Some 300 Northampton, Mass., citizens, modeling themselves after the Sons of Liberty who organized against British tyranny before the Revolutionary War, met on Feb. 4 to organize ways to protect residents of the town from the Bush-Ashcroft USA PATRIOT Act. They defied Attorney General John Ashcroft, who threatened dissenters in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year. Instead, Nat Henthoff wrote in the Village Voice, "the Northampton Bill of Rights Defense Committee began a new American Revolution."

The Northampton group got more than 1,000 signatures on a petition urging the town government to approve a "resolution to defend the Bill of Rights." That resolution passed the Northampton city council by a unanimous vote on May 2. It targets not only the USA PATRIOT Act but also all subsequent actions by Ashcroft and others that "threaten key rights guaranteed to US citizens and noncitizens by the Bill of Rights and the Massachusetts Constitution." Among those key rights: "freedom of speech, assembly, and privacy; the right to counsel and due process in judicial proceedings; and protection from unreasonable searches and seizures."

In April, similar resolutions to defend the Bill of Rights from the Bush administration and feckless Congress were passed in the nearby towns of Amherst and Leverett. City councils of Ann Arbor, Mich., Berkeley, Calif., Denver, Colo., and Cambridge, Mass., have passed similar resolutions. More are in preparation.

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