https://socialistaction.org/2017/02/26/clamp-down-on-muslim-immigrants-trump-makes-obamas-program-worse/
Clamp-down on Muslim immigrants: Trump makes Obama’s program worse
/ 13 hours ago
donald-trump-airport-2By CELYNE CAMEN and KAREN SCHRAUFNAGEL
Trump’s ban on Muslims, which tens of thousands protested at airports
across the country, was the most recent escalation of an ongoing assault
on the rights of Muslims and youth from Africa and the Middle East. This
group has been targeted continuously at least since the beginning of the
so-called “War on Terror.”
In the fall of 2014, the Obama administration announced that a new
program called “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) would be launched,
with pilots in three cities—Minneapolis, Boston, and Los Angeles.
Minneapolis, not coincidentally, has the largest Somali immigrant
population in North America. The Somali people have faced deep political
and economic instability because of war and monumental environmental
destruction and drought, forcing the people to flee to the U.S., where
they have been facing undue profiling, racism, and discrimination.
The Boston Marathon bombing in April of 2013, attributed to two Muslim
brothers, made that city a second logical choice. Funds were filtered
through the Massachusetts State Department of Health as “Peace Grants,”
the largest amount going to the Boston Police Foundation, an NGO that
funds the police department. The rest went to groups that work with
youth and the Somali immigrant community.
Although the administration gave no reason for its choice of Los
Angeles, the region is home to one of the country’s largest Muslim
populations. According to a Los Angeles Times article from September
2014, Fatima Dadabhoy, senior civil rights attorney of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA), responded to the announcement by
saying: “If it’s going to lead to more profiling and surveillance,
that’s clearly going to be problematic. Is it really a project to
counter violent extremism, or is it really a project to counter violent
extremism in the Muslim community?”
CVE is based on PREVENT, a “counter radicalization” program introduced
in Britain in the wake of the 2005 London bombings. Based on
misconceptions about how “radicalization” happens, PREVENT has pushed
health professionals, including mental health workers, to violate
professional ethics regarding privacy and confidentiality. It has
undermined health, social service organizations, and educational
institutions that have partnered with the program, making them
ineffective in providing needed services to their clients.
It has also damaged communities’ trust in agencies that have received
funds or collaborated in the program due to law enforcement pressures to
participate in surveillance of those they serve; deterred those in need
from seeking treatment (many British Muslims are afraid to seek medical
and mental health service for fear of being targeted); divided
communities and engendered suspicion in Mosques and community centers,
denying the community the right to speak freely about political or
social views for fear of being wrongly reported; and created good
Muslim-bad Muslim scenarios, pitting neighbors and friends against each
other.
The entire rationalization for the PREVENT program has been discredited.
It is not possible to disentangle the alleged signs of “radicalization”
from the personality traits displayed by the vast majority of youth. Nor
has any connection been demonstrated between so-called radicalization
and actual acts of violence. But this did not stop the Obama
administration from importing the program.
The initiative works without apparent transparency—offering funding to
nonprofit health and social service agencies like schools, hospitals,
health clinics, youth programs, and places of worship. It seems that in
some instances the groups receiving funds may be unaware of the
surveillance role they will be obligated to take, while in other cases
the organizations are fronts in themselves.
One recipient of funding is Empower Peace, a program to bring young
people in the Middle East in contact with American high school kids.
Empower Peace is connected with the Rendon Group, a spin-doctor
communications firm operating in at least 98 countries, often under U.S.
auspices. Rendon has made millions off U.S. government contracts since
1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help “create the conditions for
the removal of Hussein from power.”
Before the Obama administration left office, the Department of Homeland
Security announced a $10 million round of grants, authorized by Congress
in 2016 and set to be distributed in 2017. The announcement, coming one
week before Trump’s inauguration, shows that the program had already
advanced well beyond the three pilot cities:
Awardees by Category and Areas Served
Developing Resilience
•Police Foundation – $463,185 (Boston)
•Ka Joog Nonprofit Organization – $499,998 (Minneapolis)
•Heartland Democracy Center – $165,435 (Minneapolis)
•Leaders Advancing and Helping Communities – $500,000 (Dearborn, Mich.)
•Tuesday’s Children – $147,154 (Nationwide)
•Music in Common – $159,000 (Nationwide)
•Peace Catalyst International, INC – $95,000 (Nationwide)
•Coptic Orthodox Charities – $150,000 (Nationwide)
Training and Engagement
•City of Houston, Mayor’s Office of Public Safety & Homeland Security –
$400,000 (Houston)
•City of Arlington, Police – $47,497 (Arlington, TX)
•Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority – $187,877 (Illinois)
•Global Peace Foundation – $150,000 (New Jersey)
•Nebraska Emergency Management Agency – $300,000 (Nebraska)
•City of Dearborn Police Department – $51,521 (Dearborn, Mich.)
•City of Los Angeles, Mayor’s Office of Public Safety – $400,000 (Los
Angeles)
•Denver Police Department – $240,000 (Denver)
•National Consortium for Advanced Policing – $200,000 (Nationwide)
Managing Interventions
•City of Los Angeles, Mayor’s Office of Public Safety – $425,000 (Los
Angeles)
•Crisis Intervention of Houston, Inc. – $400,000 (Houston)
•Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department – $425,000 (Las Vegas)
•Life After Hate Inc. – $400,000 (Nationwide)
•Muslim Public Affairs Council Foundation – $393,800 (Nationwide)
Challenging the Narrative
•Project Help Nevada, Inc. – $150,000 (Reno, Nev.)
•Unity Productions Foundation – $396,585 (Nationwide)
•America Abroad Media – $647,546 (Nationwide)
•Rochester Institute of Technology – $149,955 (Nationwide)
•Masjid Muhammad, Inc. – $450,000 (Nationwide)
•The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – $866,687 (Nationwide)
•Muslim American Leadership Alliance – $40,000 (Nationwide)
Building Capacity
•Counter Extremism Project – $298,760 (New York)
•Claremont School of Theology – $800,000 (Los Angeles)
We now have some details about how the Trump administration will
continue these programs. Katharine Gorka, a Trump transition team
member, told officials involved in DHS’s CVE program that the Trump
administration was likely to rename the program “Countering Violent
Jihad or Countering Radical Islam.”
Reuters reported on Feb. 2 that five people briefed on the matter said
the program would change to “Countering Islamic Extremism” or
“Countering Radical Islamic Extremism” and drop any pretense of
targeting groups such as white supremacists. Some Republicans have been
pushing for such a change. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman
Michael McCaul recently called for the Trump administration to “repeal
and replace” President Obama’s “failed, politically correct” CVE program
and instead “target the specific threat we face from radical Islamist
terror.”
The explicitness of the Trump administration is already having ripple
effects. A New York Times article also dated Feb. 2 reported that both
Ka Joog (in Minneapolis) and Leaders Advancing and Helping Communities
(in Dearborn, Mich.) would not accept their half-million-dollar grants,
while the Muslim Public Affairs Council was “waiting to see what changes
will take place in the program before making a decision about keeping
the money.”
The morphing of counter-terrorism efforts, from those that employed
neutral-sounding rhetoric while very specifically targeting Muslim
communities to those that acknowledge directly what such efforts are
really about, has forced groups like Ka Joog to withdraw what had been
overwhelming support for CVE. And it has broader implications for our work.
The Trump administration is signaling an end to “good Muslim-bad Muslim”
divisive rhetoric. Those who hid behind the pretense that CVE was
actually meant to help the communities it targeted cannot pretend this
is the case with Trump’s version.
The new program will further institutionalize Islamophobia but it will
also trigger broader resistance. We must shut down these programs and
purge them from our hospitals, clinics, workplaces, schools, community
groups, places of worship, and local law enforcement. Those of us who
are non-Muslims can stand up vocally for those individuals and groups
who are wrongly labeled and punished as “extremists” and “terrorists,”
simply because of their religion, their skin color, or their political
ideology.
Say no Islamophobia! Stand with the Muslim community!
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February 26, 2017 in Immigration, Middle East, Minneapolis, Trump / U.S.
Government.
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