Our family was stunned. My partner and daughter were still in their pajamas when the agents stormed in, and I was still upstairs in bed. For hours, we couldn't move freely in our home, without being accompanied by an agent. As we got dressed, went to the bathroom, or made our six-year old daughter's breakfast, we were under constant guard. They said that we were not detained, but it seemed wrong to leave these strangers alone in our home, and our daughter's school day did not start until 10am. So we tried to shelter her from them as much as we could, playing cards in the front yard with community members who came to stand with us.
Reporters came by, asking me to comment on the raid while it was under way. With my invaded home as a backdrop, I tried to explain. It was clear that my anti-war activism was the target of the raid, especially my work in solidarity with the peoples of Colombia and Palestine. The search warrant zeroed in on international travel to these two war-ravaged nations, as well as the Anti-War Committee, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Without a script, or any chance to speak with others whose homes were targeted that morning, I began the work of defending myself, the organizations I work in, and the movements I have helped to build. On one hand, I and my colleagues were well-known in our communities as leaders of the movements protesting U.S. wars and militarism. On the other hand, local and national news reports named and pictured me, caught up in a high-profile terrorism investigation. So early that Friday morning, it was a rude awakening that the war on terror had come to my home.
Before the FBI left my home with a truck full of my belongings, still not returned a year later, they left me with a subpoena to appear before a Chicago grand jury just a few weeks later. To date, a total of 23 activists from Chicago, Grand Rapids and Minneapolis have been issued subpoenas for that grand jury, and in May the FBI initiated another raid on the home of a colleague from Los Angeles. All of us are standing up and speaking out against what is happening to us.
We have been standing up and speaking out in opposition to the "war on terror" since the day it was launched. We have protested every US war and aggression. We have extended the hand of solidarity to the peoples targeted in these wars, and resisted the criminalization of liberation struggles around the world. It is this very work that put us in the crosshairs of a government investigation that has criminalized international solidarity as a whole. Like Dr. Al Arian and the Holy Land Five, the government will claim that sending a few dollars to support kindergartens in Palestine is a crime, and that motive for our crimes can be found in our own words, when we have spoken out for the rights of people to resist war and demand justice. Our political work in opposition to the aggressions of the US government has made us targets.
Since last September, we have learned more about how the "war on terror" extended its reach to our doorsteps. Just as has been the case with those targeted earlier on the home front of this war, we were spied on, infiltrated, and now we are being pursued for what we believe and who we know. Like so many of them, we have now been placed on air travel watch list, and are subjected to pat downs and having our belongings rifled through every time we fly. While many of them had their immigration status threatened, I've had my passport seized.
And just like many of them, we have refused to help the government make its case against us or our friends.
At this point, almost a year since our homes were raided, we still wait to hear what the government has planned for us. None of us has spoken to that secret grand jury in Chicago, and the prosecution has not yet brought charges against us. But they have sent a clear message that we remain in the crosshairs: The prosecutor has told our attorneys that they are seeking multiple indictments (they won't say against which of us). They have refused to return most of our property or our passports, no doubt holding it as evidence against us.
While the world remembers those who lost their lives on September 11, we must also mourn for the collateral damage created since then by the "war on terror" - casualties of wars, and the loss of freedoms. The case of the 24 anti-war activists should be a wake up call to all of us: The casualties are still mounting. Will our children lose their mothers and fathers to prison; will our friends and colleagues be jailed, and our movements crippled by fear and loss? Or will we be able to fight off this assault on our democratic rights, and send a message of hope to the thousands who have been targeted by "anti-terror" machine?
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