As gov't swoops down
Protest defends immigrant rights
By Deirdre Griswold
The U.S. government ratcheted up its terror campaign against
immigrants on Nov. 7 with countrywide raids against businesses
it claimed had financial connections to Osama bin Laden. Using
this flimsy excuse, and without a shred of due process, agents
abruptly shut down stores where immigrants from Africa and the
Middle East shop and send home money to their families.
In Seattle, a raid by the Treasury Department, U.S. Customs,
FBI, and Immigration and Naturalization Services on a building
in the heart of the Black community that houses four small
Somali stores sparked an immediate protest demonstration.
Somalia, a country on the Horn of Africa, has been reduced to
abject poverty by U.S. military intervention and sanctions.
Many of its people survive on checks sent home by relatives who
have emigrated.
People from Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party,
who have an office nearby, quickly set up a picket line
demanding respect for civil liberties and immigrant rights.
They were joined by neighborhood residents, Somalis who had
seen the protest on television, and activists from other
groups, including Workers World Party.
One woman's sign read: "My father is 90 years old. I will
keep sending him $100. This has nothing to do with
terrorism."
The picket lasted six hours as the FBI took photos of the
demonstrators and stopped and questioned Somalis passing by.
Inside, the government agents stripped the Maka Market of its
wares, cereal box by cereal box. The owner was detained but
then released.
Anne Slater of Seattle Radical Women said, "The aim of this
disgusting witchhunt is not to stop terrorism but to create an
'enemy' at home to justify weakening civil liberties for
everyone, and to intimidate critics of the U.S. slaughter in
Afghanistan. We don't intend to buy into the scapegoating, and
we won't be scared off."
Reprinted from the Nov. 22, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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Email: ww@workers.org
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