Spontaneous protest of 3,000 against INS jailings
From the L.A. Times
“Hundreds of men and boys from Middle Eastern countries were arrested by federal immigration officials in Southern California this week when they complied with orders to appear at INS offices for a special registration program.
“One attorney, who said he saw a 16-year-old pulled from the arms of his crying mother, called it madness to believe that the registration requirements would catch terrorists.”
“His mother is 6 1/2 months pregnant. They told the mother he is never going to come home — she is losing her mind,” said attorney Soheila Jonoubi, who spent Wednesday amid the chaos of the downtown INS office attempting to determine the status of her clients.”
My thoughts: This is madness. It won’t catch terrorists, raises serious civil rights questions, and sends a terrible message to the rest of the world.
One fascinating point. L.A. has a large Iranian population, and this demonstration of 3,000 people took place only one day after the jailings. The protestors were almost entirely Arab and Iranian. Clearly this was a spontaneous – and large – outpouring of dissent.
And this is precisely what Not In Our Name speaks about in their three-part platform;
NO War on the World
NO Detentions & Round-ups
NO Police State Restrictions
Is “Police State Restrictions” too harsh a term? Certainly, we are nowhere near a real police state (a police state is when they take you at 4 AM, strap you to a table, then attach electrodes to tender body parts), however unsettling laws like the Patriot Act, and the noxoius Total Information Awareness plan certainly are giant steps away from personal liberty and freedom.