Dear Iranian American,
We have taken time to assess the impact of the election, and it is clear that President-Elect Donald Trump puts everything we have achieved in jeopardy.
The nightmare scenario on civil rights that many feared under a Trump Administration is rapidly moving forward.
A “Muslim registry” proposal – requiring people from Muslim-majority countries to register with the U.S. government, submit fingerprints, undergo interrogation, and regularly check in with authorities – is now being developed by top Trump official Kris Kobach, who masterminded the post-9/11 program to register immigrants from Iran and other countries.
A Trump surrogate justified these efforts on Fox News last night by citing Japanese internment camps and efforts to track Iranian students during the hostage crisis.
Now is not the time for fear, it is the time for action. I still believe we can stop this, but only if every single one of us is invested in this battle.
We are fighting these proposals as I write this. And we are preparing for a major public battle in the coming days and weeks to block these unimaginable scenarios from becoming reality. We are working with ACLU and other organizations since we cannot win this alone.
In addition, the nuclear deal with Iran is in grave danger and the potential for war is something we cannot dismiss.
People with deep ties to the Mujahedin-e Khalq who have explicitly called for bombing Iran, like Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton, are being considered for Secretary of State in the Trump Administration.
Senator Tom Cotton, who wants to rip up the Iran deal and says we can bomb Iran’s nuclear program “back to day zero,” is in the running for Secretary of Defense.
And Trump is consulting with and considering top jobs for conspiracy-theorists like Clare Lopez and Frank Gaffney, who promoted the “Obama is a Muslim” myth and who have promoted dark conspiracy theories against NIAC and senior Obama administration officials on the basis of their ethnicity.
This is not a drill. This is dead serious. We have never faced a threat to the future as grave as this.
We have one ask of you right now – donate. We need the resources from our community today and the biggest impact you can make is by ensuring our organization has the funding necessary to win.
We are mobilizing to stop these nominations and block pro-war efforts before it is too late. We are already involved in efforts to protect our civil rights. But we can’t do it without funding from our community.
We have raised more than half of the $400,000 we had as our end-of-the-year goal. But we need to go beyond that now mindful of the dramatic new challenges at hand.
Please contribute $100 or an amount that is right for you so that we can win the battles to come and become a stronger community as a result.
We are counting on you.
Sincerely,
Trita Parsi
Board Member