Week 9 Clarice Wong

Clarice Wong
ASA 002 A02
19 November 2017

So Our History Doesn't Become Your Future: The Local and Global Politics of Coalition Building Post September 11th

In So Our History Doesn't Become Your Future, Nadine Naber draws parallels between the response to 9/11 in Oakland, California and her native neighborhood in Cairo, Egypt. Although the attacks were not carried out by our government, the people of both cities collectively decided that the US government deserved some of the blame, for pursuing imperialist policies which could be perceived as a trigger for these attacks. Famously, the US government responded by issuing a sort of "war on terror" to falsely place the blame on immigrants resulting in a sort of racism linking Arabs or Muslims to terrorism. I think this is so unfair of our government to shift the narrative of an act of terrorism to mitigate the response that Americans would have against their own government, and is a sort of manipulation of the people through the power of the institution. Naber further argues that another result post 9/11 is the escalated violence of female immigrants and other women living in third world countries. While there were many negative consequences, some others were that Arab and Arab American activists sprung to action to fight this stigma. For example they brought up the issue that the post 9-11 mindset would be used to rationalize Israeli massacre, and that Palestinians would be "devalued increasingly". This type of washing out of communities of color is totally unjustified and has largely stemmed from the Bush administration's response to 9-11. 

Question: Nader discusses the reaction by the city of San Francisco in an effort to protect South Asian, Arab, and Muslim groups. In particular, SF has declared that their airport belongs to the city and not the federal government. Have other large cities done similar organizations to protect these minority groups for example, as a sanctuary city/ INS Raid Free Zone, especially to protect immigrants flying in?

References: 

Naber, Nadine. (2002, October). “So Our History Doesn’t Become Your Future.” Project Muse Retrieved November 19, 2017.

War on Terrorism Language. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://maatsdefenders.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/war-on-terrorism-language.gif