Author: mara.ahmed

Angela Davis on Dalit Lives Matter

“In a powerful video statement, philosopher and political activist Angela Davis emphasizes the need to forge meaningful international solidarity at this time of global outcry against the structures of white supremacy and casteist-Brahmanical patriarchy. She gives a shout out to ‘Black Lives Matter,’ ‘Dalit Lives Matter,’ and ‘Muslim Lives Matter,’ reminding us of the important connections between these calls for justice and struggles for human dignity.” A dear friend of mine helped put the talking points together.

supporting friends and community

hello roc friends, just wondering if a petition in support of Iman Abid-Thompson addressed to the NYCLU has already been started? if not, i’d like to get working on it quickly. as everyone knows, iman is one of the lead organizers for Free The People Roc. we need to come together, speak up as a community, and model solidarity. pls let me know if something is already in the works. thx.

gadot as cleopatra

a friend asked me to speak to her class about feminism and islam, something i’ve written about, so i’ve been refreshing my reading of texts by three spectacularly incisive women of color – saba mahmood, houria boutelja and francoise verges. the timing could not be better as the controversy over casting gal gadot, a white israeli actress, in the role of cleopatra continues on social media.

i know this will ruffle feathers, but i’ve been meaning to write this since the new ‘wonder woman’ came out (also played by gal gadot). i grew up in the middle of europe, when wonder woman was on fire (albeit dubbed in french) and i have to say, it never did anything for me. i’ve read ad infinitum how wonder woman changed the lives of western/white women and i’ve always felt completely disconnected from that discourse. wonder woman, as invented by a white man and played by a skinny white woman, did not resonate with me. most of the time, she seemed to be awkwardly balancing herself while twirling, burdened with an impractical costume, and, i felt as a child, more limited in her powers than other super heroes. she did not represent strength to me. the bionic woman (also dubbed in french) seemed more sensible and badass than her.

it’s pretty fitting then that gal gadot, a supporter of IDF and settler colonialism, came to embody white feminism, its artifacts and imagery – something i am indifferent to.
in the same way cleopatra, as delivered by elizabeth taylor, felt sad and campy, so very campy, and failed to project female empowerment. she was obviously conceived and executed by a bunch of men in hollywood. now that we’ve come a long way, in terms of women’s rights, a group of white women want their chance to co-opt the story of an egyptian queen. i’m sure that their counterparts will be inspired, but the rest of us — brown, black, women from the east and the global south — will just have to do our own thing:)

stop already, wajahat ali

a couple of years ago, wajahat ali goes to palestine with MLI, a zionist-supported program, and writes all about his insights on how settlers have feelings too (the atlantic gives him plenty of space to reflect on the hackneyed ‘competing narratives’ vis a vis palestine/israel). there is pushback as expected. wajahat ali doesn’t back down. he writes a second piece for the atlantic to defend himself and spit on retrograde muslims. now, once again, wajahat ali gets annoyed because steven salaita, ali abunimah and others point out how certain opinions get more media coverage than others and how the proponents of those views get bigger media platforms. wajahat ali bends over backward to frame that uncontroversial statement as being anti-semitic and sends armies of trolls and miscellaneous gatekeepers of speech on p/i their way, in spite of how much damage such allegations have already wreaked on scholars/activists/journalists. sadly wajahat ali is pakistani american. his shameless (and outrageous) centering of himself on the subject of palestine is embarrassing. dude, pls pipe down and go back to writing unimaginative plays like ‘the domestic crusaders’.

JVP in nyc

so i joined JVP’s NYC chapter and they welcomed me w such warmth and love. added me immediately to their cinema palestine team and are super excited by all my ideas (i have too many). the other people on the team are filmmakers, playwrights, artists, an assistant curator at the whitney, and a psychotherapist who’s palestinian american. all activists of course and lots of young people. thrilled to start working together:)

The Ecology of Perception – David Abram

in jan 2019, we organized a community discussion on ‘from inclusion to equity: the diversity advantage’ at the gandhi institute for nonviolence. the idea came out of an interview i did on wxxi. i was talking about the partition of india and the insanity of wanting to homogenize richly plural cultures, languages and religions, when mary scipioni called in and shared the need for diversity in her work – landscape architecture. more diverse systems create resilience and strength, as well as beauty. this prompted a conversation on diversity, approached from different angles and areas of expertise. so happy to come across material, all the time, that highlights the connections we were trying to make.

David Abram: ‘It seems to me that falling in love outward with the more-than-human earth is the deepest medicine for this, because if there’s anything that the local earth wherever you live teaches, it’s the need for diversity, the need for the whole, weird multiplicity of shapes of life and styles of sentience—all of them shaped so differently from you and from one another—to be interacting with one another in order for the land to be strong, to be healthy, to be resilient. And so as we open our hearts and open our senses to the wider sensuous earth, I think we imbibe this deep teaching of diversity, of the need for an irreducible pluralism, and for celebrating otherness and radical alterity, radical otherness in our world, not looking to just shelter ourselves among those who think just like us or speak just like us or look just like us, but taking deep, new pleasure in otherness and strangeness.’ More here.

more elijah pierce

in his many religiously inspired, biblical wood carvings, jesus and his companions are always black. pierce’s work is fiercely political, from depicting police brutality and the violence of imperial war to the corruption of the white house. he lived until he was 90 and witnessed a lot of tumultuous history.
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philly #philadelphia #barnesfoundation #elijahpierce #woodcarvings #exhibition #blackart #blackartmatters #politics #war