Fighting the War at Home

The "Stop the War" chant didn't take off--though a few stalwarts did give it a try. The several hundred protesters who assembled in Manhattan's Union Square on Martin Luther King Day spoke--sometimes literally--a different language. "In quilab, zindu baad," they chanted heartily, gathering momentum. "INS murdabaad!" Despite miserably wet weather, this Urdu chant--"Long Live Freedom! Down With the INS!"--a variant on a slogan historically used in anticolonialist struggles, cheered the crowd.

The demonstrators, many from Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), a New York City community-based organization of poor and working-class South Asians, were protesting one of the most chilling aspects of the Bush Administration's "war on terrorism"--the war on immigrants. ("Desi," a popular word in a number of South Asian languages, including Bengali and Hindi, means South Asian.) The rally focused on the Immigration and Naturalization Service's post-September 11 refusal to reveal who it is detaining and on what charges; since the World Trade Center attacks, the INS and the FBI have held over 1,200 immigrants, mostly of Middle Eastern or South Asian (especially Pakistani) descent. "Our communities have been devastated," says Monami Maulik, a DRUM organizer. "Many people have disappeared, and we do not use that word lightly."

Most of the Union Square protesters later boarded a bus to Passaic County Jail in New Jersey, where some 350 detainees were incarcerated, almost all without charges, and many without legal representation. Rally speakers included Uzma Naheed, a Pakistani woman whose husband and brother were taken from their New Jersey homes in the middle of the night by INS officers this past fall. Four months later, she had still not seen her brother and had no idea why either man was being held. "No one is telling us what is going on," she said tearfully. Like many families of detainees, she and her children have been left without any financial support, and she has had to sell her belongings to buy food. Protest organizers presented an admirably specific demand: The INS must hold public meetings in Brooklyn and New Jersey, where most of the detainees' families live.

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