Truest Statement

So after special registration which only actually registered all the Muslims and didn't register anybody else, people were frightened, incredibly frightened in the communities saying, "You know, they are going to round us up. This is it. They're going to round us up and put us into detention. They're going to figure out a way. They're figuring out a way just to single out the Muslims." And you saw people stop, you know people Muslims stopped participating in a lot of civic activities. Even, I mean I remember after 9-11, some majority Muslim neighborhoods like in Brooklyn and Queens, some of the south Pakistani neighborhoods, you couldn't find people in the stores. People just stayed inside. They were scared. Let alone, mustering up the courage to go to a protest or to go out and join with a political group that was to counter what the administration was doing. So the fear was huge.

And one of the many rumors that came out was, "Hey, somewhere in the middle of the country, they're building a facility just for Muslims and it's just for us. Get your bags ready, either go to Canada or be prepared to let, you know, put an emergency phone call and let somebody know where you are because we're all going and we're going somewhere. It was with a little bit of panic that people greeted the news in April of this past year that the Federal Bureau of Prisons said they were going to have a brand new prison system, a brand new unit. Let me tell you what it is first because it actually exists. It opened up, it's operational as of December 11, 2006. This is called the Communications Management Unit it's out of Federal Penitentiary and it houses almost exclusively Muslims. It's meant to house, right now, about 80 people but I think there's far less, probably a little bit under 20 at this point, it's so new, only a couple of months. Now the Communications Management Unit as you might guess from its name is very restrictive in a way that most prisons are not. It's probably, it's not quite up to a super max facility, but it's a little below that. You have extreme restrictions on prisoners' contact with the outside world.

Dalia Hashad, co-host of Law and Disorder and speaking only for herself and not the organizations she belongs to (such as Amnesty International where she's USA Program Director). Our pick for truest statement at any time but especially after last week's nonsense that we need to return to the glory days right after 9-11 when "we" were all one. Not everyone got included in "we." Mike (who noted the broadcast here) and C.I. came into this edition ready to fight hard that Hashad gave the truest statement of the week; however, they didn't have to argue -- we all immediately agreed. Law and Disorder can be heard at their web site and over the airwaves on:

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