By Neela Banerjee | AsianWeek
After spending the last year and a half on the frontlines of the war on civil rights, the New Jersey local of the National Writer’s Union decided they wanted to take some action of their own.
“Our local is very vocal in social justice issues. We have been involved in larger coalitions that are holding protests at the county jails where many of the detainees are being held,” Jeanette Gabriel, writers’ union organizer, said.
Gabriel and others decided that they wanted to bring together writers and activists in the Muslim, Arab American and South Asian communities and brainstorm for ways to protect civil rights. Thus, the Writing For Our Rights! conference came to be. This conference, already at capacity with over 150 participants registered and numerous speakers, will be held Jan. 25 – 26 at the Rutgers Newark Campus in Newark, N.J.
“We are very concerned that there is so much legitimate fear, the FBI going door-to-door in the Arab American communities,” Gabriel said. “We thought this might be a way to get writers and activists together, and just sort of use the energy of both of those groups to kick off some projects.”
The National Writers Union is a small trade union, which is committed to improving the economic and working conditions of writers, focusing on issues such as health insurance and helping writers retrieve money that is owed to them.
“There has been very little discussion in the media about the attacks on civil rights, people really don’t know how widespread the attacks are, and people don’t know that some detainees have been held for a year and a half or that political asylum seekers are being denied asylum because of the attacks,” Gabriel explained, pointing out the need for such an event. “Nobody seems to know that 20,000 Pakistanis have fled New York for Canada, these things are just unknown, so therefore the press is not doing their job.”
The conference call reads: “[This event] will create an opportunity for Middle Eastern, South Asian and Muslim American writers in all genres … to discuss concrete plans and actions to stand up against the government’s oppressive policies.”
Though organizing for the conference only began in December, response and buzz around the event has been explosive. Gabriel said that she has had to turn away panelists.
The conference will start off with a legal plenary to bring people up-to-speed about their rights, which will include Nancy Chang from the Center for Constitutional Rights. Other panels include a look at feminism in post-Sept. 11 America, especially in Arab American and South Asian communities and a roundtable discussion on self-censorship.
“The self-censorship panel is really popular. It looks at how writers are really censoring themselves in this atmosphere because they feel if they speak out, they may be attacked,” Gabriel said. “And how much of that is being orchestrated by the publications that they work for and how much of it is being internalized and coming from themselves.”
Panelists include activists like Arun Aguiar, of the Not in Our Name coalition, formerly a columnist for the New India Times, writer Meena Alexander and poet Suheir Hammad.
Aguiar hopes the conference won’t be focused so much on what writers can do to get these issues coverage in the mainstream media, “but about what are writers feeling? Are they feeling suppressed? If a writer wanted to stare the truth in the face, where would they go to publish it?”
Aguiar, a dedicated activist based in the Bronx, also hopes the conference will address concrete legal issues for the writers. “Do people know what to do if they come for you in the middle of the night?”
Responding to a question about whether writers are feeling pressure from the government or their own publications to censor themselves, Aguiar was adamant that some kind of censorship or fear must be in place.
“If you look at the ethnic press in New York, most of what they are reporting are mild stories, nothing saying ‘Mohammed has disappeared, he’s been gone for six months.’ That should be front page news, especially in the Pakistani community,” Aguiar said passionately. “Instead they are putting Sonia Gandhi and Musharraf on the front page, when they should be burying Musharraf and Gandhi and the Bollywood stuff in the back.”
Aguiar added, “How can these guys not pick these stories up? They must be scared. How many people are challenging their publishers?”
Both Gabriel and Aguiar hope that the activist plenary at the conference will produce concrete plans that will help defend civil rights.
“We already have a couple of concrete proposals, one thing is to have a committee focus on placing advertisements in mainstream publications, and we are working to raise money for that right now,” Gabriel said. “We just want to inform people that writers, who have always been champions of civil rights, are standing up and encouraging American people to become more active around these issues.”
For more information about the Writing for Our Rights! conference go to www.nwunj.homestead.com or contact Jeanette Gabriel at 609-406-7857.
Reach Neela Banerjee at nbanerjee@asianweek.com.
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