Voice of Witness

Right now, Voice of Witness needs your help to make possible a groundbreaking new collection of oral histories from the innocent men and women who have been subject to hate crimes, discrimination, profiling and other injustices after 9/11.

Our forthcoming book documenting post-9/11 injustice seeks to tell the life stories of the innocent men and women who have been needlessly swept up in the ‘war on terror.’ Our narrators include people like the young Sikh man brutally assaulted simply for wearing a turban; the hard-working academic, subjected to suspicion and placed on FBI ‘watch lists’, and the families whose schools, mosques and community centers have been …

by John Knight

On Sunday, the Columbia Missourian ran a story about Ted White Jr., a man wrongfully convicted of assaulting his 12-year-old stepdaughter in 1999. White was exonerated in 2005 after his attorneys discovered that Detective Richard McKinley, the officer responsible for leading the investigation against White, was having an affair with White’s wife, a fact that was never disclosed in the conviction.

The Missourian reported that in 2008, White was awarded $16 million as compensation by Lee’s Summit, the Illinois city where he was convicted. But four years later, White is still waiting to receive the promised money. According to the city’s mayor, paying White would violate McKinley’s constitutional rights as a city employee, a claim one of White’s attorneys calls “rubbish.”

White told AP reporters, “They’re saying ‘We don’t care about you, your family, the money you spent to defend …

by Henry Jones

Last week, police officers in Los Angeles county rescued thirty-five illegal immigrants who were being held for ransom by their smugglers. The Los Angeles Times reports:

An Ecuadoran man told investigators he was held in an 800-square-foot Baldwin Park house while his captors demanded $2,500 above the $10,500 he had already paid to be smuggled into the United States.

Another man traveled from New York to pay $12,000 for the release of his 12-year-old son sequestered in the house. Smugglers then kidnapped the man and demanded another $1,000 from his family for his release.

The immigrants, most of whom came from Central America, had been detained in the house for about a week before “one of them managed to get a cellphone and call 911.”

The case …

By John Knight

On August 14, the BBC reported that two UNAMID police officers were abducted by gunmen in Darfur. It is the most recent incident in what the article calls “a wave of kidnappings involving foreign aid workers” in Sudan. Most kidnappings appear to be for money but the motives behind this weekend’s abductions remain unclear.

Nonetheless, the incident highlights the tensions surrounding UNAMID, one of the largest aid organizations in Darfur. In July, UNAMID took into its protection six members of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), who are wanted by the Sudanese government for their involvement in violent clashes between the SLA and the Liberty Justice Movement (LJM) in the Kamal refugee camp. The camp is one of the largest in Darfur, where many members of both the LJM and the SLA reside. Violence broke out between the …

Posted by Henry Jones.

This week the New York Times wrote about the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement approach of going hard after immigrant criminals while sparing undocumented students from deportation.

By remaining in the country, many of these students could become legal residents should Congress pass the Dream Act, a piece of legislation that would offer a path to citizenship for foreign-born individuals who have grown up in the US and who attend college or enlist in the military.

You can read the full article here.

Such a law would benefit Mexican-born students like Lorena, whose story is recounted in Underground America: Narrative of Undocumented Lives. Lorena came with her mother to the US illegally when she was six years old. She grew up in …

Today, Voice of Witness editor Ayelet Waldman blogged about her experience working on our forthcoming book Women in Prison: Narratives of Incarcerated Lives for The Atlantic. Her post gives readers an inside look at some of the issues facing women prisoners as well as those of Voice of Witness interviewers going into the field. To read the full article, click here.

Voice of Witness is still raising money to complete this important book- to make a donation, please click here. You can support Women in Prison by clicking the ‘Donate’ button or support Voice of Witness throughout the year by becoming a monthly sustainer!

Voice of Witness is delighted to announce its collaboration with three local and national organizations for its forthcoming book telling the stories of those affected by post-9/11 backlash including Muslim, Arab, South Asian and Middle Eastern-Americans.

The organizations- CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations of California, San Francisco’s Arab Cultural and Community Center, and MPAC, the Muslim Public Affairs Council- will assist Voice of Witness in advisory roles and with community outreach and fundraising for the forthcoming book. Edited by author Alia Malek (A Country Called Amreeka) with consulting support from journalist/playwright Wajahat Ali (The Domestic Crusaders), the project addresses the rise of hate crimes and discrimination against men and women from Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, South Asian and other communities in the US after 9/11.

Editor Alia Malek describes the importance of this project, saying:
“As we approach …

ALICE

Alice was a grassroots political organizer for the Movement for Democratic Change, the opposition party in Zimbabwe. Now in her 40s, she lives undercover in a neighboring country while she waits to find out if she will be granted asylum. Here, she relives moment-by-moment her experience in 2008 of abduction and rape, sexual violence as political retribution.

My neighbor said, “I heard they are coming to get you today.”

I said, “I’m tired of running. If they want to come and get me they can come.” Less than an hour later, they came. In winter it gets dark early. It was some time after 6 pm when three cars full up with people arrived at my house. This was the 7th of June, 2008.

When I heard the sound of cars, I looked through the curtain and saw that it was …

Our forthcoming book on women’s experiences in US prisons covers a lot of ground, but one issue that surfaces continuously are issues of healthcare within the prison system. A feature on NPR this morning aptly described the experiences of many women in prison. Their experiences are strikingly similar to one Voice of Witness narrator, who was 6 months pregnant at sentencing. She was sent to the hospital prior to going into labor and was then forced to have an unnecessary c-section.  Like the women featured in NPR’s piece, she was also shackled during labor and birth, a common practice in many states.

To read the article, click here.

To help make this book possible with a donation, click here.

Voice of Witness is raising funds for a forthcoming book telling the stories of men and women who have experienced human rights abuse and other injustices after 9/11. This book will illuminate the life stories of people who have experienced the violence, violation of rights and civil liberties, and discrimination that has become widespread in the last decade. We welcome the experiences of all people affected by this issue, including but by no means limited to Arabs and Muslims, South Asians, and Middle Easterners in America, whether citizens or not. The book will be edited by acclaimed author Alia Malek, with consulting support from journalist and playwright Wajahat Ali. We aim to collect oral histories of men and women across the US to create a vital historical record of the experiences of injustices experienced by innocent people in a post-9/11 …