LA-8 Defendant and Filmmaker Discuss Civil Liberties Victory at Evergreen Film Fest

author : Therese Saliba topic : LA-8 | Palestine | Immigration

by Therese Saliba

For the last twenty years, Michel Shehadeh was accused by the US government of being a terrorist. In 1987, he was arrested in an early morning raid by armed federal agents in Los Angeles along with 6 other Palestinian men and a Kenyan woman. They were jailed for 23 days in a maximum security cell, then released while the government tried to deport them. Through numerous court rulings and appeals, their case made it to the Supreme Court . On October 30, 2007, after what Shehadeh describes as “20 grueling years,” the federal government dropped all charges against the LA-8.

Shehadeh and filmmaker Joan Mandell told their story at the sesame 5th Annual Middle East Film Festival on Feb. 2. Mandell’s 1990 film, Voices in Exile: Immigrants and the First Amendment, chronicles the early years of the case, when the LA-8 were accused under the McCarthy-era McCarren-Walter Act for supporting “world communism,” and then under the 1990 Immigration and Nationality Act for supporting “terrorism.” They were charged with affiliation with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a PLO member organization, for their community organizing on behalf of Palestinian rights. The film exposes a 1986 INS “Alien Terrorist Contingency Plan” to round up suspected terrorists from a list of Middle Eastern countries in the event of war in a detention center in Oakdale, Louisiana. This Reagan-era plan called for a “test case” to see what the public response would be. Fortunately, for Shehadeh and his co-defendants, as well as for all our civil rights, there was an outpouring of community and national support for the LA-8. In discussion, Mandell stressed the importance of activist media in getting these stories out to the public and exposing the government’s violation of immigrant rights.

Shehadeh, a Palestinian American and green card holder, argued that the government tried to set a precedent with the LA-8 case. They used secret evidence and argued that immigrants do not have the right to free political speech. As the legal landscape changed for immigrants, the defendants were tried under successive government legislation retroactively—The Counter-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (1996), the USA Patriot Act (2001), and the Real ID Act (2005). Yet judges repeatedly ruled in their favor. Judge Bruce J. Einhorn called the government’s behavior “an embarrassment to the rule of law.” Many of the abuses suffered by the LA-8 have become common practice under post-9/11 policies.

What lessons can be learned from this—the longest political immigration case in US history? As the film shows, this case is a continuation of an historical pattern against certain communities to assert government control over those who dissent. Voices in Exile draws connections between the Palmer Raids, the Japanese Internment, and the LA-8 case, which prefigure post-9/11 policies of detention and deportation in the name of fighting “terrorism.” “How do you keep fear of the government from stifling dissent?” asked Shehadeh. “We must not see the government as all powerful—our victory is proof of that.” Shehadeh also argued for building movements in support of immigrants.

Shehadeh asserts that the government tried to deport them for 20 years because they were “trying to educate Americans about the situation facing millions of Palestinians living in apartheid-like conditions under the Israeli military occupation.” Shehadeh and Mandell began their talks by saying they were honored to be in Olympia, and at Evergreen, the home and school of Rachel Corrie. Mandell, who also made the 1984 film Gaza Ghetto, said that she had stood in the very place where Rachel was killed. She was inspired by Rachel’s courage and honored to have the chance to speak to her community.

Voices in Exile is available at The Evergreen State College library or through http://www.newday.com/films/VoicesinExile.html .

Therese Saliba is faculty of International Feminism and Middle East Studies at The Evergreen State College.