Racial Tolerance in
Evidence at Fremont
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
The Bay Area Tri-City
community held a forum - “Our Community: Who Belongs?”
- on March 10, 2005, at Irvington High School, Fremont,
CA, to express solidarity with the Muslim and Sikh minorities
in the wake of hateful speech and acts.
California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer delivered
the keynote address in which he summarized the events that
have engendered such fear, the strategies he and other law
enforcement officials are employing to combat them, and
the steps local citizens could take to create a safe community
for all.
Lockyer has long been outspoken on the issues of hate crimes,
having written in 1991 the first felony hate crime law in
the nation. More recently, he opened the Office of Immigrant
Assistance, created a Civil Rights Unit, and established
Rapid Response Protocols for hate crimes.
Glimpses of the Fremont forum
A Democrat and a possible
2006 gubernatorial candidate, Lockyer warned the audience
about misdirected hostility. "It's OK to be angry about
the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,"
he said, "but direct that at the people who carried
it out, not the people who are here to enjoy these freedoms."
Despite the fact that about six hate crimes still occur
in the State each day, Lockyer said he is optimistic about
the future. "It's important that we be mindful that
we virtually all are immigrants here," Lockyer said.
"For three centuries, we skimmed the planet and brought
its risk-takers to this place. This is the first place on
the planet where the fundamental policy has been, 'Everybody
counts, every voice matters,'" he added.
Samina Faheem Sundas, Executive Director of the American
Muslim Voice, told the audience that we should not remain
silent if anyone of us is targeted because if we remain
silent, we make ourselves easy targets. The best way to
do, she added, is to focus on what binds us together rather
than what we believe divides us. Samina went on to day that
we should also send a clear message to the world that we
are one, that we are working together to achieve our goals
to make America a home for all.
Kavneet Singh, Western Regional Director for the Sikh American
Legal Defense and Education Fund, the nation's oldest Sikh
civil rights and education advocacy group, told the forum
that it is critical that Americans take the next step in
the war on racial and religious bigotry. "As a community,
we need to continue to fight to move beyond tolerance,"
said Singh, who added that there are about a half-million
Sikhs living in the United States today. "It's not
just our responsibility to tolerate but to accept."
Bill Lickyer addresses the civil rights
forum in Fremont Kavneet Singh Samina Faheem Sundas
Homaira Hosseini was
another speaker who shared personal testimony about how
local Muslims, Sikhs and other "vulnerable and victimized"
minorities have been subjected to things such as name-calling,
eggings and other abuse in the wake of the 9/11 attacks
and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I am an Afghan
and a Muslim and an American," said Hosseini, who noted
that Fremont is home to the largest number of Afghans living
outside Afghanistan.
“I knew then the rest of us would have to step forward
and be counted,” explained Herman Rosenbaum, the chairman
of the ad hoc committee organizing the forum, and who serves
as a volunteer with the Jewish Community Relations Council
of the East Bay. “These are our neighbors, our friends,
members of our community. We cannot stand by while they
suffer.”
Joining Rosenbaum on the committee were more than a dozen
representatives from diverse religious, cultural, civil
rights and community groups; the forum had received enthusiastic
endorsements from more than twenty local organizations,
including the human relations commissions and the schools
in the Tri-City Area.
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