Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September-October 2002, pages 64-65

The Mideast in the Midwest

In Event of Another 9/11, Says Bush Appointee, “Forget Civil Rights in This Country”

By Roxane Ellis Rodriguez Assaf

After a series of court battles over a contested seat on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR), Cleveland attorney Peter Kirsanow gained his place on the Commission—just where President George W. Bush wanted him. Ironic, then, to think that he would use his hard-won spot to raise the possibility of internment camps for Arab Americans at a USCCR meeting held in Detroit, Michigan, home to the largest number of Arabs in the U.S.

Present at the Commission’s July 19 meeting to air Arab and Muslim concerns and grievances were activists, members of the press, local community leaders, and representatives of USCCR’s six Midwest Regional State Advisory Committees (SACs). As the meeting was drawing to a close, a University of Michigan adjunct professor of Asian American history sought Kirsanow’s assurance that there was no possibility of a repeat of the “internment experiment”—the concentration camps in which 120,000 people of Asian extraction, including 70,000 U.S. citizens, were corralled for three years during World War II.

Homeland Security is not only a means of ensuring the safety of Americans, but also of protecting civil rights, Kirsanow replied: “I believe no matter how many laws we have, how many agencies we have, how many police officers we have monitoring civil rights, that if there’s another terrorist attack and if it’s from a certain ethnic community or certain ethnicities that the terrorists are from, you can forget civil rights in this country. I think we will have a return to Karamatsu [sic—referring to Japanese American Fred Korematsu, who was imprisoned for defying evacuation orders] and I think the best way we can thwart that is to make sure that there is a balance between protecting civil rights, but also protecting safety at the same time.”

With so many ears bearing witness and the official transcript preserving his utterances for posterity, Kirsanow is having a hard time swallowing his words. When the Washington Report asked his opinion of internment camps, he exclaimed, “The very idea is preposterous!” To the notion that he has espoused the idea, he replied, “Never! Never! Never! Never!”

The Washington, DC-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is not satisfied with Kirsanow’s later expressions, however. ADC President Dr. Ziad Asali and others have called for Kirsanow’s removal from the commission. “His job is to defend our civil rights,” Asali pointed out. “The monthly meeting took place in Detroit specifically because of anti-Arab reactions to 9/11. He certainly didn’t reflect the sensitivity you would think a man chosen for this job would display.”

Others agree. In a letter to President Bush, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) executive director Wade Henderson joined the ADC in thanking the president for sending the clear message that “collective blame and stereotyping are unacceptable and un-American.”

Believing Kirsanow’s remarks to be inconsistent with the administration’s stated sentiments, Henderson and Asali requested that the president “repudiate and disavow” Kirsanow’s comments and “take steps to remove him from this important position.”

“I am extremely sensitive to how things affect the Arab community.”

Nonetheless, Kirsanow, a partner with the law firm Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan, and Aronoff, is confident he is the right man for the job. “I am extremely sensitive to how things affect the Arab community,” he insisted. “In fact, I am astounded by the irresponsibility of people. This involves a very large community and how secure they feel being in the U.S.”

Of those calling for his dismissal, Kirsanow said, “I am chagrined that they are attributing attitudes and opinions that are repugnant to me. These views are complete anathema to what I am.”

Kirsanow later agreed that he could have been more judicious in his choice of words at the end of a four-hour discussion. He was further frustrated, however, that a reporter quoted him as having said after the meeting that “not too many people will be crying in their beer if there are more detentions, more stops, more profiling. There will be a groundswell of public opinion to banish civil rights.”

“I gave him a description of what would make people feel insecure,” Kirsanow explained. “If half of Detroit Metro got nuked, people would be more concerned about their lives than about civil rights.”

That may well be. People with an ear for racial intolerance, however, are vigilant when it comes to language. “In some ways it is a veiled threat,” said Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) national executive director John Tateishi. “It’s a sort of threat to say if there were another attack by an identified group that public hysteria would overtake reason.”

Activists argue it is the duty of civil rights champions to see to it that a departure from reason is ruled out as a possibility. Anything less should be considered reckless and irresponsible. In Tateishi’s own letter to President Bush asking that Kirsanow be taken off the commission, he stated, “It is indeed troubling when a member of the Commission on Civil Rights opens an avenue of discussion for mass detentions…Our community has a clear recollection of the weeks following Pearl Harbor when initial calls for tolerance gave way to suggestions for mass internment….It is a precarious slope made slippery by prejudice, intolerance and fear.”

Kirsanow did not see it that way, however. “I don’t think our government would ever consider anything like that,” he said. “We learned from Korematsu. We have evolved as a country.”

Tateishi was incredulous at this. “Never?” he retorted. “He needs to recall that two days after the [Sept. 11] attack on the U.S., two thousand people were arrested and detained. No one knew where they were, and the government was making moves for their permanent detention. There are so many parallels with the case of Fred Korematsu.”

Beyond the subject of confinement, meeting attendees were disturbed by what they perceived as an underlying tone suggesting that Arab and Muslim Americans come to accept a reduction in civil liberties as part of America’s war on terror. The USA PATRIOT Act and the Justice Department’s new TIPS program recruiting volunteer informers represent an increased acceptance of stepped-up suspicion and surveillance. Emphasized Commissioner Jennifer Braceras at the Detroit USCCR meeting, “There’s certainly no constitutional right not to be inconvenienced or even embarrassed or treated inappropriately.…so I’d like to make that perfectly clear.”

ADCs Detroit chapter head Imad Hamad postulated that Braceras’ “strident” remarks and Kirsanow’s loose lips are indicative of a trend. “There is no question you can say things about Arabs now that you couldn’t say comfortably before Sept. 11. You can say it as ugly as you want and get away with it. When [Kirsanow] accepts the logic of concentration camps because of the people’s mood, that’s insane.”

“It is consistent with the permeating sense that it is okay to defame Arabs and Muslims,” agreed Asali.

No stranger to the topic of racism, Kirsanow often is caught at odds. “I’m used to it,” he said. “Not only am I black, but I’m also a conservative. So normally I’m pretty thick-skinned. But with this I’m losing sleep.”

While Kirsanow does have his detractors, Asali denied being one of them. “I was entertained to read in the press that his ‘enemies’ had made an issue of this,” the ADC head commented. “I’m not his friend. I’m not his enemy. I’ve never heard of him.”

Others had, however. In the current maelstrom, the story of Kirsanow’s tenuous path to a seat on the eight-member Civil Rights Commission re-emerged. Earlier this year, after President Bush appointed Kirsanow to the USCCR, Commission chairperson Mary Frances Berry refused to seat him—not because of Kirsanow’s vocal criticism of affirmative action and other aspects of a civil rights movement he considers “stuck in a time warp,” she maintained, but on the grounds that there was no vacancy.

According to Berry, the commissioner already occupying the contested seat, who had been appointed by outgoing President Bill Clinton to serve the remaining term of a commissioner who had died, was entitled to a full six-year term. Although a Federal District Court judge originally had sided with Berry, an appeals court panel ultimately rejected Berry’s claim. With this move, the heretofore liberal-leaning eight-member commission would be evenly divided between Republican and Democratic appointees.

Berry denied charges of political gamesmanship, expressing concern that the conservative shift would turn the 45-year-old investigative body into little more than a data-collection agency. While the commission has no law enforcement authority, it does have the power to shed light on such controversies as the disputed Florida election results.

Following the ample press coverage of Kirsanow’s remarks and the calls for his ouster, the commission issued a July 24 press release entitled, “Civil Rights Commission Reaffirms Commitment to Protecting Rights of Arab Americans and Muslims.” In it Berry was quoted as saying, “Maintaining a secure homeland does not justify discrimination against Arab Americans and others today, any more than World War II justified the internment of innocent Japanese Americans over a half century ago. Although individual commissioners are entitled to their own views, the commission is charged with the vital mission of serving as a vigilant watchdog of the civil rights of all Americans.”

Without naming names, Berry’s point was clear. The ADC, LCCR, JACL and others, however, are not pulling punches. They are naming names and proposing a course of action. It was 18 months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that the internment camps evolved from discussion to reality, Tateishi recalled. While he doesn’t expect a response from President Bush, he is hopeful that his vigilance will lure civil rights workers, especially high-ranking ones like Kirsanow, away from the brink. “At least in the future,” the Japanese-American activist said, “even if he thinks it, he won’t say it.”

First Amendment Victory in Chicago

Ironies never cease when it comes to telling the story of the Palestinians. For example, a Palestinian film festival in Chicago lost the support of its university host when it was determined that the theme could be “controversial.” When the university conditioned the festival on a simultaneous Israeli film festival, event organizers went elsewhere.

Most recently, it was the Illinois governor’s office. This time, however, the outcome was better. A Palestinian photo exhibit, which had made its way across numerous national and continental borders, was installed in the rotund lobby of the Thompson Center (also called the State of Illinois Center) in downtown Chicago. Sabeel, the Jerusalem-based ecumenical Christian peace organization, had compiled several dozen photographs of the Palestinian experience, many from the U.N., chronicling events from before 1948 up to the period following the Oslo accords. Entitled “Our Story,” the exhibit has been in circulation since 1999. A corresponding coffee table book (available from the AET Book Club) recounts the tormented history of the inhabitants of Palestine as they were forced out of their homes, killed, relocated, terrorized, humiliated, granted a promise of hope, and ultimately disappointed.

Having just finished hanging 50 photographs on both sides of a series of standing panels, Widad Albassam, the Arab Arts Council program director for the Arab American Action Network, took a break for lunch in the building’s concourse-level food court. Upon her return, she found the photos sitting in a stack on the floor.

Puzzled and dismayed, she went to Pat Michalski, special assistant to the governor for ethnic affairs, with whom she had arranged the exhibit. According to Albassam, Michalski told her that within minutes of the exhibit’s installment, someone had approached her complaining that it was both political and anti-Israel, and that he would be writing a letter to the governor directly. That was all it took.

“The role of the Ethnic Affairs Office is to build bridges,” said Albassam incredulously. Nor was the local press of much help in clarifying the issue. The Chicago Sun Times, for example, mistakenly referred to “controversial” images of Sabra and Shatila. While images of the 1982 massacre do appear in the book, none were included in the Thompson Center exhibit.

At the end of the day, Michalski allowed eight of the 50 images to remain—all of them comparatively innocuous and, combined, depicting little of the half-century of strife.

Illinois Gov. George Ryan’s office had another idea, however: invoking the First Amendment. Deputy Press Secretary Wanda Taylor confirmed that Michalski had made the decision to dismantle the exhibit after receiving complaints about its content, but attributed the action to the staff member’s “thinking she was being sensitive to all concerned rather than taking a political stand. It’s a public building frequented by schools on field trips and families,” Taylor explained.

Nonetheless, the governor’s office firmly ordered that the exhibit be reinstalled immediately. “She made a poor decision on the spot for what she thought were the right reasons,” added Taylor. “Something making people uncomfortable doesn’t supercede someone else’s right to display or discuss an issue. The photo exhibit may be disturbing to some, but it is reflective of a history and culture.”

By the light of Fox News Network cameras, Albassam and co-coordinator Jennifer Bing-Canar of the American Friends Service Committee re-hung all 50 images which, for the remainder of the week-long show, went undisrupted. Just as, across the breezy aisle, did the Jewish Holocaust memorial, which had raised nary an eyebrow.

Roxane Ellis Rodriguez Assaf is a free-lance writer based in Chicago.