"So Our History Doesn't Become Your Future: The Local and Global Politics of Coalition Building Post September 11th"

ON SEPTEMBER 11th, in the marginalized and geographically distant spaces of activism in Oakland, California, and my neighborhood in Cairo, Egypt, a shared response emerged: "Clearly, the September 11th attacks were heinous, but the U.S. government should share responsibility for pursuing imperialist policies that helped create the historical conditions within which these attacks were inspired, planned, and carried out." 2 Within weeks after the attacks, activists in the U.S. who focus their work on immigrant rights and racial justice opposed the Bush Administration's use of the "war on terror" to persecute immigrants of color, particularly those perceived to be Arab or Muslim, in ways that trample upon the very "freedoms" that it purports to be defending. This paper traces shifts in progressive activism in the San Francisco Bay Area in the aftermath of September 11th . My analysis is based on ethnographic research among members of several community-based organizations. 3 I focus on the transformative possibilities of coalition building and the political challenges that have surfaced as Arab/Arab American histories have been brought increasingly into conversation with people of color politics in general and Asian/Asian American politics in particular.