Yazan Zahzah Oral History

Yazan Zahzah, pronouns(they/them), is one of the Arab Muslin community members and the director of community, a grassroots organization based in Los Angeles called Vigilant Love. Yazan also has undergraduate and master’s degree in gender studies research, which mostly focused on relationship between gender refugee hood and surveillance. At the beginning of our interview, Yazan talked about the early life. With parents, whose country was impacted by war and colonization, Yazan immigrated to the US. In 2017, Yazan moved to San Diego and helped to build the Majdal Community Center. Initially, Yazan helped Syrian refugees to secure food, clothing, and also helped them to fit into the US culture and life. Then Yazan and their peers decided to build a physical place for the refugee community to represent themselves freely, like sharing their opinions in politics and social justice. As for the current work, Yazan is focusing on researching and looking at policies in San Diego that were impacting refugee safety, which is around the surveillance of refugees. This interview covers topics such as Majdal Center well-being, Solidarity overlaps between refugee experiences, Community Autonomy, Social justice struggle in community, and Tension in NGO spaces around refugees. Yanzan was paired by Ramah Awad as my narrator. Our interview was conducted via zoom in order to practice social distancing during the pandemic. The interview was conducted by Muhan He, a senior student majoring in Math-Computer Science at UCSD who is interested in community construction of the Majdal Center and refugee immigration policies.