Linda Sarsour’s “We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders” provides a first person account of activist Linda Sarsour along with a forward by Harry Belafonte, who once lead a delegation to Venezuela to visit Hugo Chavez and is a long time admirer of Fidel Castro.
“Purpose and Grace” forward by Harry Belafonte
“I have been aware of this tremendous young woman for several years now. I find her to be bold and brilliant and unexpected—a combination of qualities that inspire me. When Linda first crossed my threshold, brought into my midst by Carmen Perez, who runs my social justice organization the Gathering for Justice, I was immediately drawn to her. Quite the spitfire she was, unapologetic and strong. I saw in her a burning fire, and she drew me in. I watched her and her comrades shift the ground and make waves and stop the machine. I delighted in their tenacity, their bold vision for Black and brown liberation, and their radical approach to movement work.”
Excerpts Linda Sarsour
“What happened next is contested: Officer Wilson says Brown punched him in the cruiser and then ran when Wilson pulled his firearm and started shooting. Witnesses say Brown did not assault the officer, but ran from the cruiser when the cop started firing, then turned and put his hands in the air and yelled, “Don’t shoot!” Yet Officer Wilson kept squeezing the trigger, twelve shots in all. Six bullets entered Michael Brown’s body, one through the top of his head. The noonday execution of this unarmed Black man was shocking enough, but Brown was then left on the street for four hours in the August sun”
“upon hearing about the death of Michael Brown, I picked up the phone and called Mustafa Abdullah, a friend and fellow activist who served as the lead organizer of the ACLU of Missouri. “What are you doing about Michael Brown?” I asked him. “Where are the Muslims on this? We need to stand up.”
The next week I got myself on a plane and flew to Ferguson. I wanted to bear witness in person to what had transpired there. It felt right for me, an American Muslim woman in a hijab, to stand in solidarity with protesters from around the country, marching for the sanctity of Black lives. ”
“As the case against Michael Brown’s killer wound its way through the criminal justice system, Mustafa and I, along with Imam Dawud Walid, an African American religious leader from Detroit, and Muhammad Malik, a South
“Asian American labor and community organizer from Miami, cofounded Muslims for Ferguson. We wanted to encourage Muslim Americans to embrace the fight against police brutality as a top priority, so we put out a call for Muslims to attend Ferguson October, an event planned by local activists in advance of a critical grand jury hearing on whether Officer Darren Wilson would be indicted. ”
“We also arranged for Black Lives Matter organizers to meet with South Asian and Arab business owners in the St. Louis area to foster solidarity between our communities.
Despite our efforts, in late November 2014, a Missouri grand jury declined to indict Michael Brown’s killer, saying he had broken no law. A week later, a grand jury in New York reached a similar conclusion in the case of the man who had choked Eric Garner to death. People of conscience were heartbroken and enraged. On college campuses, students lay on the ground to stage “die-ins” in protest of the grand jury decisions. In New York City, Tamika, Carmen, and I helped to organize rallies to close down highways, while protestors poured into Macy’s department store and laid themselves down in the aisles. ”
“Marvin Bing is one of the most creative community organizers I know. A conceptual designer and producer of cultural events, he’d been a foster kid growing up, and had done time in juvie in his native Philadelphia. The experience had left him with a lifelong mission to defend youth who are unable to defend themselves. Marvin brought an artist’s imagination to all his social justice activations, and an abiding belief in Kingian nonviolence, which urges us to confront the institutions and structures that perpetuate injustice, rather than the individuals who act in their name.”
“Now Marvin had a new idea, and he wanted me to be a part of it. Before I even knew what he had in mind I was on board, because I trusted him and appreciated that he always made sure Muslims were present around any table at which he sat. That is how I came to be in a meeting on the ground floor of the 1199 Service Employees International Union (SEIU) building in midtown Manhattan, along with nine of the city’s boldest and most influential activists and politicos.
Carmen Perez was cohosting the meeting along with Marvin. Also present were people like Angelo Pinto, leader of the Raise the Age campaign to improve juvenile justice outcomes; and Cherrell Brown, a criminal justice organizer working to repeal the death penalty.”
“Justice League NYC would go on to engage numerous critical battles on behalf of the oppressed and disenfranchised. Other civil rights groups, labor movements, and police reform advocates would soon join with our initiative, including Tamika Mallory. Tamika, Carmen, and I were now officially working in common cause, and together we pulled off a number of high-profile protests. There was the time when Prince William and Kate Middleton were courtside at a Cavaliers-Nets game at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. We knew a lot of press would cover the royals’ attendance at that game, so we staged a mass protest outside the arena to demand that all the cops involved in Garner’s death be held accountable. We dubbed the action a “Royal Shutdown.” Some of us even wore plastic crowns as a statement on the absurdity of the press being preoccupied with a royal visit when people were being killed in the streets.
It was a cold night in December 2014. Outside the arena, hundreds of us chanted, “I can’t breathe,” and “All I want for Christmas is to live,” and “How do you spell racist? N-Y-P-D!” Thirty minutes later, everyone became quiet and lay down…
“For half an hour the only sounds that could be heard around us were the crackle of police scanners, the hum of street traffic, and camera shutters going off as press photographers and ordinary citizens recorded our protest. Meanwhile, inside the arena at halftime, the Cavaliers’ big man LeBron James pulled on a black T-shirt with the words I CAN’T BREATHE across the front, and several other players joined him. Justice League NYC had created those T-shirts, which had been hand-delivered to the players by hip-hop producer and part owner of the Nets, Jay-Z, one of our allies.”
“There was no other choice but to keep going,” Mr. Belafonte told us. “Defeat is never an option.” He looked around the room, seeming to hold each person in his gaze at the same time. “All of you here have inherited the mantle from the ones who marched then, and we are all counting on you. For that entire meeting, I hung on his every word, feeling the great privilege of his belief in. “us to carry on the struggle. I was in awe of his commitment, which fifty years later was undimmed. Defeat is not an option, he had said, and with all my heart I believed him. That night, his grace, authority, and humanity felt like an infinite font of love, pouring sustenance into us all. A month later the same group was once again gathered inside the same building in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, where Mr. Belafonte kept a suite of offices.”
“in addition to the Gathering for Justice, Mr. Belafonte had founded Sankofa, an organization to connect artists with grassroots organizing and social justice campaigns.
The Gathering for Justice was headquartered inside Mr. Belafonte’s suite, as was our own group, Justice League NYC. Our meetings there often lasted well into the night. No one ever wanted to leave. We relished being in rooms that were imbued with Mr. Belafonte’s warrior spirit. It reminded us that our efforts were never in vain. ”
“By the end of March, almost one hundred people had registered, including many 1199 union members. The head of the union, George Gresham, and Mr. Belafonte had agreed to be honorary cochairs of the march. They helped us with fund-raising and sponsorships, and Mr. Gresham even secured two RVs manned by nurses and EMTs and equipped with medical supplies to accompany us along the route. If people got blisters on their feet, they’d provide salve and a place to rest. If people’s knees or ankles ached, they’d tape us up so we could keep going. “Two hundred and fifty miles will wear on your bodies,” Mr. Belafonte had said when Carmen, Tamika, and I first met with him to tell him of our plan. “The logistics alone are crazy. But I’m on board. I don’t know what it is about you three, but I will follow you anywhere.”
“His words fortified us for the road ahead. Determined that our effort be seen as more than a publicity stunt, Carmen, Tamika, and I, as lead organizers, took pains to establish concrete goals that would yield a quantifiable result.”
“Our youngest marcher, Skylar Shafer, a white sixteen-year-old from Litchfield, Connecticut, had signed on to march because she was interested in advocating for children of war. Our oldest marcher, sixty-four-year-old Bruce Richard, was an 1199 union member and former Black Panther.”
“On Monday evening, April 20, as the Union Temple Baptist Church in Washington, DC, came into view, a chorus of sobs broke from the marchers. We had made it.”
“My own organization, the Arab American Association of New York, had sent a busload of supporters from Brooklyn, and the 1199 union had sent a couple of busloads as well. Our honorary cochairs and a lineup of actors and musicians were also with us on that last day, as were gun violence survivors; immigrant rights advocates; women’s groups; Black Lives Matter activists; LGBTQ, Latinx, and Asian American organizations; and hundreds upon hundreds of everyday American citizens.”
“I want to give a shout-out to Bernie Sanders, the Jewish senator from Vermont, and the transformative effect of his campaign on my Muslim community—and on me.
I was a surrogate for the Sanders campaign, and my inside view of that operation left me with a profound respect and affection for the candidate I came to call Uncle Bernie.”
“My first clue to the tenacious idealism that animated Bernie Sanders’s political ideology came when I was introduced to Winnie Wong, cofounder of People for Bernie and mother of the #FeeltheBern hashtag. Through her, I met senior-level staffers who asked me to be an official national surrogate for Bernie Sanders. ”
“Another issue was the fact that the planning team was loose and decentralized, with members spread across the country and communicating mostly online. We all knew that the effort had to be headquartered somewhere, and New York seemed a logical choice. After speaking with Mr. Belafonte, Carmen offered the offices of the Gathering for Justice. With the Gathering’s direct action experience and strong ties to social justice and artistic communities, she knew it was the right move.”
“Over the next few weeks, Mr. Belafonte, Gloria Steinem, Angela Davis, LaDonna Harris, and Dolores Huerta also signed on as honorary cochairs, giving us instant street cred with their various constituencies and making it easier to bring high-profile cultural influencers like Toshi Reagon, Alicia Keys, America Ferrera, and so many others on board. Indeed, almost everyone we approached to take part in the event agreed at once, and helped spread the word to their social media followings. We were starting to understand that this thing was going to be huge—as many as a quarter of a million people might show up. We thought we were dreaming big.”
“When all was arranged, decided, and done, we would pay out more than $2 million so that women and our allies could stand shoulder to shoulder in opposition to tyranny and in solidarity with women’s rights everywhere. In the process, the self-care mandate that is rule number one in any activism handbook was sorely neglected by practically everyone involved in the planning. The pace of our days left us physically exhausted and emotionally depleted, all the more so because during those nine weeks of nonstop emails, fund-raising and sponsorship meetings, permit coordination, and daily conference calls, we hardly ever saw our families.”
“Of course, my unrepentant stance only further inflamed my critics. It didn’t help matters that I had dared to link the liberation of Palestine to the women’s movement in an interview with The Nation magazine. “You can’t be a feminist in the United States and stand up for the rights of the American woman and then say that you don’t want to stand up for the rights of Palestinian women in Palestine,” I said. “It’s all connected. Whether you’re talking about Palestinian women, Mexican women, women in Brazil, China, or women in Saudi Arabia—this feminist movement is an international global movement. The editors had titled the piece “Can You Be a Zionist Feminist? Linda Sarsour Says No.” ”
“This is my life now—keeping my voice loud and showing up for social justice causes that might need a hopeful spirit and tireless feet. And so I was once again in Washington, DC, participating in an act of civil disobedience outside Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s office, demanding that he meet with us to hear the concerns of undocumented people. We were there to protest the Trump administration’s call for an end to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that former president Barack Obama had put in place to confer temporary legal status on some seven hundred thousand undocumented immigrants brought to America as children. Demonstrations were happening across the country in the run-up to the March 5, 2018, expiration of DACA protections, as announced by Trump. Ultimately, the Supreme Court would delay the shutdown of the program by up to a year to allow Congress to take action on the DREAM Act, a bill that would grant a pathway to permanent legal status for DACA recipients. I’m convinced that our direct action campaigns, like the one outside Speaker Ryan’s office, helped to bring about that outcome.”
“At Auburn Seminary, we coached one another in the organizational skills and spiritual resilience needed to lead communities in making change. My seminary group had been a lifeline. Time and again these thoughtful faith leaders had helped me to rise above the vitriol that came at me by the hour.
I was glad to be at the retreat on the day the news broke about the bombs. I’d felt grounded by the company of dedicated movement builders like the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, founder of the Poor People’s Campaign; Stosh Cotler of Bend the Arc, a movement for justice and equity in the Jewish community; the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, an advocate of racial reconciliation, LGBTQ rights, and economic justice; Imam Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations; Rev. Peter Heltzel, a progressive Evangelical pastor in New York City; and the Rev. Dr. Katharine Henderson, president of Auburn Seminary, author, and interfaith bridge-builder. These warriors for justice helped me to stay centered when we learned that a series of pipe bombs had been mailed to fourteen prominent critics of the current commander in chief, including to former presidents Obama and Clinton and their first ladies, and the offices of CNN, which Trump had decried as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.”
“As I’ve traveled the country to raise awareness of social injustices and to organize, my gratitude goes to my MPower Change family for holding down the fort and helping me build the largest grassroots, Muslim-led movement in the country. The Rev. Dr. Jacqueline Lewis and the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, you have been my spiritual center, always a phone call or a text away. ”
“As attack after attack was levied against me, I remained steadfast knowing that Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and Jewish Voice for Peace would stand boldly in my defense. Your organizations are the embodiment of allyship, and I will never be able to repay you. ”
Below are Excerpts from: Linda Sarsour’s “We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders” Afterward
“Rashida Tlaib, you were the activist organizer I strived to emulate as a young person. You showed me how powerful it was to be unapologetically Palestinian American and encouraged me to never tone down my Brooklyn attitude. Thank you, Zahra Billoo and Imraan Siddiqi, for checking in on me and strategizing with me when I felt as if I knew the destination but didn’t know how to get there.
To the senior fellows at Auburn Seminary, thank you for your constant prayers and for committing yourselves to a faith-rooted movement for justice. ”
“Winnie Wong, Ana María Archila, and Ady Barkan, you are my movement warriors. You always go where you are needed and you take me with you. When I thought I was too exhausted to get out of bed, your battle cries for justice were all I needed. Eric Ward, you are brilliance personified. You invested in me, you believed in me, and you are available to me in a way I don’t always feel I deserve. Maria Mottola, my neighbor and dear friend, you saw my nonprofit leadership before I realized it was my path.”
“Imam Omar Suleiman, Imam Zaid Shakir, Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid: Thank you for showing up to the front lines when called and for demonstrating the beauty of our faith. You have come to the aid of the most pained and hurt in our society in the path laid by our beloved Prophet Muhammad (may peace and blessings be upon him).”
“There are so many other friends who stepped up for me over the years: Patrisse Cullors, Sarab Al-Jijakli, Imam Khalid Latif, Tahanie Aboushi, Manar Waheed, Alicia Garza, Nadia Firozvi, Shaun King, Sunny Alawlaqi, Mohammad Khan, Rama Issa-Ibrahim, Kayla Santosuosso, Ashleigh Zimmerman, Said Durrah, Chris Rominger, Jennie Goldstein, Shahana Masum, Rasha Mubarak, Ahmad Abuznaid, Philip Agnew, Fatima Salman, Steve Choi, Jumaane Williams, Brad Lander, Carlos Menchaca, Aliya Latif, Ali Najmi, Father Khader El-Yateem, Zeinab Bader, Aber Kawas, Dalia Mogahed, Mark Thompson, Julianne Hoffenberg, Brea Baker, Jennifer Epps-Addison, Cassady Fendlay, Mysonne Linen, Kirsten John Foy, Habib Joudeh, Nadia Tonova, Maha Freij, Sarah Sophie Flicker, Abed Ayoub, Sophie Ellman-Golan, Paola Mendoza, Rafael Shimunov, Jose Antonio Vargas, Alida Gardia, Nihad Awad, Cathy Albisa, Zein Rimawi, Rinku Sen, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Dove Kent, Somia Elrowmeim, Amardeep Singh, and many, many more.
To the institutions that have held me up: Arab American Association of New York, MPower Change, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Muslim American Society (MAS), and the Muslim Legal Fund of America—I’m so grateful for all that you do for our communities.”