[O29] Arabs and Muslims, "Middle America, " and building our movement

[R Miller]

Keith,

I could not follow your argument at all.

I don't know what is meant by "hard hats" but if you think racism and 
beating on students isn't happening, you are sadly mistaken.

Witness the recent pouncing and pounding on of a peaceful Pakistani 
student US VETERAN at George Mason University.

>> Full Report: Student Brutalized by Cops, Right-Wing Students, for 
>> Protesting Recruiters At George Mason U
>> M. Junaid Alam
>>
>> - See Pictures of Arrest-

http://lefthook.org/Ground/Alam100505pictures.html

>> A Pakistani-American who served four years in the United States Air 
>> Force as munitions personnel was beaten and brutalized by right-wing 
>> students and campus police last Thursday at George Mason University 
>> in Fairfax, Virginia.
>>
>> Tariq Khan, now a junior majoring in sociology, said he was standing 
>> in front of the recruitment table outside the school student center - 
>> as he has often done before - during noontime with a paper sign 
>> reading, "Recruiters lie, don't be deceived," taped to his shirt. A 
>> student approached Khan and initiated a verbal argument, screaming in 
>> his face; he then took the flyer and ripped it up in front of him, 
>> Khan says.
>>
>> The student then left and returned with another student claiming to 
>> be a Marine having recently served in Iraq, and the three continued a 
>> verbal argument that began to escalate, Khan claimed. "I asked the 
>> marine, 'So how many people did you kill?'" Khan said. "And he 
>> answered, 'Not enough.'" The marine student soon ripped Khan's sign 
>> off his shirt and threw it in the trash.
>>
>> Shortly thereafter, two of Khan's friends came to his defense, and a 
>> college staff member told Khan he had to leave because he had no 
>> permit to table in the area. "I didn't even have a table to begin 
>> with, so I didn't see why I needed a permit for one," Khan said. 
>> "Besides, to have a table, you need to be a campus group, and we 
>> didn't have one," he added, pointing out that the student council 
>> denied an anti-war group's right to exist on campus earlier because 
>> it contained several anarchists.
>>
>> The staff member called campus security, at which point a police 
>> officer, Lt. Reynolds, approached Khan and demanded to see his 
>> student ID. Khan said he told the officer he was not carrying his ID 
>> and tried to walk away when the policeman tried to arrest him and 
>> then became violent. "He threw me into the stage," Khan claimed, 
>> referring to a dance area in the student center left from an event 
>> earlier in the day, "and I just sort of raised my hands to show I'm 
>> not violent and tried to get as much attention by saying, 'I'm being 
>> non-violent and I'm being brutalized.'"
>>
>> Fellow student and friend Amie Wells confirmed Khan's account, saying 
>> the officer "grabbed him, put him in a half-nelson headlock," and 
>> then "slammed him into a metal stage," propped three feet above the 
>> floor. Wells added that the officer then slammed Khan into the ground 
>> hard, resulting in his face hitting the surface.
>>
>> Describing the atmosphere, Wells said a number of right-wing students 
>> were cheering on police officers who were attacking Khan, exclaiming, 
>> "Kick him!" She claimed most of the crowd appeared to be on the side 
>> of the police. "It was disgusting," she said. Another student who 
>> witnessed events, David Curtis, said some students initially implored 
>> the police to let Khan go, but others soon arrived to support the 
>> police, chanting "Kick his ass!"
>>
>> According to Khan, Wells, and Curtis, one of the right-wing students 
>> who had earlier harassed Khan joined the cops in forcing him on the 
>> ground. Curtis asked the student what authority he was exercising, 
>> and the student backed off.
>>
>> However, Curtis says, a university employee who stood about six feet 
>> eight inches and weighed around 300 pounds began helping the cops to 
>> further subdue Khan. "He performed jujitsu moves on me while the cops 
>> held me down, and the cops let him do it," Khan said. "Frankly, the 
>> cops were doing just fine without him, but this huge guy came and put 
>> [Khan's] free arm in a Kamora," Curtis said, referring to a jujitsu 
>> maneuver in which the arm is painfully bent backwards. "You could see 
>> on his face that it was really hurting him," Curtis said of Khan.
>>
>> A police officer claimed the university employee was an "auxiliary 
>> police officer," but Wells, who works with the man in the computer 
>> store, said she had never seen him in that capacity.
>>
>> Khan said he was then dragged off by two officers toward a police car 
>> but was reluctant to get in. He says one cop was preparing to spray 
>> him with mace. "He held the can straight at my eyes, about five 
>> inches away from my face," Khan said. "So I started yelling, 'Hey, 
>> this cop is trying to mace me, someone take a picture if you have a 
>> camera!"
>>
>> Wells quickly took out her cell-phone camera and began snapping 
>> pictures. "After I did that, the cop put away his mace can and said, 
>> 'Okay, no one's going to get maced today.' I mean, clearly, he knew 
>> he was doing something wrong," she said.
>>
>> Khan says Officer Reynolds told him he had to arrest him because, 
>> "What with 9/11 and everything else, we didn't know what you would 
>> do." Khan also says another policeman told him that "You people are 
>> the most violent people in the world." Before being hauled off to the 
>> Fairfax County Jail, Khan was warned by the police who were 
>> questioning him that "If you even look at [cops] the wrong way, 
>> they'll hang you up by your feet."
>>
>> Officer Reynolds asked the handcuffed student if he needed medical 
>> attention or desired an attorney, Khan claims, but says he was 
>> granted neither medical attention nor an attorney after expressly 
>> asking for both.
>>
>> Released after two hours, Khan was charged with disorderly conduct 
>> and trespassing on campus - even though Khan is a student and police 
>> found his ID when they searched him.
>>
>> The student protester says he is planning to sue the school, the 
>> police, and the right-wing students who attacked him. "I went with my 
>> wife and my mother-in law to file a complaint at the police office 
>> right afterwards, and had pictures taken of all my cuts and bruises," 
>> he says.
>>
>> In response to the incident, the university issued a statement to 
>> Khan recognizing that he was staging a peaceful protest and insisting 
>> it was committed to students' rights to free speech on campus; it 
>> also said it will conduct an internal investigation into the conduct 
>> of the police officers and the other students who were involved in 
>> Thursday's events.
>>
>> Khan, however, is not impressed. "They haven't even contacted me 
>> yet," he said. "I'll believe them when I see results."
>>
>> Asked what motivated him to begin his protest against military 
>> recruiters on a campus where there is no organized anti-war movement, 
>> the former Air Force enlistee said, "For four years, I was making 
>> bombs. Then I started wondering where those bombs were actually 
>> going." After reading and learning about the bombing of Kosovo and 
>> ongoing destruction of civilian facilities in Iraq, he came to his 
>> conclusion: "I asked the questions and I wasn't happy with the 
>> answers We were bombing civilian plants."
>>
>> Speaking at a rally held on October 3 that was attended by 150 to 200 
>> supporters at the university, Khan sounded a defiant note: "I will 
>> not be bullied or intimidated into silence…The university authority's 
>> actions against me last Thursday were their way of telling me to shut 
>> up. And my answer to them is, no, I will not shut up...The 
>> power-mongers in this country are using 9/11 and terrorism as an 
>> excuse to trample all over our individual rights. A friend of mine 
>> recently said, 'When we've traded in all our freedom for security, 
>> we'll find that the only thing we've secured is our own 
>> incarceration.'"
>>
>> M. Junaid Alam, 22, is co-editor of Left Hook and a Journalism 
>> student at Northeastern University. He may be reached at 
>> alam at lefthook.org.Yahoo! for Good
>

> O29 at massglobalaction.org
> http://massglobalaction.org/mailman/listinfo/o29_massglobalaction.org




On Oct 5, 2005, at 3:36 PM, Keith Rosenthal wrote:

> Hey All,
>  
>    I just wanted to throw a couple of thoughts out there regarding the 
> vote and discussion at Monday's O29 meeting concerning demands for 
> this protest -- specifically the demand: "Stop the racist scapegoating 
> of Arabs and Muslims"  also, since the political discussion around the 
> demand was short and choppy in the meeting, i wanted to respond to 
> several things here.
>    I think it was a mistake that this demand was voted down in a tie 
> vote (9-9), and some of the justifications presented for why it should 
> be voted down have the potential to set a bad precedent for our 
> movement.  it was stated that we "don't want a radical protest, which 
> will only draw 1,000 people," "that we have to reach out to middle 
> America," and that we should learn the lesson of the Vietnam antiwar 
> movement which, "got the hard-hats to stop beating up the students, 
> but instead join the students."  i think this perspective is erroneous 
> and somewhat mythical.   
>    First of all, i don't think we should have a laundry list of 
> demands on the flyer, nor do i think we should talk about everything 
> under the sun on the flyer.  but i don't think a demand around arabs 
> and muslims is "beyond the pale," too radical, or will bring less 
> people out to the march.  in fact, i think it can draw in more people 
> pissed about the Patriot Act, Guantanamo mistreatment, and, of course, 
> will draw in Arabs and Muslims, who just recently have been making 
> pleas to Romney to stop the plan to wiretap local Mosques!  where is 
> the antiwar movement on this question of the supposedly imminent and 
> overwhelming threat that "Muslim and Arab extremists" pose to "our 
> freedoms"?  the demand around Palestine at the September 24th protest 
> certainly did not make that historic march any smaller, so why would a 
> demand to stop anti-Arab racist scapegoating make our march any 
> smaller?
>    Second, we ought to be less afraid right now of being "too 
> radical."  the single-most important figure in revitalizing mass 
> antiwar activity recently has been none other than that "raving 
> radical" Cindy Sheehan, who supports Palestine, the Iraq resistance to 
> occupation, refuses to vote for pro-war Democrats, and calls the 
> current war "imperialist."  she is resonating with people because the 
> reality is that right now, in the aftermath of the sinking occupation 
> of Iraq and the Hurricane Katrina disaster, most regular people are 
> growing increasingly fed up with this war and with everything having 
> to do with the current government.  right now, people are increasingly 
> fed up with even the Democratic Party for not taking a firm enough 
> stand against Bush and the war because of their concern to not 
> alienate "swing-voters in middle America." 
>    Finally, who is this mythical "middle America," and how do we win 
> them?  the reality is that right now, a majority of people are against 
> the war and against Bush.  according to polls, 1 out of 3 people 
> consider themselves part of the antiwar movement -- that's 100 million 
> people nationwide.  in boston, that's roughly 200,000 people.  once we 
> get these people organized, it will be easy from there to win the 
> other antiwar 1/3 to our side.  also, who are we trying to win to this 
> movement?  soccer moms (like cindy sheehan)?  sure!  arabs, muslims, 
> blacks, gays, women, students, latinos, workers, etc., (i.e., the 
> majority of people)?  we must! 
>    And if i may ask, which hard-hats are beating up antiwar students 
> today?  it's my understanding that the AFL-CIO is against the war in 
> Iraq (this includes organized construction workers, i believe).  
> remember, we are the majority!  soldiers and military families are 
> increasingly on our side.  now is not the time for conservative, 
> cautious moderation, but rather for bold, confident, and aggressive 
> steps forward. 
>    During the vietnam war, these so-called "hard hats" (do you mean 
> workers, soldiers, what?), were not won over to the side of the 
> "students" because the "students" moderated their message.  rather, 
> they were won over to the antiwar movement because they simply grew 
> more and more disgusted with the war and the government and felt they 
> simply had to do something about it.  in other words, people were 
> going through a process where they were beginning to think much more 
> critically about the government, if for no other reason than because 
> of the increasing reality of what the government was doing to the 
> Vietnamese people and to the US soldiers.  this is precisely what is 
> happening right now.  the way we are going to win these people is not 
> by moderating our message, but by taking every opportunity to expose 
> every lie, smokescreen, and brutality that this government is carrying 
> out in the name of this war . . . and in all of our names.  in so  
> doing, we will give expression to growing millions of people disgusted 
> by the government and simply waiting for someone to confidently 
> address the government's barbarity, blow-for-blow (e.g., Cindy 
> Sheehan). 
>   
>    In conclusion, i warn against the broader framework, justification, 
> and implications used to defeat the demand on anti-arab racism at 
> monday's meeting.  it sounds dangerously similar to the logic employed 
> by Kerry supporters in the last election that we have to moderate our 
> message to appeal to "swing-voters in middle-America" in order to 
> win.  not only did that strategy, in fact, lead to a defeat for our 
> side, but it also taught movement activists how to hold their tongues 
> instead of raising their voices.  as the 2006 congressional elections 
> begin to be talked about, we would do well to remember this lesson, 
> and refuse this time around to repeat our mistakes.  the way to grow 
> is to confidently fight for our principles and to win more people to 
> them -- in tandem with their own developing criticisms of the war and 
> the government -- and not by "moderating ourselves," "politically 
> disciplining ourselves," or "holding our noses." 
>    Again, this is not to say that we should have a laundry-list of 
> every possible demand on the flyer.  but this is to say that we have 
> little to lose and much to gain by adding clearly relevant demands and 
> letting our movement take an increasingly critical posture towards the 
> government's various policies and ideological buttresses.  and we 
> ought to be wary of making arguments that would set a precedent for 
> our movement to balk and moderate itself in order to appeal to some 
> mythical "middle-America" at the expense of standing up for our 
> beliefs and for those who are most oppressed and victimized by this 
> war and this government. 
>  
>  
> Solidarity,
> Keith Rosenthal
>     
>                 
>  
>  
>  
>  
>
> Yahoo! for Good
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