Raed Jarrar, an Arab human rights activist, was about to board a JetBlue Airways flight from Kennedy Airport in NY to Oakland, CA when four officials approached him and said he could not board with the shirt he was wearing. The shirt read “We will not be silent” in both English and Arabic (in photo). One official said to him, “Going to an airport with a T-shirt in Arabic script is like going to a bank and wearing a T-shirt that says: ‘I’m a robber’”. It is still unclear as to whether the officials worked for the TSA, Port Authority of New York, or JetBlue. All three organizations acknowledged that the dispute took place, and each independently said were conducting investigations into the matter.

Jarrar is director of the Iraq Project for Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based organization. Initially, he refused to turn his shirt inside-out as the officials requested. However, the shirt’s slogan was eventually coerced into silence when Jarrar agreed to wear another shirt over it rather than miss his flight. Jarrar was also forced to give up his seat near the front of the plane and issued another boarding pass for the rear. Though the TSA has banned all liquids and gels in carry-on baggage at US airports, there are no specific rules on attire.

The woman went away for 3 minutes, and she came back with a gray t-shirt reading “new york”. I put the t-shirt on and removed the price tag. I told the four people who were involved in the conversation: “I feel very sad that my personal freedom was taken away like this. I grew up under authoritarian governments in the Middle East, and one of the reasons I chose to move to the US was that I don’t want an officer to make me change my t-shirt. I will pursue this incident today through a Constitutional rights organization, and I am sure we will meet soon”. Everyone said okay and left, and I went back to my seat.

At 8:50 I was called again by a fourth young man, standing with the same jetblue woman. He asked for my boarding pass, so I gave it to him, and stood in front of the boarding counter. I asked the woman: “is everything okay?”, she responded: “Yes, sure. We just have to change your seat”. I said: “but I want this seat, that’s why I chose it online 4 weeks ago”, the fourth man said ” there is a lady with a toddler sitting there. We need the seat.” Then they re-issued me a small boarding pass for seat 24a, instead of seat 3a. They said that I can go to the airplane now. I was the first person who entered the airplane, and I was really annoyed about being assigned this seat in the back of the airplane too. It smelled like the bathrooms, which is why I had originally chosen a seat which would be far from that area.

Quoted above is an excerpt from Raed Jarrar’s blog. You can read the rest of his story here.

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