World attention. That's what the inauguration on Mon., Nov. 17 of Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger has brought to Sacramento, the Golden State's capital.

World media is focused on many details of the film actor turned politician. He is the man of the hour, the GOP's "white knight" set to begin a housecleaning of state government.

Balance California's budget. Enhance public schools.

Revive business profits. Cut government red tape.

Meanwhile, a contradictory trend for improved governance is also moving forward, though with far less attention. Just blocks away from the state capitol on Nov. 13, the Sacramento City Council voted 8-1 to approve a resolution to symbolically oppose the USA Patriot Act, signed swiftly into law after the East Coast terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Sacramento now joins 208 other communities across America taking a stand against the Patriot Act, crafted to battle terrorism by increasing the government's power at all levels over the public, with and without its knowledge. Presumably, this is the best way to proceed in the post-9/11 war on terror.

In my hometown, the city council vote on Nov. 13 was due in big part to the mobilization of the Sacramento Coalition to Stop the Patriot Act. It had no bulging bank account to spread the word, just the energy of people who value the freedom to disagree with the powers that be.

In contrast, large cash defined Schwarzenegger's recall campaign. He borrowed and spent millions of dollars to unseat the Democratic governor.

Lacking big bucks, Sacramento's anti-Patriot Act coalition includes folks of many backgrounds and interests working together to strengthen civil liberties as a widespread US-led attack on terrorists, real and imagined, proceeds. In contrast, protecting constitutional freedoms during the current era of the criminal justice crackdown on terror is not much on the radar screen of the new governor.

But that can change, as such treetops politicians have done in the past. To that end, more than 100 people waited in line outside the Sacramento City Council chambers for over two hours, while an equal number sat inside it before the recent Patriot Act debate and vote.

One person waiting in the chill of the night was from Fresno, a Central Valley city where the freedom to publicly criticize US foreign policy of preventive war after 9/11 is at-risk. Case in point is law enforcement infiltrating of Peace Fresno, an anti-war group.

Members of the group were "recently shocked when they found out that one of their participants, Aaron Stokes, died in a motorcycle accident," noted an Oct. 9 report by Democracy Now!, the national news show hosted by journalist Amy Goodman on the Pacifica radio network. "An obituary published in the local newspaper in late August showed Aaron's picture.

"But the name under the picture was not Aaron Stokes. It was Aaron Kilner, an undercover detective who was working for the Fresno County Sheriff's department. He was also a member of the local anti-terrorism unit."

In George W. Bush's America, people who back the settling of disputes between nations without using armed forces have become a target of government snoops. And American taxpayers are footing the bill for such surveillance.

Consider grants totaling $725 million to cities across America to "boost counter-terror efforts and to respond to terrorist attacks more effectively," noted a report in the Financial Times of Nov. 14. "The money, which is earmarked for the next fiscal year, comes on top of $800 million already disbursed to US cities this year as the Department of Homeland Security steps up efforts to involve the country's cities and municipalities in counter-terrorism."

This trend of law enforcement spending is also Keynesian stimulus to prime the pump of a slow/no growth US economy. Such government investment can counter the national downturn that has caused the shedding of millions of jobs under the Bush White House.

Against the backdrop of growing government power over regular people, global media have been converging on Sacramento to cover the historic swearing-in of the action film actor who won the recent gubernatorial recall vote. Mass media are giddily detailing Schwarzenegger's past exploits on and off the film set.

Who from Hollywood and Wall St. will attend his inauguration? Such journalism can also be a diversion from the Patriot Act-driven attempt to intimidate some Americans into political submission.

Unwilling to live their lives in fear, Patriot Act dissidents in Sacramento and nationwide have created a popular movement of mutual aid to protect the Constitution, and the public. This movement, itself part of the anti-Iraq occupation mobilization, is gathering momentum.

Call it a blossoming vision of liberty and security from the grassroots. Call it democracy in action.