Fighting Islamophobia and Education Apartheid: Lamis Deek and Fahd Ahmed...

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Hi i'm laura flanders this week .
On the show communities of color organized against state violence Muslim community activists let me stick and fired hamid talk about Islamophobia and we talked to chicago teachers who were organizing community wide against racism and the school to Prison Pipeline.
All that and more on the Laura Flanders show the place where the people that say it can't be done.
Take a back seat to those who are doing it.
What is it about Palestine and Islamophobia and anti-arab racism but even many liberal Americans still don't get it not even talking about the out and out racism of a certain Republican presidential candidate earlier this year New York Governor Cuomo went so far as to declare an executive order against the Palestinian boycott divestment and sanctions movement.
Hillary Clinton's called it evil on campus at the same time alliances between Arab black Latino and Asian struggles are growing here and internationally what role do law and lawyers play in making the radical and structural change people are seeking and what happened since the Battle days of 911 wasn't Obama supposed to end the abuses of the war on terror.
Our next guest can report from the ground five armored is director of drum South Asian organizing center a membership lead group of low-wage South Asian immigrant workers and youth in New York City he came to the US as an undocumented immigrant from pakistan in 1991.
Let me stick is a human rights attorney and activists originally from Nablus and Palestine.
Now she's based in New York she's represented high-profile defendants including ahmed for honey who is targeted in an NYPD sting operation which lured marginalized men into a manufactured plot of conspiracy to commit terrorism.
She's currently chief counsel to the global justice and human rights law network the founder of the Muslim defense project of the National Lawyers Guild and part of the growing.
International legal movement for war crimes prosecution in the middle east and north africa welcome both glad to have you let's start with the specific how do you define the question of Islamophobia what is it you thought I think you know that there's different levels of it obviously there is the explicit anti-muslim bias and bigotry but then there's also i think particularly in in liberal circles and in left circles there is a very Eurocentric perception of what progress is and what the evolution of societies and communities are gonna give an example when a lot of liberal perspectives and the perspectives look at movements in South Asia in the Middle East they look at them with the expectation that they should have the same evolution speak the same language and look the same way that we do it red marks and all the rest and and and it's almost like a checklist has to be met before there's even a condition of the conditional possibility of engagement and what it misses out is the organic nature and how I'd movements communities individuals are developing how their ideas are developing specific to the particular context.
So it was a little bit about who you work with when you say South Asian what do you mean exactly at drum.
So remember shit based organization and we work with people from South Asia or salvation aspera so that's Afghanistan Pakistan India Bangladesh Nepal Sri Lanka also the dance for her from Southeast Asia East Africa and from the crib in trinidad and guyana and we were particularly with working-class segments of our communities those who bear the or whelming brunt of.
Discriminatory policies whether it's in the form of policing surveillance immigration policies as workers or as youth and underfunded schools you mentioned earlier limits that although there was an explosion of violence after nine eleven that wasn't the end of the story hasn't gone away and i certainly think that was the very beginning of it and if you know it's important to contextualise that none of this is new at what is new is the way that we discuss it right and and how much more organized the repression is against Arabs and Muslims and south asians in particular this has a very long history united states it became more acceptable to talk about it and to legislate it that specifically after nine eleven and.
Is exponentially increase at 2008.
In fact at the time that President Obama had been elected I had countless Arab clients non clients people that I organized with come to me and say that they were actually picked up by state authorities by government authorities and interrogated interviewed as they called it about what they thought was going to happen after now that Obama was going to be elected in there read their countries of origin.
Right that was really the beginning and then we saw a gross rapid explosion of anti-muslim repression in the city and and I think a lot of that came not just from the federal government but also from state agencies as well reminders about that , virani case which people may have forgotten.
So that was one of the the first new york state terrorism cases brought under the new Terrorism statute was in New York same one that was rejected by it was brought by the NYPD and rejected by the FBI and in fact by the Joint Terrorism Task Force and it was really an example of the gross amount of abuse employed by the NYPD and they're very desperate attempt to criminalize specifically the Palestinian movement but also the Arab and Muslim activists and organizing communities at large.
The same we had a 2 infiltrators enter and i'll do the Palestine right to return coalition use the credit their credibility in those organizations.
- then infiltrate a whole host of other community-based Muslim organizations largely Arab organizations and even left organizations outside of New York after having failed and spent millions of dollars on this two year long operation after having failed to find any criminal wrongdoing by this plethora of organizations and individuals myself being a target as well.
What they decided to do was target a very you know what you know.
Infirm young man who was poor he had some petty criminal history and he had a very long history of mental health issues in fact he was picked up by the NYPD themselves from the time he was 16 years old and.
Institutionalize taken to Bellevue and other mental health hospitals he'd been suicidal since then they manipulated him got him to say a few choice words that they thought would overcome an entrapment defense and you know manufactured entirely really.
This whole plot of terrorism they had the cameras set up even before the arrest had happened and you know it was it was terrible but it was great that the media was able to see through and and it also coincided and is related to the AP leaks the leaked documents of the secret demographics unit the terrible training the way that they were having these officers engage and and essentially set up these people.
Long story short that the media the courts were able to see through you know through what was happening and through the government's claims we ultimately ended up with a sentence that would have been what he would have gone had he not been accused of terrorism has anything changed since these cases that limits and others have managed to bring to light not really i think what we see is just an evolution in the techniques and an evolution in sort of how the messaging happens but on the ground the same thing continues if not worse special registration what is that.
So you know it's it's a series of policies that have taken place over the last 16 years in immediately after nine eleven there's massive suites that happened in the streets of New York City and and then the surrounding areas over 1,200 men were picked up from their homes from the streets from the workplaces and we set up a hotline and we literally were getting called from women saying my husband left for work three days ago he isn't coming we don't know where he is these sweeps continued for the first year and a half after nine eleven almost all of those men were deported.
One year after 9-11 was I the government instituted special registrations program required men above the ages of 16 from 29 different countries all the Muslim countries with the exception of North Korea to make it covers these men were required to register with the government.
Eighty-three thousand registered 13,000 put into deportation proceedings and again in both of these cases they found 0 people with any connections in forms of terrorism or any wrongdoing and so it's around that time that really the infrastructure around the infiltration of communities started to be set up because they realize that these open policies were not yielding results and so by April May of 2002 is when we started getting reports of you know the law enforcement agencies started doing community engagement efforts we want to talk to the community we want to work with the community will and figure out the right people are that we need to pick up and immediately we started getting reports from people saying like oh they invited me to come to the office and then they asked me to click license plate numbers I think that it's important to look at the culture and the media's role in this and historically so and how that's really permeated school culture and home culture and civil society.
Looking back at you notes Sesame Street and the seventies right the correlation of an Arab looking man with the word danger for example but also at more sinister and really well managed operations specifically and this will relate to the issue of Palestine which we'll discuss it specifically groups who are really committed to the criminalization and the censorship of anybody who would be sympathetic to you know forward-thinking or anti-zionist or pro-palestinian work and you have to look at the role of Zionist organizations on and the Israeli government in really perpetuating and organizing and keeping at the at the forefront this idea.
You know that muslims error South Asians people who would be naturally sympathetic people of color generally Africans blacks in the u.s. you know as demonized and criminalize as possible and if you look at the Islamophobia network as it's it's been called two-thirds of those organizations dedicated to perpetuating anti-muslim rhetoric and pot and policies are actually Zionists and or have ties directly to the Israeli government and I think it's important to keep that in mind and unless we're addressing not then we're also not really addressing the core issues behind us on the phobia and why it's it had why these issues have not been really overcome or addressed by liberals and leftists and that's all tied together in my think there's a tendency in US social movements to focus on either the international or the domestics and a lot of the domestic groups say they're not going to deal with international affairs at all that doesn't only not work in the context of what you're talking about let me see it actually backfires can you talk about that.
Well that that's not how repression operates I mean repression is coordinated international it's coordinated globally and there is no coincidence that we're seeing Israeli government for example push you know this line about how to handle the BD at the boycott divestment sanctions movement and the actual criminalisation aside from Cuomo's executive order I'm talking about there is a test case right now brought by the Kings County Prosecutor's Office against a young man in in that case you know the judge during a conference ask the prosecution on that case why are you bringing this as a hate crime do you have a quota to fill.
Because the case is trying to criminalize anti-zionism not just equate it to actually criminalize anti-zionism as a hate crime in and of itself but it's not a coincidence that we're seeing not case Cuomo's order and the Israeli government's you know they just convened a conference at the UN the same forces are all operating together repression never happens in a.
Tell us about some of the Alliance's that you're seeing that we can maybe get excited about what's going on out there so we base our work in building alliances across the mass memberships that we have such thinking about the you that we are organizing around school to Prison Pipeline policies immigrants around anti-immigrant policies and detentions and deportations families that have been targeted by these in traffic cases and surveillance cases young people that have been targeted by the police all of these are things that are not moved completely exclusive to our community.
There are overlaps with other communities as well so what happens when the mother whose son is entrapped in serving three years in prison is meeting with black and Latino brothers black mothers who have had their children killed by the NYPD latina mothers who had two children died crossing the us-mexico border.
What comes out of the relationship building that happens really at that level and I think it's really a understanding that solidarity is not really an intellectual idea it's not really a concept it really is a flesh-and-blood relationships so what happens when undocumented South Asian immigrants say that you know what we're actually not interested in the comprehensive immigration reform package if it includes for the motivation of the us-mexico border because we've met the Latino mothers who have lost their children crossing the border and so when people start to have a conception of themselves in ways that is inclusive or the communities and their struggles and are willing to sacrifice their own short term gains for the purpose of building long term relationships.
It allows a relationship building solitary building that that really transformative of of our movement and of society it's been a ton of rotten rhetoric thrown around this election season.
What's been the cost in in your community in terms of real human lives.
You'll be saw you know the increased the rise and hate crimes mr. con men.
It was attacked you know being near death just a couple of days ago right in queens and a black child who died as he was running away from a mob of white kids who were calling him the n-word I mean.
So this really speaks to the impact of that on the other hand what we're seeing and what I'm hopeful about is the.
Polarisation that's happening between the people who are seeing this as something terrible against which we must mobilize in the coalition's that forehead has discussed versus the people who are clamping down and exposing themselves and really.
Unmasking the realities you know in our society institutionally but also culturally that need to be unpacked deconstructed and rebuilt again.
So I'm hopeful in that respect you talk a little bit about the attacks you have come under personally.
Can you elaborate a little bit on that what's it been like for you to do this work.
Ok i'm in countless forms and a lifetime of it and when I say a lifetime I said that without exaggeration i'm talking about from the age of seven and through law school I had one professor or black woman tried to protect me from that after i graduated law school but I i I've been you know from the very day that i began practicing in court on remotely political cases representing Arab or Muslim clients in 2004 I was you know personally targeted by the government for many many many years.
My organization was directly infiltrated by undercover officers.
Um I've been put through their grind for a very long time what I am happy and proud about is that I hope and rides been witness to some of these is that you know I've I've stood up to the challenge and hopefully have made a little bit of space to make it acceptable for Arab Palestinian Muslim women to stand and speak on these cases in a way that other attorneys aren't able and to demand the recognition and.
Respect of the court not just as an individual but of the political issues and dynamics at play the New York Governor Andrew Cuomo did something governor's don't do every day which is to sign an executive order against the boycott campaign of Palestinian solidarity.
Can you talk a little bit about that where that's coming from what you think its impact might be without minimizing the resources that are going to have to go into dealing with this I want to say that I think it was an absolutely brilliant move that really serves the Palestinian solidarity my house well first of all it exposes the embeddedness and the.
Relationships of Zionist organizations and Zionism in the culture of Zionism in new york state institutions and in new york state governance and we have to talk about this it talks to also the detailed my new coordination and if we had half an hour i can give you countless examples of this right between Zionist organizations and government institutions specifically prosecutors offices and other really important state institutions you say scientists institutions can you clarify which ones you mean.
Organizations like the zionist organization of America um a pack the it you know the Israeli government actually themselves on the Clarion a project I've been talking about this for years but i could not have had the impact that Poe had in exposing this number one number two he's really given a lot of space and air time to the boycott divestment and sanctions movement and really making people question number one those relationships and number two why this you know stubborn unyielding you know support given you know the now very well exposed israeli war crimes and apartheid right so i think it was really fantastic that he did that.
I want to thank him the last thing that I'm actually really happy about is that he realizes that he has to do this by 4 is that it's not gonna happen in a popular way and that he's doing this against a very popular movement we hear every so often from viewers to the program who say I'm Jewish I'm Israeli and I to think that this Israeli government and its Zionist backers is a threat to stability in the region and into my life your partners both in Israel Palestine and here at home in the broader jewish-american Middle East interested community we work with countless Jewish anti-zionist on Zionist organizations Jews for Palestinian right to return Jewish voices for peace daily we're seeing increased increasing numbers of young Jewish people who don't want to be equated with Zionism and certainly want no relationship with Israel thank you both for coming in has been great to talk with you will leave it there there's something very interesting happening in Chicago where teachers are organizing community wide for education justice and against teaching apart aight chicago teachers organizing for change is a report brought to us by our very own producer.
Jonathan clap take a look the form is not going to cut it partial solutions are not going to cut it what we need is actually like revolution abolishment of these things that do violent when we have a mayor and we have a state attorney who will be willing to cover up a murder of a young man that's something that is a beer right no reform can fix that and we have whole communities that have schools with no libraries but they have metal detectors and they have police officers in schools.
It's really a state of crisis a lot of the same problem that we're facing whether it be as like people trying to fight against police brutality or state violence.
They're connected to other things like school closing just how the money is allocated in this city that's where you can really see it where you have a city budget that forty percent of the budget goes to policing we found that at that time the police were doing ninety percent of the time they were using it to harass folks for 15 grams or less and we are still hunting campaign it counters violence against black women girls and film identify folks one of the times that we had Israeli actually march to diet you have a young black person who is murder by police right where we have a city where there's been a half a billion on police brutality bonds related to covering up murders we still have harassment and oppression of folks in the city before that and that comes in the form of closing schools.
What happened here in Chicago is that we don't have quality neighborhood schools anymore the privatization of Education corporate reformers have come in and basically decimated our communities when they started to close schools 20 out of the 22 schools in bronzeville were slated to be close.
Black women especially low-income low-income women we receive it from all from all those different sources right so it's like that being the double minority this attack against teacher unions is very much a gender struggling a gender battle where we don't see those necessary those same things and institutions like firemen and police officers we found our sales here at diet about to lose the only public open enrollment school left in the bronze in the community.
This low-income black working class neighborhood got together and said well what is our vision for our school we don't want you to just keep it open.
We actually have a vision of what we want for our key the hunger strike came about because cps wanted to deny the best proposal its rightful place where on a hunger strike for 34 days and 18 the board came out with their decision which was none of the three proposals we have made the community partnerships we knew that we had the community of approval on this we have three thousand signatures from parents with in bronzeville we had 578 letters mailed to the mayor from the bronx community saying that diet global leadership and green technology is the high school that we want.
The school will be open next school year however they decided to make it a sin for the Arts black you active.
From byp 100 from the thought of daughters and from these different militant black youth organizations that we have rising within our city they actually were marching outside of police headquarters on thirty-fifth in michigan and they made a march from there to die high school during the hunger strike and that was a really powerful moment because it showed that they understood that the violence that's happening within our community isn't just physical violence if we connect all of these different issues and struggles together and recognize that this is about improving the quality of life of people of color of women of low-income people that if we understand that is situated within that context and we actually understand they were actually fighting one struggle and that's way more power April first we had a massive one-day strike which you know the Mayor was calling illegal and it wasn't just stuff you know we went out with the number of other trade unions i think it was 40 community organizations and it was a really powerful message.
- I think the country to say it doesn't have to be legal right back and we need to join forces in Chicago it's really the tale of two cities we have in the south side their school closures and black neighborhoods nine over ninety percent black neighborhood he of African American teachers who are laid off more than any other race of teachers my schools on the south side.
Phenomenally Latino neighborhood and we don't have the same resources of the north side schools in teaching profession we are mostly women and we have our mayor rahm emanuel who he's going after us.
You know he's laying teachers off by thousands.
I think if this was actually work for some males this kind of situation wouldn't happen we have an appointed school board that the pointed buyer mayor around the manual.
That's not fair because what we see on our school board's a lot of bankers businessmen charter school operators and they don't have their their kids in the public schools and frankly a lot of them are seeing our students as just having you know money signs over their heads Chicago were fighting for an elective school for we've actually ran our own teachers for City Council see around the country that both Republicans and Democrats a lot aren't fighting for us and we need to hold their feet to the fire and run her own people.


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