Muslims Strive for Tolerance -- and Votes

By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 1, 2008; C08

Mukit Hossain has been up since 5 a.m., crisscrossing Northern Virginia in his tiny 10-year-old pickup truck to help turn out the Muslim vote in a presidential campaign that has left many Muslims feeling marginalized. He has stopped five times to pray in the truck, which is covered with political bumper stickers. One says "We Need Syeed" -- Afeefa Syeed, a candidate for Loudoun County supervisor -- and he thinks that may be one reason a state trooper stopped him last week and asked all kinds of personal questions before giving him tickets for a cracked windshield and not wearing his seat belt.

As he heads up Interstate 395, Hossain says his best investment last year was the GPS device that tells him how to get where he's going. The only advice the voice does not give is where to go to escape the suspicion many Muslims encounter -- suspicion that follows a man to his job and his children to their schools, lives with his family on their street, hangs over him as he tries to participate in a democratic society.

The sun is high and the air cold when he pulls into the Muslim American Society Center in Alexandria to meet with Ibrahim Ramey, director of its civil rights division. Ramey, a Virginia native who converted to Islam, sees an anti-Muslim sentiment running through the campaign season.

Republicans spread a false rumor that Barack Obama, whose middle name is Hussein and whose paternal grandfather was Muslim, is secretly a Muslim himself; Obama, a church-going Christian, denied it, and many said he did not go far enough in denouncing the racism behind the claim. At a rally, John McCain corrected a supporter, saying Obama is not an Arab but a family man.

"There is a subtext of extreme distrust that filters in the mainstream," Ramey says, "that Muslims are not patriotic. That Muslims are unworthy of trust. The comments generally tend to underscore an element of deep racism and xenophobia in the political establishment. Sometimes, it's spoken openly. Sometimes, it is spoken in code."

"The rhetoric of anti-Muslim sentiment has become more acceptable in public gatherings and in the right-wing media," Hossain says. "It has made Muslims very, very concerned that there is a rekindling of the post 9/11 paranoia," when many Muslims were detained for questioning simply for being Muslim and many more feared being attacked in the streets.

So Hossain, a Bangladeshi immigrant who laughs when he tells you he has just bought a farm in rural Virginia "where the real Americans live," organizes. The 48-year-old dictates news releases. He distributes get-out-the-vote literature. He gives speeches at mosques. He calls taxi drivers, promising monetary help for those who take time Tuesday to get people to the polls.

* * *

"Many of the Muslims who came to this country came from countries where voting was a dangerous and dirty thing to do," Hossain says. "We have to convince them that voting is not only safe and clean, but it is a civic responsibility."

In the center parking lot, he hands Obama volunteer David Kirshbaum, 53, a stack of yellow cards printed with a mild endorsement of the candidate by the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee: "Muslim Americans were upset that Senator Obama, when called a Muslim by fear and hate mongering bigots, failed to make a principled stand . . . by not asking what's wrong in being a Muslim anyway while he asserted his own faith. However . . . now that has become a target of racial slurs and pejorative epithets, it is incumbent on us to make the same principled stand we had asked of him. We must challenge the politics of bigotry and divisiveness."

It took Colin Powell, a Republican, to break the tension.

"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?" Powell said last month on "Meet the Press." "The answer's 'no.' Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, 'He's a Muslim, and he might be associated with terrorists.' This is not the way we should be doing it in America."

Powell's public plea was a salve to the Muslim community.

"It was brilliant. It was courageous. I was extremely proud of General Powell," Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim elected to Congress, said in a telephone interview. "He said something people were waiting to hear. I think it is important in America for a 7-year-old, whether Muslim or Christian or Jewish. He or she should think they could be president. This is the land of opportunity. Powell talked about a soldier losing his life. Talked about the photo on the son's grave. That there was not a cross or a Star of David at the top, but a crescent, an Islamic symbol. When he talked about that, I had to wipe away a tear."

* * *

Last week, a DVD entitled "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" was sent to voters in battleground states, showing images of children reciting calls for jihad.

"We are getting calls from all over the country saying, 'My friends, co-workers and neighbors got copies of the DVD, and I'm afraid they would have very negative feelings toward me and my family,' " said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington. "Can you imagine receiving a hate-filled DVD that demonizes your faith and you being the only Muslim on the block? How would that make you feel?"

The council recommends that Muslims who have received the mailing simply have conversations with friends and neighbors who also received it. "Our research shows that prejudice goes down when people meet an ordinary Muslim, like the bus driver, the physician, the checkout person at the local Wal-Mart," he says. "Anybody you interact with or see as an ordinary American, but they happen to be Muslim."

Ahmed Rehab, executive director of CAIR in Chicago, says the DVD is one more example of the way "Muslims and Arabs have become political lepers." Another was the statement made by McCain a few weeks ago when he took the microphone away from a woman at one of his rallies after she said she didn't like Obama because "he is an Arab." "No," McCain said, "He is a good, decent family man."

Ahmed said he knows McCain did not intend to say that "a decent man is not an Arab. . . . I know that is not what he meant because that is too obscene."

* * *

Hossain's next stop is a McDonald's on Little River Turnpike, but he is late, and the student organizer he was supposed to meet has left. Hossain goes inside and orders a fish sandwich, fries and a soda. He does not want it super-size. "After the election," he says, "I will stop eating junk food for a while." (A BBC reporter recently did a short segment on Hossain and the dangers of being politically active and described Hossain as short with the "beginning" of a paunch.)

In his home country, he witnessed poverty, hunger and famine. In the United States, for the first time, he heard people making jokes about famine. He came to this country to attend Duke and graduated with degrees in philosophy, mathematics and economics. Now he is a telecommunications consultant between jobs.

Underneath, he says, he is a human rights activist, fighting not just for Muslims but for other ethnic groups, which share a common experience, facing discrimination in a society that seems to not want "otherness," no matter what that looks like.

"Over the last eight years, whatever the ugly underbelly of society used to be has become more public and acceptable," Hossain says. "Presidential candidates have not been immune to that. It's acceptable to make racial slurs and not flinch about it. I hope whoever the next president is makes a tremendous effort to bring back basic decency. . . . This 'us versus them' sentiment is very powerful in terms of winning elections. But it may be equally fatal for building a civil society."

His cellphone rings. His next appointment is with Abdul Hashem Ahamed, 48, a Herndon taxi driver who will drink tea with Hossain at a Starbucks in McLean, where he also manages a 7-Eleven. He will agree to take Muslim voters to the polls Tuesday.

But before Hossain sets out for their meeting, he steps into the McDonald's parking lot and excuses himself. For 15 minutes or so, he sits in his truck, eyes closed, head bowed, lips moving, an American Muslim in a baseball cap praying between campaign stops.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/dashboard/public/gGWdjc

Noncitizens Embrace Political Process

By Sandhya Somashekhar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 1, 2008; B02

Aicha Bensaid Samrhouni has been almost single-minded in her desire to see Barack Obama elected president. She speared the yard of her Herndon home with blue campaign signs. She donated hundreds of dollars toward his efforts. She is taking Election Day off to work the polls.

But she will not be casting a ballot Tuesday, for Obama or anyone else. An immigrant from Morocco, she is not a U.S. citizen and therefore is not eligible to vote. It was a reality that washed over her one recent evening as her husband spoke of Obama's chances.

"She had tears in her eyes and she said, 'I wish I could vote,' " Hassan Samrhouni recalled. "I thought, 'Oh my goodness, I can't believe this.' "

Aicha Samrhouni is a legal permanent resident, one of about 12 million in the United States, according to Department of Homeland Security estimates. They enjoy almost all the benefits of citizenship -- except the right to vote.

Less than half of the almost 1.1 million foreign-born residents in the Washington area are citizens, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Although a sizeable but unknown number are believed to be illegal immigrants, thousands are legal but have not been naturalized. They include foreign students, temporary workers, people granted political asylum and permanent residents such as Samrhouni, among others.

Although noncitizens can't vote, they are not barred from participating in elections in other ways. Those with green cards, who have achieved legal permanent status, are permitted to make campaign contributions. And anyone can knock on doors, hand out fliers or register voters.

The number of donors and volunteers who fall into the noncitizen category is not known. The Federal Election Commission does not keep track of donors by citizenship status, and the campaigns say they accept volunteers without asking about status.

Steve Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for stricter immigration policies, estimates that the number of foreign citizens influencing U.S. elections is tiny and not troubling.

"The whole point of immigration is to create future Americans," he said. "So if people are participating in a legal fashion and they're here legally, that can be seen as a step toward successful assimilation."

Still, many noncitizens have been energized by this year's historic race. Some, such as Samrhouni, were inspired by Obama's oratory and his unlikely success as the child of a Kenyan immigrant.

Others, such as Isabel León, were drawn to Sen. John McCain because of socially conservative values and a desire for a strong national defense. León, 60, a retired teacher who lives in Richmond, said through an interpreter that she immigrated to the United States in 1991 to flee violent conditions in her home country of Peru.

"The values of the Republican Party are similar to the values of the Hispanic community," said León, a staunch Catholic who opposes abortion and same-sex marriage. "I came from a country where I saw terrorism, and I don't want that to happen in the United States."

This year, she has knocked on doors in neighborhoods with large Spanish-speaking populations for the McCain campaign and registered voters at Hispanic churches.

U.S. immigration authorities received a flood of citizenship applications last year, partly because of a fee increase for permanent residents to renew their status, but also because of interest in the election. Hundreds of thousands of applicants were expected to be delayed beyond the election because of the backlog; exactly how many did not make it will not be known until later this month.

Some groups have sought to emphasize to noncitizens that they can sometimes make a greater impact by volunteering than by casting a single vote.

Officials with the Service Employees Union International branch that represents janitors and security guards in the Washington area estimated that a majority of its members were not U.S. citizens, although the union does not explicitly ask its members about their immigration status. But they have mobilized dozens of workers -- some of whom make less than $11 an hour and work multiple jobs -- to take time off to canvass and make calls for Obama. Many have even been persuaded to donate money, as little as a dollar a week.

Jaime Contreras, area director and district chair for SEIU Local 32BJ, tells a story of a conversation he witnessed about a year ago to emphasize to workers the value of volunteering.

"One worker said, 'I'm not a U.S. citizen. I can't vote. Why should I do anything for the election?' " he recounted. "The other said, 'I'm not a citizen, either, but I took 20 people to the polls on Election Day. So I voted 20 times.' That's the type of message that we're trying to convey, that you can still have an impact even if you can't vote."

Aicha Samrhouni's journey into political activism began earlier this year when she read Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope," which she said revealed the candidate to be "a great thinker and a great man."

Before that, she said, becoming a U.S. citizen did not seem important, even though her husband is naturalized and her two children were born in the United States. Now, with the chance that Obama might win, and with Virginia in the rare position of being up for grabs, it hurts her even more that she did not apply for her citizenship as soon as she had a chance.

A copy of the memoir was on the sofa next to her as she explained that, although she visits her family in Morocco almost every year, her connection to the country grows weaker each year.

"After we are there for some time, we want to come back here. This is home," Samrhouni said. "I just feel that I have more in common with the Americans. I feel like I am American."

http://my.barackobama.com/page/dashboard/public/gGWdjc

The Known Unknowns

November 1, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

By BOB HERBERT

All the signs are pointing to an enormous turnout.

Already, in early voting, the numbers have been huge. In Charlotte, N.C., an elderly black woman showed up at a community college eager to cast a ballot for Barack Obama. The line ahead of her was daunting — at least two hours long. She knew she could not stand for two hours, so she went home.

The next day she came back with a folding chair. She sat down at the end of the line, which was even longer than the day before. Every few minutes, as the line inched forward, the woman would get up, move her chair ahead a little bit and sit back down.

The polls show Senator Obama ahead, but there is no reliable precedent for this election. There are too many “known unknowns,” as Donald Rumsfeld might have said.

The eagerness to vote is being driven to a great extent by anxiety. The financial sector, with hundreds of billions of bailout dollars from taxpayers, is trying to emerge from a state of shock. The auto industry, a house of cards for years, is in danger of collapsing. The economy is shrinking, joblessness is soaring and financial security for all but the very rich is going the way of the video cassette recorder.

An auto worker in Michigan told me, “I’m voting for my economic life, man.”

The most significant factor vying with the economy in this election is also the greatest unknown: the race issue. The election would likely be a runaway if not for Senator Obama’s race. He’s leading, but the question is whether the poll numbers accurately reflect what is going on with the electorate.

Of all the issues thrashed about in this interminable election season, the twin towers are still the economy and race.

“I am a strong nonsubscriber to the Bradley effect,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. He was talking about the frequently mentioned phenomenon in which some percentage of white respondents supposedly tell pollsters that they are voting for a black candidate and then go into the voting booth and do otherwise.

The race issue has hurt many black candidates. But there is very little evidence to support the existence of a Bradley effect, named for Tom Bradley, a black mayor of Los Angeles who, in 1982, lost an election for governor of California that he had been expected to win.

Mr. Miringoff does not believe that significant numbers of respondents are lying to pollsters because they are fearful of being seen as racist, or for any other reason. “If you actually listen to the interview process, you would see that people are extremely eager to have their views correctly recorded,” he said.

He recalled the David Dinkins-Rudolph Giuliani race for mayor of New York in 1989 in which Mr. Dinkins, who is black, only narrowly won. “We polled on the eve of that election, Monday night,” said Mr. Miringoff, “and we saw a big shift in the numbers. The race had gotten closer. Most of the polling had stopped two or three days earlier.”

There are many reasons why Senator Obama, or any other candidate, might do better or worse on Election Day than polls suggest. Respondents lying to pollsters is probably the least likely among them.

Turnout is the big wild card this year. Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll said that trying to gauge the size of the turnout and decipher its meaning “is probably the No. 1 challenge we’re looking at.”

An exceptionally high turnout probably plays to Mr. Obama’s advantage. It would indicate that large numbers of newly registered Democratic voters, including blacks and younger voters, were showing up in droves. With a better-organized ground operation than the McCain campaign, and with lots more money to spend, the Obama forces should have an easier time getting their voters to the polls.

A huge overall turnout could also be a sign that economic anxiety has become so great across the electorate that it trumps the concern that many voters might have about Mr. Obama’s race.

A potential pitfall for Mr. Obama is the danger that voters who have not expressed a preference to pollsters end up voting heavily for John McCain. Those voters could shift the balance in potential swing states, especially those states where Mr. Obama is ahead but is not polling above 50 percent.

There is some evidence that lower-educated, less affluent white voters — a group that tends to favor Senator McCain — may be somewhat more reluctant than other groups to respond to pollsters.

The Bradley effect may not be real, but race in this election looms large. The question that will be answered Tuesday is whether a bad economy looms even larger.


http://my.barackobama.com/page/dashboard/public/gGWdjc

One-on-one with Sen. Barack Obama

Oct. 31: In this extended interview with NBC's Brian Williams, Sen. Barack Obama talks about the Taliban, the privacy tradeoff that comes with being a public figure and his hopes for the next generation of Americans.


















http://my.barackobama.com/page/dashboard/public/gGWdjc

For Incomes Below $100,000, a Better Tax Break in Obama’s Plan

October 31, 2008

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Independent analyses of the presidential candidates’ tax proposals show that those who make less than $250,000 a year would not see their taxes raised under Senator Barack Obama’s plans. Further, Mr. Obama would generally cut taxes more than Senator John McCain would for households with incomes less than $100,000 a year.

Mr. McCain would cut taxes generally on par with Mr. Obama for those making $100,000 to $250,000 a year, the analyses found, but those making $250,000 a year and above would typically pay less in taxes under Mr. McCain.

The analyses were conducted independently by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, and Deloitte, the accounting giant, at the request of The New York Times.

Mr. McCain has been sounding the traditional Republican tax-cutting theme, trying to convince voters that Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, wants to increase taxes and spread the wealth like a socialist.

Helped by the emergence of Joe the Plumber and using Mr. Obama’s own words, Mr. McCain has insisted that Mr. Obama’s tax policies would hurt small businesses and upwardly mobile individuals, while providing welfare for low-income Americans.

Mr. Obama has been fighting those accusations in stump speeches and commercials, in recent days asking members of his audience to raise their hands if they made less than $250,000 a year. Fewer than 3 percent of households make more than $250,000.

But the tax proposals are complicated, and tax bills are affected by personal variables. Analysts at the Tax Policy Center and Deloitte tried to explain the ramifications of the candidates’ plans by applying their tax policies to various situations.

Roberton Williams, principal research associate at the Tax Policy Center, said the analysis found that: “On the average, people with income below $100,000 would get more from Obama than from McCain. From $100,000 to $250,000, they’d be fairly even under Obama and McCain. For those over $250,000, Obama increases taxes.”

Mr. McCain’s plan includes extending President Bush’s income-tax cuts and doubling exemptions for dependent children to $7,000 by 2016. He would also give a refundable tax credit to households that buy health insurance and would impose taxes on employer-provided coverage.

Mr. Obama opposes extending President Bush’s tax cuts. Instead, he proposes various tax breaks, including a $500 tax credit for each person in a household who works, a larger child care tax credit, a $4,000 tax credit each year for the first two years of college, and eliminating all income taxes for those over 65 with income less than $50,000 a year.

To reduce the deficit and inequality, he would raise the tax rate for single households with incomes of $200,000 or more and for families with incomes over $250,000. He would also raise taxes on capital gains and dividends.

The median household income nationwide is $50,233, according to the Census Bureau. The Tax Policy Center found that, for married couples with incomes of $50,000, two children and both parents working, income taxes would be cut by $284 more under Mr. Obama’s plan — by $1,005, compared with $721 under Mr. McCain’s plan.

Deloitte also examined such a couple and found similar benefits; a $700 cut under Mr. McCain’s plan and $1,000 under Mr. Obama’s.

For married couples with incomes of $500,000 with two children and both parents working, the Tax Policy Center found that Mr. Obama would raise income taxes by $3,363, from $110,955 now, while Mr. McCain’s plans would leave taxes unchanged. Deloitte found that a $500,000-a-year couple would pay $3,100 more under Mr. Obama, with no change under Mr. McCain.

Clint Stretch, Deloitte’s managing principal of tax policy, said most families would benefit under Mr. McCain’s plan because of an increased exemption for each child. That, he said, would reduce taxes for low-income families by about $230 per child and for high-income families by about $800.

To help low-income families in particular, Mr. Obama would give a “Making Work Pay Credit” equal to 6.2 percent of a worker’s first $8,100 in wages. That would yield a tax credit of $500 for a single person, and $1,000 for a couple in which both adults work. As a result, a low-income couple now paying no income taxes might receive a $1,000 refund.

But Mr. McCain has told audiences that Mr. Obama’s “plan gives away your tax dollars to those who don’t pay taxes. That’s not a tax cut, that’s welfare.”

Mr. Obama responded last week in Kansas City, Mo.: “McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you are facing that he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people welfare.”

Mr. Obama wants to eliminate income taxes for people over age 65 who earn less than $50,000 a year. So under his plan, a single person that age with income of $50,000 would experience a $2,339 tax cut, according to the Tax Policy Center. Under Mr. McCain’s plans, that person’s taxes would remain unchanged.

“What Obama’s doing,” said Mr. Stretch of Deloitte, “is he’s taking more money from people like me, and spending it on exemptions for the elderly and on tax credits for education.”

But Mr. Stretch added, “When Obama says he cuts taxes for every working family under $150,000, I’d say that’s true.”

A single head of household with one child and $15,000 in income now receives a tax refund of $3,859, largely because of the earned income tax credit, according to the Tax Policy Center. That refund would increase by $500 under Mr. Obama’s plan. Under Mr. McCain’s plan there would be no change for that taxpayer.

According to Deloitte’s calculations, a single taxpayer who earns $35,000 a year and has no children would get a $500 tax cut under Mr. Obama’s plan — to $3,000 a year from the current $3,500. Mr. McCain would leave that person’s taxes unchanged.

Mr. McCain also proposes giving many households a $5,000 tax credit when they buy family health insurance, which costs $12,000 nationwide on average. But households would for the first time have to pay taxes on employer-provided insurance.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/dashboard/public/gGWdjc