Still a Chill in the Air
Rothschild, Matthew
Still a CHILL IN hill Air By Matthew Rothschild Illustration by Jean-Fran?ois Martin ALMOST SINCE 9/12, I'VE BEEN COVERING INFRINGEMENTS ON OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES, ESPECIALLY AS THEY AFFECT PEOPLE...
...He's white...
...The harassment of Arabs and Muslims continues in myriad ways...
...His book, "You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression," has just been published...
...I'm still writing them today, even though there has been something of a cultural thaw...
...Military and medical personnel of the 86th Combat Support Hospital...
...Teachers that teach against the grain often have difficulties with school systems," he says...
...He goes up there because his wife's family lives in Ontario...
...Reed says he whispered to the officer, "It's because I'm Muslim...
...Four times in the last six months, Reed has been detained coming over the border from Canada...
...Reed's name at birth was Edward Eugene Reed Jr...
...After about an hour more of waiting and answering questions, Reed was getting impatient...
...What has happened to me is certainly not unusual...
...Hillmer herself called up Morijah to tell her the news that the state would not be recalling the plates...
...Can't you look me up on your computer and see that it's me...
...Bill Maher is back on cable...
...Ron Smith is a Customs and Border Protection public affairs officer in Detroit...
...I couldn't comment on anything related to his employment status," she says...
...No, you need to stay here...
...What's he doing here...
...We pulled up to the booth at the Windsor-Detroit crossing," he recalls...
...Michael Baker taught in the Lincoln, Nebraska, public school system since 1981...
...The agency "is in receipt of a written complaint about your personalized plates," the letter says...
...This is a whole new ball of wax here...
...I can't confirm that, but I have read that in the paper...
...We should put a bag over their heads and zip-tie their hands together...
...His supporters are not so circumspect...
...Second, another agent asked him about a letter to the editor Reed wrote to the Toledo Blade back on September 8, 2006...
...The article drew instant attention...
...Her phones were ringing nonstop...
...Your kids are being taken care of...
...She is especially grateful to the ACLU, she says, and has newfound respect for its clout- and its commitment...
...Anderson says Baker was first suspended for ten days with pay and then "got the lawyers involved...
...Staff writer Kevin Woster broke the story on May 3. "I'm following the letter of the law," DMV director Deb Hillmer told Woster...
...They wouldn't even let her go to the car to get a diaper bag to change their dirty diapers," he says...
...The Canadians don't bother him, he says...
...And Stephen Colbert memorably spoofed the President of the United States to his face at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner...
...The Associated Press picked it up...
...Michael Anderson taught with Baker at East High School for eight years...
...Still a CHILL IN hill Air By Matthew Rothschild Illustration by Jean-Fran?ois Martin ALMOST SINCE 9/12, I'VE BEEN COVERING INFRINGEMENTS ON OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES, ESPECIALLY AS THEY AFFECT PEOPLE IN THEIR DAY-TO-DAY LIVES...
...But then, the school district forbade him from teaching that way any longer...
...And number two, the horrifying damage they're inflicting on the environment in this country and in the world...
...Here are three recent stories that give you a sense of the temperature today in America, almost six years after 9/11...
...But not everyone has been able to escape the sting of repression...
...I'd much rather engage in critical thought and problem-solving, and I've always had classrooms where we show respect for each other...
...The trouble is "no doubt because you probably changed your name to a Muslim name," said Foote, who told him the Congresswoman would pursue it...
...On January 5, Kaptur wrote to the Congressional liaison at the immigration service...
...When Lisa Jensen and Bill Trimarco of Loma Linda, Colorado, put up a Christmas wreath in the shape of a peace symbol on their house in November 2006, they were threatened by the Loma Linda Homeowners Association with a $25-a-day fine...
...In May, CBS yanked retired Army Major General John Batiste off the air as a consultant after he appeared in a TV ad denouncing Bush's failed strategy in Iraq...
...Baker has clashed with administrators before...
...We'll get back to you on that...
...But the Americans do...
...Reed says he asked them, "Am I being arrested for something...
...Other residents nearby began putting up their own peace wreaths in solidarity...
...When Reed got home, he says he felt like a zombie...
...But he does acknowledge this: "The morning after I showed the documentary Baghdad ER was my last day in class...
...The second time was the most shocking because I realized something was really wrong...
...This has been literally one of the most significant experiences of my life," Morijah says...
...And for our website, progressive.org, I've written more than 200 such stories...
...Then they noticed I'd changed my name...
...Anderson thinks that the administrators seized on this incident to get rid of Baker...
...But after he showed the HBO documentary Baghdad ER to his East High School geography class on April 18, his career there was over...
...For what...
...I googled your name and saw these things that were printed in the newspaper...
...Reed's case is a particularly eye-opening one...
...He appealed and lost...
...the officer asked, as he looked at Reed's passport...
...This is getting too Orwellian...
...Thank you for your recent letter, in which you expressed your concern regarding difficulties that you have experienced during U.S...
...He asked to retire, and we accepted his request to retire," she tells me...
...I believe there were students who went home and were troubled about what they saw, and there were parental phone calls to the principal, and the next day she walked him out the door because she didn't have the courage to stand up to the complainers," he says...
...So Morijah called Jennifer Ring, the executive director of the ACLU of the Dakotas...
...But this time there were two disturbing variations...
...On March 15, Patricia M. Duffy, acting executive director, National Targeting and Security, U.S...
...Now he's the director of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin at Platteville...
...On April 29, Reed says he was detained again...
...Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processing," she wrote...
...We have recently completed our review of this matter...
...But Customs does not practice nor condone any kind of profiling...
...About a half hour later, he continues, "someone comes in with a legal-size paper and asks me why I was in Canada and who I was seeing there...
...Zakariya Muhammad Reed spent twenty years serving in the National Guard...
...She concluded: "I would request that your office act to prevent Mr...
...It's been absolutely humbling to see how many people were willing to go to bat for me on this issue...
...But this hasn't kept him from being viewed with suspicion by his own government...
...They asked for my ID, I gave them my passport, they swiped it, and then there was a look of shock on the guard's face as he closed the window...
...My wife is originally from there," he told them...
...I advise you not to take your hubby with you," the guard told her, according to Reed...
...They asked him about the Lebanese stamp in his passport...
...They told me to turn the car off and keep my hands on the wheel, and they opened my door and led me into the building...
...It was entitled, "The World Sees an Arrogant America," and it was critical of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and its occupation of Palestinian land, as well as Bush's Iraq War...
...Six weeks later, virtually the same thing happened all over again...
...She hopes that some good can come from the kerfuffle...
...She noted that Reed was an "honorably discharged veteran and U.S.-born American citizen" who had "no criminal record nor has he exhibited probable cause to make law enforcement think he may be associated in any way with anti-American elements...
...He expects to continue teaching at Southeast Community College, which is nearby, and at the University of Nebraska, where he gives a course on the history of American public education...
...Reed...
...We should treat them like we do in the desert...
...Baker tells me he cannot talk freely about what happened because he reached an agreement with the school district...
...Then they put me in a four-by-eight-foot room with two armed guards...
...And for Arabs and Muslims in the United States, the climate is as cold as ever...
...Other musicians, across genres, have spoken out against the Bush Administration at no cost...
...But I hope the momentum this has created continues...
...And not just on the free speech issue, but also on going forward with removing this incredibly harmful Administration...
...Baker is sorry to leave...
...And it was all over the blogosphere, she says...
...I would like to know exactly what I am being accused of and why is it that I am having so much trouble reentering the home of my birth...
...Is this where I live...
...One of her favorite calls came from Pennsylvania, she says, where a man offered to send her a check for $19.84 in memory of George Orwell...
...Suddenly, there were five guys surrounding the car with their hands on their weapons...
...The ACLU has a lawsuit pending against Homeland Security for its alleged religious and ethnic profiling...
...He had IMPCH W. So last fall, Morijah, who lives in Rapid City, South Dakota, paid the $25 extra for vanity plates to get MPEACHW The plates arrived, no problem...
...And they said no, you're being detained...
...You will have 10 days from the date of receiving this letter to surrender the plates...
...Was he disciplined for showing Baghdad ER...
...Keith Olbermann on MSNBC denounces the President, and gets a larger audience for it...
...Your name is on every computer at every crossing point into the U.S.," Foote wrote on January 30...
...Ring told her not to hand over her plates and urged Morijah to speak to the press...
...A few weeks later, Foote told Reed by e-mail that it was not going to be so easy...
...It was a crazy frenzy," recalls Morijah...
...The third time was in mid-March...
...Jon Stewart regularly skewers Bush, as does David Letterman...
...I found that very satisfying...
...I first wrote about it in a cover story for The Progressive entitled "The New McCarthyism" back in January 2002...
...Meanwhile, his wife was talking with the guards, asking if they should expect trouble every time they try to cross...
...Then on April 18, Morijah got a letter from the South Dakota DMV...
...We both feel very strongly about this Administration for a large number of reasons," she explains...
...Can I go see my kids and talk to my wife...
...The first time, we thought it was a fluke," he says...
...I see you like to write for the newspaper," the agent told Reed, he recalls...
...Hillmer warned in that article that if Morijah didn't surrender the plates, the state might sic law enforcement on her to get them...
...Islam...
...This particular issue has been resolved," she says...
...Even the National Review sung its praises, calling it "refreshingly earnest...
...He also says the guards engaged in some nasty banter...
...Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive...
...This can't be happening...
...I asked them for a list of all the vanity plates they'd issued in the last year, and they wouldn't give me that...
...You know, we're really too good to these detainees," one said, according to Reed...
...He takes the clip out of his weapon, looks at the ammunition, puts the clip back in, and puts it back in his holster...
...Morijah, a conservation organizer at the Sierra Club, took the advice and contacted the Rapid City Journal...
...After about three hours, Reed says, they took his photo and his fingerprints, and made him wait a half hour longer before giving him his passport back and telling him he could go...
...For the last eleven years, he's been a firefighter in Toledo...
...Any other comments...
...A lot of kids are in classrooms where they are lectured to...
...If an individual is found doing so, they would be subject to discipline, up to and including dismissal...
...But the local outcry was so fierce that the board members of the homeowners association had to back down, apologize, and resign...
...Heather Morijah thought it would be cute to have a personalized license plate on her silver Prius that was almost identical to the one on her partner's blue Prius...
...And the plates are the property of the state of South Dakota...
...He told me perhaps my name should be pariah, not Morijah...
...Baker carefully frames his departure...
...Reed from experiencing further delays and detentions and do what you can to update his record in the computer...
...Nancy Biggs, the assistant superintendent for human resources at Lincoln Public Schools, gives her account of why Baker no longer teaches there...
...What's obvious is that the showing of Baghdad ER was only an excuse to remove a progressive educator from the classroom," Anderson charges...
...The Dixie Chicks, who once faced mass hostility, including bonfires of their CDs, have enjoyed renewed popularity on the charts and at the Grammys...
...Reed is worried about what will happen the next time he and his family go visiting to Canada...
...The agent had downloaded a copy of the letter, which was on the table, Reed says...
...I can't talk about specific individuals because of privacy concerns," he says, "so I can't speak to particulars about Mr...
...But so far nothing has happened...
...Reed says he told the guards: "Look, I just did this six weeks ago...
...Not true, his wife told him later...
...He's American...
...Morijah says she called up the DMV right away...
...The ACLU's Ring then faxed over a letter on May 4 to Paul Kinsman, South Dakota's secretary of revenue and regulation, which oversees the DMV Ring pointed out that "political speech such as 'impeach George Bush' is indisputably not 'indecent' or 'vulgar' in any respect...
...I have never done anything criminal in my life...
...These are but a few reasons that have put America on the 'most hated' list," he wrote...
...I really enjoyed engaging high school students in critical dialogue," he says...
...Nobody will give me any information as to why I am being detained," he wrote...
...They wouldn't it give it to me," she says...
...I literally only received one call that was not supportive, and that was from Rapid City," she says...
...They put me up against the wall and frisked me and took everything in my pockets," he says...
...I have been treated like a criminal and my wife and children have been mistreated and disrespected in the name of Homeland Security...
...This, despite the fact that in 2006, Baker was one of only forty-seven teachers in the state to win National Board Certification, according to the Lincoln Journal Star, which broke the story...
...She was very polite," says Morijah...
...All we want is to go on with our lives as before...
...He opted to start at the present and work backwards, an approach he'd been using for four years, since it engaged the students right away...
...Basically, the same thing happened as before, Reed says, the same questions, the same fingerprinting...
...This unsettled Reed...
...In 2005, they objected to his innovative approach to teaching history...
...Based on the information you provided and our research into the issues you raise, records have been modified where appropriate...
...The big number one would be leading us into an imperialistic occupation in Iraq to get their oil, and lying to the American people at the expense of many American lives and many Iraqi lives...
...We have to approach the problem at the director level...
...Reed says he was also bothered by a remark from a plainclothes officer...
...The first time, Reed, his wife, and their two small children were coming back at about 11 p.m., so the kids were asleep, he says...
...In communities across the country, there also appears to be some more space for dissent...
...Is this the country I love...
...HBO says Baghdad ER captures "the humanity, hardships, and heroism of the U.S...
...And Secretary Kinsman issued a press release stating, "After reviewing case law on this issue, we have determined that the plate will not be recalled," according to Woster in his follow up for the Rapid City Journal...
...Customs and Border Protection, wrote Reed back...
...On May 7, the DMV pulled a U-turn...
...Meanwhile, Reed keeps getting hassled...
...First, a border agent took his weapon out and put it on the table during interrogation, Reed says...
...I'm thinking, this is intimidation...
...Part of that agreement prohibits him from saying much about it, he says...
...We went there on our honeymoon...
...His wife and their two children had to come in and stay in a common area, he says, as border agents took him down the hall...
...With this complaint I am sorry to inform you that the set of plates MPEACHW are being recalled...
...Yeah, so...
...What faith was that...
...I just asked them to fax me a copy of the person's letter with the name blacked out...
...It's completely against our policies...
...Was he suspended for ten days...
...Nothing, I'm just curious...
...I'm sad," he says...
...Is this what it comes down to...
...You must start from the oldest date and go forward, they ordered him...
...His is just one of many such cases reported by Muslim Americans...
...Now, not only am I being persecuted for my faith, but I'm being persecuted for a personal opinion...
...It may offend some citizens of South Dakota, but that is not a valid basis for the State to censor pure political speech...
...It's offensive to someone and not in good taste and decency...
...Who do we have here...
...I was terrified," he says...
...CNN did a story on it...
...For a while there, we had blue and silver Priuses with matching Impeach Bush license plates roaming around Rapid City," she says...
...I'm disillusioned...
...It's outrageous," Anderson says of Baker's departure...
...And don't get me wrong: Some dissenters are not yet free to speak without fearing the consequences...
...I've followed up periodically in these pages...
...On February 2, Reed sent a letter to the Interagency Border Inspection System...
...I have never taken part in any subversive activity to cause harm to this land or its people...
...And I asked for a list of the vanity plates they had recalled, and I couldn't get that, either...
...For personal reasons, based on faith...
...No such luck...
...I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be evasive, well, I am being evasive, and I need to be, so I don't violate confidential personnel information...
...At the same time that the Loma Linda residents rose up to defend their free speech rights, for instance, six imams were handcuffed and booted off a US Airways flight in Minneapolis after complaints that they were praying before boarding...
...Reed contacted Representative Marcy Kaptur's office and talked with aide Dan Foote...
...Why did you change your name...
Vol. 71 • July 2007 • No. 7
