rights as American citizens and therefore these protections do not apply to them -- what would you say to critics that think that?
A: The Fourth and Fifth Amendments use the terms "people" and "person", not "citizen", so their protections apply to noncitizens as well. In Reno v. Flores, a 1993 Supreme Court case, Justice Scalia wrote "it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings."
Q: What would you say to onlookers who might question the integrity of an initiative like this one?
A: The cards list basic constitutional protections that apply to everybody, and everybody in the U.S. should be aware of their constitutional rights.
Where we’re at now
Even since those stories aired, there have been reported sightings of ICE in the parking lot of the local Target, while the LUCE hotline continues to get more and more popular. The Democratic City Committee is almost done giving out the red cards in the initial batch of 4000, which we handed out and mailed to ten different nonprofits in and around Medford (I’ve received plenty of requests from individuals for red cards, but I’ve had to either refuse these or encourage them to look for a nonprofit). At a recent City Council Public Health and Community Safety meeting, representatives from the Medford Police Department said that ICE doesn’t even try to reach out to them since they’re aware of which cities have local non-cooperation clauses. And, for some good news: Rümeysa Öztürk was finally released.
