Jewish activists launch project to tackle anti-Muslim racism
Mondoweiss Editors on February 14, 2018 |
Late last year the Pew Center published a report that confirmed anecdotal data, and plain common sense: hate crimes against Muslims are up.
Current rates dwarf the national spike that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks. The culprit for such a dramatic increase is no surprise. Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for president ushered in a wave of racism against Muslims, among others. To combat the challenges of the political moment, activists Elly Bulkin and Donna Nevel have launched a new campaign: Jews Against Anti-Muslim Racism.
The project provides resources to activists an educators. There’s a syllabus, a directory of groups organizing around anti-Muslim racism, and guides for events. The site also connects to some practical advice for just about anyone. Want to know what to do if you witness harassment against Muslims? Elly and Donna have it covered.
Here’s the hard pitch from Elly and Donna, and check out their site. It’s worth looking through:
Jews Against Anti-Muslin Racism is a new initiative offering resources for community education and organizing. This undertaking grows out of work that we have being doing with groups and communities across the country over the past decade, including resource and curriculum development and organizing.
We are excited to continue to develop resources to help strengthen our community education and organizing and to enable us to be principled, effective partners in challenging anti-Muslim racism. We look forward to continuing to work with the many groups we have partnered with and also to be a resource for new groups—community centers, organizations, universities, synagogues and Hebrew schools, high schools, foundations—that would like to deepen their work challenging anti-Muslim racism. We will support curriculum development and research responsive to local needs; help connect Jewish organizations and others with speakers, workshop facilitators, and resources; and explore different ways of acting in solidarity.
We strongly believe in the importance of thoughtful, challenging community and political education, so that our work can address long-standing systemic issues without unintentionally promoting anti-Muslim racism. We will continue to provide resources for organizing and community education to strengthen the ways that Jewish communities and others can meaningfully deepen their work to challenge Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism. We will also continue to work closely with PARCEO, a participatory research center, on curriculum development to make our resources as accessible as possible to a wide range of communities.
Most importantly, our work will continue to grow out of the organizing, analysis, and resources of Muslim and other impacted communities. As Jewish partners in this work, we consider ourselves accountable to these movements for justice. To ground our work, we have created an advisory circle of some of the people with whom we have worked closely for many years and whose wisdom and knowledge we deeply value.
We very much look forward to working together with you!
Elly Bulkin and Donna Nevel