Alameda, Calif., meeting protests attack on mosque

BY BETSEY STONE

ALAMEDA, Calif. — Over 150 people turned out for a “Standing Against Hate Crime” meeting here Dec. 27 to protest a Dec. 11 attack and threats against the Islamic Center of Alameda. Held at the Elks Lodge, the gathering was sponsored by the center and chaired by Imam Musa Baldé.

Baldé welcomed everyone, explaining that a large plate glass window at the center’s building where Muslim women pray, across the street from the main mosque, was broken after the center received threatening phone calls. “Go back home,” callers said. “You’re not welcome here.”

“This is our home,” Baldé said, referring to the establishment nearly 20 years ago of the Islamic center and mosque in Alameda, an island city in the bay next to Oakland.

“We are here in peace and love,” Baldé said, “and against terrorism by anyone, whether they be Muslim, Christian, Jewish or atheists.

“We are also concerned because our sisters wearing the hijab have found some people are not as congenial as before on buses or other public places,” he said.

Many of those attending were from churches, synagogues and community organizations in Alameda. People in the community around the center have brought flowers and volunteered to help repair the damage.

The program was kicked off by three speakers, followed by an open forum, where many expressed their readiness to defend the center if any more attacks are threatened.

“We have to learn from history,” said Michael Yoshii, pastor of the United Methodist Church in Alameda. “During World War II, many in our congregation were immigrants from Japan, taken away to concentration camps under the Roosevelt administration.” Yoshii cited war hysteria, racism and lack of leadership as being the reason why the mass incarceration of Japanese took place.

“That is why Japanese-Americans are coming out in support of Muslims today,” he said.

“In the workers’ movement we say an injury to one is any injury to all,” Joel Britton said, speaking for the Socialist Workers Party.

“Attacks like the assault on the center not only harm Muslims, they are an attack on the rights and political space of all working people to organize and fight for our interests.

“The attacks on Muslims go hand in hand with the war drive, military interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere,” Britton said. “So we say: End U.S. bombings and other attacks in the Middle East now. And stop the attacks on Muslims and refugees from the Middle East and elsewhere.”

Rabbi Allen Bennett, who came with over a dozen members of the nearby Temple Israel Synagogue, also spoke.

During the open forum, Dina Ezzeddine, a young woman from Oakland, took the floor and pointed to the history of aggression by the U.S. and other imperialist powers against peoples in the Middle East, from Iraq to Libya.

“You can’t understand anything that’s going on if you don’t understand this,” she said.

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