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Linda Sarsour's rising profile reflects new generation of Arab-American activists
Last August, watching the images of militarized police cracking down on protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, after a police officer shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown, Linda Sarsour decided to get involved.
Sarsour, a Palestinian-American activist from New York City, has a growing national profile in battles against surveillance of Muslims, discrimination and Islamophobia. In recent years, her work in New York has brought her closer to African-American activists fighting stop and frisk, biased policing and mass incarceration.
In Missouri, Mustafa Abdullah, an organizer with the local branch of the ACLU, was staring at his computer on the Monday after Brown’s death, feeling overwhelmed by the torrent of complaints about rights violations coming in from the protests, when Sarsour called.
“Mustafa,” she said. “Where is the Muslim community on this?”
“I hadn’t even thought of that question,” Abdullah, who is Egyptian-American, said later. “Linda’s call was almost a prophetic call, a call to conscience.”
Immigrant Muslims have spent the years since 9/11 largely on the defensive against increased suspicion and bias. But a new generation — social media savvy and versed in the new tools of decentralized activism — is asserting itself through multiracial coalitions that challenge the parochial approach and sometimes the prejudices of its elders.
Sarsour, a blunt-talking, hijab-wearing, 35-year-old Brooklynite forged in the crucible of New York City politics, has played a galvanizing role in this mutation. A veteran of nuts-and-bolts local work — for instance, to raise Muslim voter turnout and have the Eid festivals made school holidays — she is also a regular presence on cable, sparring with the likes of anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller. But as the mobilization known as Black Lives Matter has taken flight, Sarsour has thrown her effort into building its Muslim contribution.
Walking her talk
Sarsour asked Abdullah to draft a letter to Brown’s family for Muslim groups to sign. Within days, they started a Muslims for Ferguson campaign, holding conference calls for college students, professionals and imams to hear from Ferguson residents and raising money for local organizers. In October, she visited Ferguson. “It was beautiful,” she said. “I was in hijab. I didn’t look like the other people there, and I was embraced.”
In April she walked 250 miles in eight days from Staten Island in New York to Washington, D.C., in the March2Justice with some 70 other activists to deliver a package of criminal justice reform demands. She co-chaired the march with Tamika Mallory, a former top aide to the Rev. Al Sharpton. A month earlier, Sarsour had been in the Capitol as the guest of U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand for the address to a joint session of Congress by the president of Afghanistan. This time, she rallied outside with Danny Glover, “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett and U.S. Reps. John Lewis, Yvette Clarke, Keith Ellison and Barbara Lee.
Source: america.aljazeera.com