The Man Behind the Radical Walking Tours of New York City

"In winter 2012, Asad Dandia, 19, discovered that his friend who crashed at his house in Brighton Beach and dined at his family table was a New York Police Department plant. The department's Intelligence Division was dispatching spies and plainclothes officers to compile dossiers on Muslim "hot spots." They infiltrated local bookstores, restaurants, and mosques, eavesdropping on casual conversations and befriending unwitting community members."

"The revelation devastated Dandia, a wiry Pakistani American university student. Not long after, the ACLU asked him to join a lawsuit challenging the NYPD, and, alongside five other plaintiffs, he watched a judge declare the surveillance program unconstitutional. "That's the story of how I changed New York City policy before I got my first full-time job after college," he told a cluster of people one late-September afternoon, an antique map of New Amsterdam tucked under one arm."

"Now 32, Dandia runs New York Narratives, which leads walking tours around the same city that put him under watch. He begins every outing like this-enumerating the many ways New York's establishment failed him. Then, before you can absorb the gravity of the state violence he endured, he's pivoted-gesturing toward East Harlem's Islamic Cultural Center, launching into a spiel about how 46 Muslim countries helped fund its construction and how its oxidized copper dome evokes another New York icon: the Statue of Liberty."

In winter 2012, Asad Dandia discovered that a friend who stayed at his Brighton Beach home and ate with his family was a New York Police Department plant. The NYPD Intelligence Division sent spies and plainclothes officers to compile dossiers on Muslim 'hot spots,' infiltrating bookstores, restaurants, and mosques, eavesdropping and befriending community members. The revelation devastated Dandia. The ACLU recruited him for a lawsuit that led a judge to declare the surveillance program unconstitutional. Dandia now runs New York Narratives walking tours, recounts state surveillance, and highlights Muslim-funded landmarks while grappling with institutional betrayal and continued love for the city.

Read at The Nation