[News] A New Orleans Intifada?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/flaherty02232009.html

February 23, 2009


A Grassroots Movement Rises in the Arab Neighborhoods of New Orleans


A New Orleans Intifada?

By JORDAN FLAHERTY

In neighborhoods around New Orleans, there’s a 
buzz of excitement gathering among this city’s 
Arab population. A new wave of organizing has 
brought energy and inspiration to a community 
that is usually content to stay in the 
background. The movement is youth-led, with 
student groups rising up on college campuses 
across the city, but also broad-based, with mass 
protests that have included more than a thousand 
people marching through downtown’s French 
Quarter. Activists say that their goal is to 
fight against what they see as a combination of 
silence and bias from local and national media, 
and – more broadly – for a change in US policy 
towards the Middle East. They take inspiration 
from other movements in the city – joining in the 
struggle against the continued displacement of 
much of the city as well as the slow pace of 
recovery – while also following activism across the US and around the world.

New Orleans’ immigrant communities are often 
ignored or under-represented. But through 
grassroots organizing, legal action, and 
political lobbying, Asian and Latino 
organizations in the city have won some important 
victories. Activists from New Orleans’ Arab 
population – which is largely Palestinian - have 
expressed hope that they can follow these examples.

The city’s Vietnamese community gained influence 
through post-Katrina struggles to bring their New 
Orleans East neighborhood back in the first 
months after the storm. This effort, which also 
involved a fight against a city landfill located 
near their homes, turned grassroots protests into 
political power, including the recent election of 
the nation’s first Vietnamese-American congressman.

The city’s Latino community has grown and changed 
as thousands of recent immigrants came looking 
for work in rebuilding after the storm. Despite 
continuing problems, including police harassment 
of undocumented immigrants, grassroots efforts 
have helped translate those numbers into 
political influence and leverage over employers 
who had sought to exploit them. While employers 
and politicians have sought to pit the city’s 
Latino and Black workers against each other, 
organizers have built alliances between these communities.

These victories, together with a sense that there 
is a need for their community to be heard, have 
provoked Arab New Orleanians into action. 
According to Angelina Abbir Mansour, a student 
activist at UNO, outrage caused by the 
devastation in Gaza was a catalyst. “When the 
Gaza massacre happened, the first thought that 
came to everyone’s head was ‘we can’t be quiet 
anymore,’” she explained. Young activists have 
also been inspired by successes in other cities, 
such as a recent successful campaign to get 
Hampshire College to divest from companies that 
supply the Israeli military as well as sit-ins 
and building occupations on other campuses in the US and Europe.

Mass Protests

At Jackson Square, in the center of New Orleans’ 
French Quarter, more than a thousand people 
gathered on January 4 for one of the largest 
demonstrations this city has seen in recent 
years. Tracie Washington, a civil rights leader 
in the city and the director of Louisiana Justice 
Institute, attended with her son. Addressing the 
crowd on a megaphone, she said, “my son asked me 
today about what is happening in Gaza. He asked, 
‘is it like if I pinched you and you punched me?’ 
I said to him, ‘no, its like if you pinched me and I shot you with an AK-47.’”

The cheers of the crowd were audible from several 
blocks away. Palestinian youth led raucous chants 
of “No Justice, No Peace,” and “Gaza Gaza don’t 
you cry, in our hearts you’ll never die.” 
Children held up signs saying, “This is what an Israeli target looks like.”

The Louisiana Justice Institute was one of 
several New Orleans social justice and civil 
rights organizations that Palestinian organizers 
have built ties with – others included INCITE New 
Orleans, The Women’s Health and Justice 
Initiative, Pax Christi, Malcolm X Grassroots 
Movement, and Mayday Nola, an organization that 
works on public housing issues. “I’ve seen a huge 
amount of support from the African American 
community,” says Mansour, who is co-founder of a 
chapter of the General Union of Palestinian 
Students on the campus of the University of New 
Orleans. “Because they know more than anyone what 
its like to face racism. Alliances between our communities make sense.”

The January 4th march was the second of four mass 
demonstrations for Gaza during the Israeli 
bombing. The first demonstration, brought 
together in less than 24 hours, brought out more 
than 300 people. Palestinian youth from New 
Orleans organized and led the march, and entire families participated.

The size of the demonstrations surprised even the 
organizers. “New Orleans is a small town,” says 
activist and business owner Emad Jabbar. “For 
1,200 people to come out with just a few days 
notice – I’m speechless.”  Every local TV station 
covered the demonstrations. However the Times 
Picayune, New Orleans’ local paper, refused to 
send a reporter. In response, activists organized 
a demonstration the following week, bringing 
almost 100 people to protest outside the paper’s offices.


Beginnings

Organizing in New Orleans’ Arab community is not 
new – it goes back to at least the late 80s, 
during the first Intifada, a time of increased 
activity in the Palestinian Diaspora around the 
world. Since then, activism has surged and 
receded in waves, with support and trainings from 
national organizations such as the Muslim 
American Society and US Campaign to End The 
Israeli Occupation playing an important role.

The two years before Katrina saw mass action, as 
well as coalition building and education, among 
local Palestinians and their allies, and in some 
aspects today’s movement is built from work that 
happened then. From 2003 through 2005, activists 
presented a breathtaking array of events; from 
films, demonstrations and speakers; to art shows, 
a Palestinian hip-hop concert, presentations in 
high school and college classrooms, and a 
regional conference. They met with newspaper 
editorial boards, appeared on radio shows, set up 
literature tables at busy public locations, and spoke at churches.

A coalition of activists also organized human 
rights delegations to the Middle East, sending 
nine delegates from diverse backgrounds and 
communities to Palestinian cities on the West 
Bank in the summer of 2004. They self-published a 
book and a released a newsletter, made and 
distributed a film (chronicling one member’s 
journey to Palestine), and worked on several art 
projects, including a hip-hop show, a photography 
exhibition, and collaborations with the New 
Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival.

A multiracial and multi-generational coalition of 
Palestine activists met on the campus of Xavier 
University, a historically Black college, and its 
core group included Muslims, Christians, Jews, 
and secular activists.  The group collaborated 
closely with many different aspects of the Arab 
and Muslim community in the city – meetings were 
attended by representatives of New Orleans’ 
Muslim Shura Council, the American-Arab 
Anti-Discrimination Committee of New Orleans, New 
Orleans’ Palestine American Congress, and Stop 
The Wall - a local group made up of more than 200 
New Orleanians with family in the Palestinian village of Beit Anan.

Another core member of the group was a white 
Episcopal minister who had traveled to Bethlehem 
and Jerusalem, and several members were 
Palestinian Christians.  Nation Of Islam members 
were a part of the group, as well as several 
Jewish activists, including a woman who had gone 
on a pro-Israel delegation organized by New 
Orleans’ Jewish Federation – and came home 
disturbed by the Palestinian suffering she’d 
seen, causing her to break with the Federation 
and become an activist for Palestinian rights.

A Small Community

According to the US census, New Orleans’ 
pre-Katrina population was 67 percent African 
American and 27 percent white, with all other 
categories adding up to about 6%. Maher Salem, a 
young community leader and business owner, adds 
that, “The Palestinian community is a small 
minority in New Orleans. The city is mostly 
African American and white, then you have 
Latinos, then Vietnamese, and Palestinians are 
the smallest group. We’re at the bottom of the list.”

As with many immigrant communities, New Orleans’ 
Palestinian community is both spread out and 
insular. Families are located in various suburbs 
on New Orleans’ Westbank (on the other side of 
the Mississippi river), but there isn’t a 
particular neighborhood where most live. The 
community is rarely discussed in national 
coverage of New Orleans, or even in the local 
media. “Growing up, I didn’t know there was a 
Palestinian community here,” Mansour says. “I 
guess because we’re a small population and were not making headlines.”

Many of New Orleans’ Palestinians are from a 
handful of small towns and villages near Ramallah 
and Jerusalem, such as Silwad, Al-Bireh, 
Al-Mizra’a, and Beit Anan. They are often small 
business owners, owning restaurants, convenience 
stores, and clothing stores.  In the aftermath of 
Katrina, much of the city’s Arab community was 
displaced, losing both their stores and homes. “A 
lot of us lost businesses,” says Salem, “and many 
from our community moved to other cities.” 
Although they no longer live here, many of those 
that are displaced still feel connected to the 
city. “I know guys that are in Dallas now,” Salem 
says. “But every time we have a protest or 
something else happening they call and ask what 
happened. They miss living here.”

For those that have returned, rebuilding has been 
a struggle – as it has been for other New 
Orleanians in this city where a third of all 
properties are still empty.  Sandra Bahhur is a 
Palestinian-American woman originally from 
Al-Bireh. A nurse and restaurant owner, she has 
been a strong voice for social justice in New 
Orleans. Sandra's home in the Lakeview 
neighborhood of New Orleans was so destroyed by 
flooding that she couldn't get the doors to open. 
Her business on Carrollton Avenue was destroyed, 
just days before it would have been ready to 
debut. They had been working all day on the 
restaurant the day before the hurricane, as they 
did many days. “We had just bought a new oven, 
new refrigerators, new kitchen equipment,” she 
told me days after the storm. “Everything's 
destroyed. Our home is destroyed, the business is 
destroyed. We lost everything. Everything.”

Like many New Orleanians, Sandra and her husband 
Luis love New Orleans, and refused to give 
up.  After two more years of work, their 
restaurant reopened in late 2007 to positive 
press coverage and full houses. However, Sandra 
and Luis were never able to fully recover from 
the debt they went into to rebuild after the 
storm. With the recent economic downturn, the 
restaurant hit hard times, and closed permanently 
last month. Although they love the city, Sandra 
and Luis’ future in New Orleans is uncertain.


Changing The Media

Although disappointed with local media coverage, 
activists have created powerful video and images 
documenting their own movement, and spread the 
word through social networking sites, email, 
texting, and word of mouth. 2-Cent Entertainment 
- a group of young African-American video 
activists who are responsible for some of the 
most exciting media organizing happening in New 
Orleans today - made a pair of powerful videos 
documenting the activist uprising, which have been widely distributed online.

The young activists that organized the actions 
are determined to make their mark in the city, 
through changing the media landscape and shifting 
public opinion. “We’re a part of this city,” says 
Emad Jabbar. “We identify with it. If you ask 
most New Orleans Palestinians where they’re from 
they’ll say New Orleans - especially the young 
ones.” It was this spirit that led dozens of 
Palestinians to join with African American 
community leaders in last month’s annual Martin 
Luther King march. Community leader Maher Salem 
explains, “My cause, my goal is about the 
Palestinian people, Gaza, and freedom for 
everyone. However you describe me – businessman, 
father, community leader - what I am is someone who stands for justice.”

As they move forward, Palestinian activists in 
New Orleans are excited at the possibilities. 
“People call me, come to me in the street and in 
the Mosque, and ask me what are you up to, what’s 
next,” says Jabbar. “Our organizing in New 
Orleans is moving forward. People in the 
community are passionate, and have a lot of 
energy. We just need to keep stepping up.”

Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New 
Orleans, and an editor of Left Turn Magazine.  He 
can be reached at <mailto:neworleans at leftturn.org>neworleans at leftturn.org.




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