DEARBORN — The announcement of the cancellation of the 2013 Arab International Festival by the American Arab Chamber of Commerce has now been widely reported and questioned by locals and the media.  The decision has drawn plenty of speculation and a wide range of opinions and emotions from community members on whether, or not, the decision to cancel the annual event was the correct one to make. 

In response to the speculation and rumors that have surfaced within the community, The Arab American News conducted several interviews with current and past organizers of the annual event. Topics discussed included the history of the festival, its current condition, and what could be done, in the future, to bring the event back in a productive manner, while leaving behind the accelerating hostility that has overshadowed the original objective of the festival in recent years. 

According to sources, although the 1st Annual Arab International Festival took place in 1995, the idea and concept actually originated and was executed in the late 70s and early 80s for the developing Arab American community on Dix Ave, in Dearborn’s south end. A board of community leaders originally organized an annual event, with an emphasis on Middle Eastern cuisine and music.

The event was hosted for several years along Dix Avenue, before it began to lose momentum, when blame was cast on organizers for not doing their part to help the project expand and gain more sponsorship. In the early 80s, a decision was made to no longer hold the event along Dix.

The concept was then again revisited in the early 90s. Lebanese American Heritage Club (LAHC) Founder Ali Jawad says that his organization had considered the idea of organizing an annual event, along Warren Avenue, to highlight the increasing presence of Arab-owned businesses in the area. At that point in time, Warren had grown into a home for dozens of Arab American businesses, and the City had even considered re-naming it “Arab Town.”

In an effort to highlight the growing Arab American community in east Dearborn, Jawad says he collaborated with then ACCESS Executive Director Ish Ahmed to host a festival along Warren Avenue. ACCESS (The Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services), at that point, had already established itself as the voice of the community, and thus possessed the resources necessary to help make the vision possible. 

The LAHC and ACCESS had two initial goals in mind for the festival: To highlight and promote the Arab-owned businesses, and to expose both Arab Americans and non-Arab Americans to the cultures and customs of the Middle East.

In an effort to test the waters, a one-day afternoon event was held on Miller Road in the summer of 1994, which lasted only a couple of hours and included free music and food. That event, which was organized in a short period of time, surprisingly attracted over 5,000 people.  Jawad says that at that point, they knew they were onto something big.

In 1995, the LAHC and ACCESS received the support that it needed from the Warren Avenue Business Association to organize a festival along Warren Avenue. However, the City continued to give organizers a difficult time in granting them a permit. They were finally given clearance to host the festival along Warren Avenue, but only between Oakman Boulevard and Miller Street; a two-block stretch.

The 1st Annual Arab International Festival, held in the summer of 1995, was an enormous success, attracting over 200,000 visitors from across the world. The organizers had struck gold when they booked Middle Eastern superstar Walid Toufic to perform at the event. That attraction, alone, single handedly generated significant momentum for the festival. 

“Bringing stars from the Middle East was a good way to allow the average person, who couldn’t afford to go to an expensive concert, an opportunity to see those stars for free,” Ali Jawad said. 

After the success of the first annual event, the City of Dearborn took notice of the economic benefits that the festival could bring to the City. In the late 90s, organizers were given an extension on their permit to allow the festival to stretch for approximately a mile down Warren Avenue, and additional sponsors and organizers began coming on board every year.  A tradition for the event was established that it would take place every year over Father’s Day weekend in June.

The American Arab Chamber of Commerce was recruited by ACCESS to help organize the event from a business angle, with a goal to attract more sponsorships and corporate involvement in the late 90s and early 2000s; what many say were the peak years of the festival. The City had even donated $10,000 to the festival for several years in a row, according to previous Chamber Executive Director Nasser Beydoun.

But in the early 2000s, one important aspect of the festival had to be dropped. For economic reasons, along with an increasing difficulty to book Middle Eastern performers during the summer months in the U.S., the organizers of the festival decided that they would no longer host such big-name performers to participate in the festival.

Regardless of this loss, the event still continued to attract thousands of people from cities, like Toronto and Chicago, and even from the Middle East. Michigan State University conducted a study on the economic impacts of the festival, citing that it boosted the local economy by $7.7 million on an annual basis. 

The Arab International Festival attracted over 200,000 visitors during its peak in the early 2000s.

Year after year, a host of corporate sponsors, including Ford, Comcast, AT&T and various government agencies, like the CIA, in addition to local businesses, chose to get involved in the festival. In addition, an increased presence of religious groups from different faiths began taking part in peaceful discussions. Impact International, a Christian group that originated in the Bible Belt, sent over 250-300 people, on a yearly basis, to volunteer at the festival and help with set-up, clean-up, security and assist festival-goers in locating lost family members. 

The organizers believed that the presence of religious groups, like Impact International, sent a peaceful interfaith message to the community, especially post-9/11, when racial profiling and stereotyping against Arab and Muslim Americans had become a major issue. 

“We had Christians as part of the festival since day one, and they weren’t being destructive. They were there, promoting understanding and tolerance,” Nasser Beydoun states. 

In 2008, Fay Beydoun, took over as executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, and the event was successfully able to transition under new leadership. For reasons not made public, the LAHC decided to pull out, as organizers, from the festival. Jawad wouldn’t give the exact reasons behind the decision, but stated that some differences surfaced, between the LAHC and the Chamber, regarding the direction that the festival should be heading. 

One incident, in particular, may have marked the beginning of a downward spiral for the festival. Christian evangelists, who had become increasingly aggressive, beginning in 2009, had garnered some mainstream attention for how they were being treated at the festival. Members from the Christian evangelist group Acts 17 Apologetics had posted a YouTube video in 2009 that showed them being escorted out of the festival by Dearborn Police, after they had gotten into confrontations with festival attendees. 

The following year, that same group returned to the festival, and three members from the group were arrested by Dearborn Police and charged with breaching the peace.

The arrests gained national attention and provoked discussions about possible violations of freedom of speech. The three individuals were acquitted by a jury later on that year and, in turn, sued the City of Dearborn for their wrongful arrests. Last week, it was made public that the City had settled the lawsuit, by paying the individuals a total of $300,000.

“I think these groups could have been ignored, and I think the community could’ve behaved in a more mature way. The organizers and the City made mistakes in dealing with them, and it could have been handled differently,” Hassan Jaber, executive director of ACCESS said.

In 2011, ACCESS announced that it would no longer be an official organizer of the Arab International Festival, but it would, however, remain involved in planning the annual event. 

“From the beginning, we knew we would help contribute to the start of the festival, but we were expecting the business community to take over,” said Jaber. “When the Chamber offered to take over, we eased ourselves out of it.”

Increased tension may have led to smaller crowds in later years.

Although the Chamber of Commerce is now the sole organization, whose name is on the permit for the festival, Fay Beydoun said that numerous local organizations, including ACCESS, HYPE, and many mosques remain involved in planning the festival, but do not include their names on any official paperwork for legal reasons.

While never publicly disclosing an opinion, it became apparent that the City may have also viewed the festival as a liability. In 2012, the Chamber worked out an agreement with the Dearborn Police Department to have the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department lead security at the festival. 

However, that did not stop tensions from mounting at the festival that year. A group of protestors, who called themselves The Bible Believers, attended the festival, displaying a pig’s head and marching through festival grounds.  This act, in turn, set off local attendees, who began retaliating, by throwing rocks and bottles at the group. After over an hour of protest, the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department made the decision to escort the group off of festival grounds. 

Later in 2012, The Bible Believers filed a lawsuit against the Chamber and the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department on the grounds that they were prevented from exercising their right to freedom of speech. The lawsuit was thrown out by a U.S. District Judge in May of this year. 

Despite the outcome of the lawsuit, The Bible Believers announced that they would return to the 2013 festival.

Last month, following Dearborn’s $300,000 legal settlement with the Acts 17 Apologetics, the City recommended that the festival be moved from Warren Avenue to Ford Woods Park.

“That recommendation was made in order to have a more controlled environment. The rules are different when a festival has specific entrance points. There is more flexibility for how behavior can be monitored, if there are specific entrances into an event,” Mary Laundroche, Director of Public Information, stated.

 Following the City’s “recommendation” to move the festival to Ford Woods, the Chamber announced that it would “postpone” the festival until next year. 

Fay Beydoun said that the purpose of the festival was to promote economic development in Dearborn and the surrounding areas and share the Arab cultural heritage.  It was postponed because these objectives could not be met if the festival was to be held at the park on such short notice.

“Moving the festival to the park within the amount of time we had was just not feasible,” she said. “We needed more time to better plan and provide the quality event that we had been providing in the past.”

While she did not confirm that the City forced the Chamber to move the festival, it was apparent that the City would not grant a permit for the event to be held on Warren Avenue.  

Beydoun refused to elaborate on questions relating to the City, saying that such questions should be asked to City officials.

After the controversy and numerous lawsuits that were filed by evangelist groups, insurance on the festival for its three-day span increased by 37 times, rising from $1,500 to $56,000.

Fay Beydoun said that the increase in cost of the insurance was one of the factors that led to the postponement of the festival, but not the deciding factor.

She refuted claims that the Chamber cancelled the festival because it was losing money, and reasserted that the festival was still profitable as of last year.

Beydoun added that the American Arab Chamber of Commerce made the decision to postpone the festival, along with “our partners, sponsors and other key players.” She said that key businesses along Warren Avenue were consulted, before any decision was made.

The festival had lost AT&T and Comcast as sponsors this year, but Fay Beydoun explained that those sponsors did not pull out because of increased tensions, as every year some sponsors opt to withdraw, while new sponsors opt to come on board.

She said that the anti-Muslim protesters were not happy by the news of the cancellation of this year’s festival, because they came to the festival, which is a cultural event, to create controversy and make money out of it.

She went on to explain that after the decision to postpone the festival was taken, many local and national organizations reached out to the Chamber to offer help and support.

The reaction of businesses on Warren Avenue has varied over the cancellation, as has their profitability from the festival.

Jamal Koussan, co-owner of Super Greenland Market said that he was personally sad that the festival was canceled, because it had been a community tradition for nearly two decades. But financially, Koussan said that the festival was not profitable for Super Greenland.

“Every year, the festival hurt us business-wise,” he added. “But we did not complain, because the community was happy. We considered our losses on those three days of the festival as a contribution to the community.”

Koussan said Beydoun did engage his business in discussions about the festival.

Hassan Hashem, whose family owns Al-Ameer Restaurant on Warren Avenue, said that canceling the festival was “a small hit” on the business.

Hashem said that the restaurant’s revenues from the festival had been declining over the past few years, but Al-Ameer was still attracting more diners than usual during the festival.

He said Al-Ameer learned about the cancellation of this year’s festival from the news, much like everybody else in the City.

Ali Berry, owner of Mr. Video, a small shop on Warren Avenue, said that his business boomed during the festival and will definitely be affected by its cancellation.

“We wait for the festival all year long and count on it,” he explained. “They closed off this source of income without asking anybody.”

Local residents did not seem to be greatly affected by the cancellation of the festival.

Dr. Maisa Hider said that she is glad that the festival was cancelled, because it was no longer representative of the Arab American community.

“The Arab Festival has lost its ‘Arab’,” she said. “It became too commercialized.”

Hider criticized the reliance on national sponsors in recent years, because they turned the festival into grounds to promote their products and services. She said that if the festival organizers needed help, they should have reached out to the community, instead of turning to non-Arab companies.

Alia Almayahi, who used to attend the festival annually, said that the festival was good at promoting some aspects of Arab culture.

“But I will not miss it too much,” she added. “In the early 2000s, the festival used to be very nice, but lately, it has become dirty and disorganized, and it has attracted mostly teenagers. The little kids could not enjoy it anymore. Even the rides have become very expensive.”

When asked if there would be a festival next year, Fay Beydoun said, “We are taking a break for one year to regroup, bring all the players around the table and take a look at what we are going to be able to do next year.  The time we have is going to give us an opportunity to better restructure and refocus the festival.”