- Welcome.
I'm Sylvia Law.
This is the 23rd time
that I've had the honor
of welcoming people to the
Rose Sheinberg Lecture.
Rose Sheinberg was an
intersectional person
before anyone knew that word.
And she's also the aunt
of Richard Sheinberg,
and Richard and Jill had the idea
of giving something to the law school,
but in a form that would honor Rose,
but also would assure that the students
were involved in picking the lecturer,
in organizing the program
and continuing the tradition
of bringing people together
to address evolving,
always challenging issues
at the intersection
of race, gender and class.
Honestly, I am so delighted
with this audience,
I don't think we've ever seen an audience
as diverse as this one, and
we've had a lot of diverse
audiences and great speakers,
but I think you guys
win the prize on that regard.
The committee that organizes this lecture
consists primarily of students.
Students are selected in their first year,
and I'm now open to applications from 1Ls
who would like to be on the committee.
They serve for the rest
of their law school career
and they help select the lecturer
and organize the program.
And also some faculty
members Alina Das, someplace,
right here in the front.
Our wonderful immigration law clinician,
Naomi Sunshine, someplace.
Oh down at the end.
A wonderful lawyering professor,
we have had a tradition
of having an alum member
and we've revived that this year,
Elizabeth Jordan from 2013,
Elizabeth are you here?
No.
Our graduating 3L members
are Claude Heffron,
and Hugh Barrin, who might be out
at the table registering
people coming late.
They've taken us, I think, to
a new level of organization.
We've never before taken
people's emails down.
But it's brilliant. (laughs)
It only took us 23 years
to figure that out guys.
And the 2L members that
will have the heavy lifting
next year are Edie Joseph,
Tyler Walton and Kyla Vincent,
who've all been wonderful
members this year.
My job is to introduce Vince Warren,
head of the Center for
Constitutional Rights.
He has a long career as a civil rights
and civil liberties lawyer at the ACLU,
now at the center working for
the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission in South Africa.
Just this week the center's in the news
challenging the surveillance
of Black Lives Matter,
enforcing the continuing to
struggle the enforce the rights
that the center achieved
from the Supreme Court
for the Guantanamo detainees,
challenging in federal courts the torture
of people at Abu Ghraib.
The center is on the front
line of every important
human rights and civil
rights and racial justice
and economic justice issue
and we're so fortunate
that Vince could take time
to come be here with us tonight.
We had lunch with Linda earlier today
and we are in for a treat.
Vince.
(audience applauding)
- Thank you so much for the
introduction Professor Law
and these days, I like to tell people
that the Center for Constitutional Rights
is mostly the center for what's left
of your Constitutional rights.
(audience laughing)
But the good news is that
you guys are all here
and you're gonna make that stuff happen
in your legal careers.
My name is Vince Warren,
it's my distinct honor
to introduce Linda Sarsour,
who is our lecturer tonight.
Now there are a great
many things to be said
about Linda and her
outstanding leadership,
but since I'm all that
is standing between you
and hearing her talk, I
will be mercifully brief.
However, for the sake of
maintaining my own self-confidence,
I have to be honest with you.
In addition to being
honored to introduce Linda,
I'm a bit relieved.
And I'm relieved because
I get to speak before her,
rather than after her.
Because when Linda stops speaking
the mic just drops.
There's nothing more to
be said after she speaks,
there's nothing, there's
no more intellectual
or spiritual or emotional bandwidth left
for the listener,
there's only inspiration,
and a desire for action.
You will feel that tonight.
And just so that you know
that my immense gratitude
at having been asked to speak before Linda
isn't purely driven ego, I
would like to offer this.
Earlier this year, I was
asked to keynote a gala
at the Michigan Human
Rights Coalition in Detroit.
And on those planning
calls where I was speaking
with the folks who were
organizing that event,
I asked them who the keynote speaker was
in the previous year in the
hopes that I would be able
to build a bit on the
previous speaker's talk
to be able to move people along.
The event host literally said
the following words to me.
"Bad news for you Vince,
last year's speaker
"was Linda Sarsour, I
don't think you'll be able
"to top that, so perhaps
you should be thinking
"about talking about something else."
(audience laughing)
So when I arrived at the event,
everyone that was sitting
at my table was chatting,
a full year later, about how amazing
and inspiring Linda's talk was.
Then, as if recognizing
me for the first time,
that I was in the room,
they all turned to me
and in a manner that can
only really be described
as concerned sympathy and said,
"Oh, I'm sure you'll be good too."
(audience laughing)
Well, they were right.
There is only one Linda
Sarsour in the world,
and I realized that one
of our great privileges
in social justice work is to listen to
and learn from a true leader.
And when I'm in Linda's presence,
I'm well-advised to
listen more than I talk.
So tonight I'm gonna introduce to you,
I'm gonna introduce Linda
to you in three ways.
First I'm gonna tell you the things
that you do know about her.
Then I'm gonna tell you the things
that you should know about her,
and then I'm gonna tell you a few things
that you might not know about her.
The things that you do know.
Well, to begin with, I wanna
start with the first sentence
of her bio, which in
addition to being the best
sentence in a bio that was ever written,
(audience laughing)
tells you exactly who she is.
Linda Sarsour is a working
woman, racial justice
and civil rights activist,
every Islamophobe's worst nightmare,
(audience laughing)
and the mother of three.
She is all of those things.
Each are important, none are severable
and she refuses to let those
or any other categories
limit her vision, her
work or even her being.
She's the executive director
of the Arab American
Association of New York
and co-founder of the first
Muslim online organizing
platform, MPower Change.
Linda has been at the
forefront of major civil rights
campaigns, including a call to an end
to unwarranted surveillance of
New York's Muslim Communities
and ending police abuses
like Stop and Frisk.
In the wake of the police
murder of Mike Brown,
she co-founded Muslims for Ferguson
to build solidarity amongst
American Muslim communities
and encourage work
against police brutality.
She's a member of the New York,
of the Justice League
NYC, which is a leading
New York City force of activists
of formerly incarcerated
individuals and artists working to reform
New York City police department
and the criminal justice system.
She's received numerous awards.
Can't go into all of them.
Champion of Change by the White House,
should we start with that one?
She won the Champion of
Change from the White House.
The YWCA's U.S.A. Women
of Distinction Award
for advocacy and civil
engagement and an award
from the Arab American
Anti-discrimination Committee.
Linda was named one amongst
500 of the most influential
Muslims in the world.
Which, if you think about
it, is saying something.
Most recently, Linda was
profiled in the front page
of the New York Times Metro section,
did you all see that?
She was dubbed, "Brooklyn
Homegirl in a Hijab."
The things that you
should know is that Linda
is extraordinarily strategic.
As a leader, she has mastered
the two greatest lessons
that anyone who aspires
to leadership should know.
One, people will follow
you because they choose to,
and not because you want them to.
And two, never ask anyone to do something
that you wouldn't do yourself.
More on lesson one later.
But as for lesson two, Linda
does not only talk the talk,
she walks the walk.
And by that mean, I don't
really actually mean
that rhetorically, she
literally walks the walk.
Linda co-chaired the March to Justice,
which was a 250 mile journey
on foot to Washington D.C.
to deliver a justice package
to end racial profiling,
demilitarize police and
demand the government
invest in young people in communities.
That's 250 miles on foot.
In heels.
(audience laughing)
Not only that, amongst
her many accomplishments,
Linda was also instrumental
in the coalition
for Muslim school holidays,
to push New York City
to incorporate two
Muslim high holy holidays
in the New York City
public school calendar.
And because of her efforts, New York City
is now the largest school
system in the country
to officially recognize these holidays.
And just reflecting on
these two achievements,
I would remiss if I
didn't note that the only
other person that I know
who both led a march
to Washington and secured
government holidays
was the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.
Some things that you
don't know about Linda.
Linda doesn't get often,
but I bet she's nervous now.
(audience laughing)
I've worked with Linda for
years, for many many years.
Meeting her for the first
time in San Francisco
several years ago and her
first words to me were,
"Vince Warren, we need to
keep it spicy up in here."
By spicy she was referring to her penchant
and talent for shaking up the status quo,
for telling truth no
matter where it may lead
and by being fiercely
accountable to her people.
The most important thing
to note is that my people
are also her people.
All of our people are her people,
so long as they remain awake to,
and dissatisfied with the manner
in which the most vulnerable
amongst us are treated.
Linda is fierce, of course,
but she also loves to have fun.
She has a wicked, oh yes, I
did say that, sense of humor,
and can be credited with
single-handedly bringing
blue eyeshadow back to the movement.
(audience laughing)
At one point in Miami, working
with the Dream Defenders,
Linda and other activists took
over the Florida State House.
They just took it over.
In order to secure the repeal
of the stand your ground
laws and others that
contribute to the deaths
of black and brown people
and you might ask yourself,
do you have the courage to take
over the governor's office?
And if you did, what would
you do when you got there?
Do you know what Linda did?
She did the electric slide.
I'm not kidding.
(audience chuckling)
Taking over, they are camping
out in the governor's office,
and this coalition of
activists who wanna have fun
and want to talk about
how important it is,
recognizing how hard it
is, did the electric slide.
It's on Instagram and I can prove it.
(audience laughing)
Which brings us back to lesson one.
As a leader, people choose to follow her.
They choose to listen to her,
they choose to consult with her.
She is deeply respected and honored
in both the legal community,
the organizing community
and the artists community.
Social change simply is not possible
without people like Linda.
I am deeply privileged
to have worked with her
on a range of issues.
I consider her not only
a friend and colleague,
I consider her family, I love her dearly.
Ladies and gentlemen, Linda Sarsour.
(audience applauding)
- I don't even know what to say.
And Vince knows something about me,
I don't get quite speechless ever.
But I wanna say I am even more humbled
and honored to be here in this space
with you all this evening.
I am grateful for the friendship
and fearlessness of Vince
and the Center of Constitutional Rights.
I actually do this work
with the kinda confidence
I have 'cause I'm like,
wherever they're gonna send me,
CCR's gonna find me, and
I'm gonna be all right.
Someone asked me earlier at the lunch,
they said, "What does
community lawyering look like?
"What are your good experiences?
"We wanna know as young aspiring lawyers."
And I said, "You wanna
know what that looks like,
"hang out with the Center
for Constitutional Rights."
They are true advocates of our community.
They center the most marginalized voices,
and when they defend the rights
of those that are most marginalized,
believe it that they
had those conversations
and that those plaintiffs are proudly
sitting in those courtrooms,
believing that the lawyers
at the Center for Constitutional Rights
are sharing their stories and
are defending their rights
from a place of values and
convictions and principles.
And I am grateful every single day
for the Center for Constitutional Rights
and in particular under the
leadership of Vince Warren.
So thank you, thank you,
thank you every day,
for everything that you do.
I'm just blessed just
thinking about Miss Sheinberg
and this lecture that's
been going on for 23 years.
And one interesting thing
that Vince didn't tell you
about me that not many people know
is that I was also an
aspiring high school teacher.
I wanted to be an English teacher,
that was my life dream.
I had this vision that I was gonna,
that, I'm old, so remember
that Michelle Pfeiffer movie
where she was like, she was
a high school English teacher
and she was inner city schools
and you were gonna get those
kids to express themselves,
and you were gonna help
them see their potential.
That was me, literally
that was my life dream,
but I'm not a teacher,
but I felt connected
to Miss Sheinberg through
her kind of progressive
leftist, that's exactly
who I wanted to be.
So, it's 2016, and it's
been a hell of a year.
I can't wait, anybody else can't wait till
this darn year is over?
(audience laughing)
Yeah, man, lemme tell you.
So, there's a lot of things
you probably already know
about me, I'm a Muslim.
I'm a daughter of immigrants.
I am also Palestinian.
And I'm a woman.
Basically you don't want to be me in 2016.
(audience members laughing)
And it's real out here, and I wanna share
and people know me very well
and I'm known for, I'm from Brooklyn,
like I just keep it real, I'm Brooklyn
and I'm Palestinian,
like, can't really, yeah.
(audience laughing)
And I'm known for just keeping it real
and just really allowing
myself to speak the truth
and even if there are things that I say
that make you feel uncomfortable,
I want you to sit with
that discomfort a little.
I want you to weigh yourself in it
and it's okay.
And I want you to know that
we live in New York City.
We live in one of the most
metropolitan, cosmopolitan,
liberal, progressive cities
in these United States of
America, if not in the world.
So this is where my words come from.
You know, hate crimes
against Muslims have risen
exponentially and I'm not even talking
about the rest of the
country for a second.
I'm gonna talk about right
here in New York City,
just within the last few weeks.
Two religious imams
executed on the streets
of Ozone Park, and just a
few, maybe 10 days after that,
a 60-year-old woman from
Bangladesh, Nazma Khanam
was stabbed to death in her own community,
in Jamaica Hills New York.
When they found her,
she still had her purse,
beautiful gold bracelets were on.
She wasn't robbed, she was stabbed
in her own community.
And just a few weeks after
that, two women from Yemen
in Brooklyn, broad daylight,
pushing babies in strollers
were attacked by woman
who physically assaulted
one in particular who
was pushing a stroller
and the baby fell out of the stroller.
This was here in New York City.
A tourist, Muslim tourist
comes here from Europe
'cause she wants to come,
who doesn't wanna come
to New York City?
She's out here by Valentino's.
Like I can't even afford to buy stuff
from Valentino's and she's walking out
and a man sets her shirt on fire.
This is here in New
York City, in our city.
And we just a few weeks ago celebrated
(speaking in foreign language)
which is one of the highest
holy holidays for Muslims.
And as I was preparing my children
and our families were
preparing and our mosques
were getting ready, we were
doing these outdoor prayers
with thousands of people,
there was a Muslim community
in Fort Pierce Florida,
parents who had to explain
to their young kids
that actually no, we can't go tomorrow
to our mosque that we always go to,
because some man decided
to set our mosque on fire
the day before I high holy holiday.
And just maybe not even 10 days ago,
three white men in Garden City Kansas
were arrested on domestic
terrorism charges.
They had a plan to plant four car bombs
around a housing complex
and a mosque that housed
over 120 Somali Muslim refugees.
And the FBI said that
if that terror attack
would have actually been implemented,
which by the way was scheduled to happen
on November ninth, the
day after elections,
we would have had 120 dead people,
dead Americans, dead sisters
and brothers, on our watch,
here in the United States of America.
I just read yesterday
that a guy in Agoura Hills
outside of Los Angeles was arrested.
He was arrested for documented threats
against the Islamic Center
of Southern California,
which I've been to, which
is a very beautiful mosque
and a beautiful community.
Actually a very active and
actively engaged community.
Very well loved by their neighbors.
And when they went to this man's house,
he had dozens of firearms, full magazines
and over 200 pounds of ammunition.
Guess where this white man is?
He's out on the streets of
Southern California on bail.
So you wanna tell me
how Muslims are supposed
to feel safe in Southern California
knowing the man that was threatening them
and actually had the
ammunition in his house
that could have carried out the threats
that he was making is walking around
on the streets of Southern California.
This is the reality that we live in
in these United States
of America as Muslims.
Now, when I say hate
crimes, and people think
that we talk about
Islamophobia and Muslims,
we think about oh you know,
we think about racists
and bigots and individual acts of hate.
But not only do we have to deal with that,
and fear walking in our own cities
and our own communities
by our fellow Americans
that wanna harm us, but
then we have to deal
with systemic Islamophobia and racism
that is implemented by the U.S. government
against our communities.
Including in places like New York City
where through secret documents,
not through paranoia or because
we think it's happening,
that's what people used to say before
the Associated Press released blockbuster,
at least it was blockbuster
for everybody else,
for me, it was like, thank
you for confirming everything
that I've been saying
for the past 12 years,
but okay, but for
everyone else in New York
it was like (gasps)
this is really horrible.
That the New York police
department was engaging
in unwarranted surveillance
of 250 mosques,
Islamic centers, Islamic schools as young
as elementary to the
Muslim Student Associations
including on places like the NYU campus.
And, including my organization,
the Arab American Association of New York,
where we were also in secret documents,
where the New York police department
had a bright idea to create a profile
of a confidential
informant that they thought
would be quite spectacular
to serve on the board
of directors of my organization.
Now we don't know if that ever happened.
How do you know, for sure,
that our board of directors
are not infiltrated
with police informants?
We just don't know for sure,
and this is what surveillance
does to a community.
It's pretty much psychological warfare
on a community, many of whom
came from police states, right?
Fleeing the very things that
are happening to Muslims
in these United States of America.
So, when we think about Islamophobia
or thinking about the
environment that we live in,
who's the most directly
impacted and targeted?
Women, right?
I can't help the way that I look.
You don't have to ask me where I'm from.
You don't have to ask me
what religion I follow,
you already know because
of the way that I look.
And what's so unfortunate about that is
that in these United States of America,
a country supposedly founded
on religious freedom,
it is actually an act of courage
to look like me and walk on these streets
in this very country where many people
from other religions actually came here
because they thought here is the country
where we can practice our faith freely,
where we don't have to
be afraid of who we are.
Now, when we think about
Muslim women in particular,
you think about two things,
and this is, you know I blame
a lot of people for this,
and this is by the way,
I'm not an academic,
so I'm giving you what I
call an articulate rant
for the next like 20 minutes, but.
(audience chuckling)
There are either two things
that we are basically sold,
or we're consuming about Muslim women.
We are either oppressed
and victims of violence,
that's one story, right?
Or, we're vulnerable and
being recruited, right,
as perpetrators of violence
'cause we're being recruited
by groups like Isis, right?
Or we're part of that group.
And somehow, the majority of
Muslim women in between, right,
are literally absent.
Like we don't exist, non-existent.
And for me, you know
that's the biggest problem
that I face as a Muslim woman,
because we're here, we've been here.
Not just here in the United States,
but we've been here, we
live in almost every country
in this world.
Muslim women are flourishing
in every country in this world,
including in Muslim
majority countries, right?
And we have important
stories, both stories here
in the United States as Muslim women,
but also stories of Muslim
women abroad, right?
Even in places where we have
made up these stereotypes
of what Muslim women look
like in Pakistan or in Yemen
or in Palestine or in north Africa.
We just are walking around
with these perceptions
not based on reality, but
based on some Hollywood film
we watched, right, or some
article that's out of context
in any, even in the liberal media
or the progressive media, by the way.
The great thing about
Islamophobia by the way,
is it doesn't matter what
part of the political spectrum
that you're on, everybody's
joining in on it.
It pays whatever side of the spectrum on,
so for those of you who think
Bill Maher is a liberal,
I'm talking to you.
(audience laughing)
Now.
So a lot of people say to me,
"You know Linda, you are
an American Muslim woman,
"and you're just so damn unapologetic,
"where does that come from?
"I wanna be like that,
I'm not even Muslim.
(audience laughing)
"What is it?"
And what I tell people is
that if I took it upon myself,
because of the type of public education
that I had, and I'm a New
York City public school,
or the product of New
York City public school,
and I love public school, and I'm grateful
for the teachers that I had.
But they had little resources to work with
and we're working from curriculums
where I didn't really get to see myself
or understand what my role was or where,
where did I come up in the
trajectory of American history?
That was just not the
story that I was told.
So I took it upon myself
to do my own studying.
And where I come from
and why I am who I am,
is because I understand,
you know people say heroes
and Vince said Dr. Martin
Luther King, right?
He said a hero, and there's so many heroes
that we can think of, we
can think of women and men,
so many heroes, right?
But I always tell people there were heroes
before the heroes, right?
We never talk about the
heroes before the heroes,
'cause you might have not
known what their names were.
And for me, the heroes before the heroes
is that I connect my own lineage, right,
as a Muslim in this
country, to enslaved people
who were forced to come
here, about 25 to 30%
of those enslaved people were Muslim.
And there are many books that you could,
I'm reading a book right
now, "Servants of Allah"
that tells you the stories
of these enslaved Muslims
who came here to the United States
and there's a book called
"Prince of Slaves."
But my point is is that here were people,
and by the way the Muslim
enslaved people in particular,
they were, and of course others as well,
but in particular the
Muslim enslaved people,
they were well educated.
Some of whom were fluent
in the Arabic language.
Some of whom were Islamic scholars
and believe it or not,
some of whom belonged
to the royal family.
The slave trade literally
didn't discriminate
when they were enslaving
the African people.
So 25 to 30% of these
enslaved people were Muslim.
And what I always think
about when I'm feeling down,
and I'm like, "I hate this."
And "I don't like this?"
And "Why is this?"
And "I'm just over this."
Right, this is what I think.
My mind takes me to these enslaved people
who were forced to come to this country,
who were Muslim, and somehow,
I don't even know how,
how did these people figure
out how to stay Muslim?
How do you figure out how to stay faithful
and connected to your religion?
Right?
I read stories where based on the sunset
and the sunrise, they knew when to pray.
I read stories that based on the seasons
they knew when the different
Islamic months were.
So they knew when it was Ramadan, right?
They might have been off a little bit,
but it was all about the intention.
So I think to myself, if enslaved people
could figure out how to be Muslim
under the watch of slave masters,
why am I gonna be fretting
about being Muslim in 2016?
Because I will never understand
the sacrifices, right,
of those Muslims, and that's where
I take my confidence
from, my courage from,
my resilience from, because
someone risked their actual
life for me to be Muslim
in America in 2016.
And for me, those stories
give me inspiration.
And remember, the enslaved
people were black Muslims.
And what I take inspiration
from is living in 2016,
that I'm Muslim, but
imagine our black Muslim
sisters and brothers who have
to be black and Muslim in 2016.
Now,
I've been old enough to
be part of many elections
if I wanted to, right?
And I never really decided that that was
what I wanted to do.
But in 2016 I felt a different
way, as a Muslim woman.
As a person from a marginalized community,
a vilified community,
a victimized community,
I felt a different way.
And what I did this 2016
is I wanted to get off
the political margins
and I wanted to bring
my community's voice to the center.
Because I was tired of a conversation
that was about us without us.
And I told this to my
community many times before,
I said, "Look, when you're not part
"of the conversation, what happens?
"The conversation is about you."
And I wasn't gonna allow
there to be a conversation
that did not include the voices
of people from my community.
So, during this election, I joined
the Bernie Sanders campaign.
I'm still heart broken
about that by the way, but,
I'll get over it eventually.
And, you know, people were
like, "Bernie Sanders?"
I said, "Look, let's
get something straight.
"I don't really get
inspired by old white guys."
And Bernie Sanders wasn't
exactly the most charismatic man
in America, he was
definitely no Malcolm X.
But what I was intrigued by when it came
to the Bernie Sanders
campaign, I was intrigued
by a few things.
One was his authenticity
and his genuinity.
The guy just kept it real,
and I'll tell you this,
he's from Brooklyn,
he just can't help himself.
It's just, you just, you're
from Brooklyn you just,
just say it like it is.
So I was intrigued by that.
But I was also intrigued by the people
that were part of the campaign,
and this is where when
we talk about the erasure
of people and minority
communities in particular,
and women of color in particular,
that was happening across the board
in particular on the
Bernie Sanders campaign.
I was so tired of people saying
that the Bernie Sanders
campaign was a campaign
of younger white folks, because it wasn't.
Were they there? Sure.
Were they out there?
Were they with us?
Were they down with Bernie?
Were hey feeling the Bern?
They sure were.
But to erase Muslims who
because of our participation
in the primaries, gave Bernie Sanders
the biggest political
upset in U.S. history
in a state like Michigan,
which Nate Silver,
one of the most accurate pollsters said,
"Hillary had it 99%."
And then we showed up on election day
and the story was that
the Muslim community
helped Bernie Sanders ride to victory
in the state of Michigan.
When people like Nadya Stevens
who was the New York state
director, a powerful political black woman
in the state of New York,
was leading the campaign
in New York, when our New
York state political director
for the campaign Michelle
Agelli, who's also a black woman,
when Symone Sanders, one of
the most powerful politicos
on the national level, who was
the national press secretary
for Bernie Sanders, when these voices
of women of color were being erased,
I was a national surrogate
for Bernie Sanders.
Rosario Dawson is Puerto Rican,
like the fact that we were not the focus
of a campaign like Bernie Sanders
goes back to why we're talking about
where are the Muslim women voices?
It's not that there aren't black women
who are powerful and active,
it's not that there are Muslim women
who are silent and are waiting for you
to tell them to get up and speak.
The question is why are you not listening?
Right?
The question is why are we allowing there
to be an erasure of one of
the most powerful groups
of people in this country,
and they are women of color.
Leading every movement,
at every front line,
at every arrest line, it is women of color
in these United States of America.
Now things that bother me is when people
see people like me, they
think I'm an anomaly, right?
They're like, "Wow, look at her."
(audience laughing)
"You know, she's really
defying those darn stereotypes.
"Wow, shattering them.
"That's just, man, those
men in her community
"must be up in arms.
"Darn it, she must be risking her life
"as a Muslim woman speaking
up and speaking out."
And what bothers me about that is that
what I do is not in spite of
my Islam and my community.
It is exactly because of
the fact that I am Muslim
that I have courage and conviction
and principles and values.
That is why I do this work.
I want people to look at me
and say, she is who she is
because she is a Muslim woman.
And that's not the conversation
that we are allowed to have,
because somehow, because I live
in the United States of
America, I have to be grateful,
this is where the trolls come in.
I have to be grateful, right?
'Cause I don't live in Saudi Arabia.
The fact that in this country people have,
basically what they're doing
is they're making money
off of the propagation of
misinformation about Islam.
There is an Islamophobia
industry in this country
and it's not conspiracy.
Like I'm Arab, I know,
conspiracy theorist,
that's what we do.
(audience chuckling)
But this time I'm serious.
Look, there is an Islamophobia industry.
There are actual entire organizations
in this country, Act for America,
The Center for Security Policy,
by the way these people
are actually advisors
to presidential candidates,
this is where the hot mess
comes in, and many of whom
are registered hate groups
by the Southern Poverty Law Center
and other groups who track
basically white supremacists
and nativist groups.
And these people get paid.
Like they wake up every morning
and they are propagating
this idea that Islam
is an oppressive religion,
they propagate that
the support of violence
and extremism and terrorism in Islam,
and all this other stuff that you watch
on national television
when you click on your TV
every single day.
And these folks are,
and one of the reasons
why someone wrote in my bio that I'm every
Islamophobe's worst nightmare is
because people like me come up
and they're just like
damn, she just messes up
the whole thing, like she is,
she is the opposite, right,
of everything that we're saying, right?
And oftentimes what they're saying
is that my religion oppresses me.
That my religion intimidates
and silences me, right?
When in fact the irony of the situation
is that the people who
silence me and intimidate me
and send me death threats
are not other Muslims.
They're not extremist Muslims.
They are mostly white
supremacist, the alt right,
and right wing Zionists.
These are the people who are telling me
that I should go back to Saudi Arabia
when in fact, in this
country, I am oppressed
by white supremacy and right wing Zionism.
This is the irony of the whole situation.
So I live in the United States of America,
in the land of democracy and freedom,
the land of free speech, and I am attacked
for engaging in democracy and free speech
by those who say that I don't deserve,
or should be grateful to live
in these United States of America.
Now,
oftentimes you know people say that
Islam is a religion of peace.
I don't know, like I'm not moved by that.
Are people moved?
I don't know, like I don't get moved,
even when my own people say that.
That's not why I am proud to be Muslim.
I'm proud to be Muslim
because what's more important
about Islam is not that
it's a religion of peace,
which it is, it's a
religion of justice, right?
So when people see me and they say,
"What is this light skinned
Palestinian girl doing
"working on Black Lives Matter?"
People ask, believe it
or not, I get asked that.
And I say to people, "Well
you got a lot to learn."
I said, "First of all, I'm Muslim."
That doesn't do anything for them.
(audience laughing)
And I say to them that Islam, or Muslims,
let's talk specifically about Muslims
in the United States of America.
One third of my community's black.
One out of every three
Muslims is African American.
So when you see people
like me, woman in hijab,
or people who tell you they're Muslim,
like I'm out here fighting
for my own sisters
and brothers first.
For me, I don't like people to look at me
and say, "Oh, Linda's an ally."
or a light skin ally.
'Cause I'm not white, so
let's not just get in that.
(audience laughing)
So, for me to project my religion, right,
and the way that I do that
is I don't wanna tell people
what Islam is, I don't wanna sit you down
and tell you, "Here is the
five pillars of Islam."
I want you to feel my Islam.
And the way that I show
you what my Islam is,
is I want you to see me
when you need me, right?
I want you to know that
when you see a Muslim woman
on the front lines of
social justice movement,
it's not because we think
it's the right thing to do,
which it is, or we think
it's the cool thing to do.
It is what our religion tells us to do.
And oftentimes one of the biggest,
you know, the trolls are just outrageous,
but you know there's a
lot of misinformation
about the prophet Mohammed
may peace be upon him.
And what I always tell people,
I mean, I don't really care
what the Islamophobes think about
my beloved prophet, I just care
what I think about him, right?
That our prophet was in himself
a racial justice activist
and if people study the
life of the prophet,
which I have, he himself was
a racial justice activist
and one of the first people
that he had appointed
to do the call to prayer
in Mecca was a black man.
That was a deliberate choice
to show that there is no hierarchy of race
or skin color, right?
Our beloved prophet was an
environmental justice activist.
This idea that this Earth
was given to us by our God
and our responsibility to take care of it.
We think about human
rights, I remember one time
being at a labor rally for living wage
and I heard this imam and I was,
it was so profound even
people were like, "Wow."
There is a Hadith that was
narrated by our prophet
that said, "Pay the
worker before the sweat
"on his forehead dries."
This is the principles of
justice in our religion.
Immigration, when people
talk about we don't want
the refugees, maybe we'll
take the Christian ones.
I want them to think about
that when they're doing
the little nativity thing that they do
in front of their houses,
when that Palestinian
Jewish refugee, right?
(audience laughing)
It just boggles my mind the logic
of those that hate, that in
fact, if they actually went
back and just got into,
'cause most of them,
by the way are the
religious people, right?
Like "That's what Christ said."
I say, "I don't know
what Christ you talking
"about, but yeah."
'Cause he was a Palestinian
Jew, that's what I know.
But.
(audience laughing)
And he was not white, and
he did not have blonde hair
either, but that's a
lecture for next year.
(audience laughing)
Now, I think you know, people know me too,
like I wanna work.
And Vince said this about me,
and it's something that I, we
all have to check ourselves,
and check our intentions,
why we do what we do.
And for me, this is just my, who I am,
I will never ask you to do something
that I myself would not do.
And I tell this all the time to,
in particular to those I
organize with most of whom
are people of color and
most of whom are black,
I say to people, "Look, I'm ready to die
"for what I believe in."
Like, I have no fear.
I accept whatever destiny that is for me,
but what I will say is
when I say things like
never again and not on
my watch, I mean it.
Because it's not gonna happen on my watch.
And while it may continue to happen,
I'm not gonna be around to see it,
because I know I'm gonna
risk my life to make sure
it doesn't happen where
I get to witness it.
And it reminds me of a story.
I went to lecture at a university in Ohio
and a young Muslim boy stood up,
he was 19 years old and
he said he had a question
in the question and answer part
and he said, "You know
Sister Linda, I wanna know,
"I wanna know who lived in this country
"at the time of Japanese
internment camps."
And I was standing on that
stage and I was thinking
to myself, "What is this
kid trying to ask me?"
And he kept on, and he
was really passionate
about like he thought about it,
like it's been lingering
in his mind and his heart,
like he's been thinking about it.
He said, "I wanna know
who those Americans were
"that allowed for their Japanese neighbors
"and for their kids to be
picked up and put on camps
"on this U.S. soil,
who were those people?"
He was so outraged.
And he just sat down.
And I didn't have an
answer to his question.
And then like a couple of days
later I'm sitting in my office
in New York City, in Brooklyn
and all of the sudden
his voice kinda started haunting me,
like I heard the question again.
And I said to myself, "I
know who those people were."
They were good people, but
they were the silent majority,
that's who they were.
They were people that allowed
this to happen on their watch.
And the reason why I
tell you that story is
because one of the most
important things to me right now,
we think about this idea
of intersectionality
is that Islamophobia is just a branch
on a larger tree of
racism in this country.
And when people say oh,
we wanna end Islamophobia,
ain't nobody ending nothing.
Because I'm not gonna end Islamophobia
when we still have had centuries of racism
in this country, right?
When we just keep doing the same thing,
just naming it new things like
when we went from slavery,
now we just call it mass
incarceration, like I know that.
When I understand that we
have people in this country,
corporations in these
United States of America
who profit off of the incarceration
of mostly people of color.
I understand that.
When people say and I've heard this
during the elections too,
people said, people heard,
"Oh, we gotta register
"those Muslims in databases."
Right?
And what was the response?
(gasps) Nope, not on our watch.
That sounds like Nazi Germany.
I'm sitting in my office being like,
"People, we did that in 2003."
From 2003 to 2011 we were
registering Muslim men
from 29 majority countries
and we have a whole database
of them with their fingerprints
and their pictures.
And guess what happened,
10% of those 180,000 men
were deported from this country.
And probably God knows how many more
who were afraid of just
the process in itself,
were like lemme pack my family up,
and I'm going back to
Pakistan and Bangladesh,
which happened for folks
that I know out here
in Cony Island, one of the
largest Pakistani communities
outside of Pakistan.
That already happened,
and when did it happen?
On our watch, right?
From 2003 to 2011.
People were outraged
when Ted Cruz was like,
"Oh, we gotta patrol the
Muslim neighborhoods."
Everybody was like, "What do you mean?
"Muslims live in every community.
"That's really outrageous,
we gotta go on CNN
"and hold that man
accountable to his words."
I was like, "Really people?
"We already patrol Muslim neighborhoods.
"We already have entire Muslim communities
"under unwarranted
surveillance simply based
"on the faith that we follow."
So there's a lot of righteous indignation
where people are really good at being like
(gasps) "No, it's 2016,
we don't go backwards,
"we go forwards."
No, we've been going backwards
in this post 9/11 America,
we've created a true police state.
And people of color, right?
Are at the center of
that police state, right?
Political activism in this country.
So my call to action for
you is not to hear things
and say, "Oh no, we're not
gonna let that happen."
I want you to hear from communities
who are directly impact
that it's already happening.
Our kids are already being incarcerated.
People say, "Guantanamo Bay,
we gotta close Guantanamo Bay
"and where has President
Obama, he lied to us,
"he didn't close Guantanamo Bay."
Sisters and brothers we
have something called
Guantanamo North on the soil
of these United States of America,
in places like Indiana, called
communication management
units that were created in 2006.
Muslims were like maybe,
'cause I just wanna exaggerate,
maybe we're like 1.7%
of the U.S. population.
People say we're 1%, but
I just added that .7,
'cause I think we're under counted.
(audience laughing)
But let's say we're 1%
of the U.S. population.
We make up over 80% of the
communication management units,
which are 23 hours a day
solitary confinement,
we have no access to the media,
we have no access to news papers,
we have limited access
to our immediate family.
We have to pick one family member only,
limited access to lawyers and
even with the family member
that we do have access to, right,
we are only allowed to
talk about certain things.
So even our limitations to
being able to speak freely
with our loved ones.
Like that is Guantanamo, but
it's here on this U.S. soil.
So there are things that
are happening already
on our watch, right, when
we think "Oh Donald Trump,
"we can't let that white man
be president, white supremacy."
There's a lot of bad things happening
and Donald Trump is not really
the president yet, right?
So when we think about deportation,
"Oh, deportation, he wants
to deport all undocumented
"immigrants, well that's
horrible, we need,"
We've been deporting a thousand immigrants
every single day.
Actually, President Obama
has deported more immigrants
than any other
administration prior to him.
So, my call to action for
you is that I feel like,
and this is not for people in this room,
because you are all
politically inclined people.
You are here because you
care about something,
you are here because
you have a genuine sense
of interest or even many of you who I know
are already engaged in
a lot of movement work
and social justice work.
But really calling on people to say,
"There are things
happening on our watch now.
"And there are things happening right here
"in New York City, right,
when we have to wait
"for two years for the
Department of Justice
"to tell me that they're filing charges
"against Officer Pantaleo
who killed Eric Garner
"on video for all of you to watch,
"and I needed two years for
some guy in Washington D.C.
"to tell me that he did the wrong thing
"and he violated someone's rights."
Like this is the country that we live in,
and it is absolutely outrageous
that we stand back and allow
these things to happen.
And I tell people all the
time that one of the biggest
attacks that I get from
the alt right in particular
is they say to me, "You're unpatriotic."
"You are unamerican."
Because I criticize the government
or I criticize the status of
communities in this country.
And I tell people all the time, I say,
"If anything and if
there was a picture next
"to the word patriot or
patriotic in the dictionary,
"it would have my face next to it."
I'll tell you why.
Because for me, a patriot,
someone who's American
and loves their country,
I love my country so much
that I know that my country
had the potential to be better.
When people say the greatest nation,
I don't like people who
say we live in the greatest
nation on Earth, it really bothers me.
Because it makes it
seem like we already hit
where we need to be
and it doesn't allow us
to think that what's the potential?
How much more farther can we be?
So we can truly be the
greatest nation on Earth.
When we will be the
greatest nation on Earth
is when a Muslim woman like me can walk
down the streets of New
York City and feel safe
at any time of night, right?
When a young black boy with a book bag
can walk into a train station
and not be held suspect
for something he didn't
do just for being black
and walking in the streets, right?
When an undocumented
person could walk home
and actually in their heart
know that they're gonna get home
to their children and
not be stopped by CBP
before they get there and
snatched from their families.
We'll be the greatest nation on Earth
when we're not the holders of
the largest prison population
in the world in these United States,
that's when we'll be the
greatest nation on Earth.
So, I ask all of you in this room
that we not be distracted
by this current circus
of an election, this
mortifying public display
of democracy to the rest of the world.
When we have a basically
a rapist, misogynist,
xenophobic, racist, white supremacist
that thinks he could lead
the free world, right?
And on the other side,
and I know that there's
a big comparison there,
but let's be real people.
We are projecting warmongering, right?
A war hawk on the other side.
And I know that we have a choice to make
in this election, I am
a person with strategy
and the way that I'm working this election
is I'm working it from the
premises of who do I want
my opponent in the White House to be?
Who do I wanna be a social
justice activist under?
Do I wanna be a social
justice activist under a law
and order regime, under white supremacist,
those supported by the Ku Klux Klan?
Because the Ku Klux Klan
has always been around,
but the interesting thing,
what I fear about them more,
and I'm not afraid of them,
but fearing the climate
that we're in is that they
used to wear hoods, right?
'Cause they wanted to be anonymous,
they did not want you
to know who they were.
Guess what they're doing now.
They're just outwardly racist.
They took their hoods off
and they're standing armed
in front of mosques,
intimidating worshipers.
They're coming to counter
protest Black Lives Matters.
They started the Blue
Lives Matter movement.
It's not beyond me where we are
and where we're going as a nation.
So I understand the risks,
and if there is anyone
that understands it's a
Palestinian Muslim woman
from Brooklyn, so I know.
But I want people to
keep the administration
and hold their feet to the fire.
And that starts on November ninth.
Because what we did with
Obama is we were like,
"Okay, got this, right?
"We got a black president,
he's a community organizer,
"he's from Chicago, we got this.
"He knows what he needs to
do when he gets in there.
"We could all go back
to what we were doing."
And we trusted in that process.
And it's not that
President Obama didn't know
what he needed to do,
but we didn't continue
to create the political will
and the political environment
on the outside so President
Obama could be like,
"Look, I gotta do this,
because these folks outside
"are not gonna let me hear the last of it
"if I don't do it."
So we didn't help him, right?
In the way that we should have,
and we would have gotten a lot more done
in the past eight years, right?
And we also wouldn't have
lost in 2010 to the Tea Party,
which was the first wave
of white supremacists
flexing their muscles, right?
Because they did it and
they did it politically.
So what I'm saying to you
is that I'm committed,
and I will say this here for the record,
that is I'm committed to November ninth.
I'm committed to January
21st, to hold the feet
of the next president of
the United States of America
and as a woman, as a
social justice activist,
as a Muslim, yeah, I'm
hoping it's Hillary, right?
Because if it's not, I might
not be out in the streets.
I may be somewhere else where the CCR's
gonna have to come look for me.
#FreeLinda, I'm just saying.
(audience laughing)
Y'all better have my back with that one.
So I just wanna say that I'm praying
that we all find the moral courage
to stand up for what is right
and not worry about the consequences.
That there are people
before us who also did that
and sometimes we gotta be the ones
and we really can't be
waiting for anybody else.
And the questions I ask
myself all the time,
and you may think I'm crazy.
Sometimes I sit in my office and I think
about people a hundred years from now.
Like I'll be dead,
basically, we're all not
gonna be here, just so you know.
I always think about
Muslims in particular.
I always say Muslims a
hundred years from now
and I always think about
what kind of conversations
are they gonna be having?
And I always have this nightmare
that there are gonna be
some Muslims somewhere
sitting in a basement, and
they're gonna be real quiet,
and they're gonna be
whispering to each other.
They're gonna say, "You
know, why are we so afraid
"to be Muslim?
"Why are our women not wearing hijab?
"Why are we not naming
our kids Muslim names?
"What happened? What's going on?
"What were those Muslims doing?
"What were people doing
a hundred years ago
"that we're so afraid to be who we are?
"Why didn't they stand up for us?
"Why didn't they defend
our rights to be Muslim
"in this country?"
And that really is like
a nightmare for me.
And what I hope that you want,
is you want people a
hundred years from now
to say, "Man, those people in 2016, 2017,
"they were some courageous people.
"Those people were not having that.
"Those people were
consistent and they stood up
"for the rights of all people.
"And it is because of
those that lived in 2016
"and 2017 and 2018, that we
could be proud to be Muslim
"in this country.
"We could be free and black in America."
I want people to say about us,
like I want people to say I was a hero.
That's what I'm going for here.
I want people to say, "Yeah,
there were a lot of Lindas
"and Alicias and Opals,
those were our heroes."
And I will say for you folks in this room,
and I'll end by saying this,
where I get inspiration
from, believe it or not,
in the movement work that I've been doing
is from black women.
I have learned something
that I never thought
that I could experience
and I can't explain
to you the feeling 'cause
you have to engage in it
to know it, is this idea
of radical love, right?
That you love your people so much,
like so deep, right,
that that's where your
activism comes from, right?
This revolutionary radical love.
And black women with
all that they have seen
and none of us can say we've seen
anything near what black women have seen
in this country and continue
to see and experience,
that they could still find a way
to have radical love for the communities
that they come from, that
they can still sacrifice
and risk to live in a country
that upholds not only
their dignity and humanity,
but the dignity and
humanity of all people.
I am moved by that every single day
and I do this work with them in mind,
because they are leading this movement.
And if you ain't following a black woman,
then I don't know what
movement you're a part of,
but you in the wrong movement.
We will win, I will
tell you this right now.
And the reason why I am an activist
is that I have hope.
And if I didn't have
hope, I wouldn't be doing,
I'd be sitting in corporate
America right now.
The reason why I do this
work is I have hope.
And I have hope because
I believe that we all
will be liberated at
the hands of black women
in this country, and when
black people are free
I will tell you this, you
are all gonna be free.
And even if you are white in this room,
I am telling you that you are not sitting
in your full humanity in this room
because you cannot be
in your full humanity
if your fellow Americans
are also not living
in their full humanity.
And we will all live in our full humanity
when all of us are treated
with dignity and respect
in these United States of America.
Thank you very much.
(audience applauding)
- [Sylvia] So, can you
take some questions?
- Yeah sure.
- [Sylvia] The mic's right over there.
Tough act to follow.
(audience laughing)
- [Audience Member] Hi there.
My name's Blythe Hawthorn Lawazzo
and I wanna ask a question about gender.
I find that social justice
warriors have a hard time
talking about women today,
especially when intersectionality
comes up and especially when
there are really painful
issues that I as a white
ally will never be able
to even come close to comprehending.
But I have found that
the oppression of women
that still exists and women
as a group that still exists
is something that social justice movements
are not comfortable talking about.
We quickly move to broaden
to the queer movement
and to gender non-conforming people,
which I think is an
incredibly important issue,
but there is something
for me that still speaks
about the power of women as a group.
And Nate Silver's map couldn't
have said it more beautifully
that when if only women voted,
the country would be
blue, but if men voted,
and if poor uneducated white men voted,
the country would be red.
That is a gender issue.
So I'm wondering if you could talk
to your womanness for a little bit,
outside of your Muslim womanness,
outside of the
intersectionality that is real.
Because it's still real for
me, even as a white ally.
- That's a great question.
(audience applauding)
I think, I mean women as a group,
we have been a target
group in this particular
election and groups that
stand up for the reproductive
rights of women have always been targets
of the alt right, right?
There are men in this country,
most often all male panels
talking about what I should
be doing with my body.
I think what's interesting
about the gender issue
is also that yes, women are all a group.
Yeah, sure.
Yes, we are women as a group, right?
But even within the group,
there is an issue of understanding
are all women the same?
So for example when I think
about the reproductive rights movement,
I think about where are,
why aren't there more women of color
in the reproductive rights movement?
Why aren't there more Muslim women
in the reproductive rights movement?
Oftentimes when we think
about feminism, right?
Now feminism is a really powerful word.
And often in the beginning,
maybe like 10 years ago,
I wasn't really feeling feminism.
I don't call myself a feminist, right?
Only recently till I started
studying black feminism
then I was like, "Oh, maybe
this feminism's speaking
"to me right now."
And the reason why I say that is because
in the way that we have looked upon women
on the other side of the word,
as quote western feminist
is that we are going to save
the women of the other
side of the world, right?
We are the savers of the
third world country women.
And we, by doing that
we have erased history
of strong and powerful women
of color all over the world,
some of whom have been heads of state,
well educated, people who we
could take inspiration from.
Anywhere from the president of Liberia
to the Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan.
And we're talking like
countries like Georgia
who've had Muslim women,
we out here being like
we about to have the first women president
and the Muslim community,
I mean the Muslim majority
countries, actually some
of whom have been way
farther ahead than we have, right?
So, I think that women,
our womanness is important
and us acting from a place of womanness
or as a group is important, but
there's so much complexities
and even unity within that
particular category of gender,
that that's really something
that we haven't figured out
how to address right in ourselves.
So even sometimes when I watch these,
most of whom are in Europe
or they do that here too,
but where they wanna go protest Muslims
and they like I don't know, they like,
are like topless, and
I'm like, "That's cool,
"if that's what you wanna
do, but like don't tell me
"your being topless makes
you more or less oppressed
"than I am, 'cause I feel
like I wanna cover my body."
There's also this misconception
around hijab, right?
So for like when we
talk about being a woman
and being part of a larger group,
like this idea that I choose
to be modest, that's just my choice.
You have a choice to wear
a miniskirt if you want to.
On issues of sexual harassment
and street harassment,
just because I'm a covered woman
doesn't mean that I'm not
a victim of sexual assault
or sexual, or street
harassment for example.
And there's again conversations
that are exclusive, right?
And that don't include different voices
even amongst women, who by
the way, are quite a diverse
group of people, right?
We're from every ethnic,
racial, socioeconomic,
so I think to your point,
I think it is important
for us to flex our political
muscle as a group of women,
but within that, we
also have a lot of work
as women to create an inclusive movement
that empowers all women.
Even when we talk about equal pay,
we still have to look
that even on the spectrum
of equal pay there are still Latino woman
that get paid less than black women
that get paid less than white women.
There's also class issues
within some of the,
kind of women's rights
issues that we're working on.
So that also sometimes is
not part of the equation.
When we talk about undocumented women,
like where do they fit
into the larger movements
that we're also a part of as well.
So, I think it's complex, but
I agree with you as a woman.
I'm very proud of my womanness.
And I do say she when people ask me
for my preferred gender pronoun.
I think that we still are here
and we could express that as well.
But we have a lot of work
to do to make it inclusive.
I just talked about moral courage
like five minutes ago, people.
(audience laughing)
If you got something, even if you think
it's a question that you're not sure about
and you think I'm gonna be, trust me,
I've heard way worse than
anything you're ever gonna ask me
so this is your moment.
- [Audience Member] Okay, so this is a
very personal question.
And it is just to benefit me.
You talked in the very
beginning about the two
kind of stereotypes of
Muslim women, right?
There's the oppressed, kind
of quiet, meek Muslim woman
that I think like Donald
Trump talked about when--
- Ghazala Khan.
- [Audience Member] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then there's the
angry radical Muslim woman
that's aiding terrorist movements.
And I just think like, this
is something that I've felt
throughout all of my life.
Like when I'm too quiet, I
feel like I'm being grouped
into that first category,
when I'm too loud,
when I'm angry about these things,
I'm part of the second category,
and I just don't understand
how to get the courage
to speak about things
that I care about.
I just wanna ask you how you do it,
'cause it's really important.
- I was you just maybe 10 years ago.
And I was never the meek
Muslim, or the meek woman,
but I always worried about the perception
of others of me, right?
Was I gonna be the angry Arab,
or the angry Muslim woman
who needs to go back to her country
if you don't like it here.
I always thought about that.
Or because I was
Palestinian did I wanna talk
about the Palestinian Israeli conflict,
because I do have family that lives there
and I should be able to speak about that
here in these United States of America.
And I always was worried about
what everybody else thought.
And then one day my
Brooklyn really came out.
(audience laughing)
And I talked to myself and I was like,
I said, "You know what?
"I don't give a damn what
anybody thinks about me."
Literally, I was talking to myself.
(audience laughing)
And I was like, "Why am I
holding back really important
"things and I'm not seeing
my perspective anywhere?"
And I literally was sitting
with myself in my house
and I'm like, it was
actually, believe it or not,
lemme see, what year are
we in, it was like 2000,
it was like 2006.
And I was just like, "That's
it, this is my time."
And when I started, when I
put myself in that context
where I was like, "Who's
better than I am?"
Right?
Like who are these people,
these imaginary people
that I'm worried about,
about who is gonna think
something bad or ill of me.
Then I realized that those
people were gonna think ill
of me regardless of what I said.
I could be good or bad,
I could be saying things
they agree with or they don't, they just,
that's their thing, they're
just going to always oppose me.
So, one of the most
powerful tools that we have
in our possession is social media.
And I started using social media as a way
for me to project my principles and values
and the things that I care about.
And all of the sudden,
I went from believing
that social media was
almost like an empty space
that nobody cared about,
that I was just kind of,
just giving stuff to,
and all of the sudden,
my stuff was going viral.
Why?
Because people are like, "Darn it, I never
"thought about that."
Or "This is a voice that
I don't hear often."
So what I want you,
doesn't matter who you are,
'cause this is not just
a struggle of Muslim,
and it's a struggle of people
who just feel misunderstood
or just feel unheard.
And a lot of, even in the
Black Lives Matter movement,
it took social media, right?
Like for example, black
people have always been
getting killed by law
enforcement in this country.
I'm sorry that just, I
hope I'm not providing
any new information.
But what happened was having
digital tools available
to communities, we just started hearing
about them more often, 'cause
now people were taking news
into their own hand and
they were forcing you
into grappling with something
that already existed.
So when it came to, for me, I just started
putting my thoughts out
there, and then I was like,
"Okay, so it looks like
there's some people
"that don't agree with me.
"And looks like there
are some really vicious
"and nasty people out here."
There's so many of those, by the way,
like I feel like half of my
Twitter followers are trolls.
Literally.
(audience laughing)
So I don't get, I'm not
the kind that's like,
"Darn it, I have a lot of,"
I'm like half of them are not my friends,
and then the other nine million
that are probably out there
in this country, I blocked,
(audience laughing)
because they're, they're
like super vicious.
But I realized that I
had an important story,
and I realized that I'm just
gonna put my voice out there
and I'm gonna be willing to
take whatever comes with it.
And yes, it comes with ugly,
but it has also come with profound support
from people all across this country.
People who are like, "I
got you, I'm with you."
People who ask me, "Can I share this?
"Can I take this story?"
And I'll tell you a really quick story
that I just posted on Facebook,
just a couple of days ago.
And it was my way of also sharing
the stories of my community.
Oftentimes I share other people's stories,
'cause I finally have my own platform
that is visible enough where
I can give other people
my community platform.
And I'mma just tell you a quick story,
just so you can understand the mindset
of some Muslims in this country right now.
And I think this would,
if anything doesn't scare you, this will.
I was in Ohio, just like
a couple of weekends ago,
and I was with a young white woman,
and we were canvasing.
And you know when you canvas,
they give you a list of people
to knock on their doors.
Now, I was walking, and there was a house,
and I saw an old man
outside, like on a porch,
and then I saw a woman open
the door who was in hijab.
And she passed him a glass of water
and just went right back in.
Now, I look again, and there's this house
with this old man sitting
outside drinking some water
and there was a Trump sign outside.
And my mind immediately was
like, this doesn't go together.
And my partner who was this
wonderful young white woman,
who I had known also
from the Bernie Sanders.
She was like, "Linda, that
house ain't on our list."
I was like, "I know that
house ain't on our list."
(audience laughing)
I said, "Just you gotta gimme a minute."
So she was like, "No, but we're only,"
like acting like I never did this to her,
like, "But we're only supposed to knock
"on the doors on our list."
I was like, "Trust me,
I know what I'm doing.
(audience laughing)
"Lemme, I need to have a
moment with my people."
So I walk up to this porch,
and I say, (speaking in
foreign language) to this man.
And I had a nice conversation with him,
he spoke to me in Arabic
and asked me what I was
doing there, who I was
and just very nice, regular old guy.
And then I mustered up the courage,
ya know 'cause, when
you're with your elders,
it's a little different, like
my courage is a little like,
okay, let's act now.
Now, I mustered up the courage to be like,
"So, you got a Trump sign
outside, so I just wanted to know,
"what's going on here?"
So he was like, "Yeah."
He's like, "You know," he's
like, "I just feel safe.
"I just feel safe with it outside."
And it reminded me about
something also about organizing,
where we don't judge people.
We are very judgmental, especially people
who are like racial justice,
civil rights, human rights
activists, like we're
always so self-righteous,
like we know what you're
supposed to think and do, right?
And if you don't think
like we think, ya know?
And when he said that, it
never in my wildest dream
would I have ever thought
that someone would put
a Trump sign outside of their home
as a way to repel, and to feel safe.
Like I just never thought
that that might be
why someone would do that.
So I continued a couple
of more seconds we had,
I was like, I was pretty
speechless, like I didn't know
what to say to that.
How do you tell someone what
safety looks like for them?
That's what it looks like for him in Ohio.
And then I said, then
in my mind I went back
to being judgmental, I was like,
"Yeah, that's good to know,
"that bro, but he definitely
ain't voting for Trump."
Right, like he just has that outside
'cause he's feeling safe, so
that makes sense to me now.
So then I mustered up
the courage again to say,
try to be a little snarky,
try to be a little witty,
I was like, "Oh, but that
doesn't mean you're voting
"for Trump, right?"
And he looked at me with
these really sad eyes
and he actually looked away.
And he said, "You know,
I might vote for 'im,"
He's like, "Look,"
he's like, "but what happens if he loses?"
There is gonna be a lot
of really angry people out there.
And he's like, "You think those people
"are just gonna go on with their lives?"
He's like, "Who do you think
they're gonna take revenge on?
"Who do you think?
"It's gonna be you and me."
And he just, really sad,
like almost ashamed.
And I'll be honest with
you, it was another one
of those moments where I was like,
"What am I supposed to say to that?"
Because I have no confirmation, right?
That I was gonna be able to say to him,
"No, uncle, don't worry,
it's gonna be great
"on November ninth, like we got you."
I couldn't say that.
And I was able to share his story
without giving his name,
'cause I wanted people
not to be judgmental and to understand
the real state of where
we are as a country.
And just wanted to share with you this,
that just happened today.
There's a former congressman,
his name is Joe Walsh.
He's a former Illinois congressman.
This is the important
part, he's a former, right?
Member of the House of Representatives
of these United States of America.
And this is what he said today.
He said, "On November
eighth, I'm voting for Trump.
"On November ninth, if Trump loses,
"I'm grabbing my musket, you in?"
This is a, I'm not even
gonna use this word,
because it's a lie, but for other people,
not for me, he was a distinguished member
of the House of Representatives
from the state of Illinois.
He's not from Mississippi,
you know what I mean?
And here's a man who
represented constituencies
in Congress, basically
calling people to arms
on November ninth, and
this just happened today.
And this really solidified for me
where this old man in
Ohio was coming from.
There's something, we
have a saying in Arabic
that says, "There is
no smoke without fire."
That people really
believe this is happening
and when I saw that, I just
saw that from Joe Walsh
and I think about all these things
that I told you, the guys in Garden City,
the guy in Agoura, the guy
in Fort Pierce, Florida,
and I think to myself like,
we really gotta wake the hell up.
We gotta wake up.
We have predominantly
white men in this country
who do not know how to deal
with a changing demographic,
who feel like they're losing grip of power
in this country, and
they're angry about it.
And because of what privilege
has been able to do,
because the man in Agoura
Hills who had 200 pounds
of ammunition in his house,
and dozens of firearms who was documented
threatening the mosque is out on bail.
He's out on bail right now.
So they think that they can do this.
Like a sitting congressman
can call people to arms.
You better believe the FBI
ain't visiting his house.
So, these stories are the
reality that we live in,
and I'm asking all of you, share stories.
Be vocal, and don't be
part of the silent majority
where people say, "Where
were you in 2016?"
You better be the people
that people know who you are
'cause you were where you needed to be.
And that for me, is the scariest thing.
And I'll just end with this,
there was an article
in the New York Times,
I think it was yesterday, telling stories
of these kids out in Staten Island,
little Muslim kids where the girl woke up,
like a little seven-year-old girl woke up
with a nightmare and her
father was telling a story,
basically being like, "And
then Donald Trump came,
"and then this happened,
and then they took us
"and they put us in
this thing or whatever."
And I thought to myself,
could it just be a nightmare?
Could that happen again?
It happened before.
And I always tell people, I said,
"What makes Muslims better
than Japanese Americans?"
I'm not more worthy than
the Japanese American,
like what makes it different?
So, maybe we could this time be different.
Maybe this time there could be more people
that are willing to stand up
and say, "Not in our country.
"Not at this time, and never again."
Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- [Audience Member] (speaking
in foreign language)
So basically my question is,
so I was born and raised in the Bronx,
I'm a product of South
Bronx public schools,
to a low income Gambian family.
And so basically I'm very
interested in educational equity,
educational reform policy,
Black Lives Matter,
Islamophobia and all these
other different issues,
immigration and it's like,
how do you address issues
within our own community amongst people
who feel like based on
what they see in the media
about black people that
you shouldn't be advocating
for those communities?
Because a lot of times I've
gotten into conversations
with people who feel like,
oh yeah, you see on the news,
black people are doing this, and whatnot.
And it's like, oh, they're
in jail because they're doing
all these wrong things,
so how do you respond
to someone who's sending
off that kind of negativity?
- I think that's a question
that's really for everybody.
It goes back to something
black people always say,
which is, "Get your cousins."
We all have cousins.
I don't care what community,
you're white you have cousins,
if you're Latino you got
those cousins, right?
I'm Muslim, I got those cousins
that I have to challenge, right?
And sometimes when we
hear that and they say
you know that when people say that whole
"Well look at the black on black crime."
That's always a response
to everything, right?
Or when a young black
person, unarmed is killed,
people say, "Oh, but you
know, he was in that store
"and he stole something."
You know, there's always these people
that are just trying to justify
based on what they hear,
to really sit and justify
murder of people, right?
Or people saying to me like,
"Linda, we got enough problems.
"Why you out here for these black people?
"We got our own problems
in the community."
That's like, these things happen.
And I think what we do is
we have to challenge those.
So my father, and I'll just
give you a really quick,
so my father just recently retired
and my father was a small business owner
out in Crown Heights.
And for 45 years my father
owned a mini supermarket
in Crown Heights in a
predominantly black community.
And over the course of the
time that my father owned
that store my father
was held up a few times,
by young black kids.
As a matter of fact one
time it got pretty violent.
To the point where
actually a dog was let out
on my father.
Now those experiences of
individual interactions stick
with people for a long time.
I was a young person, I didn't
really listen to my parents.
My parents didn't say racist
things in front of me,
but I'm sure they thought about them.
And especially, and I had
an uncle back in the 80s
who was shot actually in his
store out in Brownsville,
by a young 16 year old black boy.
These things happen, right?
My family members owned
businesses in black communities,
so of course, if there's
gonna be violence,
it's gonna be black people.
It's not because black people
are inherently more violent,
it just happens to be those are the people
that live in that neighborhood.
Now, so when I started being more involved
in the Black Lives Matter movement,
and the first time is when I literally got
on an airplane, I went to Ferguson, right?
When I heard about Mike Brown.
I was thinking to myself,
here I am in Brooklyn,
and here is a black boy who gets shot,
unarmed black boy gets shot.
And if that wasn't bad
enough, we let him lay outside
on the streets for four and a half hours
swimming in his blood.
If that wasn't bad enough,
four and a half hours after
he sat swimming in his
blood in an August hot sun,
we pick him up like he's a bag of rocks
and throw him in the back of an SUV.
I was outraged, like you have no idea
how outraged I was sitting in Brooklyn.
I never even heard of Ferguson by the way,
I don't know if people
knew there was a place
called Ferguson, I didn't.
I was so outraged, I
literally got on an airplane,
I went to Ferguson.
And for me, it was an opportunity
to go and bear witness.
I wasn't there to tell
anybody how to organize
and what to do, I just wanted to be there.
So when I came back,
there was an opportunity
to have these conversations
and say, "Look,
"this is an unarmed kid who
was killed in his community."
And I sat with my family and I was like,
"This is what happened
and they did this to him,
"and four hours."
And my parents all the sudden were like,
"Wow, that's outrageous."
And I've seen people, by the way,
on my own social media
who went from justifying
and trying to find excuses,
'cause that's what human beings do,
they try to find reasons to rationalize
why these things are happening.
I got people from there, right,
to watching people on my
social media literally
180 degrees where they're
joining us in the streets.
Where they're actually
coming, believe it or not,
I had people that come to me and say,
"Linda I can't believe,
like I can't even believe
"some of the things that I used to say."
So I think what we need to do is challenge
our own people first.
And when I talk about racism by the way,
we as Muslims are not immune to racism.
We are a very diverse
community and we have classism,
we have racism within
the Muslim community,
we have misogyny and patriarchy
in the Muslim community.
Not any news to anyone else.
So when I talk about this, I'm not saying
it's a American concept, it is a concept
in every single community.
So sometimes I have to challenge things
when people talk about
interracial marriage
in the Muslim community.
Where people will say,
"Oh, I'm not racist,
"but I don't know if I want
my Palestinian daughter
"marrying a black man."
Like that's real, right?
So, I want you to know
that those issues exist.
But what I also want you to
know is that Muslim women,
in our communities are at the forefront
of addressing those topics,
issues of sexual abuses,
sexual assault, domestic violence.
We have some of the most
extraordinary women,
many of whom are right
here from New York City
running organizations
addressing domestic violence
within Muslim communities
head on, unapologetically.
So what I want people to
know is that these issues
that I talk about are also
within my own community.
But I also, and what we don't know,
'cause people will say,
"Yeah we know that."
But what you don't know is that the people
addressing them are Muslim
women in the community.
And it is all about accountability,
it's all about moral courage
and there's a verse in the Koran that says
that you, "Oh you who believe,
stand up against injustice
"even if it's against," right, get this,
"even if it's against
your parents or yourself."
So my religion tells me that
even if my parents are wrong,
I get to stand up to my parents.
And they say that the
strongest form of resistance
is strict or strong words,
I'm translating from Arabic,
against an oppressor or a tyrant.
That's our, that's the
religion that I come from.
So accountability, challenge the people.
Just gotta keep having those conversations
and people will change.
If we can't convince the closest to us,
then our activism is
meaningless on the outside.
If I can't convince my mother
who held me and loves me,
that about an injustice, then
I'm gonna have a hard time
convincing some stranger
that I don't know.
So I started with my family
and they still not
perfect, lemme tell you.
(audience laughing)
But they're moving along,
they're coming along.
- [Audience Member] Hi, I'm
guessing based on actually
a bunch of the comments that you've made
that you're someone who
really deeply believes
in the power of the written word
and I'm interested in what sort of authors
and/or books you turn
to when you need a way
to feel re-centered in your life
and in your work.
- Aw man.
(audience laughing)
I mean, Audre Lorde.
I don't know the brilliance
that is this woman.
One book that really, I'm
sure many of you have read
in this room, and it's
a book that I read like,
I'm not exaggerating, but
I probably read this book
like nine times, "The
Autobiography of Malcolm X."
The power of redemption,
the power of transformation,
the power of looking at someone
who you would look down on in a society
that had the opportunity
to be a great leader.
I think that teaches us that the potential
of every single person in our community,
to be valuable asset to society.
Oh man, Arundhai um,
help me out here, she does these quotes
that I have all over my phone.
Kaur, is the last name.
- [Audience Member] Rupi Kaur.
- Rupi, another one, brilliant.
I don't know where those,
there was one in particular
that believe it or not, 'cause
my mom's on Facebook now,
(audience laughing)
my mom picked it up
and it's such a moving,
and it was like right around the time
when we were still debating whether,
well, we're still debating
it, but whether or not
we wanted refugees and it was something
that was like "We came
to a land that told us
"that you're not welcome here."
And it really spoke to my mom
as an immigrant that came here.
Reading also, believe it or not,
just reading some of the
women in the movement,
reading their op-eds and they are doing
a lot of writing which is
so beautiful at this stage
and it's so easily accessible to us
and being able to just
read their brilliance
also just gives me
inspiration and gives me hope.
And sometimes 'cause I
don't have a lot of time
to always read stuff, just
watching powerful documentaries
and the recent one that I watched,
that so by the way, not
only do I need things
to inspire me, I need
things to re-outrage me.
You know when you're like,
when your outrage is starting
to go down and you're
like, "Nuts man, I gotta,"
(audience laughing)
"I gotta get mad again,
somebody give me something."
And if you wanna be outraged,
like really outraged,
like you wanna like scream
at the top of your lungs
and like punch walls,
you gotta watch "13th."
It's a documentary right now on Netflix
and it is absolutely, it's brilliant,
but it's absolutely outrageous.
Like to the point where
you were really feel
a sense of deep shame as an American
to live in a country that is engaging
in really what it is
is modern day slavery.
That's exactly what's
happening on our watch.
So I highly encourage you to watch "13th"
- [Audience Member] Hello,
I'm on this side now.
So I'm four generation Japanese American
and so, all my great
grandparents and my grandparents
were interned in internment
camps during World War II
and we were the terrorists of the time.
And that kind of like ignited my grandpa
and he became a Christian minister
and used his platform and
his pedestal in the church
to organize communities in San Francisco
and the Bay Area, but
more likely than not,
the experience is more like the other side
of my family, my grandmother
who really decided to assimilate.
You know there was the major pressure,
forced assimilation, to lose the language,
to not celebrate the holidays anymore.
We held on to some
traditions, mostly food,
but beyond that there was
a lot of internalized shame
that was then passed down to my parents
and then passed down to me.
And what you said about
the young man who asked
where were people at that
moment during internment camps?
I asked myself that.
But I mostly asked myself,
where were my people?
Why did my people go?
And it was really
without a lot of protest.
And they're, anyways,
I won't go into that.
But there was a lot of
shame, a lot of fear,
and I'm wondering if you have thoughts
about organizing in this
time of intense fear
and particularly to allies,
like how do we organize
our people and I think
you spoke to this already
a little bit, in the question before,
but how do you organize in this time
of really intense fear and
so much misunderstanding
about what Muslim culture and religion is?
I was lucky enough to grow up
around a lot of Muslim people
and so I have a different understanding,
but so many people that
I'm hearing are like going
onto subway trains and then seeing someone
in a hijab and being afraid of them.
Little things like that.
- Thank you very much for sharing that.
And I mean I also get deep inspiration
from the Japanese American community.
I've gotten to spend a lot of
time Congressman Mike Honda
who was a child and was
actually in an internment camp,
and he's a member of
Congress out in California.
I think that assimilation
is a really dangerous thing.
And that's why when I think about it,
I think about integration,
I think about being who I am
and staying who I am in this country,
because this country was
made of people like us
and like me and you, but
there's this been push
of assimilation and assimilation,
really what it means
is how white can you get
and how white can you be?
That's really what it is.
And I'm gonna give ya a great example.
Arab Americans are considered
white by the U.S. census.
And in the 1940s we
were actually approached
as a community whether or not
we wanted minority status.
There were Arab Americans that
chose not to be minorities,
because they understood that
in order to be privileged
in this country, they
had already picked up
that being white is the way to go.
So we lost out on a lot of opportunities
as a community because there
were people in the 1940s,
many of whom were Arab Christians,
Syrian, Lebanese Christians
who chose not to be a minority.
And I think that there
are many communities,
like if I wasn't wearing this hijab
I could be another white girl.
I do have pretty light
skin, I have dark hair,
I could probably.
People thought I was Puerto Rican
when I wasn't wearing hijab.
I had that Rosie Perez thing
going on from Brooklyn.
But generally speaking, I
could, if I wanted to, I could.
It's very easy for many
Arabs in particular
who are from the Levant to assimilate.
Because in my neighborhood in Bay Ridge,
many of whom are Christian,
Lebanese and Syrians,
they wear a cross and they're blonde
and they have blue eyes, so that was cool.
But I think that there's a new generation
in particular of Asian Americans,
I think they're your
generation, a little bit older
who are basically saying no.
No more model minority,
that's not who we are anymore.
There are Asian Americans that are with us
on the front lines of the
fight for black lives,
for immigrant rights and
they're saying, "Not anymore."
They understood the mistakes,
and mind you they're mistakes,
but they're not mistakes to be angry at.
People made those decisions for safety
and for security and
for what they projected
to be good futures for their children.
So they were doing it from a good place.
It was well intentioned.
It wasn't that they were like,
we don't care about Japan
or our Japanese heritage,
but we wanna be safe in this country
and this is the way to do it.
And many people did that before.
The Irish were able to
then go from a marginalized
community to checking the white box,
the same thing with the Italians.
Now, when this, one of the
things that makes me hopeful
is that there's this new
generation of fearlessness
in this country that is
really inspiring to me.
And while they say millennials,
I'm still a millennial, I
was born in 1980 people.
Barely made it.
Where I feel like we're
getting to the point
where we're like we just don't care.
We have no loyalty to
any political parties
and we're out here to say no.
And I'll give you an example,
so 2010 the U.S. Census
Bureau was engaging
in the census and they were supporting
small ethnic organizations
around the country
to make sure that you got your people
to fill out the census forms
and how important it was.
So they came to my
organization in Brooklyn
and they were like,
"Linda, we need you to help your people
"and do the census form."
I was like, "Nope."
I was like, "My people don't
wanna do the census form."
They were like, "What do you mean?"
Of course I understood
there was a larger vision,
counting the people
brings in more resources
for healthcare and things like that.
I did understand that,
but I just wanted to mess
with them a little bit.
I was like, "No."
I was like, "My people don't
wanna fill out the census."
And they were like, "What do you mean?"
I said, "'Cause we're not
white, and then you say
"in the census form, people are saying
"they don't feel reflected
'cause it says white,
"and then under it
there's like a parentheses
"and it says if you're Middle
Eastern or North African
"you're supposed to check the white box."
So then there's another, there's a spot
that says other box and you
get to write in something.
So I said, "Okay, let's talk about this.
"What if I do it my way? "
And they didn't really
know what my way was,
so they were like, "Look, we
don't care what way you do it,
"the point is we want it done."
So they were providing
resources to organization.
So what did we do in 2010?
We started a national campaign,
and the national campaign
was called "Check it right,
"you ain't white."
(audience laughing)
And we had a great flyer people,
it was just wonderful.
And the idea was is we
connected to Arab American
organizations around the country
and we basically shared
messaging and shared flyers
and shared talking points with the idea
that you filled out the census form,
that you check the other box,
and then in the other line,
you put whatever you wanted.
If you wanted to put Yemeni,
if you wanted to put Arab,
if you wanted to put Palestinian,
whatever you wanted, you got to put there.
And in particular, what
bothers me about the white box
is if you're North African, so for example
if you're from Egypt, if
you're from southern Egypt
you are black as an African,
so the fact that you,
because of your country
of origin have to put that you're white
is just outrageous to me.
There was a big case
about that, by the way,
in the state of Michigan.
But anyway.
So we did that.
So what happens afterwards,
anybody who puts other,
gets put back in the white box anyway.
But it requires just a lot more work
on the Census Bureaus part.
(audience laughing)
Now there musta been a lot of work.
Because the Census Bureau then
started testing a category,
a new category called MENA,
Middle East North Africa.
So they started testing it in 2015,
started testing real well.
And in the 2020 census
there will be a category
that says MENA.
So I can now check off
a box that is reflective
of my ancestry and I don't have to be put
in the white box just for the simple fact
that some guy decided that an Arab
or person who's Arab has to be white.
So the reason why I say that to you
is that it required young people
to stand up and say,
"No, I am not going to be
"who you want me to be, or
who you determine that I be.
"I will be who I wanna be and for now,
"I'm gonna be other until
you find me another box
"that is going to be
reflective of who I am."
And I think that there's a generation
who's starting to say, "I
will tell you who I am.
"I will tell you what gender to call me
"or what sexual orientation to call me.
"I will tell you what my parents roots are
"and where they came from,
the way I wanna tell you.
"I'll tell you what
languages I wanna speak
"and when I wanna speak them."
And it's so manifested
in the public discourse
that it's actually quite remarkable.
And in particular amongst Asian,
I don't know if you
remember the Google doc.
Somebody started a "Dear Asian Parents,"
to try to get more, to basically
explain to their parents
why the Black Lives Matter movement
was so important to these young people.
This is remarkable.
How do you do that?
You start a Google doc,
and a whole bunch of Asians
all around the country are joining in
on one Google doc, to create a letter
that they can all share
with their family members.
This is what your generation is all about.
So I always tell people,
"Sometimes we are ashamed
"of things and decisions that
our great great grandparents
"or grandparents made, but
I understand why my parents
"sometimes made the
decisions that they wanted.
"Because they wanted my safety."
Sometimes I tell my
parents, "Why in the hell
"did you come to the United States,
"I wanted to live in Palestine."
My parents were like, "Really?"
(audience laughing)
And my parents made a decision
to leave their families
in an occupied territory where
I still have family members
who live there, because my father wanted
a better life for me here.
And he came here to the United States.
There's a lot of things
that my parents came with
that I sometimes question,
but I always say, "Well,
they're my parents,
"there musta been a good
reason why they did that."
And all we can do is
move forward from there.
And I think we can try to
bring our people along.
But the other thing I
always tell people is,
"We sometimes get caught
up in trying to bring
"some of those folks
with us, like our elders.
"And I'm not saying all elders,
"but there are some in our community
"that just wanna be where they at."
And I say we try and if
they don't want to come,
it's cool, we just go without them.
And I think that that
is what's happening now
and guess what's happening.
We started going without them,
and then they started joining us.
And I'll just say this really quickly.
And I was telling folks earlier
that it's the same thing
also with philanthropy, right?
'Cause you hear a lot of people
in the right wing say things like,
"Oh, George Soro has got them all funded."
And like all this big hyper,
even if they understood
what kind of resources
are in the movement, there
are barely any resources
in the movement people.
Ask CCR, they'll tell you all about it.
You know, even philanthropy,
we've been in the spaces with philanthropy
where we've told philanthropy,
"Look, there's a new way
of thinking about this.
"Something called risk taking."
Which a lot of young people, as you see,
are doing right now in the
streets of their communities
on all levels.
And we're telling
philanthropy, there's a train,
it's called the social justice train.
You either get on it, right?
Or it's still gonna move without you.
And what's gonna happen is
that social justice train
is gonna get to liberation
and you're gonna wish that
you were on that train.
So that's where we're at right now
as a country, there is a
train, and it's moving.
You gotta make that decision,
whether you wanna be on it or not.
And whether or not you decide to be on it,
it's moving and I really
believe in the potential
of this generation to bring
us into great progress
and I want you to be able to
say that you were with us,
that you were on that train with us
and that we are going to win together.
And I promise you this time,
it's gonna be a lesser period of time.
I feel winning is very close.
Like I feel it.
Like you know how people say,
"Plant the seeds but you may not be able
"to see the fruits of your labor"?
We live in a time where we
can actually potentially see
the fruits of our labor in just the way
that the world works
and how fast the world
is moving around us.
So, that's where I'm at.
We're gonna win, people, we have to.
(audience applauding)
- It's an extraordinarily difficult time
and we couldn't have
picked a better person
to guide us, thank you.
(audience applauding)
