Garbus then highlights the 2007 story of an Arab-American educator in New York, Debbie Almontaser, who lost her position as principal after remarks she made following 9/11 were distorted. Almontaser was forced to resign her position as principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy in New York City (designed to offer classes in Arabic and English, modeled on other dual-language city schools and reported to have no religious component) when the school was subject to a campaign by the “Stop the Madrassa Coalition,” labeling the school as a facility for terrorists. Almontaser was also the focus of The New York Post, which reported on her ties to Islam and her connection to a group called "Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media" which was selling T-shirts that glorify Palestinian terror. When Almontaser was interviewed by The New York Post she downplayed the significance of the T-shirts and stated, "the word 'intifada' basically means 'shaking off'––that is the root word if you look it up in Arabic."
Garbus throws in the 2004 case of Tyler Chase Harper, a sophomore at Poway High School, an upstanding student and athlete who had never been in trouble at school before when he was suspended for wearing a non-violent yet controversial T-shirt to school in response to the Poway High School’s LGBT Day of Silence. Harper, a Christian, decided to exercise his free speech on a T-shirt that referenced a verse from the Bible, Romans 1:27, “be ashamed, our school has embraced what God has condemned,” and “homosexuality is shameful.” The school concluded that Harper's T-shirt was disruptive and offensive to other students. Harper was told that he couldn't exercise his free speech this way and the principal informed him “if your faith is offensive you have to leave it in the car.”
Lastly, Garbus' focus shifts to the 2004 peaceful protest in New York City where protesters marched past Madison Square Garden, the site of the Republican National Convention, to show their disapproval of President George W. Bush. Security forces were deployed to match the estimated crowd of 500,000 and the event went off without major violence but approximately 200 arrests were made (mostly outside the march zone) on charges of disorderly conduct, while some arrests were made for felony assaults on officers and there was a group arrested after they knocked down police barriers and hurled bottles at police lines. The largest group of arrests came at 34th Street and Seventh Avenue when 53 cyclists were cuffed for entering the "frozen zone."
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