security dweebs, we must begin by calling them names, naming truth,  
dweebs dweebs, pompous security dweebs go away and don't come back  
another day

On 21/04/2007, at 1:54, Geoffrey Gatza wrote:

> Poetry is Dangerous
> Kazim Ali
>
>
> On April 19, after a day of teaching classes at
> Shippensburg University, I went out to my car and
> grabbed a box of old poetry manuscripts from the front
> seat of my little white beetle and carried it across
> the street and put it next to the trashcan outside
> Wright Hall. The poems were from poetry contests I had
> been judging and the box was heavy. I had previously
> left my recycling boxes there and they were always
> picked up and taken away by the trash department.
>
> A young man from ROTC was watching me as I got into my
> car and drove away. I thought he was looking at my car
> which has black flower decals and sometimes inspires
> strange looks. I later discovered that I, in my dark
> skin, am sometimes not even a person to the people who
> look at me. Instead, in spite of my peacefulness, my
> committed opposition to all aggression and war, I am a
> threat by my very existence, a threat just living in
> the world as a Muslim body.
>
> Upon my departure, he called the local police
> department and told them a man of Middle Eastern
> descent driving a heavily decaled white beetle with
> out of state plates and no campus parking sticker had
> just placed a box next to the trash can.  My car has
> NY plates, but he got the rest of it wrong. I have two
> stickers on my car. One is my highly visible faculty
> parking sticker and the other, which I just don't have
> the heart to take off these days, says "Kerry/Edwards:
> For a Stronger America."
>
> Because of my recycling the bomb squad came, the state
> police came. Because of my recycling buildings were
> evacuated, classes were canceled, campus was closed.
> No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark
> body. No. Not because of my dark body. Because of his
> fear. Because of the way he saw me. Because of the
> culture of fear, mistrust, hatred, and suspicion that
> is carefully cultivated in the media, by the
> government, by people who claim to want to keep us
> 'safe.'
>
> These are the days of orange alert, school lock-downs,
> and endless war. We are preparing for it, training for
> it, looking for it, and so of course, in the most
> innocuous of places-a professor wanting to hurry home,
> hefting his box of discarded poetry-we find it.
>
> That man in the parking lot didn't even see me. He saw
> my darkness. He saw my Middle Eastern descent. Ironic
> because though my grandfathers came from Egypt, I am
> Indian, a South Asian, and could never be mistaken for
> a Middle Eastern man by anyone who'd ever met one.
>
> One of my colleagues was in the gathering crowd,
> trying to figure out what had happened. She heard my
> description-a Middle Eastern man driving a white
> beetle with out of state plates-and knew immediately
> they were talking about me and realized that the box
> must have been manuscripts I was discarding. She
> approached them and told them I was a professor on the
> faculty there. Immediately the campus police officer
> said, "What country is he from?"
>
> "What country is he from?!" she yelled, indignant.
>
> "Ma'am, you are associated with the suspect. You need
> to step away and lower your voice," he told her.
>
> At some length several of my faculty colleagues were
> able to get through to the police and get me on a cell
> phone where I explained to the university president
> and then to the state police that the box contained
> old poetry manuscripts that needed to be recycled. The
> police officer told me that in the current climate I
> needed to be more careful about how I behaved. "When I
> recycle?" I asked.
>
> The university president appreciated my distress about
> the situation but denied that the call had anything to
> do with my race or ethnic background. The spokesperson
> of the university called it an "honest mistake," not
> referring to the young man from ROTC giving in to his
> worst instincts and calling the police but referring
> to me who made the mistake of being dark-skinned and
> putting my recycling next to the trashcan.
>
> The university's bizarrely minimal statement lets
> everyone know that the "suspicious package" beside the
> trashcan ended up being, indeed, trash. It goes on to
> say, "We appreciate your cooperation during the
> incident and remind everyone that safety is a joint
> effort by all members of the campus community."
>
> What does that community mean to me, a person who has
> to walk by the ROTC offices every day on my way to my
> own office just down the hall-who was watched, noted,
> and reported, all in a day's work? Today we gave in
> willingly and whole-heartedly to a culture of fear and
> blaming and profiling. It is deemed perfectly
> appropriate behavior to spy on one another and police
> one another and report on one another. Such behaviors
> exist most strongly in closed and undemocratic and
> fascist societies.
>
> The university report does not mention the root cause
> of the alarm. That package became "suspicious" because
> of who was holding it, who put it down, who drove
> away. Me.
>
> It was poetry, I kept insisting to the state policeman
> who was questioning me on the phone. It was poetry I
> was putting out to be recycled.
>
> My body exists politically in a way I can not prevent.
> For a moment today, without even knowing it, driving
> away from campus in my little beetle, exhausted after
> a day of teaching, listening to Justin Timberlake on
> the radio, I ceased to be a person when a man I had
> never met looked straight through me and saw the
> violence in his own heart.
>
>
>
> ====
>
> www.kazimali.com
> www.alicejamesbooks.org/far_mosque.html
>
> ====
>
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