Webinar Series: Anti-Black Racism in SW Asia/N Africa + Diaspora (English)

Mizna has been a critical space for Arab American film, literature, and art for twenty years. Mizna publishes the literary journalMizna: Prose, Poetry, and Art Exploring Arab Americaand presents theTwin Cities Arab Film Festival.

Mizna

Online discussion series in English, Farsi, and Arabic addressing anti-Black racism in SWANA + diaspora contexts. This event is in English.

The Zoom registration has closed, but you can view the panel on the Facebook livestream.

FACEBOOK LIVESTREAM: https://bit.ly/3ebPPm1
LIVE-CAPTIONING: https://captionmax.1capapp.com/event/mizna

&gt;&gt;HOW TO PARTICIPATE&lt;&lt;In addition to the limited capacity Zoom webinar (<a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/webinar-series-anti-black-racism-in-sw-asian-africa-diaspora-english-tickets-111117433234" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">RSVP required</a>), this panel will be <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/3745828535445123/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">livestreamed on Facebook</a>—share the livestream with your friends! Please note: a Facebook account is NOT required to watch the livestream.&gt;&gt;ACCESSIBILITY&lt;&lt;This event will be<a href="https://captionmax.1capapp.com/event/mizna" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"> live-captioned in English</a>, and the full webinar will be available for viewing post-event.<a href="https://mizna.org/?p=4408" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">BLACK LIVES MATTER: Anti-Black Racism, Southwest Asia and North Africa + Diaspora</a>Following a<a href="https://mizna.org/mizna-news/black-lives-matter/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"> statement</a> made after the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police, between July 10th and July 24th, 2020, Mizna with the US-based organizations including the<a href="https://icgc.umn.edu/research/imagining-transnational-political-solidarities-and" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"> Imagining Transnational Solidarities Research Circle</a> at the University of Minnesota, and <a href="http://araborganizing.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Arab Resource and Organizing Center</a> will host a series of online panels in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.Panels in Arabic, English, and Farsi will address the history, present, and future of joint struggles between Black and non-Black South West Asian and North African communities, as well as solidarities and coalitions between SWANA communities and Black American communities in the United States. The series will also interrogate anti-Black racism in the SWANA region and its diasporas, and acknowledges the ways in which the SWANA communities have contributed to, profited from, and perpetuated forms of anti-Black racism and violence, while being subjected to anti-Arab, anti-Iranian, and anti-Muslim violence both locally and globally. These dialogues are some of the ongoing actions that Mizna and its partners are taking to address anti-Black racism prevalent in the laws, distribution of resources, and cultural productions in SWANA communities. We seek to confront the biases and racism present within ourselves, our families, our neighborhoods, our businesses, and our organizations. Among a wide variety of topics, we will grapple with the charges of racism and discrimination against some SWANA businesses, the surfacing of anti-Black racism perpetuated by some members of the SWANA communities, the intensification of fascism, xenophobia and white supremacy, increased policing and surveillance, and the performances of model minority citizenship and market virility that contribute to white ascendency. We aim to collectively develop strategies of organizing without subsuming Blackness under Arabness or Iranian-ness, and without falling into the divide and conquer trap that distracts our political energies. Our conversations will be rooted in multi-issue organizing traditions, joint solidarity approaches to social justice, and building sustainable movements transnationally by making connections between the violence of slavery, settler colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, cis heteropatriarchy, and militarism. By centering Black lives in these webinars, we hope to highlight the necessity of confronting and meaningfully challenging anti-Black racism in our communities and in our social justice work. Panelists from North America., Europe, Southwest Asia, East Africa, and North Africa will offer their expertise and experiences on these topics. Stay tuned for more information and RSVP to join the conversations below.This project is co-sponsored by <a href="https://agitatejournal.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">AGITATE!</a>, <a href="https://arabamcc.uic.edu" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Arab American Cultural Center, </a><a href="https://www.newarabamericantheaterworks.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">New Arab American Theater Works</a><a href="https://arabamcc.uic.edu" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"></a>,<a href="https://aaan.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"> Arab American Action Network</a>, <a href="https://uspcn.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">US Palestinian Community Network</a> and <a href="https://arabamericanwriters.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Radius of Arab American Writers</a>. <a href="https://www.newarabamericantheaterworks.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"></a>ENGLISH // July 10, 2020 at 11am CDT // 4pm GMT<a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/webinar-series-anti-black-racism-in-sw-asian-africa-diaspora-farsi-tickets-111121828380" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">FARSI</a> // July 17, 2020 at 11am CDT // 4pm GMT<a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/webinar-series-anti-black-racism-in-sw-asian-africa-diaspora-arabic-tickets-111122071106" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">ARABIC</a> // July 24, 2020 at 11am CDT // 4pm GMT

MODERATORSFarid Matuk A queer writer of mixed Syrian and Peruvian heritage, Farid Matuk has lived in the US since the age of six as an undocumented person, a “legal” resident, and a naturalized citizen. He is the author of the poetry collections This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine) and The Real Horse (University of Arizona Press), and of several chapbooks including My Daughter La Chola (Ahsahta). His work has been anthologized in The Best American Experimental Poetry and in Angels of the Americlypse: An Anthology of New Latin@ Writing, among others. Matuk's poems and translations from Spanish appear in journals such as The Baffler, Gulf Coast, The Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Poetry, and Lana Turner Journal. His essays and interviews can be found in Scubadivers and Chrysanthemums: Essays on the Poetry of Araki Yasusada, The Force of What's Possible: Writers on Accessibility and the Avant-Garde, The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind, Entropy, Bomb, and Cross-Cultural Poetics. Matuk serves as poetry editor at FENCE and on the editorial board for the book series Research in Creative Writing at Bloomsbury. His work has been supported, most recently, by residencies and grants from The Headlands Center for the Arts and The Lannan Foundation. Matuk's book arts project, Redolent, made in collaboration with Colombian visual artist Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez, is forthcoming from Singing Saw Press.Sima Shakhsari Sima Shakhsari is an associate professor in the Department of Gender, Women &amp; Sexualities Studies at the University of Minnesota, and a co-convener of the Imagining Transnational Solidarities Research Circle at the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change. They have authored many articles and a book titled Politics of Rightful Killing: Civil Society, Gender, and Sexuality in Weblogistan (Duke University Press, 2020), and are the anthropology, sociology, and gender studies book editor of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, and an Editorial Collective member of the AGITATE! journal.PANELISTSMoustafa Bayoumi Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the critically acclaimed How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America (Penguin), which won an American Book Award and the Arab American Book Award for Non-Fiction, and of This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror (NYU Press), which was chosen as a Best Book of 2015 by The Progressive magazine and also awarded the Arab American Book Award for Non-Fiction. A regular contributor to The Guardian, Bayoumi has also written for The New York Times , New York Magazine, The Nation, CNN.com, The London Review of Books, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and many other places. He is the editor of Midnight on the Mavi Marmara (O/R Books) and the co-editor (with Andrew Rubin) of The Edward Said Reader and The Selected Works of Edward Said, 1966-2006 (Vintage). Bayoumi is a professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York (CUNY).Ramla Bile Ramla Bile serves as a program officer at a St. Paul-based foundation—bringing over ten years of experience as a strategist, social entrepreneur, and storyteller. As a community organizer, Ramla works to bring awareness to issues at the intersection of racism, Islamophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment. A local leader in the Somali-Minnesotan community, she provided critical thought-leadership and advocacy against the Countering Violent Extremism program, and continues to challenge the surveillance apparatus and the ways that systems institutionalize the criminalization of BIPOC communities. A published author, she supports communities impacted by state violence by promoting greater understanding, resilience, and liberation through her writing. She co-founded and writes for Ubuntu: the Collective, a platform that spotlights emergent issues impacting the global Black diaspora. Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda Priscillia Kounkou-Hoveyda is a human rights lawyer who has a decade of experience working with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), other UN agencies and non-governmental organizations in the US, France, DR Congo, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, the Federal Republic of Nigeria and many others. Her work focuses on building international and national policies for the most vulnerable populations around the world. She has led the release and reintegration of children associated to armed groups/forces, incarcerated children as well as survivors of sexual violence.In her other life, Priscillia born in France from a Congolese father and Iranian mother, is a writer, documentary filmmaker, and the founder of the Collective for Black Iranians, a chapter-based not-for-profit organization with the mission to represent Black and Afro-Iranians' voices within the Iranian diaspora, educate on the connections between Africaness/Blackness and Iranianess as well as advocate for Black joy within the Iranian diaspora at large.She holds dual International Law and Business degrees from Sorbonne Law, ESSEC Business School and NYU Law (JD/Masters/LL.M).Lara Kiswani Lara Kiswani is from Beit Iksa and Aqir, Palestine, and was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been active in movements against war, Palestinian self-determination, and Third World solidarity movements for the last 20 years. She is a lecturer at San Francisco State University in the College of Ethnic Studies, and the executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC).Dr. Nadine Naber Dr. Nadine Naber is an award-winning author, public speaker and activist on the topics of racial justice; gender justice; women of color feminisms; Arab and Muslim feminisms; Arab Americans; and radical mothering. She is the author of Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism; Race and Arab Americans; and co-editor of Arab and Arab American Feminisms, winner of the Arab American Book Award 2012 (Syracuse University Press, 2010); The Color of Violence (Duke University Press, 2016); and Towards the Sun (Tadween Publishing/George Mason University, 2018). Dr. Naber began putting love and social justice into practice in the 1990s when she co-founded the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association North America. She has also served on the boards of organizations like the Women of Color Resource Center; INCITE!; the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy; and the Social Justice Initiative at UIC. As a professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arborr, Dr. Naber co-founded the academic program, Arab and Muslim American Studies. In 2013, she moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago as a Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and Global Asian Studies. At UIC, she is the faculty founder of the first center on a college campus serving the needs of Arab American students in the US: The Arab American Cultural Center. She will soon be the interim director of UIC's Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy.Ash Stephens Ash Stephens (they/them, he/him) is a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice with a concentration in Black Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies. His forthcoming dissertation project focuses on surveillance of trans, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary people by the state. He has devoted much of his commitments to racial, gender, and social justice movement building with abolitionist collectives focused on anti-violence organizing; including Love &amp; Protect and Survived &amp; Punished: New York. He's also organized specifically for the abolishment of cash bail and pretrial detention through revolving bail/bond funds in both NYC and Chicago. Ash currently serves as the policy coordinator at Transgender Law Center, the largest national trans-led organization in the US.

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