You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

New Yorkers Express Concern over Use of Mass WANTED Alert

HeadlineSep 20, 2016

Meanwhile, back here in New York City, residents are expressing mixed reactions, with some expressing outrage and concern, over the use of a ”WANTED” alert message that was distributed automatically to millions of phones across New York City and New Jersey Monday morning reading: ”WANTED: Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28-yr-old male. See media for pic. Call 9-1-1 if seen.” It’s believed to be the first time in the United States that the nationwide Wireless Emergency Alerts system was used to transform residents into participants in a regionwide manhunt. It sparked widespread concerns that people, particularly Muslims and people of color, who were not Rahami could be mistaken for him and targeted. This comes as hate crimes against the Muslim community have surged nationwide, including in New York City, where just last week a Scottish tourist wearing traditional Muslim religious clothing was set on fire in the middle of 5th Avenue in broad daylight. We’ll have more on this weekend’s bombings and the impact on the Muslim American community during a roundtable discussion for the hour with Haji Yusuf in St. Cloud, Nazia Kazi in Philadelphia, and Dr. Debbie Almontaser and Ramzi Kassem here in New York City.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top