Elly Bulkin, an activist since the 1970s and an Ashkenazi Jew, has worked in DARE (Dykes Against Racism Everywhere), Women Free Women in Prison, Women in Black (Boston), Jews Say No!, and other local political groups, and was a member of the National Feminist Task Force of New Jewish Agenda. She was a founding editor of two nationally distributed periodicals: Conditions, a lesbian-feminist literary magazine, and Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists and Our Friends. She is a co-author, with Minnie Bruce Pratt and Barbara Smith, of Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism (1984).
Donna Nevel, a community psychologist and educator currently living in Miami, is co-director of PARCEO, a research and education center rooted in principles of Participatory Action Research (PAR). She lectures, organizes, teaches, & writes on racial justice and organizing; on Israel & Palestine; and on Islamophobia. Among other organizations, she is a coordinating committee member of the Facing the Nakba project. She was a co-founder of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) and the Center for Immigrant Families and its Project to End Segregation in Our Public Schools and continues to work with immigrant rights and racial justice groups.
Our Work Against Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Racism
In 2007, we became part of the steering committee of Communities in Support of the Khalil Gibran International Academy (CISKGIA)—in support of the country’s first Arabic dual language public school and its founding principal, after she was targeted by a vicious Islamophobic campaign. This campaign was a stark example of government officials joining an attack initiated by anti-Muslim, anti-Arab ideologues, with prominent NYC Jewish institutional leaders lending their credibility to an anti-Islam, anti-Arab smear campaign. (Ultimately, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that the city had discriminated against the principal on the basis of her “race, religion and national origin.”)
Our organizing experience with KGIA led us to work with many groups and individuals within Muslim communities and to research and document the multiple ways that Islamophobia manifests itself. Our organizing continued as we helped create Jews Against Islamophobia, a coalition of several NYC Jewish groups, and then worked with other organizers in cities across the country to build the Network Against Islamophobia. Over the past years, we have also written about the many dimensions of Islamophobia.
Advisory Circle
Kalia Abiade is the Program Director for the Pillars Fund, a philanthropic initiative focused on Muslim civic engagement in the United States. Prior to joining Pillars, Kalia spent four years at the Center for New Community, a national advocacy and research organization based in Chicago. Kalia has more than 15 years of journalism experience, is a contributor at In These Times, and taught high school students in rural Southwest Virginia with the Upward Bound program. Her analysis has been cited in the Washington Post, The Nation, NPR, Public Radio International, and USA Today, among other outlets.
Sister Aisha al-Adawiya is a long-time community leader and human rights activist. She is the founder of Women in Islam, Inc., an organization of Muslim women focusing on human rights and social justice. She organizes and participates in conferences, symposia and other forums on Gender Equity, Islam, Conflict Resolution, Cross-Cultural Understanding, and Peace Building. She also represents Muslim women’s Non-Governmental Organizations at United Nations forums. She has worked for more than 30 years at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem and is currently the administrator of its Scholars-in-Residence Program.
Bina Ahmad is a social justice attorney and has worked with numerous animal rights and human rights organizations. She provides political and legal support to social justice movements and conducts Know Your Rights training for organizers and state targeted communities, including for Muslim communities. She lived and worked in Palestine with Al-Haq and was a legal consultant to the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, among others. She serves on the Steering Committee of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and the advisory board of The Food Empowerment Project. She works as a public defender in Manhattan.
Abdeen Jabara is a human and civil rights lawyer whose work on behalf of Muslim and Arab communities, and on behalf of Palestinian rights, has spanned the past several decades. He helped start the Association of Arab American University Graduates (AAUG), Palestine Human Rights Campaign, and American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and served as President of AAUG and ADC. He has also mentored younger lawyers and activists across the US. He has been involved with, among other organizations, the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the ACLU.
Alex Kane is a freelance journalist who writes on, among other topics, post 9/11 civil liberties, Israel and Palestine, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and Islamophobia. His work has appeared in Ha’aretz, The Nation, In These Times, The Intercept, The Forward, Mondoweiss, Salon, VICE, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and more. He holds a Masters in Journalism and Near East Studies from New York University (NYU).
Nina Mehta, an artist and educator, is a co-coordinator of PARCEO living in New York City. She has worked with a wide range of community groups and organizations on collaborative research, education, cultural organizing, and media projects. She has taught participatory research and visual ethnography to public health practitioners, artists, and community groups, globally- from NYC, to Mexico, and India. As part of PARCEO and bringing her experience as a Jewish and South Asian woman of color, Nina helped develop the Network Against Islamophobia’s curriculum and facilitator guide.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty is Distinguished Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Dean’s Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University. Her work, writing, and lecturing in the US and in many countries across the globe focus on transnational feminist theory, anti-capitalist feminist praxis, anti-racist education, and the politics of knowledge. Among her many books are Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (2003), Feminism and War: Confronting U.S. Imperialism (2008), Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures (1997) and the forthcoming Feminist Freedom Warriors (2018) She has worked with grassroots organizations in the United States and in India, and was a member of the “Indigenous and Women of Color Solidarity delegation to Palestine” in June 2011.
Linda Sarsour is a community leader, social justice organizer, and advocate on behalf of Muslim communities and all communities facing injustice. Sarsour is the former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York; co-chair of the 2017 Women’s March on Washington; co-founder of the first Muslim online organizing platform, MPOWER Change; co-founder of Muslims for Ferguson, among many others. She is a keynote speaker on a wide range of social issues, and on building progressive movements for justice, at conferences and public events across the United States.
Lesley Williams, an educator, librarian, and leading Jewish voice organizing and speaking out against Islamophobia, is co-chair of the Chicago Chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace’s Network Against Islamophobia. Among other initiatives, she organized a 2015 “Stand With Muslims” event in Evanston, collaborated with local faith organizations to lead anti-Islamophobia canvasses in several Chicago communities, and co-led the de-funding campaign demanding the Jewish United Fund of Chicago stop funding anti-Muslim hate groups. Lesley has been honored by Open Communities and the Muslim Community Center for her work countering Islamophobia.