The New York Review of Ideas » Profiles | June 2009
Rallying Arab America
Linda Sarsour’s struggle to integrate her embattled community into the U.S. political system.
By Habib Battah
Hyer-Spencer, had approached Arab leaders in Bay Ridge after losing her first bid for office in 2004, seeking their support ahead of the 2006 election. The timing was perfect for Sarsour who had been steadily building a voting base in Brooklyn by registering new Arab immigrants to vote. When Hyer-Spencer promised to “bring the community resources,” Sarsour agreed to promote her campaign, which proved victorious.
“I started to learn more about the community after I lost in 2004,” Hyer-Spencer admitted, while handing out fliers in front of a largely Arab high school in Bay Ridge last November. “I was open and receptive and this acceptance brought us together. We really connected.”
During last year’s election, Sarsour had once again stood behind Hyer-Spencer as well as her district’s Democratic Party Congressional Candidate Michael McMahon. Though the thirteenth district, which covers Bay Ridge, is traditionally one of the most conservative in the state, both candidates won and Sarsour believes the community played a significant role.
In the lead up to the poll, Sarsour had led an army of over 130 canvassers—largely Arab high school students—to fan out across Brooklyn’s immigrant neighborhoods, reaching out to Asian and Latino households as well as Arab ones. The effort was sponsored by the New York Immigration Coalition, which had chosen Sarsour and her association to lead the Brooklyn segment of its state-wide campaign to register new citizens to vote. Following the success of the campaign, which reached out to over 6,000 immigrants, Sarsour was elected to the Coalition’s board which includes leaders of the city’s Russian, Latino, Asian, African and Jewish communities. Working with other immigrant groups over recent years helped Sarsour mobilize her own community. She wondered why Arabs had consistently been ignored by politicians and asked other minority groups how they had succeeded.
“They said listen, if you want to get help from the government you need to be seen as an important asset—how many votes you got? How much money you got in your community? How much can you bring to a politician?”
Not knowing any of the answers, Sarsour set out to compile research on the community’s population beginning in 2005. She discovered that she would need to marshal at least 800 to 1000 votes for Arabs in Bay Ridge to be considered a viable swing block in local elections—and thus become attractive to local politicians. Thus a “hardcore voter registration” effort, as she puts it, was born and has continued ever since.
“Whenever anybody walks into my organization and says ‘hey I got my citizenship!’ I’m like sit down right here,” she says snapping her fingers in the air. “Fill out a registration form—you’re going to vote.”
The goal, she says, is to eventually have Arab Americans rise to positions of power as members of the Asian and Latino communities have done, with some now sitting on City Council. “You watch other people,” she says. “And ask how did they get where they are now.”
Many of Sarsour’s colleagues from other immigrant communities have encouraged her to run for public office.
“We talk about Linda running for City Council all the time,” says Sarsour friend Raquel Batista, managing director of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, which works largely with the Dominican community. “I think she should go for it.”
“She was a natural leader for our campaign,” says Jose Davila, head of state government at the New York Immigration Coalition, on the decision to elect Sarsour to the board.”
Building alliances with other minority groups has become an effective strategy for Arab Americans in coping with the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, according to Anny Bakalian, co-author of Backlash 9/11: Middle East and Muslim Americans Respond. The book argues that civil rights legislation of the 1960s and the rise of watch dog groups such as the ACLU has created a more progressive environment for American minority groups facing ethnic discrimination during times of war. Bakalian and her co-author Mehdi Bozorgmehr note that Arab Americans have faced far less discrimination following the 9/11 than did Japanese Americans following the attacks on Pearl Harbor in World War II. For example, legislation proposed by the Bush Administration in the wake of 9/11 calling for mail carriers, electricians and other service providers to act as “citizen observers” when entering Arab American households was, defeated by a public outcry orchestrated through a media campaign sponsored by the ACLU. Of course this is not to say that the 9/11 attacks have not produced a lasting impact.
Bakalian and Bozorgmehr cite FBI statistics showing a 1,600 percent increase in hate crimes against Arab and Muslim Americans between 2000 and 2001 (from 28 to 481 cases). The wave of vigilante violence included assaults, arson and at least four murders in the. U.S. In addition, Arabs were routinely taken off airplanes and discriminated against at school and the workplace.
Sarsour vividly remembers the fear that settled into the community in the days after the attacks. The Arab section of Bay Ridge became a ghost town and mosques were eerily emptied during Friday prayers. “Mad people took off their hijabs”, she adds, in a reference to the unprecedented removal of headscarves by women fearing persecution. That her mother—whom Sarsour had always viewed as a figure of great resolve—was among these, left her in a state of disbelief. It wasn’t long before the attacks would alter Sarsour’s own life.
By late 2001, the community’s fear of being attacked by its fellow citizens was eclipsed by a regime of discrimination set into motion by the state. Thousands of fresh Arab and Muslim immigrant men were called in for questioning as part of the Bush administration’s “Special Registration” program. Because she could speak Arabic, Sarsour was asked to volunteer as a translator. They came in droves to immigration department headquarters in Manhattan, the line wrapping around the building. Each day when the building closed, those left outside opted to keep their place in line for the next morning, fearing the consequences of non-compliance. “It was an eye opening experience for me to see grown Arab men sleeping on the sidewalk,” Sarsour reflects.
In the months ahead, her translation work led her to a position at the local hospital, the Lutheran Family Medical Center, where Arab outreach programs failed to attract members of the frightened community despite participation by some national Washington-based Arab American groups. As a recognizable face from the local community, Sarsour had much more success.