aleikum and welcome to our show we're going to have a very exciting show today and i'm going to be your host for the benjamin should bars and i guess today is the local director of the care organization brother who car very imprecise when i say we should do a show put an article in the muslim journal and let people know the progress that we're making in this area you know i remember there was a time when muslims would think of becoming a part of  about their rights and the civic process the political process and about media relations and so our job is also to to build coalitions with any organization that shares any mission point of ours so we work with a c l u for example because their mission point of protecting civil liberties overlaps with ours and there's many more examples of allies that we have made to promote our mission to work on our mission of protecting civil liberties in encouraging dialogue and empowering the empower american muslims and to build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding this war and this one so how long have you been involved curiously well i got involved in two thousand and six as a volunteer and i've been on staff since as a staff member full time since february two thousand and nine so would you be a little bit more yeah we care has chapters all over the country we have about thirty five chapters across the us and one chapter is here in the state of washington or offices in seattle very close to downtown seattle and i am the chapter director of the local state chapter  and nine calendar year we received over fifty about fifty cases from local muslims in in the in the northwest have received about half a dozen or so this year in two thousand and ten most of the case that we get a deal with employment discrimination and they also be a lot with federal law enforcement encounters so that could mean you know f b i in interviews or customs and border patrol stops people coming in from other countries th flying in they were stopped for many hours and our job is to resolve the complaint through mediation as a primary tool and and at times we do litigation as well whatever it takes really to restore justice for the complainant so when you say to mediation you mean you come in and become an arbiter or how does it work well it depends on the situation really i mean for example the employment case is what we do is when  first get a complaint we write a letter to the employer and say here's a complaint that's been sent to us and you want to convey it convey this to us see how we can work this out so in the letter we also include the a complaint how it might be religious observance if it is in most in which case we forward a letter to the equal employment opportunity commission which is a federal agency whose job is to whose mandate is from congress to ensure that there's no discrimination on the job so and then work through that through that  avenue to have the e e o c then investigate and see if it can be mediated that way if that doesn't work for example in the employment context then we hire private attorneys here in seattle to work on that issue other care chapters have staff attorneys who also our funding is wholly from from the state so it's individual funds so far and we haven't applied for any grants so it's really is individual donations that has funded us since two thousand and three well thing most calls we get are they really very i mean sometimes it's a public defender for example calling to see if you know a request to has been forwarded to them is valid or not is it the person's asking for accommodation or if it's there was a recent case a public defender called many times it's for example teachers we have a speaker's bureau so teachers from public schools all of the state call us and say who do you have an expert on for example women in islam and we have a look at our speakers bureau and find a female who's washington for care and before february two thousand and nine for almost two or three years we were fully volunteer based and we're always looking for good volunteers i mean if people have any skill that they want to lend to a good cause they can e mail us and they can go  did the capital works and we do it again in two thousand and eight this time this time with about fifteen people or so fifteen muslims joining on again with the poverty action network and and visiting a lawmakers and spending a day at the state capitol  and eight we stumbled upon a website a muslim capitol day dot org which is a florida muslim organization united voices for america and they had catalogued their event that they had had at their state capitol in and videos so we saw that and we kind of saw kind of a story told by the photos there and we thought hey let's let's let's ramp up our operation here and and have a larger day the capital where we have a large number of muslims from all over the state like that is in florida so we you know follow their the photos and things and do some of the things they might have done and we took some of the things we learned at our you know participation in the state capital in the past two years and put together a good you know formula for sent people off to their pre assigned appointments to the lawmakers and they got a chance to speak with the lawmakers face to face in fifteen minute meetings and came back again for some workshops and end of the day with a kind of a closing assembly and then people went back muslim sentiment and rhetoric and the link between that and on the ground discrimination and hate crimes that we see and the second thing is to have our members talk to lawmakers about the need for any increase in funding for low income housing so we had members take a few things with them to the appointments but we had them take these white folders with information about care on the left side about what our interfaith allies in our law enforcement partners and elected officials say about kerry's activities and about us positive things of course cares work with law enforcement and cares and other muslim organizations persistent and consistent condemnation of terrorism or any other acts against civilians politically motivated acts we also have on the right side we had some some handouts about you know the increase in islam phobia and the executive summary of our annual civil rights report and we also had reports by you know incredible organizations like the gallup poll which shows in two thousand and nine that most  americans exemplify diversity in potential and showing that muslim females are actually among the highest educated ones in the u s and then we had the pew research survey and many more things to show the american muslims are and what we do in the u s and of course a brief history of islam in the u s we also had a members gift a copy of the translation of the koran it has a mistranslation of the koran itself with margin notes and everything in and outlines before every chapter so it's a little bit easier read than the average straight you know a translation just goes through just a translation itself it has a explanations also and then the second thing we had them gift is a d v d on the on the basics of islam the five pillars and some of the misconceptions people have about women in islam and about other things and it's called the concept of islam it's a locally produced film by a local filmmaker here and who lives in the east side of seattle and we had them gift so basically a copy of the koran and a copy of the d v d and had them talk to lawmakers about two main issues some of phobia and the increase in islam phobia and the need for an increase in low income housing funding so overall was a very enjoyable event for every line and we had and everybody was walking around and everybody was just smiling and talking to people and it was so fast it was just so i made a hell of an impression about muslims in america and i was i was very honored to be there myself so i was glad that you guys put that thing together because i'm also one of the things for me that show that muslims are progressive absolutely i mean really progressive and the dark ages and so this was a demonstration of the true right and i'm glad you mentioned these points i think the points about the misconceptions about islam they actually negated by actual imperial research you know we don't read the cigarette morning that says you know get in there might do harm and say well you know i know some people who spoke and they're doing just fine so this this research that's done must be wrong we look at actual research and for that reason we should also look at research when we want to make judgments about american muslim we should look at the gallup significance and you know we have some issues that here we are in a in a way engaged in the defense of civil liberties and the pyramid of civil liberties at times and also the kind of remind muslims that you know and i had a significance of it where we want to do before this show closes is number one thank you really for a new you time is very good for coming out to discuss the show we want to present you with a gift and this gives here is inspiration from the koran and it's like a daily calendar each day there will be some inspirational verses or quotes from the koran there will guide you help guide you through your day and also a copy of our latest muslim journal newspaper drive vans in and organize their communities to bring them all to the state capitol they want to make sure you recognize them as well and also recognize the olympia muslim community they really made the event for us that day they were kind hosts you can say with their city so they on the leader but it's the people that do all the grunt work the grower the first soldier work to make all these things possible the good thing about being a believer in god is understanding that all of this being noted you know regulate payday lending in washington state you know at that time payday lending was the industry was and regulated so at times i mean you know we see a lot of tactics and then we see a lot of results so we see these payday lending institutions set up in town in areas that are you know that have people that are lower income more vulnerable to these to these institutions and so we also saw that on the ground effects where we saw people get stuck in a cycle of having to take more loans out to pay off more loans you know it it in a way victimizes people who are who have said you know certain needs in our job was to make to ask legislators to cap the percentage annual percentage rate to about thirty five percent or so so that is somewhat you know just and somewhat fair we couldn't necessarily secure that we did get a compromise in the state legislature or less favorable but but a decent compromise was reached and i believe i don't have the specifics on the moment but i think it resulted to a certain number of loans or so but we're still working on the issue you want to make sure that people are not victimized they don't get stuck in a cycle i think it's really bad for society as a whole and members and their families entire families are stuck in a cycle where they can't pay off the principal and the interest so there why would kira be interested in handling or approaching some problems like this is a cure just don't they just deal with the immigration issue the things like want you know our main focus areas where you know civil liberties impact coming empowerment and and facilitating dialogue but we also work in coalitions and we saw this is a huge opportunity to to have the most employees heard by the by the wider society that you know we stand against injustice and it was an option for us to stand up for justice in coalitions and that's why you pursued this  liberties ok ok so what advice do you have for most of the may be being harassed by the police well you know any kind of commission case you should take notes right away otherwise we have a tendency to forget things or forget you know specific facts so write everything down write down you know who the if it's a police context you know law enforcement context asked long for an officer their name and their badge number  and write that down later on this assumes you can write in location the place the names of witnesses and if you can get their phone numbers or something they'll be ideal and write the information down as well where it happened when it happened exactly and then once you have all the facts written down call us or e mail us right away you can call us at two a six three six seven four zero eight one that's or office number you can also e mail us in foot care see out of that org or you can go to our local or national website and file a complaint on line to our website said the most in employment discrimination you know you should take note of any any injustice that happens at work and that we have a paper trail so when you are fired or when the really drastic happens you have kind of a record of things happening leading up to that and make sure in any any discrimination case where there's law enforcement or employment you let the offender know that you feel discriminated asked them if this is happening to you because your race religion or ethnicity or and tell them that you feel discriminated against and always report cases as well as pulling for the formation about care we hope for the success of care and we want to say to our viewing audience i still have a lake in which means peace be upon you and thank you for watching