Join a Peaceful Action against Racial Profiling on the Staten Island Ferry!

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The 'Offending' Shirt.

Monday, October 23rd, 5pm - 7pm, Manhattan Ferry Terminal, at Battery Park
(Whitehall, N/R/W :: South Ferry. 1/9 :: Bowling Green, 5).
Ferry is Free.

From: Peace Action, Staten Island (NYC) -------------------------------------------
Urgent Action Required: Shirt Incident

(From Elaine) -- To All Friends Who Should Take Action Against This:

I received the following email from one of the members of the un16:

actions planned On Monday, 10/23, 5 Pm, At South Ferry (Manhattan Ferry Terminal) around the city to defend our rights to wear t-shirts in Arabic or any other damn language we want!

This type of harassment must be confronted. Please read the message below and let me know if you are interested in joining us in various scheduled actions around nyc, including the ferry!

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PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE WIDELY.
http://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/statenislandvigil
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"We Will Not Be Silent"

On Monday, October 9th, I boarded the Staten Island Ferry wearing a shirt that reads "We Will Not Be Silent" in English and Arabic. Immediately after boarding, my four armed Coast Guard officers positioned themselves around me and my friends. Every so often you see the Coast Guard patrolling the ferry, but I've never seen a bunch of them standing in one place before. I joked to my friends that this was a response to my shirt, but I didn't really believe that they would put so much security on me. As I got off the boat, I was stopped by a Coast Guard officer.

Officer: You'd better not wear that shirt here anymore.
Me: Excuse me?
Officer: It's not safe to wear that shirt in high security places.
Me: What about my shirt makes it unsafe? What do you think it means?
Officer: Isn't that Arabic writing?
Me: Yes. Is there something wrong with Arabic writing?
Officer: Well, do you remember what happened with that guy on Jet Blue?
Me: Yes. I remember that. It was racial profiling.
Officer: Well, you're obviously not a threat, but someone else wearing that shirt...
Me: Are you saying that an Arab wearing a shirt in Arabic is a terrorist?
Officer: I'm just saying you'd better not wear that shirt here anymore.

This is one of many examples of anti-Arab racism that has become so prevalent in the US since September 11th, 2001. Now, it has come to the point when Arabic writing itself is under attack. We need to stand up to racist law enforcement officers to seek to silence and scare Arabs and Muslims from speaking out against the US and Israel's wars in the Middle East.

Stephanie Schwartz stephschwartz@gmail.com

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Raed Jarrar's Story: stopped from boarding airplane because of Arabic t-shirt http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/2006/08/back-from-mideast.html.

BBC Report: Arabic T-shirt sparks airport row http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5297822.stm.

Democracy Now : "Movement Grows to Challenge Racial Profiling at Airports" http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/21/1348224#transcript.

Artists Against the War produced these shirts, and documents the contoversy http://aawnyc.org/.

WE WILL NOT BE SILENT Stories and Gallery http://www.parkerstudio.com/AAW/notsilentstories.html.

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