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When America Was Overcome with Anti-Japanese Xenophobia During WWII, One Union Fought Back
In the aftermath of the devastating terrorist attacks in Paris, a new wave of fear and hatred directed against Arab and Muslim people has re-emerged in the United States. Given this turn of events, it seems wise to revisit U.S. history and its most infamous example of internment: that of more than 100,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans.
Then, too, anger and hate reached a fever-pitch that seemingly could not be tempered. But the leaders of one, radical labor union, International Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU), fought back.
Despite the fact that there is incredible diversity among the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, some Americans still paint them all with the same brush. Most loudly, Donald Trump—currently leading the Republican field in the 2016 presidential race—called for a database of all Muslims in the United States so as to track their movements. Similarly, Ben Carson, another popular Republican candidate, compared Syrian refugees to “rabid dogs.”
This hysteria quickly morphed into some—including the majority of governors in states around the country—advocating against accepting any more Syrian refugees while others have ratcheted up the Islamaphobia, with some arguing that all Syrians or maybe all Muslims in the United States should be interned in prison camps. One U.S. Navy veteran recently suggested on her Twitter feed, "Dearborn, MI, has the highest Muslim population in the United Sates. Let's fuck that place up and send a message to ISIS." A politician in Tennessee, Glen Casada, cried out for his state’s National Guard to “round up” the few dozen Syrian refugees in the state and deport them.
Then, too, anger and hate reached a fever-pitch that seemingly could not be tempered. But the leaders of one, radical labor union, International Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU), fought back.
Despite the fact that there is incredible diversity among the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, some Americans still paint them all with the same brush. Most loudly, Donald Trump—currently leading the Republican field in the 2016 presidential race—called for a database of all Muslims in the United States so as to track their movements. Similarly, Ben Carson, another popular Republican candidate, compared Syrian refugees to “rabid dogs.”
This hysteria quickly morphed into some—including the majority of governors in states around the country—advocating against accepting any more Syrian refugees while others have ratcheted up the Islamaphobia, with some arguing that all Syrians or maybe all Muslims in the United States should be interned in prison camps. One U.S. Navy veteran recently suggested on her Twitter feed, "Dearborn, MI, has the highest Muslim population in the United Sates. Let's fuck that place up and send a message to ISIS." A politician in Tennessee, Glen Casada, cried out for his state’s National Guard to “round up” the few dozen Syrian refugees in the state and deport them.
Snip
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18631/japanese-internment-world-war-ii-ilwu-labor-unions
