To the Daily:

The Defend Affirmative Action Party at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and the University of California at Berkeley stand in sympathy with students on campuses across the country who have relatives and friends who have suffered in the attacks in New York and Washington.

As anti-racist student parties, we call on all people to oppose and stand against anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry, xenophobia, war hysteria and national-chauvinist backlash in response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

We must oppose all chauvinist hysteria, all racist attacks and all scapegoating. Remembering the attacks on Arab Americans in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, we in particular condemn all bigotry and attacks against Arab, Islamic and Middle Eastern people.

Within months of the attack on Pearl Harbor, racist hysteria against Japanese Americans led to the internment of nearly one hundred twenty thousands people solely on the basis of race we must never allow anything like that to happen again. We call on students at every school and university across the country to speak out against racist and bigoted responses to the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

It is the duty of every anti-racist, every progressive and every person who supports basic democracy to oppose xenophobia and national-chauvinist war hysteria in response to these attacks.

Jessica Curtin

Hoku Jeffery

Curtin, a Rackham representative to the Michigan Student Assembly is a member of DAAP and the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action and Integration and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN). Jeffrey is a DAAP representative for the student senate at the University of California at Berkeley and is a BAMN member.