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You can't enjoy jewelry if it's sitting in your safe deposit box. Sell it for immediate cash. We pur- chase fine gems. Diamonds and Gold Jewelry. A SERVICE TO PRIVATE OWNERS BANKS & ESTATES GEM/DIAMOND SPECIALISTS AWARDED CERTIFICATE BY GIA IN GRADING & EVALUATION a" ► Fine Jewelers EST. 1919 30400 Telegraph Rd., Suite 134 Birmingham 642-5575 Hours: Daily 10:00-5:30 Thurs. 10:00-7:00 Sat. 10:00-4:00 attempt to build a broader-based Arab- American movement around the same is- sues, and to build a national constituency" In 1984, he became involved in the Jesse Jackson campaign, an experience that, he says, opened new doors for him and his movement. Out of this experience grew his current political vehicle, the Arab American Institute, which he formed in 1985 with George Salem, a Reagan-Bush staffer. "The purpose of AAI is purely electoral. This year, for the first time, we've developed an 'issues agenda' for Arab Americans. We did it collectively — through town meetings in 17 cities, and we sent it out to 11,000 people, and they voted on it and modified it. It talks about educa- tion, health care, immigration, civil liber- ties and foreign policy. We see this process as important; it's the development of a col- lective sense of leadership. The document is a community possession." Zogby signed on the Jackson campaign team again in 1988; currently, he is the top Arab-American in the campaign, and a member of the inner circle around the candidate. The Jackson campaigns, he says, only reinforced his belief that the name of the game in America is ethnic politics. "We didn't invent ethnic politics," Zogby says. "In Chicago, that's how people are organized. You don't have the luxury of saying, well, let's just be Democrats. You're either a Polish Democrat, a Jewish Democrat, a black Democrat. And the pie just gets sliced up so many ways. If you're not organized, you don't get a slice. And our people didn't get slices for a long time." Jesse Jackson, he says, has given Arab- Americans a sense of inclusion in the political process that has affected politics at the local level — especially in cities with black elected officials. He uses the ad- ministration of the late mayor Harold Washington of Chicago as an example. "Jackson opened a door that allowed us to make the relationship with Harold Washington real. It was a sense of mutual interest. We had votes, we had money — and we owned a hell of a lot of grocery stores in Chicago. We were able to organize those stores in the aldermanic campaigns." The fruits of that relationship, he says, included a liaison commission between the city government and the Arab-American population. It also included the more tangible fruits of big-city politics, in- cluding jobs and city contracts. The 1984 Jackson campaign, he says, also taught him important lessons about places like Dearborn, Michigan. "We went to Dearborn and saw a large, unregistered constituency that was thrilled about the campaign, but couldn't do anything about it," he says. "We began a voter registration project. For the first time last year, Dear- born elected an Arab-American official. They didn't see themselves as a constituen- cy a few years ago; now they do." In the recent Michigan caucuses, Dear- born's Arab American community turned out in record numbers — and voted almost unanimously for Jesse Jackson. The symbolic importance of Jackson's inclusion of Arab-Americans, Zogby -sug- gests, cannot be overemphasized. Repeat- edly, he comes back to the rejection by mainstream politicians of Arab-American support — a rejection. that he lays at the doorstep of the pro-Israel community. He is still stung by politicians who refuse to take Arab money for fear of being tainted with the "anti-Israel" label. He cites ex- amples of canceled speaking engagements, of friendly politicians who still refuse to be seen in public with prominent Arab- Americans. "Some elements within the Jewish com- munity play this zero-sum game in politics," he says, his anger bubbling to the surface. "I'm still getting calls from reporters who say they've heard that Jesse Jackson is 'really coming around' — but that there's a problem, and the problem is that I'm in the campaign. I don't unders- tand that; I'm an American too. There are still local politicians who hesitate to come close to the Arab community because of the fear of being targeted by the Jewish community." Despite the official grass-roots emphasis of AAI, the Middle East is never far from the surface of the group's activities. On the question of solutions for the Middle East dilemma, Zogby starts off sounding like some Labor Party politicians in Israel — but with an aftertaste that won't appeal to many of Israel's supporters. "The bottom line is an international peace conference," he says, "with PLO representation. A negotiated settlement, with the occupied territories becoming a Palestinian state." On the question of Israel's right to ex- ist, he claims that there is now a consen- sus that Israel is a reality that is not like- ly to go away. The Arab American com- munity, he says, has learned to differen- tiate between different struggles. "In the West Bank and Gaza, the struggle is for statehood; in Israel, the struggle is for full democratic rights. The reality is, an Israeli people exist. And that's something that took us a while." In a distinction that may escape most supporters of Israel, he argues that Palesti- nians can deal with Israel as an accepted reality without accepting it as a Jewish state. "No, they don't accept this. I don't accept that Lebanon wants to be a Chris- tian state, or that Iran wants to be a Muslim state. Does America accept that the Soviet Union is a communist state? No. States recognize the EXISTENCE of each other; they don't take loyalty oaths to the philosophies of each other. That's too much to ask."