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Labor Day

Labor Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September (September 6 in 2010).

The first Labor Day in the United States was celebrated on September 5, 1882 in New York City. [ 1 ] It became a federal holiday in 1894, when, following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike , President Grover Cleveland put reconciliation with the labor movement as a top political priority. Fearing further conflict, legislation making Labor Day a national holiday was rushed through Congress unanimously and signed into law a mere six days after the end of the strike. [ 2 ] The September date was chosen as Cleveland was concerned that aligning an American labor holiday with existing international May Day celebrations would stir up negative emotions linked to the Haymarket Affair . [ 3 ] All 50 U.S. states have made Labor Day a state holiday .

The form for the celebration of Labor Day was outlined in the first proposal of the holiday: A street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations," followed by a festival for the workers and their families. This became the pattern for Labor Day celebrations. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civil significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement .

Traditionally, Labor Day is celebrated by most Americans as the symbolic end of the summer . The holiday is often regarded as a day of rest and parties. Speeches or political demonstrations are more low-key than May 1 Labor Day celebrations in most countries, although events held by labor organizations often feature political themes and appearances by candidates for office, especially in election years. Forms of celebration include picnics, barbecues, fireworks displays, water sports, and public art events. Families with school-age children take it as the last chance to travel before the end of summer recess. Similarly, some teenagers and young adults view it as the last weekend for parties before returning to school, although school starting times now vary.

In U.S. sports, Labor Day marks the beginning of the NFL and college football seasons. NCAA teams usually play their first games the week before Labor Day, with the NFL traditionally playing their first game the Thursday following Labor Day. The Southern 500 NASCAR auto race was held that day from 1950 to 2004.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Day

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From the Los Angeles Times

MUSLIM WORLD: Debate over planned mosque near ground zero seen as opportunity to set story straight about Islam

The debate swirling around the planned Islamic cultural center two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York has been steadily gaining attention in the U.S. and around the world. 

After weeks of protests, fiery comments from the opposition and numerous hate crimes committed against American Muslims, the Islamic world continues to react to the controversy, according to a media analysis by Babylon & Beyond.

While many around the world are outraged over opposition to the cultural center, others see the resistance to the project, called Park51, as an opportunity for Muslims to confront the proliferation of what they see as Western bigotry and set the story straight about their religion.

The United Arab Emirates-based Gulf News published an Aug. 7 op-ed article expressing resentment over the opposition's use of the controversy for political gain. 

“It is a deep outrage that opponents of this mosque persist in fanning anti-Islamic rhetoric for their own narrow political purposes. They are wrong to deliberately confuse the destructive and violent tactics of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, with the true Islamic way espoused by billions of people worldwide.”

In Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world, the Jakarta Post  published a Sept. 1 opinion article by Achmad Munjid taking a firm stance against those who oppose construction of the 13-story Islamic center, which will include a prayer room. Munjid specifically argues against Republican Party leader Newt Gingrich's comments , in which he accused Muslims of trying to impose Islamic law, or sharia, on the West. 

Munjid responded, “People don't need to sign up for graduate class on Islam to know that, much like Halakha in Judaism, sharia is understood by most Muslims as the Islamic principle on how to practice the faith in daily life, for example, how to pray five times a day and how to fast during Ramadan. Islamization of America? Even in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country with more than 230 million Muslims, the idea of state-a sponsored implementation of sharia is rejected by majority Muslims.”  

Munjid continued to lambaste those in opposition of the Park 51 project by attributing their stance to ignorance, and offered this advice to Americans: “Don't let bigots use Ground Zero to exercise zero tolerance on others and create a world full of prejudice and hatred.” 

However, most Muslim commentators are arriving at the conclusion that there are serious issues with the West's view of Muslims and that now may be the opportune time to correct misconceptions. 

An Aug. 31 article in the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper by Abd-al-Aziz al-Tuwayjiri, the director of the Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, scolds the opponents of the cultural center but concludes that it's time to buff up the image of Islam in America. 

“I believe that now is the time to move at more than one level to spread the facts about Islam, Islamic civilization, and Muslim world across the United States by all the available means, which are many. I have visited the United States last spring, and I have become more convinced that the Muslim world is absent from the United States. Correcting the information about Islam and Muslims (I do not say correcting the image of Islam) is required urgently in order to confront the currents of hatred and racism.”  

Even though the debate over the planned $100-million cultural center is far from over, most Muslims around the world simply want to escape the image that has been forced upon their religion. Despite a recent poll showing that 71% of New Yorkers oppose the project , the majority of Muslim commentators favor the project and say it should be used as a means to tackle racism and misconceptions about Muslims and bring Islam closer into the mainstream. 

Writer Aijaz Zaka Syed wrote in the late August issue of Egyptian online weekly Al-Aram , “I see an opportunity in this brewing crisis. Muslims must use this opportunity to clear the cobwebs clouding the image of their faith in the minds of Americans. They have an opportunity to remind and explain to Americans, and the world, that the destruction that struck the Twin Towers does not represent Islam, but peace, compassion and equality do.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/09/muslim-world-planned-mosque-near-ground-zero-seen-as-opportunity-to-correct-misconceptions-about-islam.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BabylonBeyond+%28Babylon+%26+Beyond+Blog%29

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Lower Manhattan denizens chafe over mosque debate

Most care more about the bigger struggle to rejuvenate and rebuild their wounded neighborhood.

By Nicole Santa Cruz, Los Angeles Times

September 5, 2010

Reporting from New York

Politicians have deemed the area around New York's "ground zero" hallowed ground. Protesters have paraded signs proclaiming, "No sacrilege at holy ground," and others have called it the site of a "sacred burial."

And it's true that the neighborhood, which many New Yorkers say is an inappropriate site for a mosque, hosts inescapable reminders of the Sept. 11 attacks that felled the twin towers of the former World Trade Center and killed nearly 3,000 people.

Some reminders are more overt. Along the perimeter of the former towers site, there are a tribute center and a makeshift shrine with candles and flowers. Tourists can visit a museum dedicated to the attack. And of course, there's the ever-present construction on a new tower.

But the area also looks like any other Manhattan neighborhood, one on the rebound dotted with bodegas and bars. Though it's been the focus of a national debate over a proposed Islamic community center and mosque, the neighborhood — the fastest-growing on the island — isn't just trying to recover from 9/11; it's also trying to reinvent itself.

Across the street from the former towers site, there's a two-story Burger King where visitors can get a clear glimpse into the new construction. There are the department store Century 21, which sells everything from sunglasses to shoes, and the St. Paul's Chapel, which amazingly sustained no damage in the attacks, and the church's graveyard. The city's oldest parish, St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, is a block away. A mosque is four blocks away and a strip club is two.

Like every part of the city, it has its morning and evening surge of commuters, with suited office workers dashing to the underground trains. It has ongoing construction — the workers eating lunches from brown paper sacks — and touristy knickknacks — Statue of Liberty figurines, "I ? NY" backpacks — for sale on sidewalks.

Mark Scherzer, a lawyer, said he has seen the neighborhood make the transition from warehouses and office buildings to a fully functioning residential area complete with dry cleaners and high- and low-end restaurants. After Sept. 11, the neighborhood looked as it did when he arrived three decades ago, struggling to get its footing.

"There was nothing," he said. "There was no life."

And any construction is good construction, said Scherzer, who welcomes the community center. Scherzer left the area after the attack — pieces of the World Trade Center broke his windows and landed on his apartment balcony — and didn't return until January 2003.

"To see life coming back, that's something we all crave," he said.

John Bayles, associate editor of the neighborhood newspaper, said any debate on the mosque should focus on property rights and neighborhood revival. "Lower Manhattan is in the middle of this huge rebuilding process," he said. "Any sort of community center is nothing but positive for the community."

Bayles' newspaper, the Downtown Express, has published several editorials supporting the community center, called Park51. The paper called it a "crucial thread in the diverse and accepting fabric of the Lower Manhattan neighborhood."

Terry Wiederlight, owner of the Fountain Pen Hospital, a pen shop, also remembers when the area used to be full of "junk stores." Now it's lined with restaurants and a smoke shop.

The business presence lost after Sept. 11 needs to be revived, Wiederlight said, but the types of businesses haven't been regulated. A strip club called New York Dolls is two blocks from the former Twin Towers site.

Four blocks away is the Off-Track Betting Corp. of Lower Manhattan. On a recent drizzly day, Andy Huguet smoked a cigarette as he pondered his bets. Huguet, who comes to the area only to gamble, said the proposed Islamic community center is coming too soon and the mosque issue is sensitive. The neighborhood remains fragile.

"It's too delicate," said Huguet, who lives across the East River in Brooklyn.

Many New Yorkers agree. Polls have shown that the majority of New Yorkers oppose a mosque so close. Still, the project does have its supporters.

At the Dakota Roadhouse bar, next door to the proposed site of the community center, Jeffrey LeFrancois cradled an after-work cocktail. LeFrancois, who used to live in the area but now works there, said the mosque is a local issue, one that should be hashed out in the neighborhood. He said too many politicians are using it as a way to gain votes.

"Most of the opposition is coming from outside the city of New York," he said, adding that people are already praying at the proposed community center space.

Indeed, the area already has an Islamic presence. Within a one-mile radius of the ZIP Code 10007, there are 17 restaurants that serve food in accordance with Islamic dietary laws.

Four blocks from the 9/11 site, Masjid Manhattan has been operating since 1970. The mosque's website said city, state and federal employees, as well as financial district workers, come by daily for prayer.

TriBeCa, known for high-rise lofts and fancy cafes, is also home to Masjid al-Farah, a small mosque near bars and liquor stores 12 blocks from the former World Trade Center site.

Both mosques are full, especially during weekly and daily prayers, said Ameena Meer, a creative director who belongs to Masjid al-Farah.

"Basically there's so many people who don't have a place to pray that they pray on the street on cardboard," said Meer, a Muslim who has lived in the neighborhood for 17 years. She said she's seen recent growth in the area's Muslim population.

People in the neighborhood need the resources the community center could provide, such as a library, 500-seat performing arts space, pool and prayer space, she said. If the area is hallowed ground, Meer said, then people are already praying on it.

"If it's a symbol, then where does the hallowed ground end?" she said.

Ray Tahlov still believes the area around his barbershop, four blocks away from the 9/11 site, is special. There aren't any reminders of the attacks on his block: no flowers, no candles. A nail salon shares his block, along with a saloon.

Still, Tahlov said, "This place is holy."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ground-zero-20100906,0,3939289,print.story

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L.A. County sheriff's deputies taking longer to respond to emergencies

The increased response times come in the wake of department budget cuts, but officials aren't sure of a direct cause and effect or whether there might be other reasons.

By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times

September 6, 2010

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies are getting to the scenes of 911 emergencies significantly later than they were before budget cuts last March, according to a recent analysis of Sheriff's Department records.

Last month, response times were a full minute longer compared with their 2009 average.

Department officials say they can't definitively link the lag to budget cuts, but whatever the cause, they say delays in emergency situations can have a major effect on law enforcement outcomes.

"Seconds count," said Capt. Mike Parker. "When people call for help, they want us to be there right away. There have been lots of calls where I was really glad I was there when I was, and not five seconds later."

Since the department moved to cut its budget by $128 million six months ago, response times have consistently been longer than they were last year. The delays affect a massive jurisdiction that includes three-fourths of Los Angeles County and approximately 4 million residents.

In a recent report to the county Board of Supervisors, Sheriff Lee Baca listed the lag as a possible effect of cuts to overtime — but in an interview, he said other factors, such as a surge in 911 calls, might be at play.

"It's not something to shrug off," Baca said. "We have to watch it and if our response to emergencies continues extending, we could come to a tipping point. I think we're still at the front end … but we're inching up to it."

Baca said deputies are often the first on the scene in shootings, stabbings and other situations in which timeliness can save lives.

The delays have alarmed the county board. To stem the increase in response times, a budget measure by Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich would provide the department an additional $2.6 million to be used specifically for patrols in the county's unincorporated areas.

Budget cuts have directly resulted in problems elsewhere in the department. For example, the crime lab has a growing backlog in the collection and analysis of fingerprint evidence. That slowdown has resulted in the destruction of evidence in about a tenth of new burglary cases and delays in dozens of homicide investigations.

In another result of cost cutting, 200 inmates were recently released early from the L.A. County jail system. Time spent in custody for male misdemeanor offenders has dropped from 80% of their sentences to 35%.

Last year, average response time for 911 calls was 4.9 minutes. The month after budget cuts began, the average climbed to 5.5 minutes and last month rose to almost six minutes. Routine calls for service have also slowed.

Baca said that despite the lag, violent crime in the department's patrol areas is down. Recent department crime statistics show that the homicide rate in patrol areas countywide was the lowest since 1975.

Still, Baca said, the response slowdown has to be addressed because deputies often arrive before ambulances and sometimes even transport assault victims to hospitals in their patrol cars.

"If it's a call for a person injured, typically shot or stabbed, it can be rather critical to lose a minute in response," Baca said. "It concerns me tremendously."

Parker said the cause of the delays could be the budget cuts or a variety of other factors. He speculated that administrative staff taking on shifts in patrol stations as part of an effort to limit overtime costs may be less familiar with the territory, taking longer to arrive at the scenes of emergencies.

"It's impossible to have cuts like this and not have impacts," Parker said. "The question is how deep is that impact and is that the only reason."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-emergency-response-20100906,0,1446606,print.story

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Making the economy work

Bold actions are needed to create jobs and fix the financial system.

OPINION

By Thomas A. Kochan

September 6, 2010

On the eve of the Depression, Andrew Mellon, President Hoover's Treasury secretary, said that rising unemployment would be good for the nation because it would "purge the rottenness out of the system" and force people "to work harder, live a more moral life." Few would dare utter such words today, but the actions — or inactions — of Washington and Wall Street indicate that respect for work and workers is again approaching that dismal level.

American workers and families face the deepest jobs crisis of their lives. Wages and income remain stuck around 1980s levels. Yet government and private-sector leaders remain unwilling or unable to develop viable long-term strategies to generate anything close to enough good jobs to build and sustain a recovery. To restore work to its rightful place in the economy and society, basic and bold changes are needed in government policy and in the leadership of business and labor. And it must all start with reordering a private-sector incentive system that is badly skewed.

Currently, corporations and their executives are driven by what is awkwardly called "financialization," the growing power of financial markets and institutions to influence business and economic policy. So instead of investing growing revenues into new and job-creating economic activity, companies opt to boost their stock prices and, with that, executive compensation and bonuses. Unless policymakers break this widening earnings disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street, promises to create jobs will mean little and the imbalance between short-term shareholder interests and the goals of employees and communities will be perpetuated.

Skeptics might say, we agree, but what can be done? The deficit is too big, banks are reluctant to loan to new firms, big business isn't investing or hiring, shareholders demand profits, jobs are sucked away by global competition, and unions are too weak to do anything about it. Meanwhile, unemployed Americans stop even looking for work and allow their human capital to further depreciate.

All this is true. But defining the problem in such a systemic way is also the first step toward solving it.

That is the goal of a group of academics now coming together under the banner of the Employment Policy Research Network. We believe it is time for bold actions that are based on research, not ideology or partisan rhetoric. Research-based proposals being generated by members of this network include:

Expand job creation tax credits. Because firms need greater incentives to invest, they should be able to receive tax credits for adding any employees. Current policy limits such credits to firms that hire the currently unemployed.

Restore top tax rates to pre-1980 levels. Allowing the expiration of current tax breaks for those who earn the most will help matters, but a more powerful way to assure that executives put revenues into long-term, job-creating investments rather than short-term, bonus-boosting profits is to take tax rates back even further in time. In 1970, the income tax rate was about 70% for compensation above $200,000 a year. Applying that rate to incomes of $1 million or more would change behavior and begin reversing the income disparities that have built up since then.

Modernize labor law. Too much futile political energy has been wasted on labor law reforms that merely seek to patch a failed system. Research by our network members demonstrates that prevailing labor law neither protects workers who try to organize nor supports the types of labor-management partnerships needed to drive innovation, productivity and wage growth. One recent study shows that 9 out of 10 efforts by workers to join a union and gain access to collective bargaining fail when met with determined management resistance. On the other hand, two decades of research in industries as diverse as healthcare, airlines and manufacturing demonstrates that by working in partnership, unions and companies outperform both old-style adversarial union settings and nonunion settings. A fresh approach to labor law, one that builds on this research, is needed to give workers the voice they want and need to build sustainable, productive partnerships with their bosses.

Other steps are of course needed. To signal our intent to be the world's leading innovation-knowledge-driven economy, for example, a permanent investment tax credit should be created. Passage of the COMPETES Act now languishing in Congress would support direct investment in research and development by increasing funding for science and education. Worker training and education programs must be revitalized to help the unemployed find jobs in sectors where there is demand, including healthcare, green technology and occupations related to civil engineering and infrastructure repair.

Labor Day is the perfect time for all Americans to call for bold actions — backed by research — like these to solve the jobs crisis.

Thomas A. Kochan is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-director of the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research, and co-founder of the Employment Policy Research Network.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kochan-economy-20100906,0,4994672,print.story

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The unemployed

Some insights into who the unemployed are and why they don't have jobs.

OPINION

September 6, 2010

Prodded by union leaders, state governments started designating a Labor Day holiday on the first Monday in September more than 120 years ago. The day has always been tinged with melancholy — it marks the unofficial end of summer. This year, however, the holiday is particularly bittersweet.

The Labor Department reported Friday that private employment increased by only 67,000 jobs in August, or 40,000 fewer than in July. That leaves 14.9 million people unemployed, in addition to the 8.9 million who are employed part time because they can't find full-time jobs. It was the eighth consecutive month of increased private hiring but the second with no improvement in the unemployment rate, which inched up to 9.6%.

Granted, the situation was worse in the last three months of 2009, when 10% of the country was unemployed. But painfully slow economic growth and even slower hiring has scarcely improved matters since then. And now the country's workforce finds itself in an unusually uncomfortable position: For the first time since the Depression, unemployment is likely to be above 9.5% for two consecutive Labor Days.

The sputtering recovery has sharpened Washington's focus on jobs and unemployment, but Democrats and Republicans remain sharply divided over what to do. Having counted on last year's $787-billion stimulus package to revive the economy, Democrats were slow to respond when joblessness continued to increase through much of 2009. And now their ranks are split between liberals eager for more stimulus and moderates anxious about the deficit. Republicans, meanwhile, blame the economy's problems on the stimulus package, healthcare reform and just about every other Democratic initiative. They argue that the best tonic would be to extend the Bush tax cuts permanently, a proposal that has no chance on Capitol Hill but may play well on the campaign trail.

To craft the right response to the unemployment problem, it helps to understand who the unemployed are and why they don't have jobs. Here are some insights provided by the data that the Bureau of Labor Statistics assembles:

The downturn has been an equal-opportunity unemployer. Joblessness has increased dramatically for almost every demographic group and almost every industry. Unemployment in April, May and June was more or less twice as high as it was before the recession for whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians. Joblessness rates increased significantly for the old, the middle-aged and the young, women and men, the college-educated and high school dropouts.

Jobs vanished in construction, manufacturing, sales, transportation, finance and information services. And even in the few industries that gained jobs, such as education, health and hospitality, hiring didn't increase fast enough to keep pace with the growing supply of workers.

Although the misery is widespread, some groups have been hit harder than others. A new analysis by the National Employment Law Project found that men make up a greater share of the unemployed than they did before the recession — 58% — as do workers 25 and older — 74%. The unemployment rate for workers 55 and older has climbed from 3% to 7%.

Workers with no education past high school still make up more than half of the unemployed. But the percentage with more education grew slightly, from 46% to 48%. Similar, subtle shifts have occurred in the work experience of the unemployed, with construction and manufacturing workers making up a slightly larger percentage of the total, and hospitality workers, salespeople, teachers and healthcare workers making up less.

The worst off before the recession are the worst off now. More than 45% of black teenage workers were without jobs in August, the highest unemployment rate by far of any demographic group. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for all black workers was about 16%, compared with 12% for Latinos and 8.7% for whites.

Workers without a high school diploma are three times as likely to be unemployed as those with college degrees. And single women who support families are twice as likely to be unemployed as married men or women.

It takes longer for the average unemployed person to find a job than it did when unemployment peaked in October 2009. As of August, 42% of the jobless have been idle for more than six months. And the average length of time spent unemployed was about eight months — twice as long as when the recession began. Both of those figures are slightly better than they were in May and June, when they hit the highest levels ever recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Long periods on the dole are not just discouraging to workers; they can stigmatize them in the eyes of potential employers. Some economists contend that extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks, as Congress has done, exacerbates the problem by discouraging laid-off workers from accepting lower-paying jobs. That argument, however, ignores how few jobs are available — according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are five unemployed workers for every opening (a figure that doesn't include the underemployed and those who want to work but have stopped looking).

Still, the current approach to unemployment could be improved by increasing the emphasis on retraining and providing subsidies for working rather than not working. One idea, advanced by economists Dean Baker and Kevin Hassett, is to use state unemployment benefits or federal tax credits to aid workers whose hours were sharply reduced, encouraging employers to cut costs through furloughs instead of layoffs. Another, offered by economist Howard Rosen, is to use unemployment benefits as a temporary aid program for the re-employed, making up part of the difference in wages when a laid-off person takes on similar work for less pay. As with the Baker and Hassett proposal, Rosen's aim is to make it less expensive for employers to hire or retain workers.

More jobs are being lost than created. After the 2001 recession began, it took almost three years for job gains to pull firmly ahead of losses. We're in a similar situation now, but with a much steeper drop in employment creating a far deeper hole to climb out of. Non-farm job losses outnumbered gains in all but one month from January 2008 to January 2010. Since February, job gains have pulled narrowly ahead of job losses in the private sector, but government layoffs tipped the balance back in June, July and August.

Employers have the resources to hire — corporate profits have bounced back strongly from the recession and companies have stockpiled huge amounts of cash — but not the will, at least not in the U.S. Conservatives blame the Obama administration for creating uncertainty about taxes and regulatory burdens, but the greater uncertainty for businesses is whether consumers are ready to begin spending again.

Job growth is in lower-wage occupations . A number of forces influence which jobs are becoming available. The glut of unsold homes and empty offices is drying up jobs in construction. The slowdown in construction and the housing market has exacerbated problems in the manufacturing sector, whose jobs have been migrating out of the U.S. for three decades. And technological changes have increased productivity and efficiency in many industries, reducing the need for some types of employees.

The National Employment Law Project found that three-quarters of the jobs created this year were in lower-paying fields, even though such jobs accounted for little more than a third of the jobs lost in the recession. Most industries reported job gains from December 2009 to July 2010. But in each of the four occupations with the greatest gains — retail sales, cashiers, food preparation and food service — the median income was less than $10 an hour.

This year's results aren't necessarily a harbinger of things to come. Lower-paying and temporary jobs typically form the leading edge of a recovery. Nevertheless, policymakers should be mindful of the need not just for faster job growth but also for more growth in higher-paying fields. The latter depends not just on the revival of the construction and manufacturing industries, but more broadly on America's ability to compete in the global economy. That's a challenge we will be confronting for many more Labor Days.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-labor-20100906,0,4799262,print.story

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From the New York Times

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American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong?

For nine years after the attacks of Sept. 11, many American Muslims made concerted efforts to build relationships with non-Muslims, to make it clear they abhor terrorism, to educate people about Islam and to participate in interfaith service projects. They took satisfaction in the observations by many scholars that Muslims in America were more successful and assimilated than Muslims in Europe.

Now, many of those same Muslims say that all of those years of work are being rapidly undone by the fierce opposition to a Muslim cultural center near ground zero that has unleashed a torrent of anti-Muslim sentiments and a spate of vandalism. The knifing of a Muslim cab driver in New York City has also alarmed many American Muslims.

“We worry: Will we ever be really completely accepted in American society?” said Dr. Ferhan Asghar, an orthopedic spine surgeon in Cincinnati and the father of two young girls. “In no other country could we have such freedoms — that's why so many Muslims choose to make this country their own. But we do wonder whether it will get to the point where people don't want Muslims here anymore.”

Eboo Patel, a founder and director of Interfaith Youth Core , a Chicago-based community service program that tries to reduce religious conflict, said, “I am more scared than I've ever been — more scared than I was after Sept. 11.”

That was a refrain echoed by many American Muslims in interviews last week. They said they were scared not as much for their safety as to learn that the suspicion, ignorance and even hatred of Muslims is so widespread. This is not the trajectory toward integration and acceptance that Muslims thought they were on.

Some American Muslims said they were especially on edge as the anniversary of 9/11 approaches. The pastor of a small church in Florida has promised to burn a pile of Korans that day. Muslim leaders are telling their followers that the stunt has been widely condemned by Christian and other religious groups and should be ignored. But they said some young American Muslims were questioning how they could simply sit by and watch the promised desecration.

They liken their situation to that of other scapegoats in American history: Irish Roman Catholics before the nativist riots in the 1800s, the Japanese before they were put in internment camps during World War II.

Muslims sit in their living rooms, aghast as pundits assert over and over that Islam is not a religion at all but a political cult, that Muslims cannot be good Americans and that mosques are fronts for extremist jihadis. To address what it calls a “growing tide of fear and intolerance,” the Islamic Society of North America plans to convene a summit of Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders in Washington on Tuesday.

Young American Muslims who are trying to figure out their place and their goals in life are particularly troubled, said Imam Abdullah T. Antepli, the Muslim chaplain at Duke University.

“People are discussing what is the alternative if we don't belong here,” he said. “There are jokes: When are we moving to Canada, when are we moving to Sydney? Nobody will go anywhere, but there is hopelessness, there is helplessness, there is real grief.”

Mr. Antepli just returned from a trip last month with a rabbi and other American Muslim leaders to Poland and Germany, where they studied the Holocaust and the events that led up to it (the group issued a denunciation of Holocaust denial on its return).

“Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s,” he said. “It's really scary.”

American Muslims were anticipating a particularly joyful Ramadan this year. For the first time in decades, the monthlong holiday fell mostly during summer vacation, allowing children to stay up late each night for the celebratory iftar dinner, breaking the fast, with family and friends.

But the season turned sour.

The great mosque debate seems to have unleashed a flurry of vandalism and harassment directed at mosques: construction equipment set afire at a mosque site in Murfreesboro, Tenn; a plastic pig with graffiti thrown into a mosque in Madera, Calif.; teenagers shooting outside a mosque in upstate New York during Ramadan prayers. It is too soon to tell whether hate crimes against Muslims are rising or are on pace with previous years, experts said. But it is possible that other episodes are going unreported right now.

“Victims are reluctant to go public with these kinds of hate incidents because they fear further harassment or attack,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “They're hoping all this will just blow over.”

Some Muslims said their situation felt more precarious now — under a president who is perceived as not only friendly to Muslims but is wrongly believed by many Americans to be Muslim himself — than it was under President George W. Bush.

Mr. Patel explained, “After Sept. 11, we had a Republican president who had the confidence and trust of red America, who went to a mosque and said, ‘Islam means peace,' and who said ‘Muslims are our neighbors and friends,' and who distinguished between terrorism and Islam.”

Now, unlike Mr. Bush then, the politicians with sway in red state America are the ones whipping up fear and hatred of Muslims, Mr. Patel said.

“There is simply the desire to paint an entire religion as the enemy,” he said. Referring to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the founder of the proposed Muslim center near ground zero, “What they did to Imam Feisal was highly strategic. The signal was, we can Swift Boat your most moderate leaders.”

Several American Muslims said in interviews that they were stunned that what provoked the anti-Muslim backlash was not even another terrorist attack but a plan by an imam known for his work with leaders of other faiths to build a Muslim community center.

This year, Sept. 11 coincides with the celebration of Eid, the finale to Ramadan, which usually lasts three days (most Muslims will begin observing Eid this year on Sept. 10). But Muslim leaders, in this climate, said they wanted to avoid appearing to be celebrating on the anniversary of 9/11. Several major Muslim organizations have urged mosques to use the day to participate in commemoration events and community service.

Ingrid Mattson, the president of the Islamic Society of North America, said many American Muslims were still hoping to salvage the spirit of Ramadan.

“In Ramadan, you're really not supposed to be focused on yourself,” she said. “It's about looking out for the suffering of other people. Somehow it feels bad to be so worried about our own situation and our own security, when it should be about empathy towards others.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/us/06muslims.html?_r=1&ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Some See a Ploy as Craigslist Blocks Sex Ads

SAN FRANCISCO — Craigslist, by shutting off its “adult services” section and slapping a “censored” label in its place, may be engaging in a high-stakes stunt to influence public opinion, some analysts say.

Since blocking access to the ads as the Labor Day weekend began — and suspending a revenue stream that could bring in an estimated $44 million this year — Craigslist has refused to discuss its motivations. But using the word “censored” suggests that the increasingly combative company is trying to draw attention to its fight with state attorneys general over sex ads and to issues of free speech on the Internet.

The law has been on Craigslist's side. The federal Communications Decency Act protects Web sites against liability for what their users post on the sites. And last year, the efforts of attorneys general were stymied when a federal judge blocked South Carolina's attorney general from prosecuting Craigslist executives for listings that resulted in prostitution arrests.

“It certainly appears to be a statement about how they feel about being judged in the court of public opinion,” said Thomas R. Burke, a First Amendment lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine who specializes in Internet law and does not work for Craigslist. “It's certainly the law that they're not liable for it, but it's another matter if the attorneys general are saying change your ways.”

Attorneys general and advocacy groups have continued to pressure the company to remove the “adult services” section. A letter from 17 state attorneys general dated Aug. 24 demanded that Craigslist close the section, contending that it helped facilitate prostitution and the trafficking of women and children.

The “adult services” section of Craigslist was still blocked in the United States on Sunday evening. “Sorry, no statement,” Susan MacTavish Best, Craigslist's spokeswoman, wrote on Sunday in response to an e-mail message.

Analysts said that if the block was a temporary statement of protest, it could backfire because of the avalanche of news coverage that the site had received for taking down the ads.

“I'm very convinced that this is permanent, even if it was not their intention to make it permanent,” said Peter M. Zollman, founding principal of the Advanced Interactive Media Group, a consulting firm that follows Craigslist closely. “I think it will be difficult, if not impossible, for them to go back and reopen that section without really running into a buzzsaw of negative publicity and reaction.”

Attorneys general in several states said they had so far been unable to get any information from Craigslist.

“If this announcement is a stunt or a ploy, it will only redouble our determination to pursue this issue with Craigslist, because they would be in a sense be thumbing their nose at the public interest,” Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general who has headed the campaign against Craigslist, said in an interview by phone on Sunday.

Mr. Blumenthal said Craigslist's outside lawyer had been in touch with his office, but that the lawyer had not clarified whether the shutdown of the section was permanent, or said when Craigslist might make a statement.

Even though courts have said that Craigslist is protected under federal law, Mr. Blumenthal said part of his mission was to rally public support to change federal law.

“Raising public awareness is extraordinarily important, because it increases support for changes in the law that will hold them accountable,” he said. “Their view of the law, which is blanket immunity for every site on the Internet, never has been upheld by the United States Supreme Court, and I think there is some serious doubt.”

Richard Cordray, the Ohio attorney general, said in an interview by phone on Sunday: “We're taking it at face value. I think it's a step forward, maybe grudging, in response to the efforts of the attorneys general.”

But Lisa Madigan, the attorney general of Illinois, was more skeptical about Craigslist's intentions. “Certainly because of the way they did it,” she said, “it leaves an open question as to whether this is truly the end of adult services on Craigslist or if this is just a continuing battle.”

For a site that prides itself on being a neighborly town square, Craigslist has been increasingly pugnacious in response to its critics.

Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist's chief executive, has written screeds on the company blog explaining and defending Craigslist's efforts to combat sex crimes, including manually screening sex ads and meeting with advocacy groups.

“Craigslist is committed to being socially responsible, and when it comes to adult services ads, that includes aggressively combating violent crime and human rights violations, including human trafficking and the exploitation of minors,” he wrote last month.

But he also uses the blog to lash out at eBay, an investor and a competitor that also has a sex ads service, and Craigslist critics and reporters who question Craigslist's actions on sex ads.

Last month, Amber Lyon of CNN reported about sex ads on Craigslist and questioned Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist and who is no longer a manager at the company, outside a conference where he spoke about a different topic.

In a blog post addressed to Ms. Lyon, Mr. Buckmaster responded: “There is a class of ‘journalists' known for gratuitously trashing respected organizations and individuals, ignoring readily available facts in favor of rank sensationalism and self-promotion. They work for tabloid media.”

And he wrote a sarcastic post titled “Advocate Indeed” in response to a television appearance by Malika Saada Saar, executive director of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, a nonprofit group that has urged Craigslist to shut the sex ads section.

Though sex ads on Craigslist are the most salacious example of the debate over free speech on the Internet, it is a battle being waged across the Web. Yelp, the review site for local businesses, has been repeatedly sued by small businesses for what its users write. The suits have been dismissed by courts citing the Communications Decency Act or withdrawn by defendants once they learned about Web sites' immunity, said Vince Sollitto, a Yelp spokesman.

Some Internet law experts say the issue strikes at the heart of free speech. “For the government to intervene in Internet communication, it has to do that very carefully,” said Margaret M. Russell, a law professor at Santa Clara University in California. “The ultimate goal, public safety, is really important, but these are venues of free speech communication. They're not conspirators in crimes.”

The erotic services categories are still accessible on Craigslist sites outside the United States, and the personals section of the site is still active. Craigslist has said that if it takes down the “adult services” section, sex ads will simply migrate to other parts of the site.

Doubts about whether the block on the sex ads section is permanent are fueled by the prospect of Craigslist losing a significant amount of money. The ads, which cost $10 to post and $5 to repost, are expected to bring in $44.4 million this year, about a third of Craigslist's annual revenue, according to the Advanced Interactive Media Group.

Still, it is difficult to predict the motives of the company, which employs about 30 people and operates in a quirky, opaque and at times petulant manner.

“It would surprise me if they didn't try to find a workable solution to reintroduce some of that income,” said M. Ryan Calo, a senior research fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. “Although, that said, Craigslist is not your typical company in the sense that it doesn't seem to be exclusively motivated by profit.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/technology/06craigslist.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Paranoid About Paranoia

OPINION

Last Wednesday, a man named James Lee entered the headquarters of the Discovery Channel with explosives strapped to his body, took three hostages at gunpoint, and waited for his demands to be met.

A foe of population growth, Lee had apparently decided that shows like “Kate Plus Eight” and “19 Kids and Counting” were pushing the planet toward destruction. “All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants,” he decreed, before moving on to demand solutions for “global warming, automotive pollution, international trade ... and the whole blasted human economy.”

By the end of the day, the hostages were safe, Lee had been killed by police, and TLC's fall lineup was preserved. But the debate about the hostage-taker's politics was just beginning.

Conservatives and libertarians dubbed Lee a “liberal eco-terrorist” inspired by a “green climate of hate.” They pointed out that he traced his political “awakening” to Al Gore's apocalyptic rhetoric. They cited an F.B.I. statement calling eco-vigilantes America's “No. 1 domestic terrorism threat.”

This was all a little ridiculous. But of course it was really an attempt to turn the tables on liberals, who have spent the last two years linking conservative rhetoric to hate crimes and antigovernment maniacs. (It's a hard habit to break: the liberal site ThinkProgress.org quickly suggested that James Lee was actually a right-wing extremist, because his hostility to “parasitic human infants” extended to the children of illegal immigrants.)

To some extent, partisans persist in these arguments — “your side encourages extremists!”; “no, your side encourages extremists!” — because America really is rife with wild and crazy sentiments. The belief that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim (apparently held by nearly 20 percent of the country) gets the headlines. But as the George Mason law professor Ilya Somin has noted , national opinion polls reveal support for numerous far-out or noxious-seeming notions.

There's the 32 percent of Democrats who blame “the Jews” for the financial crisis. There's the 25 percent of African-Americans who believe the AIDS virus was created in a government lab. There's support for state secession, which may have been higher among liberals in the Bush era than among Republicans in the age of Obama. And there's the theory that the Bush White House knew about 9/11 in advance, which a third of Democrats endorsed as recently as 2007.

So are we a nation of potential James Lees, teetering on the brink of paranoid violence? Not necessarily. As the libertarian writer Julian Sanchez has pointed out, it's worth taking all these polling responses with a substantial grain of salt. For all but the hardest-core conspiracy theorizers, they may express what Sanchez calls “symbolic beliefs.” These are “propositions you profess publicly” but would never follow through on, because they're adopted as a kind of political and cultural statement rather than out of deep conviction.

Consider the apparently widespread notion that George W. Bush knew about 9/11 in advance. If true, it would suggest that Bush was not merely a bad man or a bad president, but an evil genius on a shocking scale. But as Sanchez notes, “you did not really see a lot of behavior consistent with millions upon millions of people being seriously convinced that their president was a treasonous mass murderer.” Nobody planned an insurrection; few people fled to Canada. Instead, liberals organized for Democratic candidates, as though Bush were an ordinary opponent rather than a stone-cold killer.

The same is true of conservative conspiracy theorists today. Tuning in to Glenn Beck or joining your local Tea Party seems like a woefully insufficient response to the possibility that Barack Obama is a Manchurian candidate groomed from birth to undermine democracy and impose Shariah law. But if we understand those paranoias to be symbolic beliefs, rather than real convictions — an attention-grabbing way of saying, “I consider Obama phony, dishonest and un-American” — then conservative behavior makes a lot more sense.

Such beliefs can still be dangerous. The line between what's symbolic and what's real isn't always clear, and a determined demagogue can exploit symbolic beliefs as well as real ones.

But obsessing about the paranoia of the masses is often a way for American elites to gloss over their own, entirely nonsymbolic failures. In the Bush era attacking the conspiracy theories of the “angry left” made it easier for conservatives to avert their eyes from the disaster the Iraq war had become. Today, establishment liberals would much rather fret about the insanity of the Republican base than reckon with the unpopularity of Barack Obama's domestic program.

Some fretting is justified. (Just ask the Discovery Channel.) But over all, Americans still have more to fear from the folly of establishments than from the paranoia such follies summon up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/opinion/06douthat.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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9 years gone, everyone's a ground zero stakeholder  

September 6, 2010

ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK (AP) — It is a place of sacrifice. A place of mourning. A place people pass by on their way to grab lunch. It's a place where tourists crane their necks to snatch a glimpse around barriers walling off an enormous construction site — which is also what it is.

Ground zero.

Depending on whom you talk to, it's a scar on this city where horror still lingers, a bustling hive symbolizing the resilience of a nation, or simply, for those who live and work nearby, a place where life goes on.

In recent weeks, as debate has raged over the placement of a planned Islamic cultural center and mosque a couple of blocks from the construction, Americans have been reminded of just how many people lay claim to this place, the focal point for all those who have a stake in the legacy of Sept. 11.

Almost everyone has a stake.

Gesturing at the land he helped clear in the weeks after 9/11, Louis Pabon believes he knows who owns it: "This is mine."

Today he is wearing his hard hat again, standing at the gates of St. Paul's Chapel, hawking the photos that he took of the wreckage. Tourists stop in the sun to look at the images of smoky desolation.

Take a walk around ground zero, and you can get lost in the throngs. Among the tourist crowds at St. Paul's, a block away, a woman sipping a strawberry smoothie walks past an altar covered with photos of the dead. Outside, beneath cranes that glint red in the sun, construction workers cluster. A woman in a business suit and white sneakers speeds down the sidewalk. Burger King is full, and at Century 21 department store, across from the construction, polo shirts are 85 percent off.

This place was once a giant plaza filled with businesspeople and tourists and shoppers and commuters rushing to the subway. Then, on one sunny September Tuesday in 2001, it became suddenly a place of history and loss. Within 24 hours, someone had dubbed it ground zero, and it was never the same.

After 9/11, there were weeks, and months, of coming to grips. Everyone had lost something. A child. An acquaintance. A skyline. A sense of safety. A center of business. A solid stock portfolio. A feeling that we knew where everything was heading.

The city's Muslims, many of them, lost a willingness to speak out. They had enjoyed a kind of anonymity — a knowledge that they were just another ingredient in the hearty stew of New York. But since Sept. 11, they have felt an unwanted spotlight, and some have been afraid.

"Now no one can talk about Islam ... because Islam became like equal to violence," says Noureddine Elberhoumi, a cab driver who says that after Sept. 11 he stopped volunteering information about his religious affiliation. "In their mind, Islam is always going back to Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11 — that's it."

In the days after the attacks, the nation was in a wrenching, gripping catharsis. We were mourning our dead. We were mourning the accustomed path, whatever it was, that had been ripped out from under us. We were on a new, uncertain course.

Before the week was out, the pastor at St. Paul's began calling the site of the devastation "sacred ground." On Sept. 20, Katie Couric told TV viewers it "should be hallowed." For the family members of more than 1,100 of the victims whose remains were never recovered, it is the only gravesite they have.

"This pit of evil and doom," Sally Regenhard calls it now, her voice shaking nine years after the death here of her firefighter son, Christian.

"My son's beautiful remains are forever scattered," she says. "Ground zero is a burial ground."

Since that awful day, the story of the site has been through what seem like endless chapters.

There were battles over the land — over the prolonged search for victims' remains that kept turning up more tiny body parts in the soil five years later. The developer and insurance companies fought over payouts. The state and the developer haggled over financing and how many towers would be rebuilt.

Some families successfully challenged the creation of a freedom museum at the site, and some questioned whether a planned performing arts center there is appropriate. How best to pay respect to the dead?

Now, most everyone is staking out a position on the planned Islamic cultural center, to include a mosque, auditorium and other facilities about two blocks from the construction barriers. Some say the location should be moved out of sensitivity, because the Sept. 11 hijackers claimed to act in the name of Islam. Others say that moving the mosque would be bowing to intolerance and curtailing religious freedom.

Through all of this conflict, ground zero has been shuttered. Few have walked on its soil, except for the workers who cleared the site and those who are rebuilding it. Family members and others invited to the yearly memorial ceremonies have been allowed in, as was the pope on his 2008 pilgrimage.

But most have been unable to enter. At first, some people walked up to the barricades to post pictures of the missing, others to keep watch on the dead. More came. Out-of-towners started filling the sidewalks at the edge of the construction, holding up maps and asking passersby: What's the best spot to see ground zero?

With so few allowed in, everyone who journeyed to this untouchable space could make of it what they would. So what happens after the planned memorial opening on Sept. 11, 2011 — when the public is allowed inside the walled-off space?

Although the rules haven't been finalized, one could imagine a jogger passing through and pausing to take a drag off her water bottle, a group of kids breakdancing for tips, a businessman unwrapping his sandwich for lunch on a sunny bench.

Sacred or no, in many ways this space will belong to the American people — those who come to mourn the most personal of losses, those who come for all the other reasons, and even those who don't come at all, but know this place is now no longer just a hole in the ground.

The memorial was always intended to become a vibrant space again — to "be stitched back into the grid of lower Manhattan," says professor James E. Young, a member of the panel that selected the memorial design.

"Short of turning the whole thing into a cemetery with fences and saying this is somehow inviolable ... we knew that even sacred spaces live in public use," he says.Some proposals had called for the footprints of the twin towers to be cordoned off, with only family members of the victims allowed there.

But that "suggests that only the families of victims own it," Young says. "What about those who were injured? What about those who escaped? What about the rest of the city, which also felt surely violated and even victimized by the attacks?"

Many around the nation — even around the world — felt that they had been hit, too. A newspaper headline in Paris said after the attack: "We're all Americans."

How much reverence will be given to this open space in the city's maze, which still carries for many the memories of screams and dust and panic? Can it stay sacred?

That question was answered long ago, says a family member.

"The memorial museum is selling souvenirs, for God's sake," says Diane Horning, who lost her son, Matthew. "You can't stand in ground zero without seeing Century 21's big banners advertising whatever their special is. ... This hasn't been sacred space since the day they put the first rivets in something. It's office buildings, it's places to eat, it's everything but sacred space."

There's even a strip club three blocks from the construction site. At New York Dolls Gentlemen's Club, a woman in a red sequined G-string takes a break from platform dancing and leans over to rub her calves. In the background, Alicia Keys sings on a recording about New York's concrete jungle.

Outside, where William Dean is handing out flyers promoting the dancers, he says he's used to people yelling at him about the unseemly proximity to ground zero. His answer: "We're making a buck like anyone else."

Just one block closer to ground zero, it's still uncertain whether the cultural center and mosque known as Park51 will be built. But this would-be neighbor has aroused a reaction unlike any of the other disputes over this land.

The mosque furor has brought 9/11 back to the fore of America's consciousness. It had been quiet for a long time, bogged down in the bureaucracy of what would be built, for how much and when.

Amid all the disputes and all the compromise, the World Trade Center site had lost some of its hold on the public's imagination.

Freedom Tower, the site's signature skyscraper, rising a symbolic 1,776 feet, was renamed One World Trade Center, thought a better draw for corporate tenants. Even the ethereal design imagined by architect Daniel Libeskind came back to earth, restrained by the boundaries of physics and financing.

The plan for the memorial pools set in the footprints of the towers, though, remains.

At the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site at ground zero, a mob of visitors is snapping pictures, clustering in around a small-scale model of what this place is supposed to become.

There are the footprints, with lines standing in for what are to be the largest manmade waterfalls in the nation. There are tall, elegant buildings. There are tiny trees, each miniature trunk no thicker than a pushpin.

It looks peaceful. And it looks ready to come to life.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/2679076,911-ground-zero-090610.article

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