a T Shirt with a slogan can make you a terrorist threat.

AMY GOODMAN: The woman was Stephanie Schwartz. She joins us in the studio now. Hi, welcome to Democracy Now!

STEPHANIE SCHWARTZ: Thanks.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re a student here in New York?

STEPHANIE SCHWARTZ: Yeah, I’m a student at Hunter College.

AMY GOODMAN: And tell us exactly what happened and when it happened.

STEPHANIE SCHWARTZ: Sure. Two weeks ago, I got on the Staten Island Ferry. It was a Monday morning, and I was wearing this t-shirt.

AMY GOODMAN: And for our radio listeners, what does it say?

STEPHANIE SCHWARTZ: It says, “We will not be silent,”
both in Arabic and then in English. And as soon as my friends and I sat
down on the ferry, four Coast guard -- armed Coast Guard officers came
and, you know, positioned themselves around us and -- you know, a lot
of times on the ferry, you’ll see Coast Guard people patrolling, but
I’ve never seen four people stand in one place that long. And I kind of
joked to my friends, like, “Do you think it’s because of my t-shirt?”
But I didn’t really believe that they would have made such a big deal
about it. And we sat there for the half-hour ferry ride, and they
didn’t move.

And as I was getting off the boat, I was stopped by a security
guard who said, you know, “Excuse me, Miss, but you better not wear
that shirt on the ferry again.” And I was kind of taken aback. “Excuse
me? You know, what are you talking about?” And he said, “Well, I don’t
think it’s safe. This is a high-security area.” And, you know, I asked
him, “Well, what’s unsafe about this shirt? What do you think it
means?” And he didn’t actually comment on what the shirt meant. He just
asked me, you know, “Isn't it in Arabic?” And I said, well, you know --
I just kind of looked at him incredulously. I couldn’t believe he was
actually saying that.

And he said, “Well, you remember what happened on that JetBlue
flight?” referencing over the summer, when Raed Jarrar was wearing the
same shirt boarding a JetBlue flight at JFK. And I said, “Yeah, I
remember that incident. I think it was racial profiling, because they
didn’t allow him to wear the shirt on the plane, simply because it was
in Arabic, and they said they didn’t have a translator to tell them
what it meant.” And he said, you know, “Well, obviously you’re not a
threat to us, but someone else wearing that shirt might be.” And, you
know, I asked him if he meant by that that, you know, an Arab wearing a
shirt with Arabic script on it would be considered a terrorist. And he
didn’t answer the question. He just told me again that I better not
wear this shirt on the ferry.

AMY GOODMAN: And what are you doing now about this?

STEPHANIE SCHWARTZ: Well, just from talking to some other
activists in the city, people are pretty outraged that this is going
on, that the Coast Guard thinks they can just tell us what we can and
cannot wear. It’s a pretty clear violation of free speech. So this
afternoon at 5:00, there will be a group of us, all wearing this shirt,
boarding the ferry to see what happens. And, you know, hopefully in
numbers we’ll be able to get on the boat and not have any problems. But
if we do have problems, I hope we’ll make a big stink about it and let
it be known that the Coast Guard is not allowing people to wear shirts
that express their opinions.

AMY GOODMAN: Raed Jarrar, you started this a few weeks
ago, or perhaps it was a month ago. For our viewers and listeners who
are not familiar with what happened to you, could you briefly repeat
the story of trying to get on a JetBlue flight at Kennedy Airport?

RAED JARRAR: Yeah, I had a similar incident to what
Stephanie was describing. I was stopped in the airport, and a number of
officials from TSA and JetBlue and other agencies prevented me from
going to my airplane, because I was wearing the t-shirt in both Arabic
and English, and I was told in that time that wearing a t-shirt with
Arabic script and going to an airport in the U.S. is like going to a
bank and wearing a t-shirt that reads, “I’m a robber.” And after that,
after I was intimidated and I felt threatened that I would get arrested
or at least miss my airplane, I covered my t-shirt with a t-shirt that
they bought for me, but the incident --

AMY GOODMAN: Wait, wait, wait. Can you explain that? Who went and bought a t-shirt for you?

RAED JARRAR: A JetBlue employee ended up buying a t-shirt
for me, because I refused to take off my t-shirt or put it upside-down.
And then, after --

AMY GOODMAN: And what did the t-shirt say, that he bought for you?

RAED JARRAR: She. She bought a t-shirt that says “New
York,” just from the market. In fact, they had a small debate among
them, the security forces -- the security guards, whether they should
buy a t-shirt that reads, “I love New York,” or not. And then they
decided that maybe I will be offended, because they said, "No, we don’t
want to take him from one extreme to another?" And I asked them, “Why
do you think that I don’t love New York if I was wearing an Arabic
t-shirt?” And they did not answer. But we ended up just buying another
t-shirt with, like, “New York” or something. And I covered my first
t-shirt, and I felt really bad about it. I informed them that I’m not
doing this as a compromise. I’m doing it, because I don’t want to get
arrested, I don’t want to lose my flight, and I’m going to pursue the
issue through legal organizations.

But they did not stop there, in fact. They changed my seat
from the beginning of the airplane, and they changed it from like maybe
the third seat of the airplane to the last seat or the seat before the
last. And they said that -- I asked why. I said, “It’s my right to
choose my seat. If you have any limitations for Arabs or Muslims to
pick their seats, you should inform me on your website.” And they said,
“No.” They just mumbled something about a, you know, baby, like “We
need the seat for another person,” or something. But I felt really bad,
because this reminded me of what used to happen to African Americans in
the ’40s and ’50s, where they used to be sent to the back of buses
because there were black, and I felt that I’m being sent to the back of
airplane because I’m an Arab and because I’m brown.

AMY GOODMAN: Stephanie Schwartz, are you wearing this t-shirt because Raed Jarrar wore this t-shirt?

STEPHANIE SCHWARTZ: I actually got the t-shirt before the
JetBlue incident. I bought it at a protest this summer. We were in
Washington, D.C., protesting Israel's crimes in Lebanon, and I saw the
shirt, and I just thought, you know, what a great way for people to
kind of speak out in a very simple way against the racial profiling
that has been going on against Arabs and Muslims in this country and
just to say, you know, we -- Arabs, Muslims and the people who support
them -- won’t be silent.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you Jewish?

STEPHANIE SCHWARTZ: I am.

AMY GOODMAN: Does that weigh in here?

STEPHANIE SCHWARTZ: You know, I think I grew up, you
know, with the same kind of Hebrew school education that I think a lot
of Jewish kids grew up with, you know, kind of unquestioned support of
everything that Israel does, and, you know, I think when the war in
Iraq started, it started to bring out to me a lot of contradictions
that, you know, that I had in my own politics, that how could I, you
know, oppose the war in Iraq and support what Israel was doing in
Palestine? And it just became clear to me that if I was going to have
principled politics, I had to oppose both of those occupations and, you
know, I decided it was time to actually speak out against the crimes
that Israel is committing in Palestine and now in Lebanon.

AMY GOODMAN: Raed, the fact that the Coast Guard on the
ferry, the Staten Island Ferry, actually invoked what happened to you
as a precedent for telling Stephanie she wouldn’t be able to wear this
t-shirt anymore that has Arabic script above the “We will not be
silent,” what is your response to that?

RAED JARRAR: I am very shocked, in fact. I am very
shocked to see how my incident, my oppression in JFK is being used as a
precedent to justify oppressing more people. It makes me feel more
responsible to take this case furthermore and try to make a precedent
out of it, that you cannot oppress people and you cannot oppress the
freedom of expression. I thought that people like security officers
will feel ashamed of what happened and just people not use it as a
victory that will justify repeating the same shameful incident to other
people.