I’ve always described myself as an activist filmmaker. The desire to illuminate stories from the periphery, to create dialogue, challenge pieties, and disturb oppressive systems is why I became a filmmaker. Community projects, where diverse groups of people congregate, exchange ideas and transform one another, are also a form of art. So are collabs with other artists and activists. Recent projects I’ve been involved in.
This presentation will approach the subject of racism in America by focusing on micro-aggressions. Activist filmmaker, Mara Ahmed, will talk about her new documentary, ‘The Injured Body’ which is inspired by Claudia Rankine’s ‘Citizen: An American Lyric.’ She will show clips from interviews with a diverse group of women of color who share their experiences and discuss the cumulative effect of slights, slips of the tongue, as well as intentional offensives.
Ahmed’s maternal family is originally from Gurgaon, India, a city 20 miles outside the Indian capital New Delhi. At the time of the Partition, Ahmed’s mother was only 5 years old but, according to the artist, her mother “has vivid memories of her home in Gurgaon – the hand woven beds (with mosquito nets) that would be placed outside to temper summer nights, the plays that her older brother and his friends would stage, the swing that her father got installed in the central, open-air atrium of the house. This was the happy landscape of her childhood. She has never been able to go back.”
Presentation at First Unitarian Church of Rochester on ‘Islamophobia is Racism’ (part of the ‘Race, Racism and Relationship’ series at First Unitarian Church).
The Hanukkah stabbings in December 2019 prompted us—a group of Rochester-based Muslim and Jewish activists—to unpack the attack and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s response, by parsing the political context in which such hate crimes become possible and voicing the need for targeted communities to pull together.
On October 30th, the Rochester Institute of Technology hosted a screening of Ken Loach’s 2016 film “I, Daniel Blake” followed by a panel discussion on social class and inequality.
In this series the artist Mara Ahmed has re-created her own history by using old, black and white photographs of her ancestors, juxtaposing them against South Asian architectural details, and subverting boundaries by placing them on the wrong side of the India-Pakistan border.
A recent event at the Islamic Center of Rochester asked how anti-Semitism, anti-black racism, and Islamophobia connect. A number of young activists joined together to answer that question, and to discuss how to counter white supremacy.
At a time when hate crimes against Black churches, synagogues and mosques are spiking, we need to connect the dots between anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, understand white supremacy, and build collective resistance to it.
Co-taught a workshop on ‘Race, Racism, and Relationships: Microaggressions and the Beloved Community’ at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester. Used Claudia Rankine’s work to frame the discussion.
Two years ago, Amanda Chestnut, Rachel DeGuzman and I organized a celebration of Frederick Douglass’ 199th birthday at his gravesite in Mount Hope Cemetery. The following year, in 2018, the city of Rochester was energized to mark Douglass’s 200th birthday with multiple community events. Part of this process of excavation included a work of art by Isaac Julien, commissioned by the Memorial Art Gallery.
The White Supremacist Roots of Anti-Muslim Violence: Commentary and Analysis by Mara Ahmed, Halima Aweis, and Hibah Arshad, in the aftermath of the terror attacks on two New Zealand mosques, on March 15, 2019, that killed 50 people and wounded another 50.
We, the members of Rochester Jewish Voice for Peace as well as the broader Rochester community, stand by Ilhan Omar and her right to critique the influence that Zionism has on US politics. Join us as we rally outside congressman Joe Morelle’s office to demand an end to Islamaphobia, anti-blackness, and malicious mis-appropriation of anti-semitism.
