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Linda Sarsour (Photo by Miriam Fogelson via Colorlines)
Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, traveled recently with other activists to Ferguson, Missouri, to speak with Arab and South Asian shop owners there about making common cause in the fight against racism, racial profiling and violence. She spoke with Julianne Hing of Colorlines about her experiences there and her reflections on events of the past few months, both in the U.S. and in Gaza.
What I took away from Ferguson was that it’s OK to be angry. That anger is not something we should be ashamed of when we are each working against injustice. Injustice is supposed to make us angry. And that anger can be productive and translated into systemic change. I was proud to be angry, which is something we’re told not to be—angry Arab women or angry black women. But in Ferguson it felt good to be angry, and we were angry alongside people around us who also showed you love. It was something I never felt before in my life.
Sarsour spoke with Colorlines about the connections that can be drawn between communities thousands of miles apart, and how those communities share experiences of discrimination and suffering.
In July we were watching the massacres happening in Gaza, and people made a connection between Gaza and their water supply and Detroit and their water issues. People were connecting the dots with creative messaging, saying, “From Detroit to Gaza, water is a human right.” We are here supporting people. These are people of color, poor, living in a densely populated piece of land who can’t even get access to clean water, and we look across the world and have empathy for them. But right here in our own country in a place like Michigan, we have our own fellow Americans who are literally without running water in their apartments.
There was a solidarity expressed between communities, Sarsour noted.
People in Gaza, who barely have Internet access, were tweeting at people in Ferguson telling them how to protect themselves from tear gas. Even without our intervention as Palestinian-Americans—I’m Palestinian-American and have family living in Gaza and the West Bank—ordinary people in Gaza in a war found the time to reach out to fellow human beings across the world. [They said] you are in resistance. We are in resistance.
Sarsour also reflected on what she characterized as “the most hostile civic environment I’ve ever experienced in my life.” While Sarsour is 34, she said that her parents, who have lived in the U.S. for more than 40 years, feel the same way.
For us, right now, there’s so much external pressure on the community, not just from media or elected officials, [but] from external terrorist groups all the way across the world. It’s gotten to the point where it’s brought some of our leaders to their knees. [They] apologize for any horrific thing [that] anyone who’s Muslim or says they’re Muslim does in the name of Islam. What’s different about this kind of heat is this doesn’t happen in any other community. You will never, ever see a person from the Jewish community or Christian community or the Buddhist community—no one is ever put in a position where they have to apologize for every single person that supposedly is from their faith group who does something horrifying.
Read more of the Colorlines interview with Sarsour and learn her ideas for promoting collaboration between communities to fight racism.