Reading Families

AAAN Celebrated Arab Heritage Month with a Family Reading Night and Cultural Celebration

AAAN's Rasmea Yousef helps women apply for library cards

Free Henna was available for all

AAAN staff read Arabic storybook

Anti War Rally

AAAN youth kick off October 8th anti-war rally and march with spoken word poetry.

Never Silent, Never Afraid

The AAAN Youth Program held our tri-annual Never Silent Cafe this past Saturday, April 30th. The house was packed and our performances our awesome. Our Silent Echoes youth got to perform, most of them for the first time! And our guests included cousins and rapping partners Big Moe and Little A,  14-year old dancing phenomenon Cumi, and Morocco’s first female MC, Soultana!

aaan dabke crew:

and our special guest star soultana:

Free Community Health Fair and BBQ

Dear AAAN Friends and Family,

We are having a health fair, barbeque, and blood drive for the community on May 14th, 2011 as part of National Arab American Day of Service.

We will have food, activities for children, and health screenings including glucose and blood pressure. For every screening in which you participate, you have an opportunity to win fun raffle items like a Starbucks gift basket, free gym passes, and passes to the Brookfield Zoo!! We also encourage you to donate blood.

What: Community Health Fair, BBQ, and Blood Drive
When: Saturday, May 14, 12:00 PM -5:00 PM
Where: AAAN Office, 3148 W. 63rd Street (above the currency exchange)
Why: For health and fun!

To volunteer, register here.

We Need Your Support

Dear AAAN Friends and Family,

This year has been momentous for our organization and our community. We marched in Washington for comprehensive immigration reform, and worked with our allies across Chicago and the country to educate our community about the DREAM Act. Our elementary school youth collected shoes for Haiti and began a weekly reading initiative through a new family literacy project. Another 50 high school youth were trained in community organizing and activism.  And we sent 13 young people to the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit to learn about social movements across the country and world.

We collected petitions to convince the Department of Justice to revise the 2003 guidance on racial profiling, which currently includes dangerous loopholes that allow border patrols to still target people based on race, religion, and nationality.   We helped hundreds of immigrants become citizens and learn English, and assisted close to 5,000 families in accessing safety-net social services. Our Arab Women’s Committee produced another two dozen stories as part of its Writing Project, and we held cultural and informational workshops around the city and suburbs, guiding institutions and individuals in understanding Arab history, culture, and heritage.

And of course, we just recently hosted the legendary Helen Thomas(see below), and honored AAAN co-founder Camilia Odeh, at our elegant 15th Anniversary Fundraiser.

At the same time, the ongoing attacks against our community have worsened. Several Chicago Arab and Palestinian activists have been subpoenaed by the FBI and U.S. Attorney to testify before a Grand Jury. These individuals are being targeted for speaking out against immoral U.S. policies abroad, especially in the Middle East. We need your help to continue our work strengthening and organizing the community to defend our civil rights and liberties.

For those who were not able to attend our fundraiser with Helen Thomas, here’s your chance to support the AAAN’s work.  You can make a credit card donation, through Network for Good, of $50, $125, $250 or more. Or you can send a check to AAAN, 3148 West 63rd Street, Chicago, IL 60629. And even for those that were there, one more chance to make a tax deductible donation before year end!

Our community needs you now more than ever! Best wishes for the holidays and thank you for your support!

Hatem Abudayyeh
Executive Director

15th Anniversary Event with Helen Thomas

Helen Thomas AAAN 15thAnniversary Fundraiser

 

 

Watch Helen Thomas’s full speech here.

As the season’s first blizzard raged outside, several hundred people from the Arab community and allies found warmth inside the halls of the Belvedere Chateau at the Arab American Action Network’s 15^th Anniversary Banquet and Fundraiser on December 12.

The refuge they experienced was not only physical, but also emotional, spiritual, and political. They came to support the AAAN’s important work, and hear Helen Thomas, Arab American “dean of the White House Press Corps,” address the self-described topic, “Justice for the Arabs.” Thomas spoke of a lifetime devoted to pursuing the presidents she covered—from Eisenhower to Obama—and getting them to answer the difficult questions that no one else would ask. Much of what she kept them honest about was American policy in the Middle East and Arab World. In her speech, she described the way Arab interests and opinions have been unfairly silenced in this country, and how the community has fought back.  She also told a number of anecdotes from her career that had the entire room in stitches, including one about the time she was with a gaggle of White House reporters when President Ford stepped on a carnival scale that also told fortunes.  In summary, it read, “You are a strong and bold leader.”  Thomas, being the irreverent soul she still is today, quipped, “It probably got your weight wrong as well!”

Special guest MC Cliff Kelley, the Governor of Chicago Talk Radio, brought his special brand of humor to the event, and also spoke glowingly of Thomas’ courage and integrity, the kind not often found in any journalist, let alone one who worked in the White House for over 5 decades.

Longtime community activist/organizer, AAAN co-founder, and Southwest Youth Collaborative Executive Director Camilia Odeh was also honored at the event for her years of dedication to the Arab community, as well as the other marginalized communities of color on the southwest side of Chicago and across the U.S. The evening was a moment of acknowledgement of the importance of people working together and supporting each others’ struggles for human rights, freedom, and social and economic justice.  A number of guests called it the “best community event I’ve ever attended.”

Thomas, who turned 90 this year, spoke with a clarity and boldness that belied her years. Her presence commanded the room, and she kept everyone enraptured—teens, adults, and even a two-year-old. At the end of the evening, she stayed to sign autographs, and chat and take pictures with dozens of community members and other well wishers.    She told Associate Director Rasmea Yousef that, although she had “been to Chicago many times,” the evening was “the most special [she’d] experienced,” and that she was touched by the staff and community and their hospitality and warmth.

Never Silent

We had one of our best Never Silent Cafes yet on Saturday, December 18th. Watch videos of some our performers and guests below.

In Memoriam: Margaret Burroughs

Margaret Burroughs: In Memoriam

Photo from BlackPast

 

Monday, November 22, 2010

I lost one of my personal links to the lineage of Black Liberation yesterday.  Chicago legend Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs, co-founder of Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African-American History, died at age 95.

A political activist, historian, poet, educator, and artist, Margaret was born in St. Rose, LA, moved to Chicago with her parents as a teenager, and later earned degrees at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Although most of the mainstream media reports on her death have ignored her radical political background and history, she attended her very first demonstration—protesting the lynching of blacks in the U.S.—with future Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks in the 30s, and her home later became a meeting place for prominent black leaders of the day, including sociologist and NAACP founder W.E.B DuBois and novelist James Baldwin.

Margaret taught art at Du Sable High School in Bronzeville for over 20 years, and from 1969-79 she was a professor of humanities at Kennedy-King College.  While at Du Sable, she was questioned by the Chicago Board of Education about a petition drive she was leading to demand that the U.S. government return the passport and end its harassment of one of the 20^th century’s greatest U.S. revolutionaries and Renaissance Men, Paul Robeson.  At that time, the accomplished athlete and stage and screen actor had been blacklisted by Hollywood and Broadway, and targeted for his political ideology and organizing by McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), respectively.  And when Margaret was pressured to give the Board of Education information about other petitioners, she refused to name names.

Soon thereafter, she took a sabbatical from teaching and lived in Mexico for a year, where she met the renowned Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, and learned the printmaking for which she eventually became famous.  Some of her beautiful linoleum block prints, with powerful images describing the African-American experience, are hanging on my daughter’s bedroom walls today.

While teaching and being forced to use Euro-centric textbooks that ignored black history, Margaret determined that she needed to help bring the African-American story to the world. In the 40s, she helped co-found an organization that still supports the development of burgeoning black artists, the South Side Community Art Center.  And, in 1961, along with her second husband, Charles, and others, she opened the Ebony Museum of Negro History and Art, later the DuSable Museum (renamed after Chicago’s first permanent settler, Haitian trader Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable), on the first floor of her home on South Michigan Avenue.

“She understood the role of a museum like this in the lives of all people, especially children who she felt needed heroes in their lives,” said the chairwoman of the DuSable board of trustees, Cheryl Blackwell Bryson. “To the end, she was sharp, passionate and a critical thinker.”

Arab American attorney Rouhy Shalabi, who served with Margaret on the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners for many years, said of her passing: “She’s an icon who had incredible strength and compassion.  She had the energy of a 20-year-old and lived every day to the fullest.  We developed a great friendship, and I’m going to miss her very much.”

For almost 30 years, my family has attended, along with Margaret, a Christmas Eve party at the home of our dear friends.  Jim Fennerty, who, along with his wife Janet and their children, host the annual gathering, and are as close to Margaret as anyone in Chicago, said, “She taught art and poetry writing to inmates at Stateville Penitentiary, near Joliet, IL, for many years.  Margaret cared deeply about the poor and oppressed, and she fought against poverty, racism, and oppression her whole life.  She visited Cuba many times and loved going because, as she said, ‘There is no racism there.  The Cubans believe in true equality for all.’’

In recent years, she paid most of her attention to the children and youth at the party, performing her poetry, distributing her prints, and encouraging them to think about what their legacy in this life would be.

Her own legacy is secure.  Having earned dozens of honors over her storied career, she most recently received the Legends and Legacy Award from the Art Institute of Chicago, and a wing in the South Shore Cultural Center was dedicated to her work in early 2010.  She also authored numerous children’s books and volumes of poetry, including What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black? and Africa, My Africa.

Margaret is survived by her son and four grandsons.  She did not want a funeral, but a public memorial will be held early next year.  I anticipate that it will be a huge event, overflowing with the joy and passion that marked her life.  And when my daughter asks who is being celebrated, I will say to her, “That’s Sitto (“Grandma” in Arabic) Margaret, who loved and cared about you, and all the children of the world, as much as her own.”

Hatem Abudayyeh, AAAN Executive Director

Read our September/October Newsletter

Read our September/October Newsletter here. Racial profiling work highlighted.

 

AAAN Board Statement on FBI Raids

Last Friday, September 24^th, the FBI raided the homes of, and served Grand Jury subpoenas to, Hatem Abudayyeh, Executive Director of the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), and several other anti-war activists in Chicago, Michigan, and Minneapolis, and questioned others in North Carolina and California—essentially attempting to criminalize their strong and tireless advocacy against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and support for the rights of the peoples of Palestine and Colombia.

For many years, Hatem Abudayyeh has led the social services, cultural outreach, adult education, and youth development programming of the AAAN; and has advocated for the civil and human rights of Arabs and other immigrants in the U.S., as well as Palestinians and oppressed peoples across the world.  The Arab American Action Network denounces the raids on the homes of, and the serving of Grand Jury subpoenas to, these anti war activists in Chicago and across the country.  The FBI has overstepped its boundaries and targeted individuals based on their commitment to peacefully challenge U.S. policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Colombia.

The raids are unfounded and have violated these activists’ constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of assembly, rights that are supposed to be guaranteed without intimidation in the United States.  Furthermore, the raids are a waste of taxpayer dollars and are direct attempts to intimidate, as well as silence, these activists, their communities, and any voice of dissent.

We, as members of the Board of Directors of the Arab American Action Network, condemn this attack on our Executive Director, which is another in a long list of attacks on our community.  We stand in support of him and the other activists fighting for peace, justice, and an end to unjust U.S. policies across the world.

And we encourage participation in the national day of action on Monday, October 4^th—call Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General (202-353-1555), and demand that the Department of Justice end its harassment of anti-war and international solidarity activists, return all materials seized in the raids, and stop the Grand Jury subpoenas.