The Department of Homeland Security quietly rebrands its controversial countering violent extremism grant program during the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on a lot of new health and safety challenges, and also has given U.S. government the opportunity to quietly rebrand its controversial countering violent extremism, or CVE, grant program under a new name: Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program, or TVTP.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, website, the new TVTP grant program works as an upgraded grant to its earlier 2016 CVE Grant program. State, local, nonprofit and education institutions can apply for monetary funding with listed goals and projected outcomes that match the program’s goals, which are to “establish or enhance capabilities to prevent targeted violence and terrorism.”
The program was announced on March 30 and boasts $10 million in grant funding and is backed by the President, who wants to secure an additional $20 million dollars for the programs grant funding for its next fiscal year, according to reports.
The current application for grant funding recently has been extended until June 17, 2020.
A quick review of the TVTP framework shows that the DHS listened to the kick-back from human rights groups who do not approve of the program’s existence; groups find that these programs are merely a surveillance tactic and more-so targets and stereotypes Muslim groups and other marginalized communities. But this time around, DHS expanded its rhetoric and craftly worded a defense and breakdown that refutes the opinions of those who want to see an end to these programs.
A part of the main criticisms of the original CVE framework and grant program was that a lot of the supporting information was based off of “junk science,” and was not 100% factually backed.
“Nobody can actually show you that there is any empirical evidence that this actually works,” Arie Perliger, a scientist and director of the graduate program in security studies at UMASS Lowell said in a video interview last month. “If there’s one consistent characteristic for all CVE programs is that none of them are able to show any kind of actual effectiveness or ability to undermine radicalization.”
Local social justice groups spearhead the end to CVE programs
In the middle of a global pandemic, one may ask why the U.S. government feels the need to allocate $10 million dollars to local communities for targeted violence prevention.
Human rights groups across the nation have already been asking this question and have band together to work put an end to this.
On May 19, the #StopCVE Coalition, organized by the Muslim Justice League, American Friends Service Committee (Chicago), Handala Coalition, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, Palestinian Youth Movement, Stop CVE Coalition (Chicago), Defending Rights and Dissent, and CAIR organized an online “#StopCVE, #EndTVTP Day of Action,” to align with Malcom X Day, what would be the civil rights leader’s birthday.
This virtual call to action engages the public and asks what they would do with a large budget of money that does not specifically criminalize marginalized communities. Additionally, the coalition demands an end to the TVTP and CVE Programs, which primarily and historically have targeted Muslim communities.
In Boston, the Muslim Justice League wants to know what people would do with the $60 million budget that the Boston Police Department, or BPD, is reported to have.
The Muslim Justice League, or MJL, a nonprofit that formed in response to the announcement to the government piloting CVE programs in 2015 in three major cities, including Boston, has been responsible for helping lead the conversation to #StopCVE.
Through public records requests and other means, the group has been able to find out about hidden initiatives, and ultimately ulterior wording, for CVE programs in Boston. It’s also how the group was able to find out about the true intent of the Youth and Police Initiative Plus program, or YPIP, a program billed as a way for BPD and Somali youth to interact to better get along with each other.
BPD, over the years, has been heavily criticized by city residents, in response to disparities in treatment and fair practice towards marginalized groups. When YPIP first formed, MJL wrote a letter in 2017 to then police commissioner, Williams Evans, urging him to end BPD’s support of the program. The group argued that the program put an unnecessary stigma on Somali youth and immigrants, and ultimately associated the group to be that of hostile and violent.
The program eventually ended in July of 2019.
Will awareness bring change?
It’s been six years since the announcement of CVE programs in the U.S. under the Obama administration, and five years since the official CVE framework for the City of Boston was unveiled.
Perliger suggested that a shift is starting to be seen from when CVE was first introduced, and that the original targeted groups are not necessarily the focus anymore.
“If you ask me, and I think that you already see some changes,” Perliger said. “There is a transitioning focus to try to see how these problems can work when they are basically aiming at far-right groups; whether [it be] Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, sovereign citizens and all of these far-right groups that produce way more violence and are much more effectively proliferated all over the country and represent a more significant threat in many ways.”
Perliger who does research and work on far-right and far-left groups shared that he has recently seen more money and grants go towards programs that are supposed to tackle these kinds of militant organizations [and not Somali or Muslim groups].
“Today, everyone understands that the [far right] are probably the most significant domestic security threat,” Perliger said.
Shannon Al-Wakeel, an attorney and the former executive director of MJL, expressed the dangers of equal-opportunity CVE.
Often-times well-meaning folks, when they hear about CVE and the fact that it is so obviously focused on Muslims is they say that it’s unfair and that it should be focused more on right-wing violence, Al-Wakeel said in a phone interview last month.
“That is absolutely not what the directly impacted communities want to see happen, by in large,” she said. “We understand that if these programs are quote-unquote expanded, they’re really just still going to target the Black, brown and marginalized communities predominantly.”
Update: an edit was made to reflect when the program was announced on March 30.