ANTI-ARAB BILLBOARDS ON THE WAY

Sploid
Dec. 20, 2005

On March 29, 2004 the Coalition for a Secure Driver’s License (CSDL) issued a press release (pdf) expressing their concerns about the "added risk of terrorist attacks because some states still have loopholes in their driver licensing laws."

"The driver’s license has become the de facto identification card in the United States," said Michelle Bouchard, a CSDL board member and spokesperson. "It is a powerful tool that opens the door to places we must not allow terrorists to enter."

Now they are preparing to launch billboards in North Carolina and other states that read "DON'T LICENSE TERRORISTS," with pictures of men wearing Shemagh scarves and brandishing rocket launchers and grenades. The Arab community is upset to say the least.

"I am a little bit disturbed by the content (of the billboard) and the stereotypes that people of Middle Eastern origin are subjected to," said Abdel Aziz, a Moroccan-born scientist who lives in Santa Fe. "This does not help the security goals of our country. We need to be holding hands together to be fighting both terrorism and bigotry. This just polarizes our nation."

CSDL president Amanda Bowman, herself an immigrant, doesn't see what the big deal is. "We're not going after Arab-Americans. We're going after terrorists."

In another release (pdf) the group pointed out that "eighteen of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists boarded those airplanes using driver’s licenses they never should have been issued." In fact they had a total of 63 driver's licenses between them.

All this overlooks the fact that the Pentagon had been tracking the ringleaders for a year before being told to stop, two of the hijackers had an FBI counter-terrorism agent as landlord and that Mohammed Atta had moved about the country using an invalid U.S. entry visa. To say nothing of the gratuitous race-based fear mongering.

Local officials where the billboards are to be shown are taking exception as well. "The program has resulted in a dramatic decline in the percentage of uninsured drivers. It has proven to be a great law-enforcement tool and is the only program in the nation that actually tries to locate undocumented immigrants," said New Mexico governor Bill Richardson's spokesman Billy Sparks.