Town Hall: State Violence, ICE, and the "Muslim Ban."

Date/Time
Date(s) - 04/03/2017
8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Add This to Your Calendar

Location
Copley Formal Lounge

Categories

• Community
• Conference/Convention
• culture
• Discussion
• Education

Cost:
Free USD
Contact Person:

Email:

Website:
http://ccas.georgetown.edu/
Phone:
(202) 687-5793
Organization:
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies

WASHINGTON DC

Please join CCAS for a town hall exploring the intersections of US foreign policy and the influx of refugees and immigrants hoping to resettle in the US, state-sanctioned violence and Islamophobia, and immigration enforcement in communities of color.
Confirmed speakers include:
1. Tariq Toure:
Tariq Toure is an award-winning Writer, Public Speaker and Social Justice Advocate born and raised in West Baltimore, Maryland. Toure has taken his passion for change agency and catapulted himself among the best emerging new thinkers in the world. Touré’s debut compilation of poetry, “Black Seeds” was the number one selling book in African American Literature and Poetry in 2016’s Black History Month and ranks in the top 100 best sellers on Amazon. In 2016 Black Seeds won best poetry book of Baltimore in Baltimore’s city paper magazine. Toure has been featured in Newsweek, ESPN, The Nation, Washington Post and the New York Times. International Hip Hop artist Black Thought and renowned Baltimore Author D. Watkins have regarded Tariq Touré as the “Amiri Baraka of this era.
2. Darakshan Raja, Co-Director of the Washington Peace Center
Darakshan has worked on a range of issues including organizing against anti-Muslim racism and state violence, gender-based violence, human rights abuses and the national security system, and the criminal justice system. She is the co-founder of the Muslim American Women’s Policy Forum and serves on the Advisory Board for API Domestic Violence Resource Project in DC, an organization that serves API survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. Most recently, Darakshan worked with the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center on a range of criminal justice evaluations spanning across crime victims’ rights, juvenile justice, gang violence, and violence against women. Darakshan holds a MA in Forensic Psychology and hopes to strengthen grassroots support and resources for activists and organizers directly impacted by state violence, and increase collaboration between movements to move towards intersection organizing and collective liberation.
3. Dr. Maha Hilal:
Maha is a senior researcher with Reprieve. She received her PhD in Justice, Law & Society from American University in Washington, D.C. Her area of research interest is in the field of human rights, with a focus on survivors of human rights abuses and the adverse consequences they face post-abuse. Maha has worked and volunteered at a number of human rights organizations including the Center for Victims of Torture and the Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition, in addition to serving as a dialogue facilitator at American University.
4. Sapna Pandya:
Sapna has served as Executive Director of MLOV since April 2010. Born in DC and raised in Maryland, she also spent five years in New York City as Director of Programs for the South Asian Health Initiative (SAHI) at the Center for Immigrant Health (CIH) of the New York University School of Medicine, working with South Asian and other Asian Pacific Islander (API) immigrants in New York City around navigating barriers to health care, including language, finances and immigration status.
Sapna’s experiences in New York City struck a personal chord, as Sapna comes from an immigrant family and served as ad hoc interpreter for family members, and deepened her passion to work towards social justice for priority populations (especially immigrant and LGBTQ communities). She sees the need for more community-led organizing and advocacy to reduce health and other disparities caused by barriers to access and structural oppression. As such, Sapna has created popular education-based curricula, conducted training sessions on cultural competence and how to provide language services for diverse audiences around the country, including health providers, educators, elected officials, and other stakeholders, advocates for true universal (single-payer) health care systems to serve everybody with affordable health care, and organizes around racial and economic justice.
Sapna has a Masters in Public Health from the George Washington University and is an Alumni of the CORO Immigrant Leadership Training Program and Rockwood Leadership Institute. She speaks Spanish in addition to her native languages of Hindi/Urdu, Gujarati, Marathi and English.