I Protested the Muslim Ban in 2017. Have Arab Americans Forgotten It?
The audacity of Trump campaigning for their votes. My horror that it’s working.
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Like so many Americans, I stared at the TV in horror on election night November 2016. I’d gathered in a neighborhood pub to watch the results roll in with about 70 friends. We’d brought our kids. We were ready to celebrate with our daughters as we watched America elect the first woman president, Hilary Clinton.
As it became clear nearly every pollster was wrong, that our country was electing an orange conman to lead us, a disbelieving stupor came over the room. And that was all I could feel — other than an overwhelming need to Get. Out.
Of the pub. Of the country. Of my mind, in that moment.
Did we need to flee? I knew Trump would install several Supreme Court justices, and that Roe vs. Wade would be overturned. I was two years old when women were granted bodily autonomy, when abortion became the law of the land. I’d never known anything else. Now 44 years later, I looked at my daughters and thought, that’s a long pendulum swing. I won’t live to see the damage undone from tonight.
My school-aged daughters may no longer be of childbearing years by the time the pendulum swings back.
Their dad and I briefly discussed leaving. He’s an dual U.S./Irish citizen. We could’ve likely figure out a way to make this work.
But instead, we decided to stay and fight, in whatever way we could.
The fight came fast.
Trump was inaugurated on January 20. One week later, he signed executive order 13769, a Muslim travel ban, which blocked entry of people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen into the U.S. for at least 90 days, and from Syria indefinitely. This executive order remained in place until January 20, 2021 — when President Biden rescinded it, on his inauguration day.
But back on January 27, 2017, four years seemed endlessly far away.
I’m not Muslim, not even close. I’m as areligious as they come, and was raised Jewish. This subjected me to five years of Hebrew school, where I was fed a steady diet of Holocaust films and horror stories. My core memories involve stories of being persecuted for one’s religion. I was instilled with images of emaciated men in concentration camps, young girls languishing in attics, and a misguided sense that we’d learned and moved on, that the sort of collective horror of Nazi Germany couldn’t happen again. I was taught to never forget. But it also seemed like an academic exercise, not an active concern. I never realized it was a call to action.
I didn’t know till Trump was elected what a sleeper cell anti-fascist I was.
On Saturday evening January 28, I was supposed to meet an OK Cupid date called Rex. I can’t recall the details now — were we meeting for a drink, or a show? — but it didn’t matter. Protests were being organized around the country at airports, and I knew I had to be at ours. I’d rounded up a small posse of friends and told him that’s where I was headed. “Can I join you?” he asked.
I won’t usually get in the car with a stranger from the internet, but these weren’t usual times. “Sure,” I answered. The more, the merrier. I had no idea what to expect at the airport protest, and having a dude with us seemed like a good idea.
I drove a three-row SUV mom-mobile at the time, so my housemate, several moms from my daughters’ elementary school, a first date, and I piled on in and drove the 20 miles to the airport.
We didn’t know what we’d find. We just knew we had to show up.
We found a mob.
Seattle is known for political activism and damn, did we show up — over 3,000 of us, including our Governor, Jay Inslee. The airport baggage area, so long familiar to me as a finale to travel adventures, teemed with protestors, carrying signs and chanting chants. The crowd was peaceable, but we also didn’t come to play. We wanted answers, and in the absence of a formal leader, it appeared the person to provide them was our then Seattle City Council member, Kshama Sawant. Sawant is a socialist and Marxist and a fixture on our City Council. I’d never voted for her, as she represented a different district from mine. I’d always held her in regard, and thought it good for balance in our tech-saturated city, to have a socialist serving.
And she was impressive at the rally. She had presence and volume to inform and motivate the crowd, as well as to keep things peaceful. She helped lead us in chants, directed us around the space as we marched, kept us upbeat as she denounced Trump and his executive order, and reminded us why we were there to fight. The cops showed up as well, and I know she aimed to keep the crowd engaged, but not incendiary. I’m always impressed by a leader willing to put herself into the fray, and I thought Sawant did an admirable job.
Eventually, she came to relay a message that the 13 Muslim people who’d been detained at SeaTac had access to lawyers and steps were in place for them to be allowed to enter the country.
Late in the evening on January 28, Ann Donnelly, a Federal District court judge in Brooklyn for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, blocked part of the executive order, “providing immediate relief to dozens stranded at airports around the country.” In the U.S. District Courts in Seattle and Virginia, similar rulings were made.
We cheered as Sawant broke the good news. We’d won! We knew it was one small step into a four-year term, but knowing our advocacy had halted Trump and his racist executive order felt so good.
“This is what we were hoping for,” Sawant informed the crowd. “This protest is successful. It’s time to go home now.”
We could feel the mood of the crowd shift, a sense of recklessness taking over where ordered enthusiasm had been. We all looked at each other and agreed — we didn’t need to stay for the aftermath. We happily followed Sawant’s guidance and headed home.
As we pulled up to my house, Rex asked if I wanted to go see a show at the Sunset, a rock venue close by. He was such a great sport, I probably should’ve said yes, but I didn’t. I was exhausted, and not just from all the physical marching. I knew we had a long road ahead with Trump only one week into his term. But I couldn’t have imagined that nearly eight years later, we’d still be battling him.
So instead I went inside and read on social media how the Port police unloaded pepper spray on the crowd and arrested 10–15 people. I wasn’t there to witness it, but based on the rest of the protest, it seemed like those who stayed were itching for confrontation beyond the legal safeguards the Muslim travelers got. I didn’t have a lot of sympathy there. I did have huge respect for our City Counsel-member for taking on both Trump and crowd control at such an event.
Sawant served ten years in Seattle, before deciding not to run again.
I’d always held her in regard for her service, based on that night.
Until now.
Now it’s two days before the Presidential election, and for the third time, we’re facing down the threat of a Donald Trump presidency. If the polls are to be believed, the race is excruciatingly close.
Thanks to the Electoral College, my vote in Washington means almost nothing. Most of our votes don’t, not really. The fate of our country now lies in a few counties and minority groups within seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
My outrage about the unjustness of the Electoral College goes beyond the scope of this story. Instead I’ll direct my indignation toward the headlines I’ve been reading all weekend, all focused on how the one group that may hand the election to Trump is Muslim-Americans in Michigan. He’s been courting them heavily. And apparently, it’s working?
And my only response to this is a stone-faced, wide-eyed stare as I inwardly wail… how?
I realize the answer is Gaza. Muslim Americans are dissatisfied with how Biden and Harris have responded to Israel and Netanyahu over the past year. But still. How does this undo the harm Trump has brought in the past, harm he’s overtly promising to bring back??
“When I return to office, the travel ban is coming back even bigger than before and much stronger than before,” Trump promised while campaigning in July 2023. “…he will bar immigrants who support Hamas from entering the U.S. and send officers to pro-Hamas protests to arrest and deport immigrants who publicly support the Palestinian militant group,” stated Reuters in October 2023. “I will ban refugee resettlement from terror infested areas like the Gaza Strip, and we will seal our border and bring back the travel ban,” Trump was quoted in Time just a month ago. He goes on to say:
“Remember the famous travel ban? We didn’t take people from certain areas of the world,” Trump added “We’re not taking them from infested countries.”
Infested. Countries. He’s talking about Muslim countries. And somehow he’s gaining support, from Muslims.
What makes it worse? This is happening in part because of Kshama Sawant, who’s now campaigning for Green Party spoiler candidate Jill Stein — and in Michigan, no less.
At a rally in Michigan last week, Sawant called the state, “ground zero to punish Kamala Harris and defeat her.”
She’s quoted in a Seattle Times article on October 15, 2024 called, “At Seattle rally, Sawant says Harris deserves to lose ‘1,000 times’.”
“We need to turn out every possible vote for Jill Stein and especially where it matters most, in swing states like Michigan,” Sawant said.
Again I ask: how? How does this make any sense?
How can someone who fought so eloquently against Trump’s Muslim Ban in 2017 now actively working to get Muslim-Americans to vote against Harris, which is a vote for Trump?
How can anyone — and especially a minority woman — see the two candidates and think a Trump win is the better path forward?
I understand frustration at the two-party system. I understand anger about the situation in Gaza. I really do. But I also live in reality. And that reality is, either Harris or Trump is going to be our next president. Who do we think will best manage the ongoing conflict? Do we think it’s Harris, who defends Israel’s right to defend itself, but also vows to end the Gaza war? Or is the guy who wants to build hotels in Israel?
I’m literally sickened with worry about this election. This go-around, we won’t stick around and fight. My ex and our kids are already starting discussions around how we’d expatriate, should Trump win. I desperately don’t want to leave my home, my community, my life here in Seattle. I love it here.
But democracy isn’t a given. I watched enough of those Holocaust films growing up to know when it’s metaphorically 1938 in Germany and it’s time to flee. A Trump win is giant flashing Get. Out. sign.
It should especially be time for Muslims — and other minority groups, and queer people, and liberals, and all of the so-called “enemies from within” — to flee. I can’t fathom how anyone listens to his speeches and hears anything else.
But if they do, I can’t control that. All I know is, if Muslim-Americans in Michigan hand this one to Trump, I can no longer show up at the airport to fight for them. I can’t fight for those who can’t vote in their own self-interest.
I desperately hope I won’t need to.
Greetings!
I’m Dana DuBois, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I’m a founder and editor of two Medium publications: Pink Hair & Pronouns and Three Imaginary Girls. I write across a variety of topics but parenting, music and pop culture, relationships, and feminism are my favorites. Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.
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