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For those of you who missed it, the Eid Festival in Anaheim on June 16th and 17th was a mostly beautiful event, a testament to the enormous diversity in this ‘City of Kindness.’ The organizers assembled a collection of booths, bouncy houses, rides, a virtual reality simulator truck, speakers, and a fashion festival showing the impressively broad distinctions within the Muslim community that resides in SoCal.
Drive down Brookhurst into Anaheim’s ‘Little Arabia,’ and you’ll witness curiosities unique to this town: mingled with the shops selling fashionable attire for Muslim ladies, the restaurants and vaunted patisseries, the businesses large and small, there’s the remarkably noisy signpost for ‘Honeybaked Ham,’ quite a few liquor stores, and of course, ‘California Girls’ – a “gentlemen’s club.” The Muslims at Eid Fest probably know ‘Little Arabia’ well: they have grown a thick skin, and shrug away sights they dislike, taking things in stride, contributing to the richness and color that Anaheim offers far-beyond the Mouse track.
That’s probably a little harder when hecklers with bullhorns scream at children entering a public gathering that their parents want to sell them into sexual slavery, that their religion justifies pedophilia. To me, the vitriol outside recalled other slurs – previous American thugs deemed Catholics to be servants of the ‘whore of Babylon’ – and any Jewish-American knows all to well a long list of other slurs, as do most other groups). Yet the Muslims entering, some clad in hijabs, most in t-shirts (or jackets), diligently ignored the shouting punks, focusing on the food, the toys and games, and having a good time.
My heart grieves for them today.
Today, the Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. Hawaii means that the President can choose to act to ban Muslims from entering America. Today, Trump will have a platform from which to continue a campaign of stoking fears and using them to turn out the bullhorn hordes, the fascists and sycophants who love him best.
But one thing at the Eid Fest impressed me about Anaheim. I spoke briefly with the police officers keeping watch outside – at least a half-dozen guarded the gates, mainly guarding the attendees from a certain sort of right wing thug even viler than the heckler outside, while also preserving the right for even a heckler to speak. The police were wryly sympathetic to the attendees: no, the hecklers cannot be legally removed so long as they keep their distance and do not pose a direct threat, they have a right to spew their spiel. But the police were disgusted by those hecklers: a slight roll of the eye, a thousand hints of ‘micro-aggressions’ directed not at the minority groups inside, but the would-be representatives of a ‘majority’ outside who felt they had license to hurl epithets and try to spoil the fun.
Even a horrible Supreme Court decision like Trump v. Hawaii has a few seeds of hope buried within its contents. The ruling sucks: we assumed when we wrote the law and statutes authorizing temporary bans that they would never be used to support religious animus against any group ever again. We assumed that we would elect good men (or women) to the presidency, or at least, good men and women would prevent them from playing the same sad old games of bigotry and prejudice that we fought so hard to overcome. Good men and women would not sit silent, not in America in the face of such attacks upon children!
Well…maybe.
When discouraged by such things, I turn to Peter Gabriel, ‘Biko’ – a paean to a martyr against apartheid in South Africa. Biko was murdered in 1977 in ‘police room 619.’ At his death, and when the song was penned, the prospects for nonviolent protest overcoming entrenched bigotry in South Africa seemed remote. But the “the eyes of the world are watching you now” – and not just the twitter feeds…and the eyes of our world in the OC are big enough to have space for the restaurants, shops, and people of Anaheim’s Little Arabia, and space for all the other children threatened by ugly loudmouthed thugs.
Is it a demonstration happening today at 888 S. Brookhurst St at 3:30 PM?
Do you mean is there one? Yes, I just heard there is – against the travel ban, in the heart of Little Arabia!
Yes I meant that, thanks for your response.
Donovan,
Don’t expect, or ask ,feedback except for some of the regulars sometimes. Regarding information about events like these, I get mine from the the ACLU People’s Power:
“It’s a dark day in American history. The Supreme Court just allowed the Muslim ban to continue.
In a 5-4 ruling, justices sided with this cornerstone of Trump’s discriminatory immigration policy. The latest version of the ban limits entry to the United States from citizens of five Muslim-majority countries in addition to a miniscule number of North Koreans and Venezuelans.”
Events Near You:
#NoMuslimBanEver Community Forum: In It Until We Win It
1717 Brookhurst Street, Anaheim, CA
Thursday, June 28 at 6 PM
Ricardo: Well, I can ask, but won’t expect….just, sort of hope. I’ll be there Thursday. Hope to meet ya.
“It’s a dark day in American history. The Supreme Court just allowed the Muslim ban to continue.”
Yesterday was a dark day. Today, even darker. But others are putting their lives, fortunes, sweat, and names on the line to hold back this ugly tide: I’ll do my part as well, and keep on hoping.
And it just gets darker, if you haven’t heard about Kennedy’s retirement.
To quit in the middle of the Trump Regnancy is so irresponsible it balances off every good decision he ever made – as though those weren’t already balanced off by all the bad ones.
See the OC Weekly report.
https://www.ocweekly.com/local-muslims-denounce-supreme-court-decision-affirming-trumps-muslim-ban/
I may meet you at one of the Family rallies this Saturday.
Ricardo: Didn’t see ya there, pity – I’d have liked to have met you.
Gil Cisneros was there, but since the organizers were 501(c)(3)’s, and this wasn’t a political rally, and really, this was a community forum for the sake of the attendees to vent and ask questions, he didn’t get a chance to put in any words. But it is interesting: one lady came up to me on the way out, noticed my t-shirt, and asked, “Where is he? Where are any of the Dems?”
We’re here…listening…lending a hand. Some folks are firebrands with bullhorns. That’s not my style. But I can scribble posts together and keep my eyes open, at least.
Agh, wish I’d known! Showing up at the festivals certainly doesn’t tip me off to when the events are occurring…
Oh, if anyone at the protests could speak about what they did, said, feel…well, I’d love to hear. I am no spokesperson for the Muslim community, but I definitely would like to hear from them.
I’ll put up a video of it later.
Oh whoops. I thought I saw a video of it by Mark Daniels on Facebook. But it was only a photo.
Ive seen that douchebag with the proud infidel shirt at alot of events. Dudes got some serious issues.
*You know what is so amazing about the Fake News? The National Press never covers
these local protests and just pretend in passing …..where they pick one in front of the Washington Monument and hope they will just go away! This time the smell from Warm Dog Fart by the Trumpster……may not be going away soon!