[NADA ABDO]

To add to this week’s discussion of LBBTQ+ rights and their denial in this country, I included two pieces I’ve read in another class regarding trans politics. The first is Dean Spade’s piece on the limits of the law in relation to trans rights and how this is a product of a neoliberal caste society. The second is Nat Raha’s emotional piece on transfeminine brokenness and how the continuous denial of rights to trans women has resulted in a “slow death” of their spirits, that we need to be conscious of. Both pieces are meaningful and contributed to my current understanding of how we need to approach civil rights as a nation and the benefits that adopting trans politics will have.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by NADA ABDO.

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[NADA ABDO]

I feel like this past week’s discussion of illegality and civil rights falls perfectly in with Thanksgiving, or as many Native people call it, Mourning Day. There is an interesting story going around about an American missionary who was killed with bows and arrows while approaching an island off of India known as North Sentinel Island. He intended on bringing Christianity to this indigenous population of only roughly 50, and Indian law has protected this tribe from outsiders, mostly due to the fact that they are not properly vaccinated against modern diseases. I felt as though this event, especially because it falls during the celebration of a history of colonial genocide, reflects how the theological war taking place under white supremacy is not over. Modern-day missionaries do more harm than good, exchanging volunteer work and resources for age-old religious intolerance. The American who was killed, in my opinion, should have died, for his success in reaching the island and its people would have led to much more harm, but in the forms of genocide, cultural erasure, and biological elimination. The same happened to the Natives, and continues to happen to other black and brown populations across the globe.

(NY Times, Nov.2018)

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[NADA ABDO]

Week 7 brought us to a discussion of illegal immigration, its discourses and language, and how it is constructed in order to facilitate real-life POC genocides as well as capitalist economic slavery. To bring some media context to this issue, I wanted to share with the class a new rapper I have come across. I don’t know how popular he is, but he recently released an album entitled “IMMIGRANT”, featuring the likes of The Weeknd, Meek Mill, Yo Gotti, French Montana, and others. The album titles stood out to me on a Spotify playlist called “Arab X”- Arab rappers and singers featuring popular American artists. This artist in particular goes by Belly. He is of Palestinian-Jordanian descent but moved to Ottawa, Canada at a young age. He has built a successful rap, songwriting, and producing career- working with the likes of Beyonce, Travis Scott, and being signed to Jay Z’s Roc Nation. If you listen to “IMMIGRANT”‘s self-titled song, featuring Meek Mill and M.I.A., Belly goes on an intense rant, criticizing not only his own colonial history as a Palestinian man, but he also ties in relevant issues facing other minorities, making connections between oppressions.

He states: “This ain’t a tan, my skin the same color as sand
From the motherland, look down and see the world in my hands
Government bans, I’m just here to fuck up their plans
Dance after dance, just like the world is stuck in a trance (Amen)
There’s nothin’ more priceless than bein’ free
Immigrant, that’s why they hate me just for bein’ me
We ain’t wanna leave overseas, we were under siege
Leave us in shallow graves, but still the love is deep”

…..

“Huh, oh Lord, we need a breakthrough
Lock our babies up and then they tell us that it’s fake news
Uh, yes, Lord, we need a breakthrough
Build a fuckin’ wall, I guarantee the people break through”

He is making clear connections between his own personhood and the shared experience of immigrants everywhere, and though Belly himself hails from Ottawa, he is not afraid to speak out against American so-called “democracy” and our joke of a President. When asked to perform on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, the Middle Eastern, Muslim rapper declined, due to Trump also being scheduled for the show that same night.

My intent in mentioning Belly’s song is to contextualize our conversations of immigrant criminalization and dehumanization. This also reflects how different oppressions across time and social groups tends to alienate us from one another, but works like these connect individuals through shared experiences and empathy. Belly said “Lock our babies up and then they tell us that it’s fake news”, this sentence alone echoes both his own awareness of the infant genocide being overlooked on the Gaza Strip, as well as the border issues this past summer that left us to witness almost 3,000 children being held in concentration camps in 2018.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/immigrant-amid-rising-displacement-rapper-belly-shares-ode/story?id=5864729 Norman Wong, oct. 2018

• This reply was modified 6 years ago by NADA ABDO.

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[NADA ABDO]

This week’s focus on Islamophobia reminded me of the discussion we had surrounding internment camps and how modern day genocides are masked as being not as monumental as events such as the Holocaust. This topic, for me, tied into how humanitarian crises in the East, particularly in Muslim-majority countries, are oftentimes overlooked by Western new sources and ignored by the public altogether. Even in the midst of the Syrian refugee crisis, America still had the audacity to ban Syrian immigrants through the legalized Muslim Ban. Our so-called president has stigmatized refugees in need of asylum as angry religious terrorists and blocked their aid. This same Islamophobia is repeating with the Yemeni crisis. It is known that a  civil war has taken place with the Houti rebels, but what is less widely know is the damage done by Saudi Arabia, and with US funding and missles. 18.4 Million Yemenis are expected to starve by the end of the year. 5-6 Million Jews died in the Holocaust, to give some reference as to how large this number is.

UN Warns 10 Million More Yemenis Expected to Starve to Death by End of Year

 

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[NADA ABDO]

This week’s discussions about Japanese internment camps left me thinking deeply about how sad it is that children as young as toddlers were being held in concentration camps not too far from here. And to see this image being paraded across the news really rubbed me the wrong way. Teachers (mostly white or white-passing) put on a shitshow of a project (excuse my language) both demeaning the Mexican culture while simultaneously centering it the event on Trump’s border wall debate. It was blatantly racist, insensitive, and should call for each of their termination from their teaching jobs. The school even went as far as supporting these teachers, saying no malicious intent was involved, but that bad judgement was. Especially at a school with many Hispanic youth, it is deeply saddening to see for our eyes how deeply invested our country still is in the dehumanization and removal of black and brown bodies. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/us/idaho-school-mexican-costumes.html

 

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[NADA ABDO]

Reading “The Ballot of the Bullet” really made me understand how easy it must have been for anti-progressives to use this speech to portray Malcolm X as violent and uncompromising. Not to say that he comes off this way at all, rather I respect how directly he makes the demand for black self-determination. His references actual mirrored the Black Panther Constitution, in my opinion. That idea I tied to  comparisons made between MLK and Malcolm X, such as those we discussed last week. While they are depicted as opposing minds with little alike, this image I chose puts them closer on the spectrum, I feel like. However, the intent is to also tie the two powerful figures to Marvel’s Black Panther comic-book hero. He is rich, intelligent, fair, just, and unrelenting in his fight for justice. He experiences race on an amazingly deep level in Marvel’s comic; even at one point being hung on a cross by the KKK. This comic portrays a scene in which these three minds meet in a land far from our own.

https://www.youdontreadcomics.com/articles/2017/6/14/embodying-and-transcending-race-the-importance-of-marvels-black-panther

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[NADA ABDO]

This week’s readings and class discussions, in my mind, really emphasized how the civil rights movement of our history and the one of our present are one in the same. Both movements and movement leaders are portrayed in the same manner, monstracized until their existence serves any type of value to the rich white upper class. In that circumstance, a colorblind martyrdom overtakes the movement’s intended goals. To personify this continuing struggle for equality, I included a photo of former President Barack Obama meeting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s granddaughter, Yolanda Renee King. Today, she is but nine years old, but she is maturely aware of the symbol she represents- connecting our understanding of past fights for equality and the one we face today.

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[NADA ABDO]

The image I chose to embody this week’s discussions and our New Jim Crow reading is very simple: two men, one white, one black, protesting for equal rights. Both men are holding either side of their banner, but only the black man is being questioned by police about having a permit. To me, this image represents Michelle Alexander’s point regarding the unfair assignment of police surveillance to minorities over America’s white population. This over-policing of black and brown bodies correlates directly to higher rates of incarceration in minority communities. While some may argue that regardless of who is being persecuted, the black man is still breaking the law and therefore may be subject to arrest. However, the guiding question is not what law is being broken– but who is breaking it– in order to determine who the “criminal” is. http://thecomicnews.com/edtoons/2014/0820/race/01.php

• This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by NADA ABDO.

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