community-based, non-corporate, participatory media
Special Registration Protest
by Corey Ballantyne
Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 at 5:29 PM
cjbst57@pitt.edu (email address validated) 412 687 3996
A small crowd protested INS's �special registration� of Arabs, at 12:30 this afternoon (Friday, February 21, 2003) at the Federal Bldg. at Liberty Ave. and Grant St. After speeches, Muslims were led in prayer. No violent confrontations arose.
Pittsburgh, PA---
A small crowd protested Immigration and Naturalization Services� �special registration� of Arabs in America, at 12:30 this afternoon (Friday, February 21, 2003) at the Federal Building at Liberty Ave. and Grant St. After speeches, Muslims were led in prayer. No violent confrontations arose.
WHAT SPECIAL REGISTRATION IS
Special registration is required of nonimmigrants in the U.S. from certain Middle Eastern and South Asian countries. Specifics are available from the INS at http://www.ins.gov/graphics/lawenfor/specialreg/index.htm. Discussion of the issue can be found in the Pittsburgh City Paper�s January 8, 2003, issue (http://www.pghcitypaper.com/archives/covarch/cov03/cv010803.html)as well as the very recent Pgh. IMC article announcing that today�s protest was coming up (http://www.indypgh.com/news/2003/02/1398.php ).
ABOUT THE PROTEST�S ORGANIZERS
The protest was organized by Jamaat for Justice, �a Pittsburgh-based activist group working within the Muslim Community� (http://www.jamaatforjustice.org/). Jamaat in Arabic means a �congregation,� �coming together,� or �congregational prayer,� said Saleh Waziruddin, one of the group�s leaders. A major activity of Jamaat for Justice is the coordination of free legal representation provided by volunteer lawyers for those affected by special registration. 30-40 persons have thus far registered to receive this service, said Waziruddin.
Jamaat for Justice member Nazeeh, responding to questions by another reporter before the rally, said, �Profiling people based on their nationality and background is not gonna help anyone�it just makes a lot of tension grow in the community.� He pointed out that �the aggressiveness of the [INS] office� is a criterion in their end-of-year performance evaluation.
CROWD SIZE, POLICE PRESENCE AND PASSERSBY
I counted 50 people (give or take no more than 6), including police and about five reporters, at 1:00. About 3-4 police or security guards were visible throughout the rally. One officer instructed protesters and reporters not to block the sidewalk/entrance. A clear path was left along which people entered and exited the building freely (although during the prayer some passersby appeared to opt for the handicapped ramp as an alternate path from the door to the street, keeping a greater distance from the group). The only hostile interactions apparent were comments by two different passersby while exiting the Federal Building during the rally: �Why don�t you people get jobs?� and �Get a life.�
PROCEEDINGS IN DETAIL
Shortly before the rally commenced, Jamaat for Justice leaders distributed posters. Examples read, �Profiling Is Terror,� and, �The Only Evidence is My Passport.� Speakers included Waziruddin; Vic Walczak, Executive Director of the Greater Pgh. ACLU; Michael Bartko of the American Muslim Council; and Rev. Linda Theophilus of Emmanuel Lutheran Church.
---SOME OF SPEAKERS� STATEMENTS
Waziruddin compared special registration to the confinement of Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II. He reported that Representative Howard Coble, of North Carolina Sixth District (http://www.house.gov/coble/), has commented that internment camps were good for Japanese Americans for their own protection because they were an �endangered species.� Coble, according to Waziruddin, then stated that special registration is similarly good for Muslims now.
Walczak criticized Attorney General John Ashcroft (who, according to the City Paper, ordered the FBI to conduct interviews of thousands of recent Middle Eastern and South Asian arrivals) as not knowing the consequences of profiling-type actions as demonstrated by history. �John Ashcroft, read a history book,� was his refrain as he described past periods when other groups were profiled, such as communists in the 1920�s. At those times, he said more than once, ��innocent people got screwed.� Walczak called special registration �misuse of resources� and stated that Muslims/Arabs have been �very patient and very cooperative. They�re gettin� tired.�
Rev. Theophilus reported that since 1996, certain people become �subject to deportation� following any conviction carrying a maximum sentence of 1 year or more.
Audience members were invited to speak. �Etta,� who gave her last name as Cetera, chanted a poem criticizing the INS, Ashcroft, and the special registration program they have created. The poem included the line, �Get your head out of your Ashcroft!�
---PRAYER
Adel Fergany led six people in Muslim prayer. First, the six participants�including one blond, blue-eyed, Caucasian woman with a scarf on her head�stood in a row facing east. A plastic covering had been rolled out over the damp concrete, and two participants laid prayer rugs on it in front of them. Nazeeh sang in Arabic a call to prayer. Fergany began a brief sermon with the words, in Arabic and then in English, �Peace be with you all.� �We are all the same in the eyes of Allah,� he said. He alternated musical chants in Arabic with silent pauses. At the end of the prayer, the participants performed two cycles of standing, bowing, prostrating, and kneeling (standard parts of the salat, the Muslim prayer ritual; for more info. see http://www.muhajabah.com/intro.htm#pillars .)
nit picking
by etta cetera
Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 at 5:39 PM
"etta, who gave her last name as cetera"
what is this? corporate media?
it's my stinking name ok. ive taken it for over
4 years. do people give muslims who change
there name such a hard time? probably.
what ever.
Clarifications
by Corey Ballantyne
Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 at 5:50 PM
1. Apologies to Nazeeh for my accidentally neglecting to record his last name. No disrespect intended. I may be able to fill in the last name soon.
2. The maximum sentence Rev. Theophilus mentioned was a maximum JAIL sentence.
3. The "it" that prayer rugs were laid on was the plastic, not the damp ground. This may be important because placing a religious object on the ground might be construed as impious, and I do not mean to imply that.
horrible turnout
by ----
Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 at 8:11 PM
I have to say I'm sorely dissapointed in the turnout at this. 40 People is not going to make a impact on this type of issue. This event had been announced for awhile, but I've seen very little about it. There is no reason that there should have been such little outreach done which resulted in so few people attending. I understand we may not be able to attract the communities most affected to the event, but we at least need to be able to mobilize white progressives.
Onward!
on outreach
by Saleh
Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 at 10:07 PM
info@zi-activism.net
Hi - I'll comment on the outreach issue mainly:
critical point: it's a lunch-time downtown protest, I never expect more than 30 people for these unless there is some *immediate* crisis on an extraordinary scale (e.g. Gammage verdict for Pittsburgh, Eastern Europe, etc.). It's not reasonable to expect this to be like any of the anti-war marches, even before the convergence. A lot of people work or have class at that time and it's difficult to get to downtown. I do think we could have done better outreach, but maybe getting only 15 more people from the activist base. However, it was important to do the protest during business hours at the federal building in order to get a grounding for building militancy through the jamaat tactic, which made it worth doing a lunch-time downtown protest at the expense of mass. For participants in the jamaat tactic, they got to protest in front of the bureacracy oppressing them in a way that strengthened solidarity through being more militant than their previous experience. This meant a sacrifice from the get-go in the potential crowd size.
the outreach itself:
three avenues of outreach:
1) the activist network: we put the word out on specifics two weeks ago. It was interesting to note that different groups spread the word to their base/constituents at different rates, and this was obvious from the version of the message they sent out. Indymedia for example got a fax on Tuesday and another e-mail on Wednesday I believe, and individual reporters in Indymedia knew about the protest even before it was announced, yet the announcement didn't appear on the site until Friday morning. I don't mean to disparage IMC - this was far from the worst example. A technical note to the organizers would be to be more aggressive in making sure notices get put out.
2) Pittsburgh community: very little neighborhood fliering was done. This was due to laziness coming from bad whether - no excuse, I agree, but consider:
3) Muslim community: this is where most of the available energy was put. Repeated e-mails, repeated announcements at mosques, 400+ quarter-sheets handed out at mass events (Eid celebration), 200+ sheets handed out at interfaith events. It turned out a relatively impressive crowd of Muslims willing to get militant, even if it mean praying for protest. In absolute terms it was a small #, but it was qualitatively what was expected --> due to the low-level of experience with militancy, mass recruitment/outeach doesn't work that well, so personal recruitment needs to keep building through events like these.
So, in short, yes outreach was limited, but it wouldn't have done that much better considering the character of the protest. Rather than being a protest building dissent on an issue a lot of people feel strongly about (i.e. can mobilize the heck out of white progressives), this was a protest that tried to built militancy within the Muslim community through the agency of activists in Pittsburgh (Muslim, religious, athiest, agnostic, etc. - white progressives's experience rather than mass). Given this characterization I would still agree it was short of what it could be, but not by all that much and it did reach sufficient size to move forward. Things won't really start changing till the people who are directly affected start resisting, and the level of militancy in that group is very low - this is the bottleneck to me.
I realize your comment was more about internal mobilization within white progressives, but I think the material conditions of a lunch-time downtown protest make that limited even though what you say is still true. However, the sore disappointment shouldn't overshadow the hope that can come from a non-trivial Muslim presence that got a little more militant today.
Other topics:
On last names: most of the Muslims don't want their full names being used, those that do only want it used when it really has to. This of course does more harm than good, from my experience, but nevertheless don't worry about offending anyone by not recognizing them, they're trying to be invisible ;)
Technical notes to Corey (friendly pseudo-trivial nit-picking): nonMidEast/South Asian countries are on the list too like Indonesia and North Korea, altho you made a decent generalization. Nazeeh I believe was referring to the FBI office in terms of end-of-year-performance based on aggressiveness. I would include etta as a speaker - she was as much a speaker as Linda was. I didn't quite state that Coble said special registration is good for Muslims now, but that FBI chief Mueller said that profiling mosques is good for Muslims - he said this the day after Coble's comments. Sources can be found on http://www.jamaatforjustice.org/protest.htm. Otherwise a great article!
Note the PG's preview article at http://www.postgazette.com/breaking/20030221protestp7.asp - they save the "no confrontations took place" bit for after reporting the jamaat prayer, as if one would expect otherwise ;)
Saleh
ps on outreach
by Saleh
Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 at 10:21 PM
info@zi-activism.net
while we're on the topic:
forgot some other points on outreach: a major avenue we were going to use was the TMC membership phone bank, which the TMC graciously provided. However, we lost control of this due to stuff happening with the anti-war committee - as a result the announcement of the protest to TMC membership ended up being a "by the way" supplement to the anti-war city council resolution phone calls, only when someone picked up. The original plan was to have jamaat activists, including Muslims who would be getting active for the first time, make the phone calls.
We could have timed our announcements better tho to coincide with New People and other organs in terms of mobilizing within the white community.
Go easy on the kid!
by Rovin' Workman
Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 at 11:09 PM
rovinworkman@hotmail.com
Etta,
Corey is a young reporter. She probably has not seen you before at your events. When our models are corporate media (mine was when I took a journalism class), sometimes that's what happens. I thought Corey did a good job on the article, and will learn about the shit things corporate reporters do that make us so angry.
I think a good idea is for certain Indymedia veterans (maybe bring some others to Pgh) to have a workshop on relating to activists, and really anyone, in a way that is different and more respectful than the mainstream media.
Indymedia Postings
by Rovin' Workman's 53rd clone
Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 at 11:24 PM
I want to discuss something Saleh Waziruddin mentioned. That is, why it may have taken so long for Indymedia to post this event. Well, Indymedia is basically a DIY (Do it yourself) organization. That means, don't just fax us, post the goddamn event!! We want to hear about these things! We have an OPEN PUBLISHING POLICY. That means YOU publish what you want to see on the newswire.
One can also use our calendar on the upper left for current events. Unfortunately, we only have a few cameras to go around, so while there was at least one reporter there, there may not be footage uploaded.
It would be great if someone like Saleh would post an article on the recent events in Pittsburgh surrounding the INS special registration and at-home interviews, also focusing on the organizing work being done in the Moslem community. I'm sure folks on the editorial collective would consider making it a feature.
Re: Indymedia postings
by Saleh
Saturday, Feb. 22, 2003 at 12:08 AM
info@zi-activism.net
(love getting into php comment-rapid-fires...)
I get the whole DIY/indymedia thing. My post was of course on the phenomena of how notices get sent around via e-mail, I was using IMC as an example (handy choice but bad choice as you point out) - I realize you're not talking about outreach but about IMC picking up stories. As I said earlier, I have no gripes with IMC on what stories they pick and how soon they pick them. my post was on outreach via e-mail in general, and the conclusion was that I and the others organizing the event should have been more aggressive...
But back to DIY - as I said in a post commenting on the Getu trial-ending story, unfortunately for me I'm not into journalism in the same way others are (I'm into wire-based journalism, and general reflections, but not like what IMC has). I realize that if stuff I would like to see on there is not there it's my fault - it's something I have to live with. It's a consequence of different people having diff interests. Just be aware that it's OK if not everyone wants to do journalism and so peeps will send u pr's without taking the responsibility to do the stories themselves.
--> Props to IMC for getting on the site all that is on the site
+practical stuff: I know someone who had a digital camera there - I was planning on asking them for pics for the j4j web site, can pass it on to whoever has the skills with IMC photos for them to pick and post. Just let me know who I should connect with.
long live DIY media!
Saleh
props to Corey for in-depth research
by Saleh
Saturday, Feb. 22, 2003 at 12:32 AM
info@zi-activism.net
I should have included this before - major props for finding some of the links and giving leads for more info. I was surprised to find there was a site that described/made-sense-of the prayer positions! Definately adds to the story.
Students
by Evan N
Saturday, Feb. 22, 2003 at 10:21 AM
Hey don't get bummed about the small turnout - because im sure that tons of high school students such as myself and a bunch of my friends would have shown up had it been at a different time than during school hours.
More Info. from Nazeeh Alothmany
by Corey Ballantyne
Saturday, Feb. 22, 2003 at 11:11 AM
cjbst57@pitt.edu 412 687 3996
Nazeeh has emailed me the following information:
Thanks for your work and coverage, one thing though about my comment:-
"He pointed out that "the aggressiveness of the [INS] office" is a criterion in their
end-of-year performance evaluation. "
This was a comment made about the FBI not INS. Recently, FBI offices are required to count
the number of mosques in their cities, profile them, and determine what kind of tracking
they require, "the aggressiveness of the [FBI] office" is a criterion in their
end-of-year performance evaluation.
And my full name is Nazeeh Alothmany.
Turn Out
by etta
Saturday, Feb. 22, 2003 at 7:24 PM
i actually thought it was a great turnout.
having been organizing events in the pitts
for sometime, i was happy to see that many people
there. we used to be lucky if we got 20
people showin there faces.
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