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George, When was the last time Mr. Repass (7/17/02) called the police to report anything more untoward than someone blocking his driveway? He, like most of you in Charlottesville live in relative safety unless the terrorists decide to hit this country in it's private pocketbook or feel particularly affronted by the visible legacy of Mr. Jefferson. Smug doesn't begin to delimit the range of Mr. Repass's remarks. Happily, his comfortable first amendment posturing would not seem in jeopardy. When the oaf in the Whitehouse has been retired, the rest of us, especially those of us who live in the kinds of places that you folks and others like to visit and which consequently make fine targets -- the rest of us will still be here. Waiting. In 1996, I taught English as a second language to Hani Hanjoor, suspected of piloting the plane that hit the Pentagon, at the ELS Language Center located at Holy Names College in Oakland California. On Nov. 2, I was fired from my job of 13 years with ELS (a subsidiary of Berlitz) for defending too steadfastly another, totally innocent Arab who had been attacked verbally on 9/13 in full view of many witnesses in the cafeteria of the school, a sedate Catholic College, by an angry young man, as yet unidentified, who may have been a racist. The president of the college, a nun, refused absolutely to make any unseemly efforts to identify the attacker. None of the witnesses would come forward, and no pressure was applied. She certainly would never have dreamed of involving any outside authorities (but then other students and teachers who had been subjected to crimal activity on that campus in recent years had never had any authorities called on their behalf, either.) The president who spoke at prayer meetings in those early weeks of September about the terrible events in the East and about the need for tolerance, never addressed the actual attack on her own campus, neither by word nor in print. No posters were posted. No meeting was called. The record is blank. Complacency reigned. Still does. Until late January of this year, the college's website (http://www.hnc.edu) steadfastly maintained that Hanjoor, who spent six months on the campus in 1996, had never been there. ELS/Berlitz simlarly hid the fact in it's public announcements (Hanjoor had used an I-20 legally secured from ELS to re-enter the US in fall 2000, but never appeared at that time to enroll.) Of course, the FBI found out. My sin was to write a letter to the chairwoman of the board of the college, a Republican state appeals court judge in San Francisco. She simply returned my letter to the president and wrote me a letter on court stationery denouncing me for my "ad hominem attacks." I had described the president as being "strangely absent" and I had characterized the school's response as an example of "moral cowardice." The fury unleased on me was focussed and remarkable, but the president did finally arrange to actually meet the victim, who had been hiding in a dormatory 100 yards away -- three weeks after the attack. A month later I was fired by ELS for "insubordination." Holy Names College, where I also taught, declined to renew my contract. I was assured that there was "no reflection on me." Indeed. My story has not been written about in any press as far as I know. I have been used in a new business ethics textbook and several student papers, but Court TV and the Washington Post, though given my name, have not pursued the story. In fairness, we have had dozens of cases of discrimination in Northern California against the obvious racial choices: people who look "middle eastern", Sikhs, etc. who lack my sense of privilege and willingness to slap back. Ignored by the ACLU, of which I am a member, the ADC (Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee) put me in touch with the EEOC and others so I now have a Federal charge for "retaliation" against ELS/Berlitz. My attorney tells me that we will make law if we win. I intend to win. I intend to go on to a civil proceeding afterwards if I can get representation. It needs to be stressed that there was nothing heroic or "special' about my actions. This is not coy. People often excuse their own inaction by over-praising that of others. I could have done more. In addition to the careerist nonentities I've described, I don't understand the students in my professional writing class -- red blooded Americans black and white, several of whom knew the victim and none of whom reached out to him in any way. But by the same token, I don't understand Arab-Americans who almost certainly knew something about some tiny angle of the nightmare who chose to keep their own counsel. I don't understand the protest, by immigrants to this country -- people privileged to be here -- over being asked to come into a government office for an interview. The FBI came to my house because I had taught one of the killers. The two men who interviewed me were humble and straightforward with me. If one thing has been borne out lately it would be the high quality of the field agents in that fabled institution when compared with the bosses. Mr. Repass assumes that the people who call the hotline will be hysterical boobs, unsophisticated people who don't undertand how our system works. There will be some of those. There will be some racists who try to use the device to settle perceived scores. I think people who abuse our stretched resources will get their paddies slapped and their purses stretched. We tell small children to act on their sense of menace: if you feel that something is not right, do something. Tell an adult or call the police. Cowards, bigots and opinionated fools are, as always, in plentiful supply. We work in uneasy tandem despite themselves shooing the wolf away from their doors. Well, I'm frankly proud to join with the postal workers (remember them?) and the truck drivers, and I won't hesitate to give the FBI a call. Naive white man that I am, I'm under the impression that they and all the security services work for me. For us. I insist that they do a better job than they have in the past. Foolishly, I expect that they are doing one now. God help them and us if they miss another close call. Page Nelson (electronic mail, July 19, 2002)
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