It's helpful to remember who we come from: In Conversation with Hoda Katebi
Illustration by Javie.
Hoda Katebi is an award-winning Iranian, Chicago-based writer, community and abolitionist organizer, and creative educator. You can find her and her work featured in the BBC, VOGUE, and the New York Times. When she isn't hosting the digital book club, #BecauseWeveRead, she is a national leader for Believers Bail Out, a bail fund using Zakat to bail Muslims from pretrial & immigration incarceration, and is an organizer with the No War Campaign. She is a founding member of Blue Tin Production, a garment manufacturing workers co-operative run by working-class women of color. Hoda's work focuses on the intersections of surveillance, global capitalism, and gender.
We had our conversation over Zoom, with her in the U.S. and me in Canada. Even with the distance, and the often exhausting medium of online meetings, I could feel her warmth and eagerness.
Hoda and I spoke with ease, joking about how easily discussing the topic of the afterlife comes to Muslims, the death of representation politics, the inspiration of the long historical arc of activism, and living beyond the expectations of white, capitalist society. This conversation is part venting session, part manifesto, and is all kinds of earnest.
FURQAN MOHAMED: What did you want to be when you were little? Is it anything close to what you’re doing now? What would baby Hoda think of your work?
HODA KATEBI: I wanted to do everything. Little Hoda wanted to be a firefighter on Monday and an artist on Tuesday. As I got a little bit older, I enjoyed acting. I joined my drama class in middle school, and I did well. I think part of why I enjoyed it is because I felt like I could actually communicate with other people.
I just started wearing my hijab in sixth grade, so it was challenging for me to build social relationships in a very racist school.
In retrospect, I liked drama so much because it allowed me, as a heavy extrovert, to get the social energy that I needed—that I wasn't getting elsewhere, or otherwise. Maybe in a non-corrupt horrendous world, I would go into acting.
Some people would argue that organizing and acting are kind of similar. For the sake of your mental health and safety, you have to create some distance, I guess, the way an actor does when playing a character.
Truthfully, I'm bad at creating a character for myself. I feel like sometimes, I'm too genuine to the point where I realize I might be giving things away. I think it's been a practice of “should be this open way,” especially as [COVID-19] death rates increase, maybe I should limit how open I am and how easy it is to [literally] access me. Just for safety.
I love that you brought that up. I'm learning about myself already with this question. There's definitely a theater to organizing and a sort of play of putting on a protest, how you are trying to convey things—I definitely agree.
You use the word access—I was wondering if you could speak to who exactly is in your community? There is the online world, and then activism circles, but who was not in your community? I don't know if you saw that Angela Davis clip where she was like, “there are some people that I do not want to be in community with,” and everyone was like, “wow.”
I love this question. I think this has changed for me as I've gotten older, especially when I first started writing and occupying space on the internet. I very much was like, “I just want everybody to read this.” My audience is everyone, but when we say “everyone,” it's really just white people—it is a specific majority that is in power that we think is everybody. If I'm writing about why Muslims are not terrorists, that's for everybody, but it's not. It's not for Muslims. It's not for our communities.
I think a lot of my relationship with who I thought my audience or my virtual community was has shifted over time. My role is to also help my community learn about things; help create content, and help think through and provide language for our people. Because if we're all dedicated to convincing one white person—one racist person—that we're not all terrorists, then how is our community moving forward? When they see something else and then tomorrow, that conversation has to start all over again?
I think for me, I've been able to shift from “I do not want to be in community” and will not be for my reasons, with people who refuse to see what I'm trying to build. To be able to see me for my work and my community for our basic humanity. I will never try to convince somebody that Muslims are not terrorists anymore. If you think that, so be it. Good. Think that in that corner, and I'll think something else, and I'll build over here.
I don't think that the revolution or even community building will happen if you need every single person on your side. So long as you know who the people that share your values are and know the world that you are trying to create. We always define our community by whoever is in these arbitrary borders that we call a nation-state.
If you are trying to build a vision-based movement, [it should be] with people who share a basic idea of what direction you are going in, and how [you are going] to get there. My idea of community has expanded very much to include people who have the same direction that we're trying to head in, and have the same “why” for doing that. I think that's important. I've stepped out of a lot of secular to the point of anti-religion organizing spaces in the United States as well. Oftentimes, there's no “why” or there's a very weak “why” that they're holding on to, and that makes me feel unsafe.
If I don't have a deep foundational understanding of “where” and “why” I'm doing what I'm doing, [then] I can't. For me, it's a little bit more complicated now, and I think that's a good thing. I do agree that we don't have to be building with everybody, just with people who are going to help us build and not destroy.
I think it takes a lot to realize that not every Muslim is down for the liberation of other Muslims.
One question I also get asked a lot is, “is this cancel culture?” [When it's really], who do you spend the time to build with? I think that has a lot to do with “Where are you starting?” For example, I always spend time having conversations with my parents and my brother, because there's a deep relationship there. I'll never be like, “Okay, screw you, we're not going to agree,” so I will spend the time always putting emotional energy because we have that strong relationship. I think in our communities, we have to think deeply both in terms of what mental capacity and what emotional capacity we have, as well as where our heart is because we all only have 24 hours in the day. We have to decide how we're going to invest that time and build those relationships.
I think that makes so much sense. It's not, “Oh, we're not going to deal with anybody.” It's more like, “How much are we going to choose to invest in other people?” You refer to yourself as a “creative educator” when doing this work. What is creative education? What does it mean to you? How does that differ from traditional means of educating people, like via scholarship and things like that. When you were able to take the time to sit down with people and teach them, what about creative education makes that work for you?
That's a really funny question. I think [I'm a] creative educator in the sense that I'm just simply a millennial. I'm not publishing on JSTOR, but I'm publishing content in a way that is accessible to the communities I want to be able to read it. For example, if I want to talk about what's happening in terms of Muslim experiences, I can do it through clothing. I can even tell the story of politics in Iran through clothing.
Oftentimes, there are ways that those of us who have had the privilege of going to institutions of higher education, where we learn all these big fancy words. We want to use them to show off our knowledge. But that's inherently alienating.
We're all on the same page. I shouldn't feel frustrated when I'm talking to an elder and they don't know what the term imperialism means when they've lived imperialism. Unfortunately, education has been an ivory tower. For me, a lot of the questions that I try to ask are A) How do we make a lot of the things that we're talking about accessible to the people who are trying to be a part of the conversation? And B) How do we also create spaces for people to learn and recognize that their own lived experiences are also valid, and also intellectual and a point of knowledge creation?
You don't need a degree to explain different theories of capitalism when you're a working-class person of color. You can explain it much better than any of us can. I think it is just about accessibility, as well as recognizing the monopoly of knowledge production, and where that comes from, and how we need to be able to challenge that.
Sometimes it's frustrating—the way that people talk about working class people as if they don't understand these concepts. It's like, “hello, who do you think has lived underneath all of them?” As a person who comes from scholarship and organizing and activism, is there any tension for you between the two? Like the tension between people who only seem to read or people who don't want to take these texts into the world and reckon with people like they're real, and not just theories. Does that ever come into tension?
100%. I think Assata Shakur who mentioned that theory without practice is just as incomplete as practicing that theory. I think [some of us] don't have the patience to read. But I think that it's so centrally important for us to understand the theory; we have to understand what we're building, what's wrong, how it is wrong, and also different ways that we can learn.
There's millions of ways that what happens hyper locally is connected on a global scale. I think if we're able to learn in a very deep and non-Eurocentric way, not in the way that we learn in our classrooms, that allows us to be able to build deeper relationships with each other—which is necessary for any large-scale movement building. We're trying to imagine and practice the world that we want, [and] that's not going to be rooted in not knowing shit about the world, right? We have to be able to understand and learn from so many different perspectives.
I just started reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, and it is so incredible. I've never really been able to have the ability or the access to connect to Indigenous thought in such a beautiful way that has helped me change my relationship to the world around me. I know that so many of our communities have had this knowledge and like, also have deep relationships with the land, but we've been uprooted. Being able to read something so deeply impactful both on a personal level—I think there are a few academics who have been able to leave that bubble and make their work accessible. Academia historically is rooted in the extraction of information from people on the streets, who they say have nothing to contribute, and yet all of their information is coming from these people. And they'll just rephrase what they say, they'll publish it in journals that are inaccessible, both in terms of language and price. I think that there's a huge disconnect between sites of knowledge production, which is communities, and then how the knowledge is produced, and then where it comes back to.
You mentioned fashion as a means of education. Then there's scholarship. I was wondering if there's any of that you do or pleasure, or for your own well-being and your enjoyment?
I think at the end of the day, we all grow as people in any way, and that helps us as organizers. I don't think that there's anything that I've read, and then not have it applied in the way that I consumed the world or think about my role within it.
I've abstained from reading novels. I was only exposed to novels written by white people, but now, I've been thinking a lot more just about how beautiful novels are, and how accessible politics can be conveyed through novels. I'm trying to be able to read more for “fun,” but also recognizing that I'm not going to read some white girl's story or whatever, “for fun,” because I don't think that provides any value. At the end of the day, I think reading is extremely important.
Speaking of books that have a purpose, what made you want to start #BecauseWe'veRead? How did that get started? It seems like quite the feat.
It started completely by accident. I had this interview that went viral, but I didn't realize I was going to go viral. I had talked about how I hated this country in different ways. I got the question, “Are you [even] an American?” I said in response, “that's because I've read,” in response to [people asking] “where are you getting this from?” It was cool, in particular. It had memes, its own Reddit sub-threads and everything because people just love that line.
I was really thinking that nobody reads, and yet somehow everybody loved that line. So how can we actually use this momentum, the energy that was coming out of that specific moment? How can we use that in order to help build communities centered around this more radical approach to education, something that we knew we weren't going to be reading in our high school classrooms, or going to be reading in our US history classrooms?
Nothing that I read I think really “radicalized me.” Everything that we read is supposed to de-radicalize us and remind us how great this country is. I think it was really important to be able to capture that moment and direct the energy into something that could be longer and community-based. So that's how it all started. Since then it's been really organic. It’s been really exciting to see people around the world read things that they've never heard of, from authors they've never heard of. We really try to not center American authors, but reading authors from across Africa, Asia, Southeast Asia, or South America. We're trying to understand our places in the world on a grander scale.
Of both your projects, #BecauseWe'veRead is more the scholarly one, and then Blue Tin Production the more “seizing the means of production” project. Could you talk a little bit about that and how that's going? I can imagine the pandemic has probably changed that a little bit.
I think the way that you're positioning these questions, and linking them all together is really interesting. I have never thought about it like that.
Blue Tin Production was born out of a deep frustration and a very obvious lack within the fashion industry as a whole. It started in the early days: a lot of brands approaching me to collaborate and me saying no, for like X, Y, Z reasons. And a few times, they would be a little frustrated and be like, “Well, don't be so self-righteous, it's very hard,” blah, blah, blah. I was like, “Okay, you have like a multimillion-dollar company.” It felt like a challenge that if I—who has no fashion experience—created a collection of clothes that was ethical and sustainable, could continue to hold all of these brands accountable, and just use that as a middle finger.
So, I started working on it. Then I realized that it's very hard to find production [spaces] in the United States that I felt comfortable saying that I used, even for myself.
Seeing how just horrendous the conditions that we've completely normalized—a lot of the fight right now is to stop screwing us over. We don't want gender-based violence in our factories. We want to get paid—just the most basic demands that shouldn't have to be demanded.
I think that what's also really challenging is just to see where the conversation has been. I realized the gap between where we should be, the conversations we should be having, and what the actual reality is.
I brought a sort of abolitionist lens and approach to thinking about how, in the way, we approached prisons or police that we know are inherently violent, looking at sweatshops and capitalism the same way. A world without sweatshops can and should exist. It has been exciting to see the small everyday conversations that we have at the studio, that have been, quite literally, magical.
Seeing messages from other garment workers from around the world being like, “Wow, you're right, we shouldn't just have to be asking for better wages.” We should be asking for our own shares, have ownership over this work and over how our bodies are being used and exploited. We're really excited and grateful for the process as challenging and awful and hard as it's been.
I've always tried to avoid the pandemic in interviews because I want to talk about other things so very badly. It's hard, for obvious reasons, but also because many focus on the pandemic and try to blame all our problems on it. Though, it has revealed so much about the world before, like the precarity of work. And the way that people we call essential are not: they're very disposable. What do you make of the sort of awakening, or whatever, that people seem to be having right now? Has that pushed the sense of urgency for places and people like Blue Tin Production? Or do you still find yourself having to prove that this works and that things like worker co-op should exist?
I think what is particularly unique to the fashion industry and also a valuable lesson for all of us is just how ferociously the system will fight to keep women of color, from any sort of ability to have economic mobility or have access to anything.
The fashion industry, the CFDA had all of these [events] “Oh, let's help the fashion industry survive.” They're giving so much money and grants out [to] all these out to designers. When you click the Like the drop-down box for how you identify yourself [when applying for the grant], there was not a single option for manufacturers. Even the fashion industry continuously forgets that garment workers exist, that they also need care and need funds. Same with the city—no category for garment workers, when they're essential workers who are going to work every single day.
Has the pandemic changed any of the ways that you organize? Are you doing a lot more things online? What has shifted? What has stayed the same for you?
I think a lot of the conversations have shifted due to the work of primarily Black femmes who have been organizing around the sort of invest/divest language that has been pushed through the abolitionist lens. How is it that the United States continues to spend millions and billions in war efforts to kill people and yet cannot spend $1 more for healthcare for people to live in this country? I think COVID allowed the conversation to get a little bit more depth; the first-hand experience for more people living in the United States, and I'm sure in Canada as well, just precisely the ways that the government quite literally invests in killing and divests in life.
I think that was important for many people—particularly white people—to recognize, which allows [these] conversations to be pushed forward. Especially in the wake of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. While people are suffering through a pandemic, somehow these killing machines called ‘police’ continue.
On a personal level, I think COVID made me realize just truly how unprepared I am in terms of practicing everything that we say that we believe in, as an abolitionist.
I'm always like, we have to be able to make relationships with our neighbors, so we can protect each other. And I realized that I don't know anybody in my building. If somebody needed something, and they had COVID, they wouldn't know the knock on my door. They don't know who I am. COVID for me, personally, was like a wake-up call. It's so important for us to practice the world we want to see, to prepare us for moments like this. COVID was a really helpful and necessary reminder of how we shouldn't just be waiting for this “revolution” to come, then start to remember to be a good person. We have to practice, envisioning and building and actively creating the world that we want, every single day, whether or not there's a pandemic. How can we practice all of that as a discipline today, so that we have that for ourselves, but also can taste what that liberation is? Could we feel like that today if all of us are starting to practice from now?
I think that's such a beautiful answer. In the wake of the murders of the Muslim family in London, Ontario. Many Muslim colleagues of mine have decided not going to go on TV or to write an op-ed. I've personally decided not to participate in the death industrial complex at all, that sort of only seems to care about Brown and Black people when we are hurt. Are there any times you have said no, in your career, any moments where you decided to take a step back? When you do say yes, like, what is the thing that guides you?
My politics are becoming more and more clear. I think people are less than willing to even reach out for something. And by people, I mean, corporations, or problematic panels. I like this question because oftentimes, we never see the “no's,” and people are less willing to say no. It's just so invisible. No one's gonna give you a heart on your comment. No one's gonna pat you on the back or give you a cupcake for saying no. I think it is the “no's” that define who we are more than the yes's do. It's always a challenge, but it does get easier and easier sometimes. I think at the end of the day, what guides my yes or no is ensuring that I have something that I'm working toward, and I have a "why."
If we haven't sat down with ourselves, and genuinely ask ourselves why, when, who—all of these important questions, then what are we doing? For me, as a Muslim, I think those questions are a lot easier to answer. It's a lot easier to know what history I'm grounding myself in. As Shia Muslims, we have such a rich history of saying no to the state, saying no to oppression, saying no to something that you don't believe in. I think that's a beautiful, important history that helps keep me grounded.
Anytime we want to go through the state, just watering down and compromise, we are left with something that has no meaning. I think this idea of limiting our imaginations and compromising ours is the kryptonite to both our souls and senses of self, but also our movements in the long run, and in the short term.
People believe in visibility as politics. Like “if I show up here as a Muslim, then that'll be enough, and I'm doing something.” I came to Sumou, an outlet run by Muslim girls as a guest on the PSA Book-club series. I remember saying yes because I love talking to Muslim women who have very clear liberation politics, not just people who hide behind Islam or behind the hijab. But people who are very articulate in the way that see community and see justice. How do you come to Sumou?
If there's any part of this, where you make bold or big in text, its REPRESENTATION IS NOT A STANDARD FOR LIBERATION! And we forget that so much. Capitalism makes us think if we just put people who look like us in positions of power, that somehow we're saved when they're still pulling the trigger! Is that right? I don't know. Do guillotines have that?
I think it's a rope!
Before I said yes to this conversation, I looked you up. And obviously, I looked up the magazine. I think that there's a level of genuine commitment to deeply beautiful conversations that don't have a lot of spaces elsewhere. I think it's important to be able to support smaller publications that are rooted in the community, having incredible people like you involved in this work, who have really solid politics and know the sort of vision that they're trying to build, and they have a good team of people that they're working with.
I adore Sumou. I'm so glad that Jood asked me to do this because I think there's also something—I don't know if missing is the right word. But there seems to be a gap in Muslim publications, or perhaps in the like publications Muslims favor. I think people forget Islam is about liberation and that we are the “knuck if you buck” faith!
I don't know if it's “forget,” though. I think it's an intentional compromise to justify your capitalist pursuit.
Right! I think that's a much better way to phrase it. It's intentionally leaving out the radical roots and demands for equality and justice as a tenant of the faith. That's why when I saw your article in Vogue, I was like, “they let her write this!? In Vogue!? We're out here!” Did you pitch it? Were you asked to write it? Walk us through the behind-the-scenes of this very Muslim article.
I want to challenge your language just a little bit in terms of “they're letting us.” I think that makes it seem like we need them when they need us. Vogue is nothing without people of color to validate them, and the culture they're seeking to create. [They are nothing without] the money they want from our communities—as a result of being able to show [advertisers] they've tapped the rich Muslim community in the Gulf. Something that I hope we as Muslims, as people of color, can hold with us as we're engaging with or having conversations with sexy platforms is that they need you. You don't need to tone down your voice, you don't need to tone down who you are, to make it feel like they will accept you. That's how they want the power dynamics to be. But in reality, these publications aren't anything. All culture in the United States has come from Black people and from immigrants.
I do think that it's actually challenging for me sometimes to say yes to some of these larger publications, because I know that, in a way, I'm giving them some of the cultures that we've created online for ourselves. Sometimes, it does feel like a compromise to agree to write something for Vogue, knowing that they're going to get ad revenue.
The editor who actually wrote a piece on Blue Tin, who has been really lovely to keep in touch with, reached out and asked if I wanted to write a piece, and I said, sure. I knew that given that the audience would be Vogue, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to be “I'm Muslim, I'm hurt,” and placing Muslims as victims, but really [instead place] Muslim as agents, and quite literally as agents of liberation. France is afraid of Muslims being able to express themselves because they're afraid of the power and potential that we as a community hold.
I think that it was really important to also connect it to [what's going on] here in the United States. We love to always critique other countries, so I think also recognizing that this is very globalist in nature; reasons, why this is all happening in France, are connected to the same things that happen to Muslims in the United States, Canada, and the UK. Colonialism doesn't go away just because you think it does.
For me, I was going to write the piece and it would be on my terms. If my politics [were not] able to come through, if they did try to edit, I just wouldn't let them publish the piece.
I want to speak a little bit in defense of my previous language about using the phrase “let” and I think you're right within reason. “Let” is not the best word, but the reason that I have used it is because of Emily Wilder's situation. She was that journalist with the AP, a Jewish woman, who was basically ousted because of seemingly pro-Palestinian tweets or something like that. I use the word “let” because these publications think of themselves as neutral observers or stenographers, but they're not. They clearly have politics. I was wondering about Vogue, a magazine that does have politics by virtue of all the whiteness and wealth that it displays, and what it means for an outlet like them to have someone like you in it. But you really beautifully explained that you wouldn't have let them publish it anyway if they tried to censor you. I think that a lot of people wouldn't have the guts to admit that. I don't want to commend you for doing the bare minimum, but there's a lot of Muslim professionals who would have just taken the byline, even if it was a watered-down portrait and a betrayal of our politics.
We talked about representation not being liberation, and I've been thinking about visibility versus success, as two things that I think are in tension for some people. When you're writing something like Vogue, does that ever come into your head? You mentioned receiving death threats earlier? I've gotten some nasty emails myself. Do you ever think about those two things: visibility and your safety, and visibility versus success?
I would 100% be lying if I don't also feel excited, you know, when things get big, or I got to write this piece. That makes me excited and happy. It also makes it even harder to say no, when those opportunities do exist. I think it goes down to how you define success.
As a Muslim—and this conversation might get dark very quickly—we are all going to die very soon. It gives me chills that on the Day of Judgment, you're going to look back on your life and it'll feel like an afternoon, and that's so accurate because I look back on my life right now.
I think that's grounding though, because if we're all going to die soon, we cannot be expected to do it all.
I'm enjoying what I'm doing. I'm grateful for that. But that's not what drives me. I know I'm going to be in a grave with nothing. I'm going to meet my maker. That's what drives me. That also helps me in not caring about the death threats, not caring as much about everything else that sort of turns into a distraction, because [it] doesn't matter. It's not going to matter when I'm dead.
I think we're taught to be afraid of death in this world that we live in, in a capitalistic world; in a very individualistic world.
If we're allowing ourselves to see how important that death is, how central, we can use that as a guidepost of being able to know that tomorrow is not promised. I think it is grounding for me to be able to use and think about death, often in a healthy way.
Would this conversation between two Muslims be complete if we didn't talk about death? I think that's why Muslims make for great abolitionists. We know how to destroy, we know that things leave. They're gone because we can tear them down. Everybody else says “if you get rid of prisons, what are we gonna do?” When you're a Muslim who talks about the end, and death all the time, you're like, “yeah, we'll figure it out. I'll die.” I don't want to say that Muslims are nihilists or that we're cynics by nature because we're not— on the contrary. There's something about faith that allows you to envision the end of a system.
It boils down to “La Ilaha Illa Allah”—there is no God but God. Capitalism is not God. The President is not God. Money is not God. All of these things that we've placed so much value, investment, respect, and high authority in are literally not God. We have to admit that as Muslims—that is the testament of faith.
Anything that we give that level of Godly power over us contradicts our faith. In our statement and declaration as Muslims, we recognize that all empires will crumble—all of them, and it's all inevitable. Our role is just to make that happen a little faster, to do what we can, but it's not upon one or two people in order to make that happen. We don't have the weight of everybody on our shoulders, and we only have to answer to ourselves. I think that's also very central in Islam.
I forgot the exact quote, I don't want to make something up. But basically, of the size of the smallest grain of rice, any sin or goodness will not go unseen and unaccounted for in the next life. But that's just for us. Nobody else will have to answer for that except for ourselves. I think that alleviates a lot of stress, anxiety, and nihilism I think a lot of people have.
I think there's a sense of liberation, both from recognizing that we are all obedient to God, but also are free within our minds. It's important for me, as a Muslim to have that binary within me. It allows me to operate and ignore the death threats. Because God's gonna kill me, not you.
I feel like that is such a, like a grounding, like, like a piece of grounding. I only have one maker. I only have one judge. I think that that is the best way to get through all the evil that is in the world. I was wondering if there are any methods of grounding or self-care that you hold on to when going through the motions of your work?
Reading is recharging for me. I think it helps me with an important reminder: that none of this is new. I'm not alone. Some people have been fighting this fight for as long as systemic oppression has existed. There are going to be people that keep this fight going.
I think reading has always been an important grounding tool for me to be able to exhale a little bit and keep figuring out what our role is, as we move forward, how we connect to all of our struggles around the world, and how we can move forward in different ways.
I love just being outside in nature. No buildings, no sounds of cars, and just like sitting there and absorbing it. It's important for me to be able to do that. I hate bugs. I love nature, but I hate the bugs. Being able to just spend time with people, who I love and care about, and just do nothing. I think it's been really helpful to recharge, and spending as much time as possible offline.
The theme of this issue is cycles and births and deaths. And, you know, as good Muslims, we've already sort of covered the topic of death. Can you talk more about being “reactive versus proactive” and maybe how you're letting the habit of being reactive “die”?
Sitting in my apartment, looking down at white supremacists with guns in their hands walking around in the street when like, I don't even know the people in my building. I think that was a very vivid reminder to be proactive rather than reactive because we have to recognize moments that we can't afford to be reactive before it's too late.
I can imagine. Here in Toronto, we've had like a bunch of anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers. They have taken up with the anti-Muslim bigots and anti-semites. Then the police come, and instead of relegating them, they give them a fist bump. They're like besties. These are the same people. But I don't know if that is becoming clearer to some people or if we just sound conspiratorial. Some people are now witnessing a lot of the horrific behavior of police officers because now everything is caught on camera, rather than listening to the testimony of their Black neighbors. It takes anti-maskers, it takes death, like George Floyd for people to realize that something is deeply, deeply wrong. How do you not go crazy? Part of me is hopeful. But the other part of me is deeply cynical.
How do I not go crazy? That's a question I ask myself every day. I think when we recognize that this moment is not actually new in so many ways, it allows us to recognize that we've been here before. Our ancestors have won worse than this before.
I think it's really helpful to remember who we come from, and how the battle has changed but still has remained the same. And how much we're actually growing. I'm even thinking about from last summer to this summer, just how many more people simply identify as an abolitionist. These are really important cultural shifts that are also necessary at the same time.
When we do take a moment to imagine the world that we want, what that looks like, we realize that it's never going to come from the state. It's never going to come from an amendment. I think cultural shifts are super important, as long as we're also recognizing how much of that power is within our hands.
If we keep placing our hope in the wrong places, then they'll always feel hopeless and on the verge of insanity. We always have low expectations, and we always know that it's going to fail. [When] we put our hope in the people, we actually see that things are growing and getting more exciting. We've seen unprecedented support for Palestine. These past few months, workers around the world have actually used their incredible power to stop the flow of Israel's power around the world. In terms of the protests last summer; people burned police cars, surveillance cameras, police stations—all the tools of state violence. These were really amazing things. We see the power of the state being reduced.
Is there anything at the moment that you are looking forward to?
I'm looking forward to a building we just closed on—a massive commercial building in Chicago, Illinois, which is, unfortunately, one of the poorest working-class communities of Black and brown people in Chicago. We're building our new studio there, as well as an amazing community center with Black and brown youth organizers from the neighborhood. And a rooftop garden. We're just very excited about it. We have been having a lot of really important conversations. What does safety look like? What does safety look like for young people in this neighborhood? Really just listening to people talk about safety on their own terms and deciding what that looks like, and being able to figure out how we can convey that in a building has been the most life-giving project yet.
I'm so thrilled to see what you guys come up with over there. It looks like that brings me to the end of my questions. I wish I could keep you longer and just pick your brain.
These were great questions. Thank you so much for all of your very thoughtful questions and comments. This has been so much fun.
Thank you, I appreciate your really beautiful answers. It was lovely talking to you.
Likewise, and I hope we stay in touch. ◆
Furqan Mohamed is a writer from Toronto. Her work has appeared in Room magazine, Maisonneuve, Toronto Life, and The Local, among others. She’s interested in all things diaspora, kinship, and abolition. Her debut collection of poetry and prose, “A Small Homecoming,” was recently published by Party Trick Press. She is currently culture editor for mimp magazine and is studying at the University of Toronto. You can find her on Instagram and on the bird app.