Artists and community members examine the impact of racism on our communities.
Savages Unite will present artistic and academic perspectives on the history of hate speech within racial & religious discrimination specifically, and colonialist & imperialist propaganda more generally. This forum will examine the connections and solutions to Islamophobia, xenophobia, White supremacism, and institutionalized discrimination in the forms of surveillance, infiltration, predatory policing and war.
ll be an open space for community members to share concerns and ideas for countering hate and war and becoming part of the solution.
Mark Gonzales has been described as 'Khalil Gibran meets Pablo Neruda.' He is a HBO Def Jam poet who has shared his writing on stage around the world, including the first TEDxRamallah talks held in Palestine. As a community builder he was an invited speaker at the United Nations tribunal on Social Exclusion. He is currently a Visiting Professor and Artist in Residence at the Institute of Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University. Mark's work breaks borders to wage beauty across continents of language and culture, which has earned him respect for his creative approaches to suicide prevention, human rights and human development.
Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur Rashid is the religious and spiritual leader (Imam) of The Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood Inc., which is the lineal descendant of the Muslim Mosque Inc. founded by the late El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X), in 1964. Imam 'Abdur-Rashid is also the Amir (President) of the Majlis Ash-Shura (Islamic Leadership Council) of Metropolitan New York. Nationally, he serves as the Deputy Amir (Vice President) of The Muslim Alliance in North America.
Sara Flounders is Co-Director of the International Action Center, founded 20 years ago by Ramsey Clark to oppose U.S. militarism, racism and war. Flounders is an editor and co-author of 10 books published by the IAC and the just published: War Without Victory – The Pentagon's Achilles Heel. She has organized fact-finding delegations to countries and struggles targeted by the U.S. government, including Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, Cuba and Colombia to build solidarity and understanding and challenge the corporate media propaganda and racist demonization used to justify U.S. wars.
Kazi Fouzia is a designer and seamstress at a retail sari shop in Jamaica, Queens. She has been a member of Desis Rising Up & Moving since 2009 fighting for better rights as an undocumented Muslim immigrant worker. In Bangladesh, Kazi was a member of a street vendors union, a community theater group, an organizer for free community health clinics, taught young children from the slums, and comes from a long history of struggles for justice.
Ramzi Kassem is Associate Professor of Law at the City University of New York where he directs the Immigrant & Refugee Rights Clinic. With his students, Professor Kassem represents prisoners of various nationalities presently or formerly held at American facilities at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, at so-called "Black Sites," and at other detention sites worldwide. Professor Kassem also supervises the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project, which primarily aims to address the legal needs of Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and other communities in the New York City area that are particularly affected by national security and counterterrorism policies and practices.