Insurance
agent inspired to break silence, seek peace Before the towers fell
and calls for war began, Dan Yaseen was an insurance agent, just a man with a
workaday job who didn't spend time protesting anything.
"I was doing
the regular things. I'd been an insurance agent for 32 years. I was trying to
make a living, pay my taxes. Then all of the sudden this happened and I was right
in the middle of it."
Yaseen, now 57, is a native of Pakistan, where he still has family.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, there was talk that the United States would bomb Afghanistan,
which shares a border with Pakistan. Bombing would change lives in the whole region.
He
had never believed in war, had always quietly embraced nonviolence.
Further
troubling to him were news reports of hate crimes against Saudis or Sikhs or Pakistanis,
anyone who happened to look like the Arab terrorists who had attacked the U.S.
"It
affected me on every level," Yaseen said. "But especially the tension
of the building rhetoric. I felt that the U.S. would attack and violence was going
to perpetuate violence."
Days after the attacks of Sept. 11, at a panel
discussion on terrorism at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fresno, Yaseen
met activists who were planning peace protests at the corner of Shaw and Blackstone
avenues.
Their original demonstrations were in remembrance of the victims
of the terrorist attacks. After the U.S. bombed Afghanistan in October 2001, the
demonstrations turned to protests against war in Afghanistan. Later they were
protests against the Iraq war.
From these protests the group Peace Fresno
was born. Its members still rally for peace at the same corner on the first Friday
of every month.
"In the beginning, there was a lot of hostilities.
Passing cars would throw things at us. But slowly it is changing," said Yaseen,
who participates each month.
"It takes time. But there have been protests
like ours all over the country, and slowly it does matter. I am a good student
of history and protests matter. They mattered for women's rights and civil rights
and they will matter for peace."
On a personal level, Yaseen says protesting
makes him feel less helpless in the face of world events. He says it makes him
feel he is living up to the oath he took when he became an American citizen 10
years ago.
"Being an activist, you are not always going to be popular.
People will call you unpatriotic. But if your cause is just and you speak the
truth and stand up for what you believe in, then there is nothing more American
than that," he said.
"After everything that's happened since 9/11,
I can be silent no more."
