Islamophobia and the Carceral State

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

2:00 pm – 3:30 pm (Central Standard Time)

RISE Together Fund and Funders for Justice invite you to a funder briefing to learn how Black, African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (BAMEMSA)* communities continue to challenge state-sponsored criminalization 20 years post-9/11. Despite being approximately 1% of the U.S. population, Muslims make up 9% of the U.S. prison population. BAMEMSA communities more generally are also singled out for surveillance tactics like countering violent extremism, and receive harsher and longer sentences than non-Muslims.

During this session, we will explore how RISE Together Fund grantees have created innovative organizing and policy advocacy models to combat criminalization at several institutional levels, from the prison industrial complex to immigration enforcement, and to push for collective abolition and liberation. We will also hear from experts on how their work is made more challenging by gendered Islamophobia, and anti-Blackness within the collective carceral system. We will ask participants to make a commitment to resourcing these organizations and the ecosystems that they are a part of.

Featured Speakers:

• Leena Al-Arian, Executive Director, Coalition for Civil Freedoms
• Khalid Alexander, Founder and President, Pillars of the Community
• Fatema Ahmad, Executive Director, Muslim Justice League
• Claire Downing, Program Officer, RISE Together Fund (Moderator)

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*RISE Together Fund uses the acronym BAMEMSA for Black, African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian to describe communities we support that have been acutely impacted by post 9/11 discrimination. While Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (AMEMSA) is a common term in philanthropy, because of our understanding that Black communities are often excluded in both community and philanthropic spaces, many felt it was important to be explicit about commitment to fund Black leadership. No acronym can fully capture the rich diversity of the field, but many in philanthropy are adopting this acronym to describe the communities they support.