In Memory of Alex Odeh

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORREA. Madam Speaker, today I rise to remember October 11th the day that Alex Odeh was assassinated 36 years ago. This somber anniversary is a stark reminder that his killers have still not yet been brought to justice. In fact, not a single suspect has been named. The pipe bomb that killed Mr. Odeh as he opened the door to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's Santa Ana office that morning took his life and left a wife without a husband, three daughters without a father.

Alex Odeh was a Palestinian-American activist and civil rights icon who served as the West Coast regional director for the ADC. He worked to erode pervasive stereotypes against Arabs in the media and stood for the human rights of all. The lack of progress in the investigation into his death is, at the very least, disturbing. For 36 years, the Department of Justice and FBI have been ignoring what they themselves deemed an act of domestic terrorism. Just a year after Mr. Odeh 's assassination, Rev. Jesse Jackson stood up and criticized the FBI's investigation, and that criticism has only become more prophetic.

In 2013, 28 years after the bombing that took Alex Odeh's life, Ben Jealous, then the President of the NAACP, wrote an op-ed in which he compared Mr. Odeh to the civil rights icon Medgar Evers, highlighting ``each man's commitment to building bridges beyond his community''. He wrote that Mr. Odeh's ``life and work shared strong parallels with Medgar Evers, as did his untimely and tragic death. Unlike Medgar Evers, however, the name Alex Odeh remains unrecognizable for too many Americans, and his murder remains unresolved.''

Today, I am introducing a resolution to remember the life and work of Alex Odeh and to call for justice to be served. I ask my colleagues to join me in my call.

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