Our Voices

Expanding Solidarity with the Arab Region Will Strengthen Prison Abolition

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Consensus is growing across U.S. social movements that people living in the U.S. have a responsibility to stand in solidarity with Palestinian liberation due to Washington providing Israel with $3.8 billion in annual military aid. Union teachers are preparing votes in solidarity with the Palestinian people and polls indicate a shift in thinking, particularly on the left and with young people and BIPOC communities. Solidarity with Palestine is often based on a recognition that the U.S. government has allowed our taxes to fund Israeli state violence and that racist U.S. systems like policing and prisons share resources and technologies with Israel. Yet we should also recognize that the U.S. imposes disastrous neoliberal economic policies on Palestinians and that these policies are essential to U.S. domination of many parts of the Arab region and North Africa. For example, in many countries in that region, U.S.-led economic neoliberalism is devastating the population.

Featured in Category

Parents’ Love Transcends Sexual Identity

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“I’m bisexual,” Isabella Balta said heaving a long sigh of relief. I literally saw the heavy weight lifting from my twelve-year-old daughter’s shoulders and quickly felt a similar weight landing on mine. My family and I were eating out at a neighborhood restaurant, discussing the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of marriage equality, making same-sex marriage legal across the country. The #LoveWins movement was a hot topic in the summer of 2015 that as a family we often talked about with support. Isabella’s Quinceañera, 2018

Sometime between the appetizer and main course being served, Isabella decided it was the right time to share with us she is bisexual.

Education

Gap Years Don’t Appeal To Everyone

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Nationwide, more students decided to take a gap year in the 2020-2021 school year than in previous ones, according to the Gap Year Association. But while some students decided to opt out of their school year, a few historically Black colleges did not see a significant number of students do the same.  A gap year has long been an opportunity for individuals to deepen their self-awareness through experiences, according to Ethan Knight, founder of the Gap Year Association. Many have aimed to do this through travel, volunteer work and other activities prior to enrolling into post-secondary education or entering the workforce.  But the COVID-19 pandemic complicated things.

Our Voices

We Will Not Stop Talking About Palestine

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Moments after President Biden thanked his team for their efforts in “bringing about a cease-fire” (that was actually brought about by Palestinian resistance), the social media posts of Palestinian and Arab American progressives across the U.S. echoed a similar sentiment: “We will not stop talking about Palestine just because a cease-fire was announced.” Two assumptions underpin this sentiment. First, for Arab Americans, the concept of “cease-fire” is meaningless as long as Israel continues colonizing Palestine.  As we have learned from history, after every cease-fire, Israel has continued to expand its borders far beyond the areas of land it confiscated from Palestinians since 1947 by expelling and dispossessing Palestinians from their homes, as we saw in Sheikh Jarrah and intentionally killing Palestinians en masse. Second, Arab Americans are exceptionally aware that the struggle over Palestine is a battle over narratives. In other words, a persistent pro-Israeli doctrine stifles criticism of Israel in nearly every sector of public debate from the corporate media, to social media, education, and the non-profit industry.  As Israel and the U.S. have institutionalized the idea of Israel as the victim, killing Palestinians only out of self-defense, Palestinian and Arab American social movement agendas have prioritized breaking the silence, shifting the narrative, and continuing to talk about Palestine.                    Over the last few weeks, the necessity of breaking the silence has been more urgent than ever before.

Our Voices

Blatant Racism Against Muslims Is Still With Us

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Shortly after his inauguration, President Joe Biden reversed former President’s Donald Trump’s Muslim Travel Ban, stating those actions are a stain on our national conscience.” This stance aligns with that of the tens of thousands of protesters who, at the time the first Muslim Travel Ban was enacted in January 2017, took to the streets and to airports across the country with slogans such as, “We are all Immigrants,” “Standing with Muslims against Islamophobia,” and “Stop Hatred against Muslims.” To be sure, the Muslim Travel Ban is a racist policy. It seeks to keep out or deport people perceived to be Muslim based upon the racist assumption that “they” are violent potential terrorist enemies of the U.S. nation. The ban was an executive order that prevented individuals from primarily Muslim countries, and later, from many African countries, from entering the United States. Yet ending the Muslim Ban only scratches the surface of a much larger problem. If progressives really want to end anti-Muslim racism, we are going to need a more radical approach, that requires, as Angela Davis reminds us, “grasping things at the root.” The root cause of the Muslim Ban is anti-Muslim racism, which has many roots.

Coronavirus

Masks Don’t Have Universal Appeal In Chicago

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Some Chicago residents have mixed feelings about the amended mask mandate by Gov. J.B. Pritzker and city officials this week. Pritzker and Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady announced that those who’ve been fully vaccinated can go without masks in most settings. Chicago resident Omar Johnson said he doesn’t understand the purpose of mask-wearing, even for those who haven’t been vaccinated, he said. You can get the virus whether you wear a mask or not, he stressed. “What is the purpose,” he said.

Community

Many Puerto Ricans See Solidarity With Palestinians

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Thunderous battles escalate in the skies above Israel and the ground below Gaza City, as the Israeli-Palestinian crisis continues to unleash death and destruction. Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators are marching on the streets of  Chicago and across the United States condemning what they say is indiscriminate bombing by Israel. Among the hundreds of “Free Palestine” signs and waving Palestinian flags are Puerto Rican flags peppered throughout the crowd shouting, “Hey hey, ho ho, the occupation has got to go.”

Many Puerto Ricans stand in solidarity with Palestinians against what they see as a common enemy: settler colonialism. “During the recent uprisings we continue the long tradition of protesting and demanding an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine,” declared the Puerto Rican Cultural Center of Chicago in a statement on social media. “We will continue to fight until Palestine, Puerto Rico, and everyone is free.”

Following the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico became an unincorporated territory of the United States in 1899.

Our Voices

Housing Is A Human Right

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No one should have to choose between decent, safe, affordable housing and one that is insecure, unhealthy, or worse – be forced into homelessness. Accessing suitable housing not only meets an individual’s social needs, but also bulldozes barriers to fair employment, education, and health care ensuring community strength and growth for the entire populous. Over decades in the making, Chicago’s housing crisis has only been intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic with the increased threat of evictions, foreclosures, and bankruptcy. Despite declines due to the pandemic, Chicago’s average rent is just under $2,000 and the median home sale price is $253,000, according to residential real estate platforms. Those listings vary considerably in North and South Side neighborhoods. While data varies, after you factor in the cost of living expenses such as utilities and groceries, a renter needs to bring in a salary of around $95,000 a year and $85,000 a year for a homeowner.

Our Voices

Latino Muslims Put Their Faith Into Action

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The temperature drops faster than the setting sun on a Friday evening that feels more like Autumn than Spring. Car after car with members of the Ojala Foundation roll into the parking lot of Fairplay Foods on the Southwest Side for the weekly “Neighborly Deeds Initiative” of passing out food to the homeless. “As-salamu alaikum,” Arabic for “Peace be upon you” is followed by “Wa-alaikum As-salaam,” ”And peace be onto you” as volunteers greet one another. For some members of the Latino Muslim group, this will be their first time earning their hasanat, or reward for good deeds; others have been donating their time since the program began three years ago. Members of the Ojalá Foundation enjoy iftaar, the evening meal in the parking lot of FairPlay Foods, 2200 S. Western Ave.

Our Voices

University Needs To Do Better When Identifying Race

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After decades of institutionalized racism against people perceived to be Arab, Middle Eastern, or Muslim in the U.S., it is a great disappointment that the University of Illinois continues to categorize Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) students as racially white in data, surveys, and university records. These populations face significant levels of racism across the U.S., in the state of Illinois, and on college campuses. To fight racism and discrimination and quantify it, this group must have its own designation separate from white. Currently, these students are classified as white, even as they are targeted as distinctly different from and inferior to whites, portrayed and treated as potential terrorists, enemies of the U.S. nation, and too frequently attacked for belonging to what bigots crudely deem a misogynist and backwards culture and religion (Islam). This institutionalizes their invisibility — meaning although they face racial adversity, they are denied recognition as a racial/ethnic group that has the legitimacy to advocate for racial justice, resources, and rights or simply be recognized, known about, and understood as having a distinct experience of race/ethnicity in the U.S. Perhaps institutionalizing their invisibility is intentional.