Must Freedom Be Pinched for Safety? : PLATFORM

MICHAEL F. YAMAMOTO

President, Japanese American

Bar Assn., Los Angeles

We need to look out for scapegoating at a time like this. I’m very worried about what’s going to happen to the Arab American people in our community and the Palestinian American people (because the FBI was looking for suspects of “Middle Eastern” appearance). That their religion is going to get trashed, their ethnicity is going to get trashed by certain unthinking people. For the rest of us, it is time to stand up and protect them.

I was born in Poston, Ariz., which was a concentration camp (during World War II). My father was a civil rights lawyer and you can imagine what they did to Japanese American lawyers during that period

But my upbringing taught me that when things like this happen, the first thing I ought to do is make it a point to look out for the rights of people who are going to be associated with these terrible criminals.

The temptation when you have people of a minority ethnic group involved in a horrible, heinous crime is to paint everybody with the same brush and to express your outrage and your sense of justice on all the wrong people.

When the Gulf War happened, the first thing the Japanese American community did was to contact members of the Arab American community to have seminars to talk about race relations in time of war--so that the same kinds of things that happened to us wouldn’t happen to that community.

I believe that our democratic culture is absolutely compatible with protecting the rights of individuals. It’s part of the American tradition as much as any other aspect of the Constitution. This is the time when it’s tested. DAVID M. REAM

City manager, Santa Ana

Every time a high-ranking public official or a well-known personality such President Kennedy, President Reagan or John Lennon is attacked or a public or private building is attacked, the question always comes up, “Can you make these facilities secure? Can you make the general public secure from these types of terrorist activities?” I don’t think you really can. Every time somebody tries to shoot at the President, they think, “Boy, we’ve got to close off the White House.”

An individual or a group that is bound and determined to try and blow up the World Trade Center--or a federal building in Oklahoma City--is still going to try, and some of those attempts will be successful. I think the best way to prevent these activities is to do everything you can to build a safe and stable environment through good city planning, good education, good community involvement so that the environment is as positive as possible. If you try to close off yourself, especially as a government agency, you end up losing touch with the community, and that creates a more hostile environment in the long run.

One thing about America: it’s a totally free society and that means a great deal of mobility and personal freedom of movement and activity. The basis of our government, the Constitution, is set up to provide that freedom of mobility and action. I don’t think you can chip away at that successfully.

MEYER MAY

Rabbi, executive director, Simon

Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles

Obviously, personal security is one of the most serious issues facing America today. Everyone is concerned about walking outside at night, of being a victim. Society has to address this major concern. It takes precedence over education, medical care, even financial matters.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution understood that we must be very careful not to allow an excess of invasions of privacy. Having said that, society has a vested interest in protecting itself.

Moreover, law enforcement should be very closely monitoring hate groups and how they spend the money they raise to cut off the source of funding for these out-of-control terrorists. We must do a better job of monitoring who is giving money to these groups. Intelligence is half the battle.

SALAM AL-MARAYATI

Director, Muslim Public Affairs Council, Los Angeles

The premise that because we have immigrants from all over the world coming into America, making up this multicultural democracy, that we have to deal with the problems of this kind of terrorism, is, in itself, a false logic because it falls into the trap of the “you versus us” mentality.

When we have people bombing abortion clinics, that’s more tolerated because they happen to be part of “us,” whereas an immigrant involved in an act of terrorism is going to be part of “them.”

Both acts are wicked. Both acts are heinous. Both acts should be answered by a justice system that is equal and that has equal protection under the law so that no one should have to suffer a form of McCarthyism or an episode of internment like the Japanese Americans did simply because they belonged to a certain race.

Anyone following Islam would abhor this latest incident of terrorism and in no way could he find any room for tolerating or sympathizing with people who are conducting this form of terrorism. We have to develop different paradigms in our society.

Rather than thinking of our society divided between Muslims, Christians and Jews, we should start thinking of our society as being divided between law-abiding citizens and criminals.

Unfortunately, this situation tends to take us back so many steps when we’ve worked so carefully to sew a very fine fabric in developing this American pluralism.

Interviews conducted by JIM BLAIR and ROBIN GREENE.