and for that. finally, there were no prejudice is because they were unknown. this was a nation of islam, the only public disability in america. in europe because they were turks, pakistanis. there were no muslims in general before 2000, there were no muslims in great britain, there are no muslims in france. they became muslims and in moderate they became muslims. before there were turks and no muslims, this is an interesting comparison. there were clearly prejudiced against them as ethnic groups but other religious groups and the prejudice against islam itself that has become the most important characteristic. >> thank you for that acute observation. that's very helpful. let's go right across the middle. the lady and is that sort of red, please call and if you can see who you are the would be great. >> i noticed you said the surveys are the most positive indicators for the acceptance of the social contact but in the rural areas obviously there are not as many muslims and i wonder if you would look into that i wondered particularly about the role of the fis leaders in particular speaking positively about muslims as a way of countering islamophobia or what otherwise would be positive to counter? >> can we pass the microphone, can somebody stay with the microphone. this gentleman on the left and that gentleman up there. >> i left in the geographic sense. i have no idea where your views are. >> you've commented that the america is founded on the principal of religious freedom. also that we see that decline of religious practice in the millennials group, and an that informs our morality what is the forward-looking -- what is that suggesting for the forward-looking view and i would raise the question specifically to we have any idea or any reaction about what we as americans are willing to accept in our society? so if we have the perception that muslims are terrorists, are we willing to accept acts of violence against the communities that were this is headed? i would raise that as a community question that we need to consider seriously. >> thank you three much. there is an interesting question on that subject in the survey that can be reported. thank you. >> ellen crowley teach immigration history at american university in byman on resident fellow at the migration policy institute. i'm wondering whether or not you taken your data and contextualized it with other opinions data of the earlier era. for example a lot of the questions you asked and the responses you got are remarkably similar to some of the gallup polls conducted about jews in the late 1930's, very, very similar, and i think it would make an interesting comparison to do that, and that it would enrich when you are saying because in fact there has been enormous progress and diminishing anti-semitism and perhaps offers some optimism as well as the pessimism and then what about the issue of recession and the war? one of the things i thought was missing from the presentation is any mention of the kind of economic tensions that a rise from the recession and often at least in the earlier waves of immigration have led to the intensity of nativism and the intensity even of prejudice against a particular religious and racial groups. >> thank you. that's a great point. i did a survey. there is strong and approval. the jews are one point ahead of catholics, which has absolutely no statistical significance but is a great fact use of a cocktail party. [laughter] >> yes? >> first on the social context question you are right the muslim population as is pointed out is less than 2% of the population and geographically concentrated, so it's not evenly spread over the country. so it is probably going to have limited nationwide effect. fortunately i can say this, the effect is there that the sort of thing that's most when there is having never talked with a muslim is the sort of fact this stands as an independent predictor about muslims. however it is less strong if there is any heartening thing it is illustrative on the van it is having never talked to hispanic influences anyone who's spent a the two hispanic influence on immigration, so those relationships are on immigration which i would maybe give to you it is still there but it is not as powerful. the things ahead of it again are the media, trust in media, a conservative ideology, living in the south, all of those are a little bit more powerful than in the independent predictors' than never talked with a muslim but the other piece of it is i don't see a silver bullet here because there is also no education as a pointed out earlier it depends what the source of knowledge is. it's not just getting the facts out there are going to completely solve the problem. i think it has to be a sort of, you know, sort of more general familiarity with is on that is maybe less a ideologically driven and it's a great tool. i used to be in higher education it's a great role for higher education to kind of to some of this, kind of give objectives of the study of islam and muslims in america and we are seeing some things like where does for example the history show up and primary and secondary school textbooks. is that a part of the curriculum or not? is that part of the american story and that is the biggest part of the story is that part of the american story or not and one of the things you will see with millennial is it will increasingly be part of the american story. one anecdote we talked about president bush so far as i know president george w. bush was the first to use the word mosque in the context of saying american churches, synagogues and mosques he included in the kind of landscape as after 9/11 and i think that itself is a significant marker of the inclusion of the institutions and the society. on the question of the gallup context, you are absolutely right. the survey can out of the field august 14th, so on the academic timeline we are sprinting to get the results out. but you're absolutely right doing that would be really interesting and really nailed down the point. but ej and bill makes the point that not with a democrat point in the essay and a section they write. we don't of the trend of the recession i wish we had a longer trend on the particular question we have to sort that out. the millennial point being that is religious. let me make one quick thing here. the millennials are less religious but it means by that i mean on a number of measures they are unaffiliated, officially kind of that doesn't mean that they are easiest it means they are not affiliated and there's a big number of them that fall into the spiritual but not religious category if you ask if religion is important to their lives a large number of them say yes so they are not antireligious. i want to be about that. they are formally affiliated. it is a less hard stand it is just the sort of not being formally affiliated with religion and there's one other question. islamic the question and the survey that too many americans believe that muslims are terrorists, something like that i think what report the number which goes on if you will the positive side of the ledger in terms of the views but still was split. i've is addressing a colleague of mine talking about muslims and he kept saying our muslims are not like that and i said what you mean our muslims? ayman american muslim. what you are trying to say let me tell you even those who don't know muslims would like to say that there are muslims who are better than the muslims in europe and our muslims are not like the muslims of iran so even those that have had no contact would be predisposed to having a slightly positive delta attitude relatively speaking. but also this clearly shows anybody that knows a muslim personally has a very positive views about muslims and does not have the striking the high unfavorable views about islam. but in the republican party is very interesting. even though people in texas and oklahoma that have never met muslims but to somebody they like like rick perry who is very close or christie from new jersey, these are people that are not talking in the islamophobia language. i have a feeling that if muslims can reach out at least to the leaders and the opinion makers the fact that not every american can no muslim can be part of a affected by muslims knowing who shares their attitude and their opinion making for half the american muslims particularly is really gargantuan. >> tell me how much time we have left because i want to go back to the twitter feed. we will begin and end with twitter if somebody can bring a microphone just pass along this one piece. >> one more thing i could have included in the positive views but didn't make it for time we also had a question about too many americans think that all muslims are terrorists do you agree or disagree? six of ten americans agree with the statement to many americans think all muslims are terrorists. so there is a clear sense that a strong majority of americans think that muslims have been judged in a harsh manner in this point. >> christine and then we will bring in a couple of more. >> this comes from and water in washington. the u.s. muslim population seems to be generally describing themselves as a thriving and part of the american social fabric despite the negative views described in the report. does this reflect that there are an insular community not aware of the public perceptions about them? >> dr. khan? >> when i looked at the numbers the question that kept bothering me all have the american muslims become so socialized and politicized that they are gaining when they are being asked questions are answering in a strategic way. but then i thought maybe everybody answers questions in a strategic way i always do. >> you are a social scientist. >> what are we trying to find out? let me tweak the data. that is one possibility to read the other thing is that american muslims particularly immigrant muslims when the contrast why is in the u.s. from where they have come, it is america at its worst has been better than many of the places they have come from at its best. so even though they recognize that there is the height islamophobia, the worst thing that can happen is getting off the plane or giving someone a ticket when you don't deserve it or a condescending remarks and you are a legal then you get locked up but that's a different issue. back home many of the country's you could be tortured for a similar non-offense. so for the american muslims particularly to realize that they are doing financially better and they are doing very well on the skill of the discrimination plus all the american muslims realize that they are free to practice the kind of religion they want in america as opposed to other muslim countries even in the so-called islamic countries there's only a certain kind of islam which is permitted for the practice. so the religious freedom is the first thing that hits the immigrant muslims and the second is economic opportunities and in spite of the recession they do well. >> thank you for that because understanding dr. casanova make the point that the difference between america and europe in this respect that on the whole people that are part of the emigration from the muslim countries have done well in the u.s. and the surveys are not a reflection about the assistance of prejudice or the success in the united states for the most part. >> i lived 22 days in oxford as a fellow and nearly 22 years in the u.s.. i have more incident of the discrimination and racism than i experienced in 22 days in england than i have and 20 years in the u.s.. this is the fact. >> peggy over here if we can bring a microphone. let's do three questions. here, back there or friend and i am sorry, we in the back. forgive me. my former students, i hope he will forgive me. >> congressional correspondent with the hispanic outlook, higher education. i write a lot about immigration, and especially with hispanics, immigration is about jobs, it's about work. so naturally with your orientation towards religion, i think the tone seems to be more that immigration is a civil right, and i would love to see in some of your questionnaires what percentage of americans who think the immigration is a civil rights, which of course it isn't, and how many think that being here in the country illegally is a civil right. this kind of orientation makes it a moral issue when it's really about jobs so i also agree with the gentleman behind me that there was a lack of the impact of the recession. so another question would be interesting is how many americans think that illegal immigrants are doing jobs that americans do or do they really think that all the illegal immigrants do jobs that americans want to or don't do or can't do, and i think that you would get a different feel about that if you enforce the immigration law its anti-immigrant and i don't think it is, and we are talking about job opportunity in the recession. >> thank you very much and then passed back to my former students i feel guilty. >> rachel, the communications on monday. i first want to start by thanking robbie and ej and bill forethoughtful poll and all of you for a very insightful presentation that's great. dr. khan my question is focused at you. you talk about how the broadcast news could play more of a role in educating americans perhaps about muslims and i wanted to turn it back to how you thought the president should be doing today some pieces of the post have an article feeling ignored of home how they are noting that president obama has visited any mosque yet since he was president and i'm wondering whether you have any insight with the president could be doing on the innovative ideas, and also with a muslim community has been in touch with television, and sort of hollywood because you know, we've all seen the role that television shows and how we would have played with gay rights for example. >> just pass it right back and then this gentleman over here if we can bring a microphone to him and get them both in. >> a quick question from robbie on the fox news correlation. did you find in the survey what percentage of those that trusted fox news identified as well as independent or democrat and were there enough of them that use all the same kind of difference that you saw among fox news republicans and others to kind of suggest the stronger variable if there were a enough of them? >> proving he was brilliant in georgetown, thank you very much. >> i teach down the street here. i have an anecdote in search of a polling question but have sacked in to build. i had a student just this last summer who is an egyptian academic and so i asked him about the mubarak and so forth and he seemed very early and how much he loved to visit paris, and after this exchange i asked him what about this poll post mubarak that said an overwhelming majority of the egyptians favor the death penalty for congress from islam and you said yes, absolutely. anyone who would renounce his religion is capable of any crime whatsoever and i was astonished so i asked him to spell it out and he was very adamant. i'm wondering whether the question that you've raised on sharia law touches on this attitude or whether you have any other data about the attitudes of muslims in america whether they adhere to the overwhelming majority of the sentiment in egypt has detected by that. >> thank you. thank you very much. that's a good question. but i will do is give everyone a shot at responding to these questions and making a closing comment and i will just go right down the panel with dr. casanova. >> we must remember that weeks before september 11th, president bush and president fox of mexico trying to fix the immigration problem. they were trying to introduce dual citizenship mexicans and america said it was unthinkable after satori 11th but what i want to point out is the bringing together, the linking of the issues on the immigration is one of course of the consequence of september 11th. that securing the borders became a particular issue after september 11th and in the borders they took issues now of security and jobs in the recession come so the precision of these issues, immigration, security, islam and of course jobs but that is what is making the issues so critical. >> dr. khan? >> i went to start commenting that the media. if you look at the media before and after 9/11 there has been an exponential improvement in the positive coverage of islam. the media have done positive stories great ones like the empire by pbs, really every mystery and law and order shall have done positive episodes on islam etc. but this is a huge country so this tends to be more than what is done. not only that but the muslims have become part of the media. any muslim who could put together the three sentences became an op-ed columnist. every face of all "washington post" and salon.com, a "new york times" has muslims right so they are not implicated in the media and its coverage. it's part of that that muslims are endorsing what is happening overseas when the explosion, one mosque being blown in pakistan, one pakistani immigrant trying to blow up times square and then ought positive work that has been done for a long time is completely negated. so that is one of the reasons why i think that the negative attitudes endure because the shocking impact of the image is depicted, and continues to happen in a love muslim world were here. so i think that it is really doing a pretty good job that needs to of moving the broadcasting corporation did something called the mittal mark on the prairie. this is a fantastic, the show that's been going on for several years. it's a shame and no one brought it to the u.s.. all you have to do is a big and you will get it. so that is something that there has been no sustained effort at combating. elon's government did a great job of sustaining the attempt to combat by producing the most expensive public television show of and i iranian falling in love with a jew during the holocaust in paris and is embarrassing that there hasn't been such a significant effort in the u.s. to generally combat this. the second point i want to make is about a similar question when muslims are asked about the implementation of sharia you ask and they are thinking yet the most important thing is the leading in the one so everywhere in the world muslims want but when others who are not muslims think of sharia they think of the taliban so there are these two different things that they are talking about when they are talking about sharia. so i suspect even for a long time the muslims are going to have a problem on how to combat this perception about muslims with regards to shelia because i suspect that in private a large number of muslims would like to see it implemented whatever it means which means they are about to pray and fast and build islamic schools but that doesn't mean we want to force you to fast and force others to pray. that is not with your thinking. so i think that if the sharia law in this dangerous the way that it's been handled in the media and i think that it will continue to endure for a while between scirica before they become strict about it and others become more compassionate and aggressive in addressing this issue. being short, let me pick up on this point because i do think it is an example of a doctrinal problem that serves as an irritant, a symbolic irritant being precise. the classic american understanding of the free exercise and provision is including the proposition that you are free both to join the community of your choice and to exit from that community without any civil disabilities or penalties and the eyes of the law. so the proposition that it should be punished by death is a direct affront to free exercise of religion as americans understand. and if i were to give to follow on the analogy with catholicism, you know, i would urge as a n doctrinal matter that muslim theologians in america do some work on the question of the stance towards apostasy should be, and that is not a simple matter i know, but it is very fundamental because to have a majority of muslims and a muslim majority nation standing firmly for the proposition that it ought to be punished by death scares americans. >> i want to move we have to close down because we are running overtime. i'm sorry. i knew that would open a big discussion. robbie jones to close. >> i want people to get to all of them in the time we have but one thing you're absolutely right about immigration be related to jobs. and we have asked in the past about immigrants who do jobs and i can get you the number the last time we ask that question. i don't have a off the top of my head. it's a sizable number of americans who say they do jobs that americans don't do. don't, that americans won't do i think is the will be asked the question pulaski the wording after we are done, and on immigration we do try to ask the question in multiple ways to get the complexity of the answer so we can kind of see not just one shot but here's how it looks if you ask in different ways and we report on all of them so you can see it. on the fox news connection we can't break down just because the sample size limitation we can't break down independent or democrats who say they trust fox news and that is mostly because that group is dominated by republicans so those groups are so small to break down the one thing to say the which i want to emphasize here is that those republicans is a trust fox news are sort of more opposed on both immigration and favorable attitudes toward muslims. republicans who watched any other news source look like the general population so it makes quite a difference not only in the general population but among the conservative groups that fox news in fact continues to kind of health and affect their but one thing i think we want to see is kind of a bigger point that if we step back one of the things we are seeing here to go back to the term of rustling it is a fundamental principle that goes back to the founding of the country, and the idea of american exceptional the sum was raised and goes to why the stakes are high because in the previous survey that we are releasing here with e.j. and bill and americans say that america has a special place and that god has granted america and a special place in human history and one of the things we see here is americans are really concerned about how recent immigrants particularly muslims and latinos are changing american society. one tidbit i will leave you with is a little bit of a conundrum we asked the question about whether immigrants are changing, recent immigrants are changing american communities on the ground the people's local communities add about four of ten saber change in american communities a lot, and the country was split on the this limit majority saying there was a good thing, the four in matane and the big partisan divide. when we asked about american society, interestingly enough, we got higher rates saying that they were changing american society them we did changing communities on the grounds of there's the perception gap sure that even if all local level people aren't seeing such high levels of change, they are sensing or having a perception that the immigrants are changing american society and interestingly enough the same division about 52% say a good thing and the partisan divide on the generational divide on the question, and the interesting thing is there was and a logical device on the question about the society about changing perception of a changing society there is no pity the budget will decide on the perception and change of the communities it is a kind of interesting tidbit i'm going to leave you on the differential perceptions of on the ground forces the kind of more symbolic thing of how does this change america and what we think of as america? >> i just want to close by saying americans often have complicated views on important questions not only because of polarization but also because they are torn come across pressured and still working through what they think. so, be aware of anyone who says confidently americans seem that unless they add americans also think that and i want to salute robbie for reminding us of all of those also's and comcast and jones and all of you and the wider audience and our highly informed c-span audience for joining us today. thank you very much. [applause] a huge focus on a grassroots coalition-building is to build relationships with organizations such as the aclu and with abc on a national level. it's important for us to have these connections with these organizations and agencies and in terms of walking that very fine line of being an ally with government agencies while still maintaining that level of open criticism as well because it's a very fine nine with working with a grassroots community that doesn't understand you need to have these relationships to further your agenda and to advance as a community and in dealing with these issues. so hopefully in being here i'll be able to address that end of things because it is coming from a completely different angle than what people deal with on a national level. so thank you for allowing me here today. [applause] >> thank you and finally but not least we're joined with -- [inaudible] >> >> yeah, i had a nice fancy speech prepared but i thought that given the significance of the weight of today i would speak more of reflection and more -- remembering the events of the past decade and so forth. and i threw away that speech so bear with me if there's unconventional stops and interruptions and obstacles during the presentation but earlier today i had a chance to speak to a former law school friend by the name of sergio perez who attended the ucla school of law with me and we both reflected on the day and i'm sure many of you can vividly remember the days and the events that unfolded on 9/11 and more specifically where you were. him and i spoke at length about that day given that it was our second week of law school. it was an interesting experience for me given i was moving from the midwest from detroit to l.a. to not having friends and having to complete to a different critical complex at a difficult and trying and volatile time not in my life but also in the history of this country. in reflecting at the time, if i can kind of paint the landscape for you, the university of california at large was experience ago post-affirmative action landscape where diversity on campus was virtually nonexistent. our law school class had nine african-americans, latino americans were, i think, 45 or 50 which is -- you know, especially a travesty given the location of ucla in los angeles, you know, being, you know, the hub if not the capital of chicano america and spanish-speaking america but we reflected on that day and i was one of three arab-americans at the ucla school of law and perhaps the only conspicuous arab-american post-9/11. and at the ucla school of law i had no platform as an arab-american to have my voice but with sergio perez and lost in association i was invited with the black law school association to be involved on both boards. both organizations gave me a critical platform and an ability to really present my concerns, my viewpoints and give face and give foist to the struggle of arab-americans during that critical moment on the history of the united states at large and the narrative of arab-americans that day and those experiences as i look back a decade earlier was very critical in shaping the trajectory of my career which has been based on coalition-building and truly building coalitions along -- not along the lines of leaders of several organizations meeting and framing strategy but really promoting a new brand, a new platform and paradigm for what coalition-building is and what mean it's a gift we have sahali here today and a community level where individuals have an opportunity to attend a conference like and hear an opportunity to hear speeches of the organizational leaders to execute the kind of coalition-building and the true kind of chunt integration that needs to be had for this country to be united and also for the interest have to truly be advanced in a meaningful way. i would like to address three seminal points. first, i'd like to discuss that diversity within the arab community and how that diversity really lends itself well to true coalition-building. the second point i want to address is before true coalition-building can be had on part of arab-americans it's incumbent upon arab-americans and leadership to redefine what it means to be from a american legal and ethnic perspective and i want to address some of our natural allies and promoting the arab-american platform, if you will. but second, how to broaden that base of allies. so first diversity of arab-american community. if all of us could look at the wall here and look at the wonderful portraits that the adc has showcased. this really showcased the diversity and the cultural and ethnic and religious mosaic that is the arab world. and i think one benefit and one natural resource that the arab world has it's deep and rich diversity. we have individuals who, you know, typically who look black, we have individuals who look caucasian. individuals who just manifest a series of different ethnic appearances. we have religious diversity which is unparalleled and that diversity lends itself really well to building in-house avenues towards coalition-building with organizations that represent a various array of constituents. arab-americans from the continent of africa, sudanese americans for instance who identify with both african and arab provide -- you know, provide direct authentic in house ambassadors that can build bridges with the african community here in the united states. organizations such as the adc and other organizations have to empower these individuals to build lasting coalitions and part of the reason that hasn't been successful in many ways are for two reasons. first of all, one thing that needs to be addressed and i've written about this issue quite extensively racism in the arab-american community which hasn't been meaningly addressed and tackled. the second point is there's been somewhat of a hyperemphasis on the lavon, egypt to the detriment of the other regions of the world that have not been given due attention so that needs to be addressed. organizations like adc, aei and so forth should really pay more attention -- more resources to address what's going on in the horn of africa, northeast africa and morocco and so forth, the gulf. unless this happens, the ability to encompass and bring in and give true voice and membership to other americans is not going to be had. i have two minutes so i'm going to rush really quick and i can address these other points during the question and answer period but i finally have a piece that addresses in the handbook that you have that addresses arab-american legal identity. in post-9/11 community the arab-americans haven't done the necessary work to really refine and to solidify what it means to be an arab-american. and even though that conflicts with other social and political issues on the ground. we've been marginalized as being anything but white and having access to white privilege and a lot of energy and work and research needs to be had to finalize and refine what it truly means to be arab-american. i'm going to stop now but i'll be glad to field any questions you may have about these issues. >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you. i got a little nervous when you brought that big board. i hope he still likes me. i thought we would have a little bit of discussion amongst the panelists and also with the audience which i know there's lots of easy and thoughts when you have a. what i thought i would do is kick off with one discussion before i turn it over to some of our friends in the audience. and we're talking about coalition-building and something we have been engaged on a community level and suhaila has been on a national level as margaret has been. and we've had some successes with folks as has been described by some of the panelists as natural allies. going back to what i was saying earlier. if poll after poll demonstrates that we are in effect losing the conversation with the american public, if polls after 9/11, september, 2001, demonstrated that around 50 to 60% of most americans -- a majority of americans realized that the attacks on our country were, in fact, by a few and not representative of a major faith community and that their and our friends who happen to be muslim do, in fact, happen to be muslims like all of us and those numbers are down to the 30s. after all the coalition-building and all the work we've done with all due respect and i include myself in that effort, where do we need improvement? who are the others that we need to reach out to? and i would offer and i want to get your thoughts on this, we need to reach out to groups that have demonstrably about who arabs, who muslims are. and those groups tend to be church-going catholics. evangelical christians which make up half of the country. if you look at poll data for those specific communities those are the groups that have the most questions and in most cases have the most suspicious about arabs and muslims. so i want to ask on a local level and a national level what your thoughts are kind of where we are on coalition-building, what you think about maybe expanding our role and our circle and our orbit of those coalitions that we reach out to and what you think might be some of the negatives and positives whoever wants to go first, i'd love to hear it. >> i know on a community level immediately post-9/11 i think i spoke at about 36 churches. people that reached out to us -- in fact, one, i was in the mall a month after 9/11 and a lady approached me and asked me -- was asking me some questions and then asked me if i would come and speak at her church, which was about an hour and a half away from dearborn. so i said yes. i went -- i thought it would be a small church group, there were 160 women who just -- we sat and had a very open conversation, allowed them to, you know, ask all the questions that they wanted and from that point on, they actually had called their friends at other churches and we had started doing that on a -- where i just grab a bunch of friends, hey, we're going to have some conversations. and it was something as simple as sitting down with these various communities and churches and talking to them about the arab-american community. though that was something that i would say was done greatly at that point. for i'd say the first few years post-9/11, most recently -- many groups go to the islamic center where they facilitate trainings and they do tours of the islamic center and give talks about who muslim americans are and whatnot. i think it's something that on a community level you need to be able to reach out to, you know, open your hand and be willing to embrace, you know, your brother or your sister at the end of the day we are all americans and we're here for the same reason, to better our lives and to move forward and have our families grow up in this great nation so it's important for us on a community level to reach out to these other organizations and to these other more on the more conservative end to ensure that they're aware that we are here and we want to work together. you know, it's difficult in coalition-building to connect with these groups that don't necessarily want to embrace you. some of them are very standoffish. some of them will actually say we're not interested, but it's just knowing you're making that effort on a community level it's something that's necessary across-the-board even if there's one muslim living somewhere in a ruler town in oregon, you know, reaching out to the local church and trying to build that relationship and talk and have a simple conversation can help greatly on a grassroots level. >> margaret or khalid? >> i was listening to the discussion with the lunch panel and the conversations around bullying. and the comments were made that the lgbt community has had a lot more success in moving public opinion and getting their concerns out on a broad level than many other groups have been able to do and i thought one of the reasons for that is because so many people in the united states know someone who's gay or lesbian or bisexual or one of those categories. so when you know someone, it changes the dynamics. i once sat in on a focus group session where people were trying to assess with a kind of messaging to get more americans on the forum. and the people who were willing to hear the messages and supportive of messages are people who knew undocumented immigrants and thought they were good people and didn't think they should be facing what they were facing so knowing someone personally makes a big difference and the work you've done is exactly on target. it's going to take that kind of personal outreach and relationship-building to make changes. but that's a really long time. and that's -- that's a lifetime investment. that's not something that changes quickly. and so i think the other key is in building relationships with groups who may not know enough about our communities, who may not share the experience of our communities but who can understand and relate to the goals that we have. one of our big targets in our campaign against racial profiling is law enforcement officials, which is an interesting group to be working with on the campaign but, in fact, having police chiefs go up to capitol hill and talk about how incredibly ineffective it is for them to do their jobs when racial profiling is a part of it but that is far more per -- persuadives than me going up >> thank you. >> the work that needs to be done before you actually approach an organization is to truly try to understand, you know, the narrative and try to understand what specific platforms those organizations and those communities are trying to promote themselves. so, for instance, oftentimes organizations approach a potential ally and try to build long lines of converging issues, racial profiling, for instance, but hypothetically speaking, that organization may not know about -- or may not fully appreciate the experience that, let's say, a latino americans have with racial profiling and they approach -- effectively trying to promote their own strategy and issues without truly understanding the experience, you know, the experience but also kind of what the specific strategy in the agenda of that organization they're looking to ally with is also. so that homework needs to be done, i think, before you approach an organization you eventually want to partner up wit with. >> i want to open it up to the floor and who have questions and i really just help me out, ask a question. if you want to make a speech, we will put you on a panel. >> again, my name is ananda david. when i hear talk shows i feel that no one is hearing us, like as much work as we're doing and you are doing and adc is doing, i say it didn't make any dent because who can be done because those who are conservative and doing talk shows they reach millions of people and just -- i hear -- now i'm avoiding all these talk shows because they make me very emotional and very upset. but even the people who call in, just 100% of all of them -- they are constantly attacking arabs and putting them in a very, very degrading situation and so your question was, who are the groups? i think people who are in the media. >> uh-huh. anybody want to address that? it >> i think the media game is clearly a ratings game and the media -- the kind of content the media is going to deliver is going to be based on the audience and who the audience is. i think one encouraging trend in this one is that this country is quickly becoming a majority/minority country meaning that people of color in this country will be the majority. so i think in terms of strategy one thing that arab-americans and organizations like adc need to partner up with the latino community which has the most proliferating population in the country and other segments in the country that are growing in number and by virtue of partnering up with populations that are rising in the long term you'd hope that's going to be reflected in not only the media but other halls of power and that those organizations are natural allies, you know, are going to provide platform to, you know, arab-americans who have a similar political and social experience such as themselves. so if i was strategizing the trainjectiontory of adc, for instance, is to contact latino organizations and my experience on the west coast, these are all organizations that would measure want to work with the adc and the american community at large. and african-american community also. and the lgbt communities to marginalize organizations of all sorts there's that national -- there's that natural overlap of experience and camaraderie and that is with being marginalized and vilified to a certain extent that provides an ideal attitude to build strong and lasting coalitions. >> and i would add to that, you know, i've gone on the sean hannity shows and shows you're probably references and there's no doubt a lot of the language has become much more hostile and much more strident. there's a couple of factors that we also need to examine. you know, the news has changed. when i grew up at dinner time, the family got together and we would turn on the news and we had three choices, abc, nbc, cbs and the next news was the next day at 7:00 or you would read your paper which you had to wait for the next morning. you would get and i think get the paper in the driveway. well, now i don't know who does than now. >> you have 24-hour cable news and you can get on your blackberry and your windows phone or your ipod and get news anytime. and what's more interesting, for better or worse, now we don't have a shared narrative of news. people watch news or read news that re-enforces their own world view. for some it means al-jazeera, for some it's msnbc and for some it's fox news. the narrow siloing of news -- i would argue it's -- it's made information more democratic, more people are out there blogging and able to get news out into their bloodstream but with the good of let everybody in, it's let everybody in, good and bad. and sometimes what is reinforced is very negative and hostile towards arabs and muslims. and so i think it's important to reach out to groups and people from many communities but we also have to go beyond that because the hostility is coming from different segments of society. and so that means going on a fox news even though you may not be comfortable with that. or going on a rush limbaugh or a glenn beck show and you might get some hostile calls but if you don't then you're leaving that whole segment of the population to have a certain narrative without reinforcement of a positive narrative, and worse we all know that within, unfortunately, these media outlets there are arabs and muslims who for whatever reason are perfectly willing to sell out the community to say, yes, all arabs are bad, or all muslims are bad and there's a whole cottage industry of anti-muslim and anti-arab hate out there and a segment of that -- a cotable industry within the cottage industry are arabs and muslims who are, unfortunately, to use that platform to sell out their friends and neighbors who happen to be muslim so they can get some airtime. so we have to be out there confronting those people as uncomfortable as it might be and that's why i think the community within the next 10 years moving forward we have to adjust as to who are we talking to? are we talking to just our friends or are we talking to people who have real questions? are we going to convince everybody, of course, not but the majority of americans are fair-minded people and they will respond to fair and justice but we have to adjust questions of concerns including national security that we are, in fact, are part of the solution of keeping our country safe. that's just my personal thought and my experience but again i want to have a discussion -- if people think i'm wrong, i'd like to hear you, marginet? >> i just wanted to make a point that's not dissimilar than what you had. in the last seven years we have been tracking hate speech and in the last couple years the number of hate groups in the united states grown quite dramatically so the fact that there's increasing hate crimes and bullying and ill-treatment of people in the muslim and arab world is not uncommon from what's happening in the latino worlds and in other immigrant communities so we're seeing this pattern across the country and i think one of the most critical things to do is to call that speech out. unfortunately, a lot of the hate groups are not recognized as such. there are groups that are very anti-immigrant who get invited regularly to speak on various talk shows about their views and they're not -- they're not trying to prevent information that's been collected using research, diligence and et cetera. it's to support a -- to serve a particular perspective. so i think it's really important that we call out those groups that are engaged in hate speech against other communities, not to tell them they can't use that so you could come after me but i think it's very important that we call it what it is and that we recognize it's not only directed at our communities but it's directed at many communities and that this is another shared problem that we should be working on together. >> you know, just to -- in living in a city that's the hub of the arab-american community and the place where every hate monger wants to come and visit and spew their -- you know, their hatred, it gets to a point where you don't want to infringe on a person's constitutional rights where we were blessed to have pastor terry jones bless his appearance on us and you have other groups, you know, where it is -- it is your right to say what you feel and have that opportunity to express your views but when you're allowing your views to perpetuate that hate and that fear to allow bloggers who are putting out their hate and that's being picked up not just on their website but is now being copied and put on another blogger's page and another person's facebook and people are seeing it all around the world, to allow for things to happen such as what happened in oslo, this is a problem for us. and we do need to open our eyes and take a deeper look into what is then -- where it then becomes a hate crime and can then hurt other communities because we're facing this problem daily. and we have people who are coming in and protesting and saying this is my right to do so; yet, at the same time, we're having this problem where they're expressing their views which is increasing the hate in the area and then once they leave and they go back to their community, wherever they may live, they've allowed then for that hate to perpetuate and people to then possibly do something against an arab or muslim or i can speak when it's pertaining to the dearborn community area. so that's a constant fear i know on a grassroots level that we have and it's something that's a huge issue for us. that people -- if you're afraid to then walk out of your home and walk the streets because so-and-so just left after doing this huge protest and now it's got people riled up who may want to do something against you, then what? then a person's rights are now infringed upon because they're not even comfortable walking, you know, down the street in their own neighborhood. >> who has the next question? >> since 9/11, do you find that the diversity of the arab-american and muslim community has been somewhat overcome? that there are groups that didn't even talk to each other or share the common heritage? have you found that's changed since 9/11? >> post-9/11, i know in metro detroit i think there was a more concerted effort for these various communities within the arab community to embrace one another and tackle these issues head on. unfortunately, it took that tragedy to bring the community together in a more, you know -- concerted effort to battle this discrimination that they were facing. people realizing that it didn't matter. unless you were visibly muslim like myself, nobody knew if you were a muslim or if you were a christian as arabs vary in their religious beliefs. so there was that effort to -- and that, you know, coalition-building and bringing groups together to combat discrimination. though the communities did work together prior to 9/11, i don't think it was as much as they did post-9/11. whereas, now there's umbrella organizations and there's been a lot more work done together. they include one another in almost every activity that's being done no matter which community it's addressing or if it's an activity pertaining to just the muslim community, you always find the christian community is participating and active in some capacity. but, you know, it's something that has, you know, worked in our favor and we've come to realize that we are very much alike as opposed to, you know, concentrating on the differences we've realized and our similarities and working on how to advance the community as a whole. >> good. next question or comment? go ahead. >> since everybody else has asked me a question. >> no, they're all in this room. >> thank you for coming out and being part of adc but i guess related to seeing what we see since 9/11 and organizations working together and organizations forming i actually had a friend recently -- what organizations i've been seen form post-9/11 will have gotten stronger and organizations have been around since then and a lot has happened and through the last 10 decades there's been spikes. there's been a lot of great things happening and then plateau a little bit and kind of ups and downs. there's something tragic happens in the world and something in the middle east, of course, things -- we agree out there and protest and rally and we get together and i guess we all knew, i guess, in our hearts that the day 9/11 happened we felt a sense of urgency that something is going to happen. we're going to be out there and we're going to go to the churches, we're going to go to the mosques whatever heritage we're from, we're going to go out there and whatever faith we're from, we're going to go to do what it takes to share our feelings, share our thoughts, out there and be proactive out there but i guess my question is, do you see what the next sense of -- the sense of urgency on 9/11 and on the less decade and what's the next? of is there god forbid, another tragedy or something happens, the next arab spring where there's something that organizations are going to come closer together and how are we going to change the perception a little bit more here in the states and the country? >> khaled? >> i think what's taking place in the region, you know, in the arab world with the arab spring and the successful revolutions. the revolutions that are still in place clearly what's going on in syria, you know, provide a really ideal opportunity for arab-americans to, you know, come together along -- along lines, you know, of human rights and kind of reframing the agenda beyond the domestic agenda. i think that -- it seems to me that, you know, after 9/11 that we're well beyond the 9/11 era, if you will. we endured the aftermath of 9/11. i feel as if we've experienced the brunt of, you know, kind of the civil rights of attack and now we're in this new phase or middle chapter if you will for the arab-american. i think the arab spring is kind of dominating that new chapter. and i think that organizations like adc and allied organizations, you know, based organizations. i never want to conflate the fact that muslim americans and that the majority of arab-americans are not that christian but aside from that the arab spring really, you know, provides an ideal opportunity to, you know, build along the lines of human rights, promote the rule of law and through that promotion of the rule of law as i was saying to echo that really build strong alliances with the human rights organizations, the rule of law organizations beyond the ethnic lens, promoting the notion of the body of human rights across-the-board and i think that's an avenue that organizations like adc and arab-americans should truly explore. >> you know, on a grassroots level, it's vital that people get involved. that they're civically active. they're addressing the fact that they have responsibilities. there are civic duties you have to get out and vote and have your voice heard. we tend to see -- i know in metro detroit, i don't know -- i can't speak much of other communities and how they are when it comes to organizing but we are more reactive than proactive. when an issue occurs, you know, oh, my god we need to take to the streets. we faced issues where -- i know in '06 during the lebanon-israel war at the time they wanted us to ask for a permit in 30 days in advance. you had to receive a bill for all of the expenses that you paid for. where in coalition-building we were lucky enough that in '03 during the iraq war, that the aclu -- because we had built a relationship with them had tackled this issue and allowed for us to not have to request a permit 30 days in advance. i mean, by then, you know, the issue's overwith and it's been resolved but what's important is that, you know, people realize that it's not about what's happening right then and there that you need to be proactive and you need to be involved in every aspect of american housewife that you can't just wait for something to happen to, you know, say oh, my god, we need to run with this and pick up the ball and want to demonstrate or rally. it's a concern that we face on a daily basis. the younger generation are more proactive with the issues that we are facing and it's a very important part of life for us. and of, sam, i think we all know, you know, we tend to jump the gun only when issues arise on a grassroots level, it's vital that people make that concerted effort to be more involved with organizations in the community and the political system to move forward. >> maybe i'll just add quickly -- i think it's inevitable that there's going to be another tragedy. we've had several tragedies since 9/11. >> uh-huh. >> so i don't think that we should wait for the next tragedy. i think the message of being proactive is exactly right. there's a number of things happening right now where they might not sound like they directly affect the arab-american community but they do. there's a bill in congress that would require indefinite detention of people who fall into certain immigration categories. so, for example, it could allow for immigration officials detaining people seeking asylum without any recourse of a court to hear their case. that's something that affects every community of immigrants in this country. that's something where you could get involved right now and you could envision how that -- if that law passed how that could affect our communities in different ways. so we should be looking for things to get involved in, to get our communities aware of, educating, bringing in young people and then let's not wait for the next thing to try to then mobilize people. let's have them ready by getting them involved now. >> i want to echo on the level of engagement just from a personal perspective because, you know, or there's nothing more than i know better than my own experience and that is i remember again going back to 9/11 just days after 9/11 there was a report on fox news that there was of a mysterious muslim man in the white house who had ties to al-qaeda and i remember seeing that, gosh, who could that be and, of course, my brother in california being the smart aleck is and i think they're talking about you they can't be and, of course, they were and i found out just as margaret articulated now one of very well known hate groups is the up with that had planted that story and fox to their credit pulled the story once they put it up there and took it off their website but it was an example as somebody who had been working in politics up until that time 10, 12 years and been in dc for 6 it was kind of an eye-opener for me but i bring that story up because when that attack was made against me and my character and my loyalty to our country and then subsequently has been made for the last 10 years by a few of these groups that margaret articulated as being out there, the very well funded and the very well organized groups that go after people in public service, politicians both on a local level and on a national level what's kept me alive politically as it were was not only my own personal determination and not let the bad guys win was that i had friends across the political aisle, conservatives liberals, moderates, democrats, republicans who knew me. and had worked with me and so when those attacks were levied i didn't have to defend myself but they defended me. congressmen, senators, left, right and everything in between were the ones who said this can't stand we know suhail and this is not something we're going to countenance as his friend so from that team i draw upon the larger topic of coalition-building. so that when that next tragedy occurs like a tragedy from the fort hood or the christmas day or whatever it might be or on something that's directed as the community as we saw where this hateful rhetoric will lead you we saw witness to in norway for those american bloggers who have been going out there and really demonizing american muslims and arab-americans, you know, it takes one person to take it to the next step and he did that in oslo and killed almost 80 people, innocent people. and so my sense is that there's two things. first we don't want to curtail free speech again one of the things that makes us. we do have a first amendment both in free practice of our religious faith but also free express but also that the best way to counter such hateful speech is to have more speech, to respond to that hateful speech with the truth. and in other words, for people to get to know us before those tragedies occur so that when they occur we aren't senselessly demonized and the vast majority of americans will say we know that our friends and neighbors have nothing to do with what happened in new york in virginia or in pennsylvania or wherever it might be because our friends and neighbors are law-abiding citizens with a country that has to be and that engagement has to continue to be there and be there beyond just our own comfort zone. it has to be with those communities out there that we may not necessarily feel comfortable with. and sometimes it is rough. i remember speaking to a very conservative group kind of making the case -- i was the first and only muslim speaker to group and i was answering very tough questions about shari'a and these crazy things people ask about and afterwards one of the persons came up to me and say, hey, don't take this so personally this was during the 2008 cycle. i wouldn't vote for a mormon and catholic either. he was very up front about that. i think that's the majority but it's out there. it's just step-by-step. and so i don't want people to lose heart. we have time for one final question before we close up. well, seeing -- go ahead. >> i won't hold the panel up -- >> you gave me a halfhearted go ahead. >> not all muslims are arabs and not all arabs is muslims and the diversity between the two communities are a natural bridge to form coalitions but going back to an earlier panel's discussion, have you encountered any state or federal agency's cherry-picking selectively engaging in only certain segment communities that want to be reached out and have you received any pushback in trying to bring other coalitions to the table in which the agency are engaging might not draw a connection to it? >> who wants to tackle that in 30 seconds or less? >> okay. wow, that was a more complicated question than i thought it was going to be. >> i'm sorry. >> that's okay. yes. yes, we have evan countered cherry-picking. and absolutely there are some groups that are deemed respectable spokespersons on behalf of whichever community they're claiming to represent; whereas, others are not. i mean, i think the key is, again, that's where coalition-building can be of help when we host a meeting for our members, all of our members are invited. we don't cherry-pick. so if you want to meet with the right group you meet with our membership but that ensures not only diverse voices at the table and our members around the table are also invited to participate and we try to make sure we ras bringing those voices to the table in all the meetings that we do here. it's a pretty simplistic answer. >> thanks. we'll close there. so i want to thank to all of you and especially adc for hosting this wonderful conference. thanks, everybody. applause [applause] >> now a discussion on civil liberties attacks. we'll hear from the officials from the homeland security department and the justice department civil rights division. this is an hour 45 minutes. >> all right. thank you for sticking with us through the day as we approach our last panel, probably the most significant panel, i think, of the day -- with a lot of information of what's really been affecting us over the past 10 years and that is our civil rights and civil liberties. we have faced many challenges which needless to say we've had many pages of legislation since the patriot act. we've seen changes of immigration enforcement immigration laws and we've heard earlier this morning about the employment discrimination problems we're facing as a community. and we will continue to address these issues but moving forward, we will -- this panel will take a closer look on how these issues may change and the work we've done over the past 10 years and the challenges we face in the past 10 years. we have a dynamic set of speakers with us up here. we have the associate professor of law texas wes lian school of law and a legal fellow isd social policy of understanding. and the director of law and policy at the sea coalition and a policy advisor of dhs for office of civil rights and civil liberties. and we were supposed to have a representative from doj but he may be running late. the forum of the panel will be opening remarks, introduction of civil rights issues we face and we'll move forward and then we'll engage in a conversation and discussion with the panelists. i'd say we just get going and divert into it. so do you want to start off? thank you. >> thank you so much for inviting me it's always a pleasure to be at adc. this is certainly an organization that i support and have benefited from frankly directly as an arab-american so depot all the challenges we face we're lucky to have adc. i want to make two significant points or two major points. after reflecting on, you know, what do you talk about 10 years after 9/11. 10 years ago i was hoping we would have nothing to talk about and 9/11 would fade into history and we could just move on. but, unfortunately, that doesn't seem to have happened at least from the civil rights civil liberties perspective. so the two i guess main take-aways i'd like you to have is first that i really now have come to believe very generally that the eternal vigilance is the cost of freedom and it's fought a cliche. and i've learned that in my work over the last 10 years and every year i think the next year i don't have to work as hard we don't have to keep pushing it's going to get better, and in some ways it does but you really have to be externally vigilant and the second point is after witnessing the responses to many of our community groups -- to the attacks on our communities that kind of ebb and flow but the last year or two have been on the up tick i'm starting to see a model citizen syndrome that i think is troubling and it's taken over a 30 and 40-year-old leaders and i'll go into detail on that. first, let's talk about the cliched eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. i think we've learned over the past 10 years that everything the government tells us and every time they tell us they're not violating our constitutional rights and we don't -- and we believe them that we eventually have surrendered those rights and i say this having worked for the government and believing very genuinely that there are very good public servants out there who act in good faith but, unfortunately, the government wants shown to be duplicitous and has said things that have been glee contradicted by their action and that's been both under president bush and president obama and so the onus is on us and it's a reality we have to face, us, whether it's muslims or south asians but ordinarily as americans and i'll talk a little bit more about how it's spread beyond the community in the violations. we'll have to be skeptical of government programs and we'll have to hold our government accountable. and if we don't do that, i think that we are setting ourselves up for losing our rights. and i know that sounds to some people very obvious but i think to others i don't think that they realize it really is a burden that you have to bear unless you're ready to give those rights up. and by taking that offensive view i have been accused and those who have been accused of exaggerating, outlandish, belligerent, trouble maker. and because -- but the reason why i find that -- and that goes into the model minority syndrome is that if you accept that, if you accept that by -- by having to play the model minority role that you are, in fact, belligerent in a similarable and disloyal then you're playing in the prejudicial version. if i have to prove that i deserve my rights then that is a fundamental problem. that's not the narrative that we should be basing our civil rights advocacy on. it should be based on, i'm presumed innocent just because another person that happens to have my ethnicity, my race, my religion, my gender commits a crime including terrorism, it doesn't mean i have to go and incessantly condemn terrorism. it doesn't mean i always have to remind everyone that i have nothing to do with this person. that i don't agree with this person. you should just assume that i don't agree with this person. unless i have shown you otherwise, you should just assume as much that i don't agree with that person as much as i think another white male who's a christian and who's a veteran and agrees with what timothy mcveigh did and there's people that i speak outside of their community when i give them an analogy where i think all white veterans are terrorists because timothy mcveigh or ted kaczynski. it's a rational point but it's not sinking in to mainstream america. so i just make that point to say that i don't think the model american syndrome is going to work but let's first before i go there -- or the model citizen strategy is going to work. but let's go back to, okay, so here you are taking on this very confrontational advery -- adversaryial role and that is because the government has lied to us. i'm going to call it a fib to mitigate the offensiveness. so fib number 1, we do not spy on mosques. never have, never will. we do not spy on mosques. we protect the first amendment. we believe in religious freedom. we have no problem with muslims being -- practicing their religion. i've heard that so many times. both in the government and outside of the government. by very well meaning government officials who i think they do believe that. and then what happens? not only do you get complaints coming to the adc, the aclu, the muslim advocates, the, you know -- name your organization, which when they file their reports, their rights working group and they issue them they still get dismissed but then you get reports from the associated, the center for investigative reporting, mother jones and all that in the last month and what does it says. it says that the new york police department has become one of the most -- nation's most aggressive domestic communities that target ethnic communities. .. >> if they were looking at radical literature they would then instigate further inquiry, and essentially target them for investigation. and then when there was scrutiny on this program, it's discovered that please regularly shredded documents. what a coincidence that all the evidence is gone, yet the department says look, we have all these lawyers, we haven't done anything wrong, we check it. why did you have to to shred the evidence? why would you shredded all the information? perhaps there's a legitimate excuse, but when you're in litigation, is usually obstruction. so something is going on data showing that there's a contradiction, is my point. these are all from non-muslim, non-arab mainstream news organization. some of them are liberals, some of them, you don't know if there in the middle or left of center but these are not people who have an agenda. are not people in our community who are very upset about what's happening to them. these are people are saying what's happening to this country? and who's bearing the burden. okay, the second lie is we do not spot on our gather intelligence on americans ordinary activities. we are not interested in illegal activities. we only go after terrorists, criminals and people we engaging in illegal behavior. i don't hum and eddie are watching "the pbs newshour" yesterday, i don't think that's an al qaeda newsagency or some conspiratorial news agency but they aired a segment on the creation of suspicious activity reports at the mall of america and many centers across the country. they interviewed many individuals who got caught up in his suspicious activity reports were you've got police, local police, starting, writing of suspicious activity reports that some takes a picture, someone looks suspicious, if someone is nervous. that's going into databases which instigates these questions which make those people feel awful because they haven't done anything wrong. then after that, a little bit of activity on the back. sorry. as long as everyone is safe. anyway, and so then after that it goes into a database, it goes to different police departments and goes to the federal bureau of investigation. there was a seven year old pakistani man to his really bad luck forgot his cell phone benefit corporate a lot of seven year old student. my father forgets his cell phone all the time and he's about that age range. i don't think it's anything within to a terrorist. that essentially lead to a very traumatic scheme of the and with the fbi went to his family's house, his son's house, asked for a voluntary interview, asked about where they're giving her chair by the nation's two, where they were traveling, what their political beliefs work, and essentially of course completely disable them and make them feel they have no rights. and interestingly the former assistant secretary of intergovernmental affairs was interviewed on "the pbs newshour" and she stated during her tenure as as a high level dhs official, under the obama administration she hadn't yet to see any evidence that these suspicious activity report actually led to forging a tangible terrorist events. so there's a disconnect between the rhetoric and the action. and, finally, and i won't go, i which is recommended viewers to go and look up the missouri, florida, pennsylvania and massachusetts centers because they have all been discovered as essentially spying on political activity, usually anti-tax protesters, first amendment rights, peace activists and speakers have reported on the. so the evidence is there. that there's something are right. and, finally, lie number three, we do not use informants to concoct terrorism plots as a means of bolstering our carrots and sticks this takes. we would never do that. that's politicizing, criminal justice. and that's inappropriate. "mother jones" in "harper's magazine" recently published very extensive investigative report that talked about the pervasive use by the fbi, many of whom are in moscow and preying on vulnerable members in the community, ex-felons who have major financial problems, and just other individuals. they usually try to flip someone who is facing criminal charges, sometimes they'll go, and if they want someone to be there informant they will go get ice to look at the immigration record. if they can find one little thing they'll expedite prosecution. and then they will tell the guy or the woman hey, usually it's a guy, if we can clear you would make sure you don't get deported if you workforce but a lot of feel a lot of people feel it's a difficult choice to make. you have $3.3 billion over the last 10 years of the fbi resources going into these kinds of activities and the characters. that's compared to 2.6 billion for organized crime. you have 15,000 informants. 15,000. some of them are paid up to $100,000 by? the informants most of their demographics are ex-felons, really down on their luck, really poor and really desperate to be thousands. not all of them but enough of them to consummate you concern. that's not to say in form and shouldn't be used or can be used in law enforcement. not calling for categorical illumination. i understand their importance of the fbi has a lot of explaining to do. if you look a star put in context and if you put those numbers in context, in 1975 the fbi had 1500 informants. 15,000 today. 1980, 20 to hundred informants. 1986, 6000 informants. now we have 15,000. what are these informants going to do? i'll tell you what they want to do, they want to get paid. you've got to show some work product. it's usually pretty easy to pick on the hapless in the meet and the unsophisticated, and if it's your son that is out there who is being manipulated, you're not going to have a lot of sympathy for the use of informants and you going to think if my son is mental health problems or if these misguided on something, why don't we sikh some kind of counseling? why do we figure out a way to rehabilitate instead of the punitive? but, of course, that would help the statistics. -- that wouldn't help the statistics. so i will end with my model minority critique. so, what i think has happened is i've listed all these things that to me are just clear as day. there's something going on. 10 years later and still talking about the stuff from these reports came out last month. not five years ago, not in 2002-2034 we had legitimate explanation, people are traumatized. it's 10 years later. there's no excuse. so what is the response of the communities to this? most of them are saying we just need to explain ourselves better, maybe we need to not be as belligerent. we need to go out there, 6 billion people go out, 294 million people, there's about six-8 million muslims and arabs. they will never get to all those 294 million. statistically impossible. that's not to say you should do outreach. but you have to do in a way that is not, though, let me prove to you i'm innocent. you walk in there with a sense of entitlement. is that i don't have to prove anything to dislike you don't have to prove anything to me. i'm a citizen and i have rights, and i am going to expect that you accept those principles because if i don't and i'm essentially turning them into, i'm turning this country into -- i'm facilitating that to my detriment. and i think it's even equally, i think it's more offensive for those of us who are children of immigrants are immigrants were born abroad but raised here, is that our parents, and i think we all feel this way, contributed a significant amount to this country. they have masters degrees, ph.d's, they've worked 15 hour days, the sacrifice for the children. they have businesses. these people are not free riders by any stretch of the imagination. they see their children to harvard and a gale and the best university they can get into and they can afford. and then you dare come and tell us we have to prove our innocence, we have to prove our loyalty, that we have to be different types of americans. i find that really offensive. and i think that's the message i would rather tell my fellow americans who are not of my demographic and say, you should never let me treat you that way, and i'm never going to let you treat me that way. that's the american patriotic thing to do. it's not, the american patriot is not, we all know this, is not the groveling, begging, pandering, please let me convince you that i'm a good person. no, it's of the proud, confident, dignified person who says my freedoms are my inalienable rights, and i'm not going to give them. and i don't have to prove anything. and so i guess i will end with a note to all of you and to myself is i think this 10th anniversary is the time when the west needs to look to the east. that when we look at the east, no longer can we vilify them as terrorist. they deserve our praise. they are the ones in egypt, libya, and syria, in yemen, in tunisia who are fighting for their freedom. and they are sacrificing and criticizing their government and do not believe the hype and not believing state sponsored television and media. and they're holding their governments accountable. so i think, if there's one lesson i've learned 10 years later is it has now come for the west to look to the east to learn about democracy. thank you. [applause] >> if you want to go ahead for the government side of things. >> can everybody hear me? thank you, abed, and adc for having here today. it's a pleasure to be here and speak to all of you. i've recently started working for the department of homeland security. i'm at the office for civil rights and civil liberties. and like a lot of the distinguished panelists here, i was also thinking on my way here about where have we come in the last 10 years after 9/11? and i think a lot of the panelists have done an excellent job laying out the current state of affairs in terms of what's happening and what's going on in the south asian arab-american arab muslim community. they've also been to joplin layout a lot of the challenges. so i'm going to do is briefly talked just a little bit about the work that we do in my department, why it exists, some of the challenges we face. and maybe also talked a little bit about the good things have happened after 9/11. i'll give you an example. i like some of the people sahar was briefly mentioning and many of us and our families, i came here about 21 years ago during the first gulf war as a refugee. and my family was a victim of discrimination. and i muslim. and back then there was no word from the soviet. there was no american public didn't have the concept of this issue, what is islamophobia. my name wasn't always ehsan zaffar. it was ehsan hussein. and when i came here, because we were the victims of intimidation of threats and violence, my father decided change my last name. and now we have a president whose middle name is hussein. right? so yes 9/11 happen. yes, there was a lot of tragic events that happen. there continue to be issues of race is on. intimidation. yes, we have a long way to go. i agree completely with sahar that we need advocates like sahar and yourself to continue to talk to the government, question policies, engage with us on a regular basis. we have also come a long way, there's been a lot of net positive. i wouldn't be in this country, i wouldn't be working at an agency were sahar or rajdeep, they sikh a coalition wouldn't exist of 9/11. are these issues your? yes. one day they will go away. we will have advocates like the adc and rajdeep and sahar there to continue watching out for issues that are plaguing our committees. also my office probably wouldn't exist were it not for the tragic events of 9/11. the office for civil rights and civil liberties is to my knowledge the only civil rights office in a national security agency in the world. you know, we started off with about five people in 2005, and now we are up 230. we are to my knowledge the fastest growing per capita department in the department of homeland security. and dhs is a large agency. it was 22 agencies the kind of were picked together and formed into this one massive agency which is now the second largest in the country with over 250,000 employees. we are not the fbi. the fbi path to the department of justice, or the atf, but we do include i.c.e., which is the immigration folks at a lot of a lot of immigration investigation, customs and border protection, citizenship and immigration service. in which is disaster relief, not a law enforcement agency. the coast guard which is an arm of the armed forces. to tsa which does transportation security. and we report to 108 different congressional committees and subcommittees. in fact, i was looking at assistance to get a few weeks ago and dhs spent something like 66 work years in 2009 of own respond to congressional questions. were as most agencies, talked to maybe two or five congressional committees. so there's a lot of challenges raising us, facing the agency. but our department over the last two years because of input from advocates such as adc and others, and some individuals like the traveling public, have worked to fix a lot of the issues. it's a fine line protecting the nation and also in shoring that the civil rights of the people that we are protecting including us are not violated. there was a controversial program called in seers, all the countries were recently delisted because of the efforts of our offer the program is no longer in force. we started something called secure flight, when you book your flight it will ask you for your gender, it will ask you for your name or your birthdate. and it will give you a place to put in a redress number. what that does is it crosschecks your information against pre-existing watchlist information. to ensure that because people travel they may want to harm our country will not travel with her name. they will change their name or they were using alias. this system tries to ensure that false positives are less and. and i traveled around the country a lot for the work i do, and that's one of the things that's been a great job of reducing domestic travel issues. me personally, i used to get pulled over for secondary screening quite a bit when i used to travel. and after secure flight that's dramatically lessened. in fact, none of my travel for my agency, they don't know if i'm traveling a map of the agency or traveling on my own, has resulted in any kind of problems. so there's been other things. at our office we redo intelligence that comes in the intelligence that is classified but we reviewed for civil rights issues, terminology. you know, like that plays a large part in our agency and the general public view south asians, arab-americans and muslims. we want to make sure, just last week i was talking with people at our office that were conducting surprise visits and immigration facilities, do a lot of internal monitoring with doctors and physicians, in sure that the way that people that are being held in facilities and life are spent are being treated with her constitutional rights intact. in any case, might end kind of know, final note is it's very important to combat these issues to be an advocate, and were it not for adc or sahar or rajdeep, a lot of these issues would not be resolved, would not come to our attention. i think it's equally as important to think about all the accomplishments that have occurred after 9/11. and see how far our community has come. after the tragic events. and to encourage all of you here, as well as the advocates and the general public, to continue talking with your federal government to ensure that these issues continue going forward in a positive way. thank you. [applause] >> turn the monitor over to rajdeep who is a strong advocate and we're very proud to be a strong coalition partner as well. >> can you hear me in the back? okay, actually. thanks so much, abed. you're good? great. thanks a bunch, abed. thanks to adc for hosting this. it's a privilege to be here. i want to tell you a little bit about the sikh coalition before you delve into the substantive portion of my remarks. the sikh coalition was founded on the night of 9/11 unofficially in response to eight torrents of hate crimes and reports of discrimination, which we had received immediately after the attacks but as you know, sikhs are distinct by turbines which we are religiously required to wear. unfortunately, the prevailing stereotype in america is the together turbine have a turbine on your head, or have some kind of facial hair, you must be an extremist. as it turns out most people in this country and perhaps even in the world who wear turbans all day everyday our sikhs. we are from south asia and our religion is about five centuries old. there are about five to 6 million arabs and americans in this country. i would say that it's a generous estimate to say that there are about half a million sikhs in the united states. so we really constitute a very sort of negligible percentage of this country's population. nevertheless, proud of what we stand for, and in light of post-9/11 challenges such as hate crimes, such as workplace discrimination, such as school bullying, i can tell you with quite a lot of confidence that our spirits will never be broken. now, not withstand this very rosy sort of optimistic declaration of mine, i'm going to tell you about to ways in which our government, at the federal and at the state level, can strip us of civil rights. very subtle, insidious ways in which they can do this. sahar actually helped us with this effort a few years ago. many of you may not know this but in 2009, the state legislatures of oklahoma and minnesota, through state law, attempted to prohibit individuals weren't any kind of religious head coverings in their drivers license photos. now, this was done purportedly for safety reasons. the idea being that forcing everybody to be bare headed in an identification photograph would facilitate identification by law enforcement. but it ignores the fact that muslims, sikhs, observant back, press other, as a matter of mandate required to wear religious head coverings every day. that is fundamentally important. nevertheless, the state legislature of oklahoma past this prohibition law by a vote of 88-8 that it was an overwhelming vote in favor of this measure. win one of the lead sponsors of this legislation, a gentleman named wade, was asked why this legislation was needed, he said, and this is actually captured on tv come you can probably find it on youtube even now. he said look, you know come if you go to another country and there's some customs that you're expected to abide to come you ought to abide by them. similarly if someone comes to this country and they were something on their head and our prevailing way of doing things is that she should wear anything on your head, they should abide by our rules, too. so clearly there was some bias motivation behind that legislation. nevertheless, it passed in the oakland legislature. minnesota within a matter of weeks of that happening also attempted to pass a similar law. why is this significant? apart from being offensive and potentially even existentially challenging for individuals like myself, who are religious are hard to wear turbans every day, who would not stoop so low as to remove our turbans to get a drivers license, for our communities, a rule of this nature can have a deleterious impact on our ability to travel and transact. think about what life would be like if he didn't have access to valid identification, or think of the implications it would have for your ability to get on an airplane, to get a bank loan, to purchase goods and services, to try to work to make a living to earn a livelihood, et cetera. can you imagine a situation where in the local legislation was successful, you've been at sea, giving a muslim, you being an observant mac were forced to move out of state so that you can preserve the dignity of being able to practice your religion on your own terms? can you imagine what it's like to direct you in your own country, in the united states? that's what's at stake. now, surprisingly laws of this nature can pass constitutional muster in this country. that's the scary part. that's the scary part. the first amendment of the u.s. constitution has in the last, oh, 20, 25 years been watered down, sort of misinterpreted some would say, in ways that make it not so potent with respect to its ability to protect religious freedom. according to the current interpretation of the free exercise clause, the first amendment u.s. constitution, what we regard as the freedom of religion, if a state legislature passes a law that on its face is neutral and generally applicable, isn't targeted at a religious minority, and it happens to have an incidental and deleterious impact on any of those religious minority, it would pass constitutional muster. it would be perfectly constitutional under the federal constitution, under the first amendment. now, i won't bore you with the details. in 1993, the u.s. congress tried to overturn or mitigate the impacts of that misinterpretation of the constitution, kosygin provisions of legislation as the religious freedom information act. upon is that in 1997 the supreme court held that it does not apply to the states. it doesn't apply to the state. so if a state like oklahoma or minnesota or any number of states attempted again to pass a law that would prohibit individuals from wearing religious head coverings in drivers license photos and you filed suit, and your state has a state version of the religious freedom preservation act you would be in bad day. you lose. it would hardly nothing to do about this very sad situation. and as the last time i checked which was about six months ago, sahar is by more expert than i am, something like 37 state in this country do not have state version of the religious freedom preservation act. in other words, something like 37 states in his condemned the vast majority follow the u.s. constitution. it's sort of prevailing interpretation which means that if any of those 37 states attempt to pass a law that said you can't have anything on the head and a drivers license photo, you would have to choose between your religion and the ability to travel, transact and participate meaningfully in the social and economic life of our country. so it's a very easy way for tickets and state legislators, a very subtle and insidious wit, very simple way, very seemingly nonthreatening way for them to completely ruin your life on account of your religion. and that is a problem which is still festering as we speak. i like to tell you a little bit about another problem which we are working on now to address. most of you may not know this, and actually i would say that you would be shocked and surprised to hear this, title vii, title vii of the civil rights act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex and so forth has in the last few years been misinterpreted by at least one court in ways that empower employers to segregate, to physically segregate visibly religious employees from customers and the general publ public. in practical terms what does this mean? it means that if you're a muslim was a headscarf or a muscle man who keeps a beard, if you're a sikh who was a turban or keep the beard if you're an observant jew and you were a yarmulke, your employer, your private employer can say to you, we've got a corporate image policy which forbids our employees from having facial hair which forbids them from wearing anything on their head. however, under title vii of the civil rights act, we are required to make a reasonable accommodation of your religious practice. we have to make an effort, a good-faith effort to try to meet you halfway and accommodate your religion. so here's what we will do. here's a reasonable accommodation. you can work your. we'll be the same amount of money. we make them pay more money than the guy in the form would you want to work, but here's the catch. is the condition to get work in the basement where nobody can see you. some courts in this country in the last 10 years have said that that is perfectly legal to it is perfectly consistent with title vii of the civil rights act. if you know anything about the civil rights act of 1964 that some of our most seminal civil rights laws. the purpose of title vii in particular of the civil rights act was integrated. it was a response to segregation, responsive jim crow laws, and effort on the part of the federal government to ensure that public and private sector workplace, your race, your religion and so forth would not be decision factors with respect to your employability. nevertheless, as we speak is perfectly legal, according to some courts for employers to segregate you based on the way you look. now, i will leave it at that. i've got a parade of horrible today but so perhaps we can do this during the question and answer period, but i would like to end on this note. i agree completely with sahar about the need for internal vigilance, and if you'd like to join us in effort to combat workplace segregation, which is one subset of workplaces commission, if you like to join our efforts to combat efforts by state legislatures to use loopholes in constitutional law, disclaim religious minorities, please let us know. we work in concert with adc, with other organizations that have been named structure this afternoon. so please a partner with us if you're so inclined. thank you so much. [applause] >> thank you. we will start with a few questions to each panelist and i want to start with dhs. saying that, not to pick on your anything. you mentioned the program, and you mentioned the countries dealing with, but the regulation itself continues to stay in place. meaning at any point in the future we could refill that regulation with arab countries again, european countries, we don't know. what is the hesitation from dhs in 19 wit of the regulations, or at least giving some minimum assurances that we will not face a similar issue once again in the future? >> well, one of the reasons why, there was a variety reasons, but one of the reasons why it was no longer an effective program for the goals that were setup for the program. i don't know if my mic is on, if people can have a, but there are many regulations that are left in place, thousands and thousands unfortunately. and that is a decision that the secretary made to leave it in place. affectively entire apparatus of the program has been dismantled. there are far better ways to achieve security goals, national security goals, and i don't know what the second question you asked. was yet another program? >> no, the program as a whole, some assurance coming out of the insurance but we sub individuals that are doing -- >> to get your second book, there are some residual effects, we recently held a meeting with marketers on the previous panel, attended that meeting to discuss the residual effects and what we can do about those, and the department is working to address those issues. >> i just wanted to say, this is a credit to adc and other organizations, this predates her tenure, adc and all these spent like nine years pushing for this. did everything they wanted to but i believe that having not done that, i think it would still have been there. maybe it would not have been used but it still, it still on the books that lease countries would have been removed. and so it's just to me not necessarily a victory for those who oppose it, but evidence, further evidence that if you don't push the government come if you don't force that to be the public servants, their supposedly because we pay them. we don't show them. they serve us. that nothing is going to happen. sometimes it's for bureaucratic reasons. sometimes it's political and ideological but i think nseers is the story, it is good if you don't, and it's a long battle. >> indeed. it into after the conference, if someone was to go upstairs, we have files. but it's definitely the primary issues after 9/11. but looking forward, you know, the next 10 years, what do you think our issues, this community will be facing? >> it's ashley and much harder question than i would've bought two years ago because there was a time when the discrimination, the overt discrimination was finally slowing down. in the last two or three years it just boomed, unfortunately. i connect it to the elections of obama. because if you look at once he started running for president, the anti-muslim slurs start to increase, anti-black, racism, racism because it's acceptable and politically correct to be anti-muslim but is not quickly correct to be anti-black. and from there it was, he just kind of got out of control and he was no longer necessarily the target, but for the questioning of his earth certificate by the burgers, which to me was clearly based on bias, but then it went into the mosques, it went into the other public forms of bias that we've been seeing. .. >> so, one, don't let your guard down just because of the things i've talked about and everyone else. institutionalize. if you think you can do it by yourself, you are woefully misguided. institutions are what mobilize and empower communities as a whole, and we've seen it with other minority groups. i think the next step, also, and this is related to the paper that i'm working on is women. i think it's time for us to start talking about women and gender in our community. it got put on the back burner because of the existential problems that we were dealing with. we were being attacked by so many sides that we had to unite which in some ways is good for the community. but there were a lot of gender issues that were made, kind of pushed under the rug. and so i think -- and that's an internal discussion that needs to happen. it's not some kind of imperialistic or external imposition. and i guess third is, it's time, i mean, i think we just continue to have to pressure the government. it's become very clear to me that it doesn't really matter if it's a republican or a democrat. i think that's been a harsh realization, frankly, over the last two or three years. i like obama's personality, you know, he's very sprite, but i'm very disappointed in his administration on national cut. national security letters are still out there, the watch lists still have major, major data integrity issues and, obviously, these informants, the spying, all this is under his watch. with the nypd issue, and it's unfortunate that my husband wasn't here, but one question i have for the civil rights administration is why didn't they file an investigation under the nypd's activities? i want to know if it's legal that they're working with the cia to send mosque crawlers to listen in on religious sermons just to listen in. imagine if you're the i man and you're -- imam and you're thinking, everything i'm saying is being recorded by the government. you will self-censor, and your congregation will not even come anymore. they will get the heck out of there because that mosque is just an invitation to be prosecuted. and nobody wants that kind of trouble. so i think that's kind of my suggestions for the future. >> um, raj, two-part question. first question, um, is many terms of school going. i know that's an issue we've definitely worked on before in the past and that's an issue we've definitely been addressing in the future. and i know melvin is here with us, and he'll probably talk a little bit about the work you've been doing with doj. but if you want to address that issue a bit about the school bullying and the second part of the question, the the issue you've been dealing with particularly in the military and the work you've done around that issue. >> okay. with respect to school bullying, many of you know this, but in recent months and the last couple of years it has become an issue which has finally been put on the national radar. and, unfortunately, it's happened because of a spate of suicides by young students who were accused of being gay even, in some cases, when they hadn't formed a sort of sense of sexual orientation. so it really came out of tragedy, this heightened awareness about school bullying, certainly at the federal level anyway. the coalition between 2007 and 2010 has conducted two major surveys of six students. one was conduct inside new york city, one was conducted in the bay area of san francisco, about nine counties comprising the bay area of san francisco. and what we found in both cases was that upwards of 60 to 70% of sick children are bullied and harassed on account of their actual or perceived religion. in many cases they're slurred as osama bin laden, they're told they're terrorists. in about a quarter of the cities, students were exhausted. in new jersey we had a student whose turban was set on fire by a fellow student, another student had his hair forcibly cut and, as you know, they're required to maintain uncut hair so that was, obviously, a serious situation for him. another student had his orbital bone fractured by another student who was attempting to remove his turban. although in other respects -- we did not just conduct a survey of sikh students, although there were differences with respect to economic issues, access to health care, language access and this kind of thing between new york city and the bay area, the school bullying statistics were uniform in the sense that they were quite bad. it's really a crisis in the sikh community, and we know from our friends in the muslim-american community that muslim children are also brutalized at school on account of their religion. students who are arab-american are harassed and bullied because of their ethnicity. and i should tell you that there is legislation in congress pending at the moment which might help address some of these problems. you should take note of it. it's called the safe schools improvement act, the safe schools improvement act. you should take a look at that legislation, and if you like it, you ought to contact your legislator and ask him or her to co-sponsor it. i'm sure adc or any of us can give you more information about that particular legislation if you want it. with respect, very briefly, to sikhs in the u.s. military, you may not believe this but until the last year or two sikhs were effectively prohibited from joining the u.s. armed forces because of the army's, in particular, the army's appearance regulations. this is ironic historically speaking because sikhs have a reputation for martial prowess. sikhs comprise something like 20% of the british-indian army. sikhs's serve in the armies of the united kingdom, canada, india, of course. until recently the chief of staff of the indian army was sikh. so the notion we would be substandard soldiers is absurd. nevertheless, we've had to struggle hard as an organization to gain admission on behalf of free sikhs into the u.s. army and notwithstanding our limited success and notwithstanding the fact that these gentlemen have been admitted and not withstanding the fact that they have been allowed to wear their turbans and are being allowed to keep their beards intact, the army and the rest of the armed forces has so far refused to change the policy on paper. so what has happened is we are relegated to being exceptions to a general rule. what we're looking for is a situation where as a matter of right presumptively if we're able and willing to serve, we can do so without having to hire lawyers, without having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, without having to consult with organizations like the sikh coalition in order to achieve the same right that any other person in this country enjoys freely. >> thank you. um, i want to welcome melvin who is the counsel to the assistant attorney general for the department of justice civil rights division. melvin, along with his colleagues at doj civil rights division have kept a strong and open line of communication and dialogue between the community and adc. and, of course, as you can imagine, at times we tend to disagree more than we agree. there tend to be a lot more issues that may be sticking points between the two entities. but we have kept the lines of communication open. and he's a strong advocate, i think, for civil rights, for civil liberties, and we are proud to have one of our own community members within the government serving. so we've been talking about issues that have impacted us over the past ten years and issues moving forward over the next ten years. but if you can just give us a general idea, you know, within doj, particularly your division, work that's being done to address the civil rights concerns of the community over the past decade. >> sure. thank you. first, let me apologize for being late. i've recently started as a special assistant u.s. attorney in alexandria, and between the weather and the distance, unfortunately, i wasn't able to be here on time, so forgive me. but i want to today take the opportunity to talk to you about the work that we in the civil rights division have been doing to protect those affected by what we call post-9/11 backlash. and what we mean by that are groups of individuals who have been targeted as a direct result of perceived association with those responsible for the attacks on 9/11, for other terrorist activity. before 9/11 there really, the universe of civil rights complaints that the department received and that the department has taken action on was really not on the charts at all. i mean, no significant presence for muslim-americans, arab-americans, sikh-americans and south asian-americans in terms of civil rights complaints, and that's across the board whether it's hate crimes, whether it was educational discrimination, whether it was housing discrimination, what have you. um, and that could be attributable to a variety of reasons, but, you know, my own guess would be really a lack of awareness within the community. it certainly can't be the case that there weren't civil rights violations before. but what 9/11 did was create a state of consciousness within a large segment of these communities that, i think, gave folks access to, to an area of, um, dealing with problems that they have been facing before that they may not have realized or may not have realized that they recourse to addressing. second of all, in the days after 9/11 we saw a dramatic number of hate crimes reports. you know, in the three months after 9/11 there were something on the order of 300% of hate crimes that we receive now. so we're talking about 3-500 reports just within the first few months following 9/11. and the assistant attorney general at the time, ralph boyd, to his credit instituted an initiative to combat post-9/11 backlash. in the beginning it was addressing hate crimes from really the first day. there were reports of individuals who were targeted. our first prosecution was of a man who went to a mosque in the washington state -- in washington state and started shooting. the good news is nobody was injured, and we're all thankful for that. unfortunately, many people could have been seriously injured or killed. and he was our first prosecution. it wasn't the first backlash event. i'm sure this has been mentioned, but the case of balbir out in arizona who was the first unfortunate loss of life after 9/11 as a result of post-9/11 backlash. that was a state prosecution. since then we've had over 800 investigations of alleged hate crimes against arab-americans, muslim-americans, sikh-americans and south asian-americans under the gamut of post-9/11 backlash. and as of last week i believe we're up to 53 prosecutions, um, of individuals under post-9/11 backlash. the most recent of which this year we had a man in february who pled guilty to having burnt or attempted to burn a mosque. he only succeeded in burning down the playground outside of a mosque. the good news is that he decided to do that at 3 a.m. when there were no children playing. but it's a serious, you know, a very serious offense that even ten years after 9/11, people continue to want to as in the words of the attorney general, you know, avenge an attack on innocence with another attack on innocence. and it's an unfortunate case that we're having to deal with hate crimes up until this day, but we are, as we're committed to enforcing our hate crimes generally, absolutely committed to enforcing hate crimes in the post-9/11 backlash universe. and as i mentioned, we had an indictment as recently as last week for a man who wanted to burn down the mosque in eugene, oregon, after he heard about the attempted bombing of the christmas tree lighting ceremony in portland last year. so this is likely an ongoing phenomenon, as unfortunate as it is. and despite the many efforts that folks from the president on down have made in speaking out against any association and any attempts of vigilante justice, we unfortunately continue to see a steady stream of hate crimes against these communities. but that's not all of the story of the civil rights division. we have across the board seen an increase in civil rights violations whether it's violations of the religious land use and institutionalized persons act which protects against discrimination for commitments that wish to build houses of worship, we have had a ongoing project since the passage of the act and its enforcement this, for those who don't know, was passed unanimously by congress ---an unheard of occasion in this day and age -- but in 2000 congress passed the act which banned discrimination against minority religions and religious institutions in general. and in be the last ten years we've had about, over two dozen cases involving mosques in particular. in the last year, 16 of our matters that we've opened have been involving mosques of those 26 cases that we've opened since 9/11. so it's sort of the opposite of the hate crimes situation where we saw a significant number of hate crimes in the immediate months after 9/11, but a decline yet steady stream, we've seen an increase in the number of reports of possible cases of discrimination against houses of worship. and in the last week, actually, we filed complaints and consent decrees or settlements with two municipalities, one in virginia and a city in georgia, south atlanta. and, you know, these are cases that we care very much about, just as we care about cases of discrimination against other religious communities. but we do recognize that the post-9/11 backlash community is as my boss, assistant attorney general tom perez likes to say, facing the headwinds of intolerance. as raj so eloquently mentioned, we have seen an increase in bullying across the board, and our educational opportunities section has been committing resources to address the problem of bullying. in april we settled a case in minnesota involving a school district that tolerated a climate of bullying against somali-americans based on their national origin. and we succeeded in a settlement against the eau what tan that school district there and hope that will serve as an example to many other school districts of their obligations to prevent illegal bullying and harassment on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sexual orr generallation -- sorry, gender or disability. in the area of housing discrimination, we've seen an increase in reports of housing discrimination cases, and it's an area that i think the community may not fully be aware of their rights to pursue recourse against discrimination. and we've heard many stories from people who tell us, oh, you know, they go to rent an apartment, and, you know, when i went it was fine, but when i brought my wife who happened to be wearing a head scarf of, suddenly there happened to be no vacancies anymore. and those are instances that are clear violations of the fair housing act. and it's something we can do a tremendous amount about, but only if individuals file complaints with their local housing authorities for possible discrimination. so these are just examples of areas that the civil rights division has been committed to, combating discrimination against post-9/11 backlash. i want to end with one final thought which, you know, we in the civil rights division have been leading an effort to engage the arab-american, muslim-america, sikh-american and south asian-american communities with the federal government since the days after 9/11. the attorney general, eric holder, has made it a priority for the entire department, and we've seen united states attorneys from around the country increase their existing engagement programs and begin engagement where some haven't never done so before. and we're really excited about the work that they're doing around the country because we believe, you know, we as a department and as a government are here to serve the people of the united states. and that includes all people in the united states. and it's not just in the area of civil rights, you know? the communities that are represented in this room and at this table are, care about all aspects of law enforcement. and we believe it's important to have their voices at the table. so with that i'll pass it back to you. >> thank you. [applause] we are very appreciative of the good efforts put forth by doj civil rights, but prior to walking in i think sahar has a question she wanted to ask pertaining to the nypd issue that's been in the media lately. >> i'm glad you're here. part of my presentation discussed, um, the concern over, you know, the report they came out, i think it was by "the new york times" about the nybd/cia relationship although vague as it may be, and more specifically about the allegations and what seems to be evidence that there's been some mosque crawlers sent into mosques to spy without any, you know, individualized suspicion or criminal predicate act. so my question is, do you know if civil rights division has either received a request, and if it has, you know, what the response is to initiate an investigation into the nypd's practices to insure that they are not violating the constitution in the similar way that, for example, if they were accused of profiling -- and to some extent one could claim this was also a profiling issue, but more specifically it's a civil liberties issue. so has the civil rights division been asked to investigate it and, if so, i guess, what's the position of this kind of shocking discovery? >> well, um, we, we are aware of requests through the media. we're certainly aware of the associated press reports and are reviewing those matters right now. i can't really comment beyond that. >> i apologize about the mic. they're out of batteries. if somebody can grab me just a battery from the back that we just purchased recently and i think for now we'll use this handheld. raj, a follow-up question for you. within the sikh community, we began talking about the civil rights, the bullying aspect and the military. what is the take on the national security issues? um, are they impacting, or is it more immigration-related, or what seems to be the big issue outside of those -- or is employment discrimination kind of like the hot button issue? so what is the hot button issue this your community? >> so many, actually, i don't know where to beginment i don't know what to tell you. you know, honestly, we don't get a lot of intakes relating to immigration. in the context of, you know, national security we do get quite a lot of reports of racial and religious profiling, people who visit sikh shrines in pakistan, for example, are often questioned in a very brusque way by officials if they happen to pass through pakistan. with respect to profiling more generally, the majority of reports that we receive come from airports, particularly at tsa checkpoints. sikhs are at many airports subjected to secondary screening 100% of the time even if they've passed through metal detectors or whole-body imaging machines without incident. and the explanation that's been proffered by tsa for that is that sikh turbans are inherently bulky and, therefore, incapable of being penetrated by the crack ait machines that have been deployed nationwide at a cost of billions of dollars. but, honestly, with respect to immigration issues more generally, we don't receive any -- we're not receiving sort of torrential reports. now, if i had to rank some of the issues that we're facing in order of severity, i would tell you that hands down it wouldn't even be employment discrimination, it wouldn't be school bullying as butch, it wouldn't be hate crimes as such. it's an attitude problem. it's entrenched bigotry which, unfortunately, as has been mentioned already, which is sort of kind of infected our political discourse. it's very fashionable these days for politicians to take pot shots at muslims. think of peter king and the hearings which he held earlier this spring and which are ongoing and unfolding. i mean, that's unprecedented. that's modern day mccarthyism. so bigotry of that sort coupled with a whole lot of ignorance is what manifests itself, ultimately, as hate crimes, discrimination and school bullying, and so forth. so it's the bigotry, the attitudes that's the fundamental challenge and our biggest nemesis. >> thank you. this seems to be working, so my next question, i mean, we heard earlier today since the obama administration has taken office we've seen more deportations than at any period prior to that. we are seeing and receiving a thurm of cases of individuals who maybe have a visa overstay that are detained for extended periods of time. we're seeing backlogs in the immigration court, visa delays, you know, a number of complaints are made to your office. and typically, um, what is done to resolve these issues? what is done to resolve these cases? because oftentimes we will get, you know, comments from the community that they made the report to dhs, but they submitted the report to dhs, but after that they didn't hear back or got a form letter. so what's being done to address those issues and what's being done really on the policy side of things to change the way immigration matters are being handled as far as pertaining to detention and so forth? >> um, well, that seems like a number of questions, but just to address the policy side really briefly, president obama as well as secretary napolitano, um, recently if you've been reading the news, um, dhs is now reviewing over 900,000 -- 300,000 cases currently in court to assess their viability for deportation or whether there's extenuating circumstances that would allow the individuals to remain. so that's a large number of cases that we're working through very quickly. um, in terms of complaints, each -- dhs, like i mentioned, is a large, second largest agency in the country, federal agency. and each agency has its own ig's office, internal affairs office. specifically relating to civil rights which is the work that my office does, we have a compliance department, a complaints department that handles a lot of immigration issues. like i mentioned last week, a number of my colleagues, they routinely visit a lot of the detention facilities where they receive complaints to conduct investigations. we also have an immigration policy section at the department that also continually reviews immigration issues. and if any of you in the audience here or if somebody from adc or another advocate does have issues, i encourage you to contact me personally, and i'm happy to address those issues. >> i have a question. no, because this is something that's actually been on my mind. um, have you guys, i know there was an issue and, again, this predated you. it actually predated margaret's arrival. there was a really big frustration for the lack of transparency for what they called the glow-mar letter that people would get. in other words, i would file a complaint and say i'd been misidentified on a watch list. i believe that i've been, my

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