OP-ED-US: How the Road from 9/11 Led to My Door

• by Jess Sundin* - IPS/Al Jazeera (minneapolis, mn, usa)
• Thursday, September 15, 2011
• Inter Press Service

The road from 9/11 led the FBI to my door, with an early morning raid on my home, and a secret grand jury investigating two dozen peace activists on terrorism charges.

When the Bush Administration used the events of Sept. 11 to justify war against Afghanistan, I joined thousands to march against that war. How many of us knew it would become the longest war in U.S. history? Costing tens of thousands of lives, and nearly 500 billion dollars, this war has lost the support of the majority of Americans.

Even so, the Obama Administration continues Bush's war, making it their own. Under Obama's command, the war has expanded into Pakistan, and the so-called 'War on Terror' is still offered as justification for aggressive military policies across the globe.

After 9/11, a war was also launched on civil liberties inside the U.S. In an effort to clear the way for endless war abroad, the government created fear of an enemy within. I watched in shame as this unfolded first within Arab and Muslim communities - thousands of immigrants were rounded up and questioned, and many were detained or deported. This has become a permanent campaign of repression and it has now expanded beyond the Muslim immigrant community.

PATRIOT Act

The PATRIOT Act, with 160 provisions, opened the door for unrestrained spying on U.S. residents and citizens, authorising the FBI and other agencies to tap our phones, read our emails, and comb through our trash. It laid the groundwork for a network of undercover agents hiding within our own communities, from mosques to peace groups.

At the same time, we witnessed racial profiling on a mass scale, especially at airports, where Muslims, Sikhs, Arabs and South Asians were questioned and searched, sometimes denied boarding onto flights they had paid for.

Under the guise of counter-terrorism, domestic spying mushroomed. There are now more than 164,000 suspicious activity reports maintained by the FBI without criminal cause, and a mounting list of so-called terror plots manufactured by the FBI and ensnaring individuals not suspected of involvement in any other criminal activities.

The dangers of collaboration between local, state, federal and private agencies are highlighted by last month's shocking reports that the CIA is operating in violation of the law, to spy on Americans through the New York Police Department.

A legal campaign has targeted Arabs and Muslims engaged in political or charity work that runs counter to official U.S. foreign policy.

Dr Sami Al Arian of Tampa, Florida, was an outspoken defender of civil liberties for Arabs and Muslims in the U.S., and worked for the cause of the Palestinian people. Since his very public arrest in February 2003, Dr. Al Arian has spent five and a half years in prison, much of that time in solitary confinement. He has now been under house arrest for 3 years.

All of this, while government prosecutors failed to win a single guilty verdict against him for charges stemming from his political organising.

In another important case, leaders of The Holy Land Foundation's, the biggest Muslim charity in the U.S., were brought up on charges of material support to terrorism. They were convicted and sentenced to 15 to 65 years each, for the crimes of sending money, food, clothing, medical and school supplies to Palestinian charities.

Even while I was aware that some of this was happening, I never imagined that I could be next.

Coordinated raids

But at 7am on Sept. 24, 2010, eight FBI agents burst through the door of my home and spent five hours going through every room, searching for evidence that I had given material support to foreign terrorist organisations.

The search warrant entitled them to seize any property associated with my political activism, organisations I've worked with and anything about Colombia or Palestine - evidence of what I believe, what I say and who I know.

Before my phone was seized, I insisted on the right to call an attorney. He got the word out, and supporters began to gather outside my house.

I soon learned that coordinated raids were being carried out at five Minneapolis homes and the office of the Anti-War Committee, as well as two homes in Chicago. At the same time, agents from five different FBI district offices were trying to question political colleagues across the country, from Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Arizona and California.

Our family was stunned. My partner and daughter were still in their pajamas when the agents stormed in, and I was still upstairs in bed.

For hours, we couldn't move freely in our home without being accompanied by an agent. As we got dressed, went to the bathroom or made our six-year old daughter's breakfast, we were under constant guard. They said that we were not detained, but it seemed wrong to leave these strangers alone in our home, and our daughter's school day did not start until 10am. So we tried to shelter her from them as much as we could, playing cards in the front yard with community members who came to stand with us.

Reporters came by, asking me to comment on the raid while it was under way. With my invaded home as a backdrop, I tried to explain.

It was clear that my anti-war activism was the target of the raid, especially my work in solidarity with the peoples of Colombia and Palestine. The search warrant zeroed in on international travel to these two war-ravaged nations, as well as the Anti-War Committee, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

Without a script, or any chance to speak with others whose homes were targeted that morning, I began the work of defending myself, the organisations I work in, and the movements I have helped to build. On one hand, I and my colleagues were well-known in our communities as leaders of the movements protesting U.S. wars and militarism. On the other hand, local and national news reports named and pictured me, caught up in a high-profile terrorism investigation.

That Friday morning was a rude awakening that the war on terror had come to my home.

Before the FBI left my home with a truck full of my belongings, still not returned a year later, they left me with a subpoena to appear before a Chicago grand jury just a few weeks later.

To date, a total of 23 activists from Chicago, Grand Rapids and Minneapolis have been issued subpoenas for that grand jury, and in May the FBI initiated another raid on the home of a colleague from Los Angeles. All of us are standing up and speaking out against what is happening to us.

We have been standing up and speaking out in opposition to the 'War on Terror' since the day it was launched. We have protested every U.S. war and aggression. We have extended the hand of solidarity to the peoples targeted in these wars, and resisted the criminalisation of liberation struggles around the world.

It is this very work that put us in the crosshairs of a government investigation that has criminalised international solidarity as a whole. Like Dr Al Arian and the Holy Land Five, the government will claim that sending a few dollars to support kindergartens in Palestine is a crime, and that motive for our crimes can be found in our own words, when we have spoken out for the rights of people to resist war and demand justice.

Our political work in opposition to the aggressions of the U.S. government has made us targets.

Just as has been the case with those targeted earlier on the home front of this war, we were spied on, infiltrated, and now we are being pursued for what we believe and who we know.

Like so many of them, we have now been placed on air travel watch lists and are subjected to pat downs and having our belongings rifled through every time we fly. While many of them had their immigration status threatened, I've had my passport seized.

And just like many of them, we have refused to help the government make its case against us or our friends.

Almost a year since our homes were raided, we still wait to hear what the government has planned for us. None of us has spoken to that secret grand jury in Chicago, and the prosecution has not yet brought charges against us.

But they have sent a clear message that we remain in the crosshairs: The prosecutor has told our attorneys that they are seeking multiple indictments (they won't say against which of us). They have refused to return most of our property or our passports, no doubt holding it as evidence against us.

While the world remembers those who lost their lives on Sept. 11, we must also mourn for the collateral damage created since then by the 'War on Terror' - casualties of wars and the loss of freedoms. The case of 24 anti-war activists should be a wake up call to all of us: The casualties are still mounting.

Will our children lose their mothers and fathers to prison? Will our friends and colleagues be jailed and our movements crippled by fear and loss? Or will we be able to fight off this assault on our democratic rights and send a message of hope to the thousands who have been targeted by the 'anti-terror' machine?

I will mark this September with gratitude for the thousands who have stood by us in the face of wrongful government persecution. Please join me in a renewed commitment to defend the individual activists targeted today, along with the rights of all of us to work for peace with justice.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera. Jess Sundin is a mother and activist from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her home was one of those raided by the FBI in September 2010 as part of an investigation of anti-war and international solidarity activists for allegedly providing material support to terrorism. She refused to testify before a Chicago grand jury investigating the activists. She first became active as a high school senior in 1991, when she protested against the first Gulf War. Since that time, her work has included solidarity trips to Iraq and Colombia, and organising massive anti-war protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St Paul, Minnesota.

A version of this piece was originally published on OpEdNews.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect IPS or Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

Where next?

Advertisement