Vol. 74/No. 38      October 11, 2010

The hearing, which about 150 attended, was organized by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and the Arab Resource and Organizing Center.

Hatem Bazian, a professor of Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, emphasized that spying on financial transactions, phone calls, and Internet activity of Muslims and mosques is a danger to the rights of all.

Speakers urged opposition to a plan by San Francisco police chief George Gascón to reconstitute a police intelligence unit that was shut down in the 1990s, a result of a victorious lawsuit brought against the unit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others.

In her remarks, ACLU attorney Julia Mass said that over the past year the number of “Terrorist Liaison Officers” in the San Francisco Police Department has gone up from 40 to 100.

“Many of my clients have been regularly visited by the FBI on campus or at their places of work,” said Veena Dubal, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus. “The agents do not need any basis to do this other than a person’s race or religion.”

Attorney Wazhma Mojaddidi described the case of an Egyptian client who was told that if he became an informant for the FBI this would speed up the process for getting a green card. When he refused, the green card was delayed for years with the explanation that it needed review “for security reasons.”

Michel Shehadeh, a defendant in the case of seven Palestinians and a Kenyan known as the Los Angeles Eight, spoke about the 20-year struggle they waged against charges of aiding terrorism. The case ended in victory, with the charges being dropped.

“Police actions to suppress opposition to government policies is not a new thing,” Shehadeh pointed out. “This has a history going back to the Palmer raids, when immigrant workers, including thousands of Jews, were deported in the ‘Red Scare’ after World War I.”

“The important thing is we cannot look to the government that carries out these attacks against us to defend us,” said Lea Sherman, Socialist Workers candidate for California governor. “We must look to defenders of democratic rights and our organizations, first and foremost, our unions.”
 
 
Related articles:
Protests denounce FBI raids in Chicago and Minneapolis
Socialists: End spying and disruption!
FBI raids aimed at working class  
 
 
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