URGENT: Racial Profiling Hearing in the Senate - Response and Participation Needed

ACTION REQUESTED: WHAT Senate Judiciary Subject Matter Hearing on Racial Profiling and Other Related Issues

WHEN Thursday, November 17, 2005 at 11 a.m.

WHERE James R. Thompson Center 100 West Randolph Street, Chicago Room 16-503

The Muslim community has a great opportunity to voice their experiences of racial profiling to the Illinois Senate. A strong Muslim presence is essential to pass the legislation that has been proposed. CAIR-Chicago is looking to compile testimonies from the community about their experiences of racial profiling by police officers.

It is important that we compile as many stories as possible to present to the Illinois Senate in order to illustrate the urgency of collecting data about Arabs and Muslims that have been stopped by the police, particularly when the political climate of this country seems to be advocating for institutionalized racial profiling.

No current official statistical data on this subject exists for Arabs and Muslims, yet incidents of police misconduct continue to be reported by our community members. Please contribute to this important movement by submitting your stories to us as soon as possible to civilrights@cairchicago.org.

Testimonies will be presented to the Illinois Senate to support the legislative bill to continue data collection on racial profiling for traffic stops and amend the legislation to incorporate more information in the data that is collected.

If you feel you were the victim of racial profiling and want to tell your story and/or pursue action, please email civilrights@cairchicago.org with a description of what happened, when, and what police department and officer was involved in the incident.

The bill presented by the ACLU-IL was amended to incorporate the classification for Middle Eastern/North Africans and individuals wearing religious garments at the request of CAIR-Chicago. Although a parameter for Asian is already on the bill, Middle Eastern/North African individuals were not indicated earlier.

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