Why I Support a Boycott of the 2020 U.S. Census

     Local government is urging the American people to cooperate with the 2020 U.S. Census survey.

     A court recently ruled that the Trump Administration could not include the citizenship question on it. But what will local government do to protect us, if the administration insists on including it anyway (whether they figure out how to do it legally or not)?

     The Constitution authorizes the federal government and its census takers to collect no information other than the number of people. Therefore,all questions about ethnicity, race, religion, country of origin or birth, and citizenship, are thus illegal, and laws providing for those questions to be asked are unconstitutional. We cannot legally be obligated to answer any of those questions, and I urge residents not to answer them (especially given that there is no enforced punishment for evading the census).

     Another reason why our local governments are urging us to cooperate with the census, is that our elected officials use the census to make money off of us. Making sure that everyone participates in the census is, after all, how government makes sure that congressional districts have equal numbers of people. And that is what they use to justify taking the census in the first place; they say apportionment and drawing districts are impossible without a census.

     However, the number of people in the district also secures that district federal funding, as part of its “equal share” of federal funding. That is how our representatives are using us – taking advantage of the fact that we are in their districts – for their own monetary benefit (i.e., the idea that we need to be represented is what allows them to hold positions and profit).

     Of course, it matters to almost nobody that spending and the tax burden are not shared anywhere near equally by the districts and states (shown in the maps below). 

But the fact that equality is not furthered in determining where these districts lie, should show that the census's main purpose is to secure whatever funding the district can manage to get. That is why urging people to participate in the census, and offering people well-paid positions to be census takers, is nothing more than a scam to continue the redistribution of wealth across the country.

     The census is nothing more than a scam to defraud us, the voters and taxpayers and residents, of our financial power (through our right to those funds), and our legal power (through allowing our elected officials to take away some of our power of attorney, and in so doing, to appropriate more of those federal funds towards themselves and their own offices than towards We the People).

     Aside from the census being a money-making scheme for our legislators, it is also a plot to track us, and harvest our private personal information. Government-regulated credit rating agencies and banks routinely lose millions upon millions of people's personal information; do you really trust government to handle your personal information wisely?

     Moreover, the census could potentially be used as a way to round-up non-citizens and other “undesirables” or “enemies of the state”. What do our state and local governments plan to do, if the Trump Administration goes forward with its plan to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census (whether legally or illegally)? Do they intend to protect us?

     Unfortunately, I predict that they're going to continue to urge cooperation at all times, because to do otherwise would be against the law, and the opposite of what they're supposed to do as elected officials (which is to urge faith in all public institutions at all times, and participation in as many government programs as possible).

     You might think that elected officials and police have an obligation to do their jobs, and do as ordered. But if your job is to threaten force against people who entered this country illegally but without threatening force themselves, then your job is immoral, and you doing your job conflicts with the public's moral obligation to peacefully resist unjust laws. The police, for the most part, have no obligation to do “their jobs” (if by that we mean “protect and serve the general public”; that's out because of Warren v. D.C.) because they can only do as ordered. “I was only following orders” didn't fly at the Nuremberg Trials, and “I was just doing my job” is the new “I was only following orders”.

     Local governments throughout Illinois should urge Governor J.B. Pritzker to instruct the Illinois National Guard, and all public police in Illinois, to refrain from cooperating with federal authorities. And that goes for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.), and agents of the 2020 census, alike; and the same goes for other states urging their governors to interpose the same federal authorities. That's because the vast majority of these agencies' activities (and the census takers' questions) were not properly constitutionally authorized.

     Under no circumstances should the public be urged to cooperate with federal authorities in pursuit of these unconstitutional aims. All fifty state governors should immediately issue orders nullifying the federal law which authorized I.C.E.; effectively removing the authority of I.C.E. to operate legally within the boundaries of each particular state.

     If necessary, state National Guard troops should be mobilized to arrest federal troops or agents, and/or prevent more of them from entering the given state, if they insist on enforcing unconstitutional federal laws. If local government doesn't intend to do anything to stop the continued operation of an illegal federal department that didn't even exist just 17 years ago, then it cannot rightfully claim that what it does, promotes either freedom or public safety.

     Local governments are doing their residents no service to recommend that they cooperate with the Trump Administration. Even if the administration doesn't use the census to carry out deportations, it's already deporting peaceful undocumented immigrants.

     I.C.E. is hassling Hispanic-Americans who were born in America now. Seasonal farm workers are being trapped in America at the end of harvest season, and mocked and driven into the shadows for being here illegally (through no fault of their own), now. Immigrants are being funneled away from points of entry where they could easily declare asylum, and instead are forced to trek through dangerous desert, now.

     Whether the Trump Administration's immigration, deportation, and census policies going forward, will be legal and constitutional or not, why should state and local governments urge us to cooperate with those “authorities”? Aren't they supposed to protect public safety? Governments are supposed to work for the people, not the other way around.

     If the police state national guards do not come to the aid of all non-violent residents (not just the citizens who pay them) during deportation raids, then neighbors will come together to protect vulnerable residents who are in the United States without proper permission.

     And if that happens, then it will be the members of local government whom will have urged resident and police cooperation with federal authorities, whom will be remembered as the people who urged cooperation with a blatantly authoritarian regime, and whom will have suckered us into becoming fascist collaborators (and potentially even turning-in our undocumented neighbors, especially if you consider the potential usurious ends for which the census taker could be used).

     I urge the people to arm themselves, and to resist the census. I also urge the people, and the police, to refuse to cooperate with federal authorities enforcing all immigration laws.

     The federal government has the authority to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, not to enforce it (which means it should fall to the states). The federal government, also, lacks authority to establish any other types of immigration policy; and moreover, the federal government has no obligation to collect census data in addition to the number of people.

     That is why I support boycotting the 2020 U.S. Census. It will be used – and, in my opinion, is already being used, by our legislators - as a way to convince citizens to shame one another into supporting the census, with the non-participating person being seen by the pro-census people as if they were withholding money from the district and their fellow citizens. We are being forced to compete against one another, and encouraged to spy on one another.

     In mid-July 2019, a federal court ruled against including a citizenship question in the 2020 Census. However, on July 29th, N.P.R. reported that the U.S. Census Bureau sent out census forms including the citizenship question to 240,000 households.

http://www.npr.org/2019/07/29/746158231/why-the-2020-census-citizenship-question-hasn-t-gone-away
     The Trump Administration says this was only a test. However, they've been criticized for not doing this test long enough before the 2020 census, before it can be approved in its final form. There are now, at the time of this writing, only six and a half weeks left until 2020. My local U.S. Representative recently reassured an audience that the census information will be secure, and will not be used to deport people (nor sold for profit to big data collection companies), but I remain unconvinced.

     It was completely predictable that the administration would keep pushing on this issue, because pushing and doubling-down is what this administration does. Lawsuits don't work against fascists; the Trump Administration will find a way to use this information for evil. After all, the Nazis might never have been able to murder as many Jewish people as they did, were it not for the assistance of I.B.M. computers, which collected census data that allowed the Nazis to track Jews down.

     We should not forget that something like that could happen again. Big data companies are real threats. Facebook, for example, has been about encouraging people to voluntarily surrender information about themselves (where they are, who they're with, what they like) from the start; in its early days, Facebook was funded by the C.I.A. through a startup called In-Q-Tel.

     We shouldn't wait for the Supreme Court to stop the Trump Administration doing something illegal; they will find ways to keep enforcing policies even when they know they are unconstitutional, improperly authorized, or could easily be enforced differently or not at all.

     Instead, we should endorse Jeffersonian nullification. The governors would be fully within their powers to nullify I.C.E., deportation orders, and additional census questions, and in so doing make the states “sanctuary states”. Although using a "states' rights" solution could be politically unpopular (or even offensive), the same power could also be used to justify keeping Illinois a "sanctuary state".

     However, I would not recommend that this “sanctuary state” designation be made in a way that secures federal funds to the given state, as the federal government should not be in the business of settling immigrants; its only duty is to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.

     I believe that this policy will help make assistance to undocumented immigrants legal, constitutional, and voluntary (i.e., neither prohibited nor mandatory).

     Until state and local governments can start offering more than words when criticizing the Trump Administration's desire to implement legislation they know damn well is unconstitutional – if the council could offer condemnation and plans for action – then it could show a generation of young Americans that their country's civic ethics are not only about promoting civic engagement, but also in recognizing our freedoms and our rights to resist tyranny.
     The American people stood up to fascism, and they will stand up to it again, whether it is at home or abroad.

Based on notes written in July and August 2019

Edited and expanded on November 13th, 2019

Originally published in final form on November 13th, 2019

(includes fragments of articles published in July and August 2019)