 Salam alaikum everyone, my name is Fatima Kawi. I am so so so thrilled to be here. I have to say out of all the things that I could be doing today I'm super super excited to be here with you guys. It's one of my favorite things to do is this program and so I just want to say thank you for spending your Sunday morning with me. Happy Father's Day to all of your dads and if it's okay can we just I'd love to know who's in the room maybe we'll do a quick kind of roll call if everybody could just we'll start over here and kind of go through everyone's names. Sweet. So maybe introduce yourself and a fun fact about you. Hello. Assalamu alaikum. Wa alaikum assalam. Hajra has sinned and a fun fact about me. Is the mic on? Yeah okay just put it close to your in case the students on the okay yeah there you go. A fun fact about me is that um I really know I enjoy reading. Okay what book are you reading right now? I'm not currently reading any books but but you enjoy it. Yeah love it. Sweet. Nice to meet you. Assalamu alaikum. My name is uh my name is Sara but my name tag says Nuha. Um yeah a fun fact about me is um I used to have a pet chicken that I named after my mom. Oh I love that. Nice to meet you. Assalamu alaikum. My name is Madiha and I like decorating cakes in my free time and I'm a learned at the Rinks fan. Great. Assalamu alaikum. My name is Zahra. Um a fun fact about me is I love baking. Really? We have some bakers in here. Love that. Nice to meet you. Assalamu alaikum. My name is Aisha and a fun fact about me is that um I like sushi. So do I. Great choice. My name is Zahra and a fun fact about me is that I like painting. I would love that. Nice to meet you. My name is Halima and one fun fact about me is I love cats. Oh nice. So do I. Like um my name is Rabia and I like baking. Sorry Rabia a little bit louder. What's your fun fact? I like baking. Baking? Okay great. Um my name is Jenna and I love playing basketball on my free time. You love what? Basketball. Oh basketball. Very cool. Nice to meet you. Um hi my name is Samara and my fun fact is that um I was born in Canada. Oh very cool. That's awesome. My name is Musa and a fun fact about me is I enjoy painting. I enjoy painting. You're what? I enjoy painting. Oh nice. Okay my name is Hassan and I like martial arts. Nice. Salam alaikum. My name is Muhammad and I like biking. Salam alaikum. Salam alaikum. My name is Is and I like to go on runs in my free time. Nice. I love all these activities. You're still thinking about yours. Math. When what's your name? Coward. Okay. Wait what's your name? Hamza Ali. Okay there you go. Nice to meet you. Um Salam alaikum. My name is Yusuf Pervez uh and my brother operated a flamethrower once. I don't know why. I don't know. I don't know where he did it but it makes me really proud. So that's my plan. That's a great fun fact. Salam alaikum. My name is Zayn and I like playing soccer. Salam alaikum. My name is Rayon and I like playing basketball. Salam alaikum. My name is Shapiro and I like playing soccer. Nice. Salam alaikum. My name is Afwan and I like playing football. Cool. Salam alaikum. I'm Yahya and I like playing volleyball. Salam alaikum. My name is Rayon and I don't play sports. Salam alaikum. My name is Muhammad and uh I play soccer. Nice. Awesome. Thank you guys so much. It's always so good to see kind of who's in the room and what you guys like to do outside of outside of these walls. So thank you so much for sharing all of that. My name is Fatima um as as I mentioned um my friend fact is that um I was born in Belgium so I guess that's fun because a lot of people don't know that about me um but I've been a part of CARES gosh I was 17 years old so it's been 16 years. It's one of my absolute favorite organizations um I started at with MYLP um if you guys have heard of that program which is incredible highly recommend it and I'm super super excited to be here with you guys. I'm originally from um the Midwest moved out here went to Berkeley and now um I work in the Silicon Valley so very much into tech but love all things art spoken word um and anything that's involved in community um and just getting a chance to talk to the youth I feel like this is where the future is so thank you for inspiring us and I'm so excited for today's session because it's a very very very very important topic it's something that's super near and dear to our hearts navigating privilege and we have a really really cool exercise um and series of kind of discussion items um so I'm glad you guys kind of got comfortable with the mic and you know got to start speaking because I definitely want to hear your voices I want this to be super collaborative this is not meant to be a lecture I want to learn from you just as much as you guys learn from us um so please don't be shy and you know pass the mic as much as we can um and in that spirit there are some housekeeping rules um I know you guys have gone through this but just as a reminder let's respect everybody let's make sure that the space is safe for everyone um let's keep an open mind right we all come from various backgrounds um various thoughts and beliefs we want to make sure everyone feels heard and feels seen and of course kindness positivity curiosity attentiveness empathy no judgment zones right big big big on that especially when we're talking about something as heavy as privilege right something that's that's incredibly dense to unpack and then um last but not least please speak up so again this is meant for you guys um this is your time and I want to make sure it's just as much value to you all so give me live feedback if something doesn't resonate we can move on and we can double click on anything that you guys want to kind of unpack further but I'm super super excited um we're going to start with our very first activity but before that any questions comments suggestions anything you guys want to add to the uh to the next two hours together so it's a 10 out of 10 great awesome all right let's go ahead and get started all right so as I mentioned today it's all about navigating privilege and the main objective is for us to examine how various systems of domination um and asymmetries of power play out in our daily lives we want to understand how we may be on a victim of a system of oppression but also while at the same time inadvertently perpetuate or benefit from other systems of domination in our life you know that's a lot we're going to talk about what that means but before that the second main one is to understand privilege and practice acknowledging it so we want to identify privileges that we possess or don't possess and then note the invisibility of those privileges through various exercises and so our very first one is going to be an activity where we're going to count groups of five so I'll start with my brother here so just say one and we'll kind of go through um so one two and then we'll break up and then we'll give you guys kind of some supplies and then I'll explain what we're going to do with those supplies so you guys ready awesome we're going to go straight oh sorry who sets x he sets x we start back at one there's no sex you did it right yeah so you're one great and you're two three oh my god that never happens we're even all right let's find you want to tell everybody where the groups are going to lay out all right so as you guys get to your activity groups sorry let me get the mic a little bit closer so folks on the line can hear you will all be given some supplies and these supplies are to make a tower you make a tower however you'd like it could look like whatever you want it to be but we're going to co-create a tower and we will spend we'll do we'll give you guys like 10 minutes and um you know Osma and myself and I and some of the other facilitators will be helping um just make sure your tower looks good and ready set go all right if you were in group one that was sitting right here please stand up group one all right group one what supplies did you guys have and anybody can answer just uh raise your hand so that we know where to send the mic to uh we had um frosting and a plate a Ziploc bag with the noodles and a plastic spoon am I missing anything no okay and your spaghetti's were cooked no they were cooked yeah okay um and someone else in the group um yeah thank you Osma for cooking us the cop cooked them um someone else explained to me what it what was it like to be tasked with building a tower with cooked noodles and were they melted marshmallows they were melted marshmallows frosting oh even better they can't even stick um it kind of forced us to be creative and like try to figure out what works to stay stay upright and then obviously dealing with losing resources was the bigger problem more so than like figuring out we would stand did any of that feel unfair uh yeah a little bit I think um as we lost tools it was definitely unfair I think we we we felt pretty confident at the beginning but then just losing tools definitely undermined confidence yeah anybody else want to comment before we move on to group two thank you group one you guys can sit down thank you for sharing group two if you can stand up and group two what supplies did you guys have do you want to talk in the mic we had the same thing as group one the cooked spaghetti frosting plate and a spoon okay and how is it building a tower with those supplies uh it was pretty hard yeah yeah anyone else in the group want to share kind of what it felt like to to build a tower it felt like I was trying to build a tower out of mush did that feel fair no yeah did you know what the other groups had could you see yeah yeah that probably felt worse huh it is what it is yeah group three three stand up please group three what supplies did you guys have was it the same thing we had marshmallows and a dream did you say a dream I love that okay how did it feel to have a dream and marshmallows not as well as you'd think okay um and someone else in the group did any of that feel kind of fair what did you what did it feel like at the beginning maybe towards the end did you guys take a sneak peek into what other groups had if you don't volunteer yourself I will yes um what did it feel like did you feel like it was unfair could you tell what other people had um it was unfair and we saw the huge tower so it was really unfair yeah yeah all right thank you and then I believe we're group four group four stand up did you guys have the same supplies as group three yeah okay how did that feel go ahead um not fair at all yeah were there any moments where some of the actors in the room kind of played a role or didn't uh yeah sort of yeah who played a role um did someone say something about what you can't even do yeah but like can someone else speak about it can someone what someone else speak about it sir sir we have one up here um we definitely got a lot of comments saying that our structure wasn't good enough and it was sad compared to the other structures when we didn't have enough materials yeah and then what did that feel like it was bad yeah that doesn't feel good yeah because we worked pretty hard and then yeah yeah that's great it was great assessment well that's been at least group five what did you guys have um so we had spaghetti marshmallows um a whole box of cutlery um we got more marshmallows this time went on more spaghetti words of encouragement um we also got to hold our structure because it was falling apart despite having all those materials we weren't very good at utilizing them and it looks like you had a whole box right we had multiple boxes and 10 yeah lots and I heard someone secretly gave you more supplies yeah he was actually collecting supplies and giving them to us and what kind of words of affirmation did you get um hours is the best and we had to win yeah yeah what did that feel like did you notice anybody else had stuff well we noticed that other people had less stuff at first we didn't notice and then one of my groupmates mentioned that they had cooked spaghetti over there and something that looked like it's frosting yeah it felt kind of bad actually because they were doing better yeah but you kept going yes so yeah because someone was telling you keep producing right yeah yeah we had lots of words of affirmation yeah whoops all right anybody else group five I would love to hear another voice yeah we got one right here sorry who raised their hand um I think all in all you know we had like everything given to us so we had like a really bad work ethic so the fact that we had like so many resources but still like didn't make the best use of it I think that was because like everything was given to us so we didn't really have to work as hard yeah yeah awesome you guys can sit down so yeah I you guys like crushed it that's exactly right I mean that's exactly the kind of experience right different groups you know live every single day we actually had three different roles that were invisibly playing different aspects of society so did anybody get something taken away from them or like told that like oh sorry you no longer have access to this XYZ for example I know group one had cooked spaghetti which is already hard to work with you guys made an incredible infrastructure built on this hope for like hey we're gonna try our best and then what happened the cop came and took away your permit that you didn't even know about and slashed half of it which wasn't really half it was three fourths and then you have to start all over right versus group five there was the capitalist there was the person that was kind of just like let's go let's go hey why is that person not working like let's put them to work he has secretly got you this and then you have the entire infrastructure the entire system working for you and as you mentioned right um you kind of worked a little less right you were like oh well I have this privilege maybe I could slant it a little bit more maybe I could hold it maybe it's not a big idea or a big deal to kind of sit there on top of a box right which was like where all of the supply everyone supplies was being carried in and then you had the comments right like you exactly right like there are people who were supposed to be the structure of capitalism saying that's not good enough like why isn't as good as that and you're just like because I don't have the same access and the same privilege right the same the same stuff and I'm trying so hard and every time I try someone tells me to work harder and I feel like I'm just running myself out right is that what that felt like and that doesn't feel good is it motivating what did that make you want to do just give up great and then at the same time you were like have everything or being like you're doing a great job like amazing and then there were the folks in the middle who had a little bit of each right and they got some favoritism but they'd got the sense of false hope right and I think you one of one of you guys said it right you're like oh we it's the guy that said I had a marshmallows in a dream right literally we tried to create that American dream built into that and I just think that this conversation and this workshop and this exercise is so so meaningful it's actually um it's called the tower of power and it was borrowed from a partnership program between Kerala and the Japanese American allies in the LA area um and it really is meant to kind of put people through the motions and you know the truth is it's like it's hard to do these activities because I know Smon I mean poor guy he was like this is so uncomfortable you know to act as the person that's taking um but it really it really signifies how you could be both a beneficiary of privilege but also be a victim all at the same time right especially as um as many of us um you know in terms of like where we come from and our families and whatnot so I want to kind of go through some of these key principles with you all but thank you so much for kind of the vulnerability and allowing yourself to go through these motions I know they're not necessarily comfortable and for some maybe they even like you mentioned it even the amount of access you had and privilege was uncomfortable because you were like but everybody else doesn't have this but you kept going right because the system was like no you have to win you have to go you have to go so even folks who are on the other side right could definitely feel that and that's uncomfortable so I just think that we're constantly living this battle of where do we fit and then how do we ensure that we're you know building a life of equity right um so any questions so far does that kind of make sense did you feel like halfway through you kind of knew why we were doing this I felt like you guys were super smart you caught on pretty quickly but any questions does this resonate yeah um so like I kind of came here late so I don't know if I missed this but and what group for you went I was in group one okay it's been group five but um my question is like why why does it matter as much because you know like I don't mean to be like a sheikh or any mom or anything like that but aren't we all gonna like you know die or something like that we're all getting tested so why does it matter if someone is tested with poverty and someone is like tested with like wealth yeah because in the end today you're just gonna die just depends on what you use that wealth for I think your answer is your question that's exactly it it's what you use your wealth for how do you lend privilege how do you lend access how do you create more access there are people who can have access and privilege and then keep it all to themselves right or you can open up one door which opened up 10 and then that's how generational wealth and generational access and privilege gets created and formed right you I think it's incredible how it's first of all that's an amazing question and it's extremely relevant right because what you're basically talking about is permanence right this idea of like we don't live forever like none of this comes with us what's the point but then you literally said accept to use it for good right and that's the I think that's the point now a lot of what we talked about today was visible you can see it you can feel it it's obvious if I have a million dollars in the bank account it's obvious that I have a million dollars more than a lot of people right I'm sorry brother what was your name yes scene right if I have a million dollars I can see it I know that I have a million dollars more than a lot a lot of other people right but what about things like skin tone right like being racially ambiguous might get me into spaces that other people may not give into or where you know my heritage comes from or so many things are more I would say nuanced or invisible if I don't do the self-work to recognize the privilege that I have then I become personally just as bad as someone who has it and can see it and doesn't give it right or doesn't lend it and I think that this is why we do this work because it's not just about what you can see but what you can't see right so I'm Algerian um and I have a lot of privilege just living in America and yes my family might have XYZ and you know maybe there's this that my white co-workers don't have to deal with or have a certain level of wealth that I didn't come from you know what I mean but I also literally have access to jobs and opportunities that many of my cousins do not so that's a privilege that I could sit in my shell and be like well you know like I'm the victim here and so there's different levels here and so the more and more we see and really look at our what we have in our lives the more we can go okay I may not have access to all of these things that like white America has but I have XYZ that if we together and I loved how groups one and two started working together and you guys called it a union right like you're like we both don't have these supplies but you had supplies and maybe group zero that was none existent had no supplies and was told to build a tower is that do you guys not know communities who are told to build something out of nothing yes right and so like there's so many different layers to it so yes and that's such a good question thank you for asking and we're going to go through some of that too about what some of those invisible privileges can look like um anybody would anybody else kind of answer that differently or anybody else have like a kind of different experience about what's the point right of acknowledging it resonates sweet awesome all right so we did our debrief I'm specifically wanted to kind of get to the how does this activity mirror society right which we had some dialogue about I'd love to talk about competition I waited until the end to say that it was a competition is that fair no because you probably were building a tower at leisure you probably didn't even think that your tower anything to do with anyone else's tower right and then I waited at the end when I knew that group five had built the top right and I was supposed to play the role of a capitalist society or like were essentially kind of fueling the privileged groups that had a lot of access and Usman was you know the one taking away the resources so it was yeah it was super unfair who's the one that's talking yes yeah you want to talk on the mic sure because I was taking pictures right so I was going around and observing the different groups so yeah I didn't notice like when they I was like how did you guys you know built so quickly because I was looking at the progress of every group and observing and just kind of seeing and I was like oh some of them like why do they have spaghetti and why don't they have like the spaghetti that's by the way like cooked or and the other ones just had like raw spaghetti so that's like yeah it's unfair right and if you have if you don't have an adequate amount of resources how are you going to build that you know how are you going to get that result yeah yeah I also thought it was really powerful to kind of see that there were four groups that didn't have as many supplies as one group and you you know when I said you know let's go ahead and take a tour around the neighborhood all of the groups kind of marched towards group one and you guys were like so many of you and then there was group one right and yet no one could do anything which I think is really powerful because I mean I think so much the society is that there are so many people who are marginalized and have lower access than those that do but yes the competition part was intentional we wanted to make sure it was unfair we wanted to make sure that access to information was delayed right I told group one at the beginning that you guys have to win so they knew it was a competition before everybody else did which is not fair right access to information and then we went around and started criticizing other people's towers almost like they didn't do enough and they weren't good enough right again not fair right especially when you're in competition and for some people it's competition over livelihood their literal ability to feed their families all right so does somebody want to read this definition privilege this is unearned access to social rewards access to resources benefits and the power to shape the norms and values of society which certain people receive unconsciously or consciously by virtue of their identity for example male privilege or white privilege any questions on that definition do you guys know what the model minority myth is does anyone heard of that before can we get another volunteer to read this definition this refers to a minority group whether ethnic race racial or religious whose members are most often perceived to achieve a higher degree of success than the population average measured in income education and related factors such as crime rates and family stability the model minority stereotype is considered detrimental to relevant minority communities because it is used to justify the exclusion of minorities and the distribution of assistance programs public and private to understate or slight the achievements of individuals within that minority and to misrepresent the diversity and inequity within that community furthermore the idea of the model minority pits minority groups against each other by implying that non-model groups are at fault for for falling short of the model minority level of achievement and assimilation so that was big in our exercise right so when you had comments about the different groups well why can't yours look like that what was happening it was the pitting of two groups together that didn't have access or had a level of inequity against each other to make it look like well what why or have you guys not figured this out yet right this is extremely extremely important and I think a lot of times goes over a lot of people's head because it's extremely difficult to understand something unless you've experienced it and I think this is why this workshop while I imagine that many of us have had an experience with privilege either being the victim or a perpetrator of it right of some levels this workshop really helps to kind of illustrate you know at an innocuous level as it relates to building a tower with marshmallows and spaghetti what how even something like that can feel so bad right now imagine it being your career your future your education right so questions like do you have a quiet place to study for your SATs that may not be the reality of everybody's right or you know is English your first language what school district do you go to what access to quality education tutoring money etc etc right these are all ways in which kind of more relatable to your levels can show up in classrooms and the model minority definitely we see it in in schools as well or you know people are pitted against each other and a lot of ways you know that the system is set up that way too there's a lot of benefits to I think capitalism in that sense but has anybody had an experience of this that you're like oh my gosh this this makes sense this definition like you know when you're experiencing something but someone puts words to it kind of makes more sense then you want to share an experience that either through this exercise or maybe in real life we have one more definition great all right can I get one more volunteer okay I'm sorry I don't know how to pronounce that word okay disaggregation this is a process which involves looking at and breaking down the individual segments of the larger community that is breaking Muslim community into different ethnic or racial groups and different classes and gives a much clearer picture of the unique experiences of groups within a broader community great and then before we move on to our last exercise here how do we address unfair access to resources so if we could redo this entire workshop what would you do differently to make sure it was equitable yes wait for the mic sorry I think if we realized what was happening we try to unionize earlier and like with more groups all against group one or even maybe work with them if they were willing to because like we didn't really think about even batting together until the very end and I feel like if we could convince everybody to get together then like what if we could all just be capitalist you know what else would you guys do differently what I noticed was that we had a lot more supplies than everyone else but like in the sense that it was too much for us so if we had decided to give our supplies to other groups we still would have had enough for ourselves but other but other people would have gotten resources too and and it was pretty selfish of us to not distribute it but isn't that how that works with capitalism too people at the top hoard their resources and they don't distribute them and then people are left to suffer so if you did have that money and that access then giving it away would be a better option than like having a top 10 percent that's a really really really great point that was amazing do you have a comment over here we have one over here thank you that's great um so like here's the thing that like I've just been realizing uh capitalism has been around since like the beginning of like human history so my question would be like how would we even fix privileges how would we even go about it because at the end of the day there's always going to be a group that's going to be higher and then in the end of the day not everyone's a good person because people are greedy so yeah how would you even go about fixing that mentality what do you think on me uh if you're if it was I mean here's the thing though I think all of us here we're all Muslims right so we already have this slam that's like our guidelines and our guide rules but I don't know about like it's someone else that's different right so again I can't really yeah help what do you guys think about yesean's question you want to also have any answers to that it's a really good one I think a lot of people spend their entire life answering we have one over here um at best like the thing is you can't really control what other people do inevitably you're going to have people who are immoral or greedy like yesean like shut up like yesean said and um what's it called I think the the best that we can really do for that is just work on our individual levels to try and distribute our resources as best we can because at the end of the day this stuff by being no form of societal oppression will ever be stricken from society for the rest of history like nobody can guarantee that it's going to keep on coming up I guess the idea is just I think that we can just engage with like small battles with it that come up in our lives you know and do what we can to uh eliminate it at any level that like we're actually capable of yeah thank you anyone else have any thoughts on yesean's question while yesean it is a million dollar question no pun intended awesome all right we're going to go ahead and flip over to um wheel of privilege you guys want to open that up okay so and you want to have a pen out perfect so for each identity category on the wheel of privilege we are going to fill in the outer ring with the most powerful group in society and you can see the index below for the breakdown of the different categories and we want to identify the most powerful group for each category so you want to think about kind of two or three and and then you want to assign the remaining identity categories um to the rest so does everybody have it in front yeah it looks like you already started okay so number one identify the privileged groups in the us in each segment of the outer ring and you guys like know like you'll put the us on the one the outer ring of the ones that apply so if age race ethnicity you'll put us on there a little bit quicker for time so the next one is identify the privileged groups in the Muslim community in each segment of the middle ring so the most outer was the us now we're going to just the Muslim community and then the next ring is your identity so what privilege do you think that you have put like me on that all right and then the last one is anything that you have in common your intersectionality you want to put a little star or shade it in you just want to showcase the ones that are um that intersects so the us the Muslim community you and your identity and then the ones you share um so it's the us the Muslim community your identity category so like um i'm Algerian so Arab would be okay what within the Arab community what identity privilege then it's you yourself you specifically as a person and then the last one is whichever one intersects like that there's like a commonality does that make sense okay so us you got that one the Muslims okay what's your nationality Moroccan so Arab right so that would be within the Arab community so it's it's whatever you think the there's privilege in being Arab for example all right you guys i'm going to go around and we're going to have a conversation yes haven't what did you notice when you did this um sorry i asked you a question before the mic thank you so much i have a lot of rights privilege privilege what do you mean by that what did you notice what kind of privilege do you have i'm not like in the us i i do have privilege because you know i was born here so i have citizenship here um um speaking to the mic and i have and i speak english and i'm not like disabled and it's like i could pass as like a white guy or whatever and the age not so much but i just realized that because it's the us there's all these factors do affect like how what kind of privileges you have and then the same thing for the muslim community like even though it kind of shouldn't be like that they're still like the what you are can also affect the kind of privileges you have so that's all right that's incredible that's exactly right Mohammed you just crushed the entire workshop that's exactly it right it's this idea of like yes seeing you brought it up right what do you do with all of that once you realize you have it so Mohammed i turn to you okay you just did this exercise you go oh my god i have a lot of privilege what do you do with that and so that's what our next section is going to be is ally chef right lending it anything else you guys noticed sorry my mic keeps going off with me looks like okay you shaded yeah looks like there's a lot of commonalities do you mind sharing i thought yeah shading mm-hmm yeah you did it right yeah yeah you did a great job i shaded in like gender and put the mic towards your mic yeah i shaded in gender age race class language ability status and citizenship because those are all things that like affect what you do a day to day in the US yeah and then for the Islamic community i didn't shade in citizenship yeah because they don't really look at that as much since a lot of people here are immigrants yeah but they do look at the other ones the same and then yeah really gets it a personal one yeah great job crushed it can we get someone on this side was any of the surprising when you start shading i knew that not surprising thank you know huh um so i guess it wasn't all that surprising because in our day-to-day life we are aware of some things like every time there's an election we always know that the president will probably be an old white guy no offense to old white guys but um it's it's just the privilege they have is that they're seen as authority like authority figures and they're most likely wealthy and yeah as as a female person of color you probably know that you're gonna have to work harder because people view you as as an authority figure or someone who will get as far in life as other people and the age is something you don't really think about because i mean we're we're all teenagers here um and but we do know that sometimes people older than us will have more authority over us but as you grow older it's less apparent but it's still there um yeah but race and ethnicity is a very big one here in the yeah thanks for sharing uh huh i appreciate it all right so um that's just another different kind of lens at everything that we've been talking about leading up to this point so um i appreciate you sharing that i appreciate you guys doing this sometimes it's uncomfortable right um i know it's not always a great feeling to kind of see that but i think it's also can be empowering i go back to yasin's point at the beginning what do you do with it right so we're gonna move on to the next section i know we only have 20 minutes left but um we're gonna hear a story from the sida and as we listen to the story i want you to think about social justice allyship and privilege so does everybody have the story in front of them great can i get a volunteer to read it and uh they're gonna pass the mic over make sure you are loud and clear the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam witnessed an incident when he was about 20 years old before the coming of the revelation a man from yemen came to mecca to do some trading struck a deal with goreishi mecca who told him to pass the merchandise he had brought and he would make the payment the next day when his man came to collect the payment the goreishi dismissed his request and said i don't know what you're talking about the man went around for different leaders to get help but at the time your loyalty to your tribe your loyalty was to your tribe and not to choose the justice the man went to a gathering of leaders at the gaaba and called out or called out for men of honor and dignity to help him a group of them came together and decided they needed to help this man who had been taken advantage of they made a pact known as health al foodul pact of virtue which stated that they will support the rights of all the oppressed even if as an outsider the pact also stated that they would oppose the oppressor even if he's one of the koreish they approached the koreishi man who robbed the merchant and demanded he returned the goods looking back at this incident the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said if i was called to take part in that pact today with islam and sharia established i would go to zakal al khair that was a beautiful reading of the story while we're still actually on you since you have the mic so sorry if we could pass it back to him in the context of what we've been discussing today what does that teach you about what our dean says about privilege and what that looks like what was the first thought after you were done reading the story you're like whoa like the first thing i first thought thing i thought was mashallah even back then still had a lot of privileges maybe even more than we have now maybe less i don't know yeah thank you any thoughts on that story great and if i can have someone read the definition of i guess ally ship didn't come up oh perfect oh well i'll read it since it's right next to me so um we're going to conclude by kind of what we what we think is the best kind of next step or next course of action right is to be an ally this is what you do with privilege and what that means is an ally is a member of the dominance or majority group who questions or rejects the dominant ideology and works against oppression through support of and as an advocate with or for the oppressed population which was exactly what was exemplified in the story that we just read from the sida and that is at the end to be all what we do with things that we have access to and don't and i what i think is amazing about this definition is when we were talking about how would we would we reimagine this workshop someone in the class said well honestly i would probably i think it was it was you in the middle i'm what's your name again brother i want to make sure you get credit for this is it so fun so fun so fun you said um well if i knew honestly i would have just like at the beginning figured out a way i had to collaborate and work together and reimagine what a society looks like when we're co-creating things together and then you're able to remove blocks and barriers and then to supplement that is no his point of well hey i was a part of the majority or dominant group if i had known i would have probably questioned or rejected the dominant ideology and worked against oppression which no it's insane how that's exactly the definition that you had already said an hour ago which is incredible so um i i would love to get quick rapid fire examples of ways that you can be an ally today so i know mohammed had mentioned a couple of his privileges and kind of things that he realized oh wow like i actually had access to this what are some quick ways that you can be an ally for another community um that you know you may have privilege that and they don't i would love this for it to be rapid fire because we are in the last 15 minutes so if you look at the wheel one of them that you saw was language and we all know english here and there's so many people who don't and there's people who start like esl programs and stuff like that that makes them an ally for people who are oppressed for not knowing english that's amazing yep helping folks out lending a hand volunteering sometimes it's even just seeing and acknowledging that it's harder right some some people just want to be seen right and then what do you do with that so fun wait for the mic thank you so much for sharing i guess also just like mentally reaffirming in yourself and understanding that you have uh the privileges that you do and like um like and making sure that you're not quick to judge people who might not have those privileges because a lot of times it's really unfortunate but people will call i don't know like if there's someone in school who doesn't know english or something as well they'll call them stupid or something right and they'll uh uh you know look look down upon them but like then you also have to remember that that person is probably just as smart as you are they just didn't get the same opportunity or um you know stuff like that so it's just reaffirming that mentally i love that i think it segues it to a couple of tips and guidelines for being an ally um number one recognize that being an ally is a process not an end goal right you're not chasing this title i'm an ally that's not the point the point is to be there right truly be there for the process um secondly and this is super important being an ally requires you to learn the narratives of their oppressed population and i would further add from the oppressed population right even if you know a lot about something you want to hear it from the person that's actually experiencing it right because i think that's where unconscious bias or our own personal narrative can take a spin and we can then recreate someone else's narrative for them which is not okay number three you shouldn't identify yourself as an ally unless the oppressed population has recognized you as one this helps eliminate this idea of running around town and claiming you know that you're an ally for this group and um it then becomes kind of a contest of you know doing work that's just something that feels good for you and not really about the about the mission or the goal of what the community um that you're trying to be an ally to um is expressing there are several steps an ally can take to carry out their role more effectively and so i want to leave you guys with this live with the awareness of the world around them right so allies are constantly aware and conscious of what's going on around them number two think critically about the world so this goes back to questioning right we don't just accept but we think we ask questions yes scene i appreciated you asking questions right and kind of challenging the space a little bit i think that's exactly what we should be doing always and often number three educate yourself on the histories and experiences of target groups from the target groups interrupt prejudice behavior so when you see something that's not okay you need to call it out right that's what an ally would do and then last but not least take action by deciding what needs to be done and then following through it's not enough to be an ally by tongue by words but by action right so you want to do you don't want to just see something or an injustice happening in front of you and then bear witness to it right you want to do something about it so these are just kind of some allyship tips and guidelines um you know i know we have about you know eight minutes left i'd left for kind of any last thoughts um on either the exercise or some of the definitions we went through or the story that we shared um what did you guys think kind of was this did you learn something new that you kind of didn't know before you came i'd love to hear kind of some feedback i just got like one question uh how do we choose the right allies because you know there's a lot of oppressed groups out there but that doesn't mean that they're necessarily like right so how do we like go about choosing the right people to help yeah yeah um i think i i think that answer is going to vary person to person right um i think by no means um is this workshop intended to say this is the group or this is what you should be doing or saying um and at the end of the day it's you know about what feels true to you um and what that community needs right um and i think sometimes a lot of times i would say there's a lot of oppression olympics right where there are a bunch of communities and they're all oppressed and that's all about whose oppression is more and i just i think it's not a it's not a question of who's is more but you know what are these communities individually need and then how can we allocate resource access and privilege in the same way we thought about these supplies and creating these towers how do we then distribute that so it's a great question and i also think that it's a personal one and i think it depends and i also think it's contextual and i i think the best start is to start and through your process because again allyship is a process not an end goal you'll learn so much i have learned so much learning how to be an ally for different communities that i may not have known ten about and honestly i've done things that are like probably lots of lessons to be learned and that's okay that's a part of learning it's a part of the process um and it's a part of you know you want to be vulnerable because i think that's where you can authentically show up for people it's not about showing up and being kind of the like savior these communities don't need to be saved by anybody and certainly not by those who are privileged so it's about by just being there and and holding space sometimes so it's a really good question this is just as much yeah this is just as much um of an experience for us as it was for you guys especially as we play different roles um oh my gosh i still feel i don't know about you smon i still feel uncomfortable about the role that that we played yeah it's not a good one um and it makes me think about you know the ways in which i'm also um experiencing and um kind of puts me into a question of like how are you lending your privilege because i definitely have a lot of it so um well i thank you guys so so so much it took a lot of courage to show up it took a lot of courage to be involved in this workshop i know a lot of the stuff that we talk about you know while um we were playing with supplies there's super the underlying message is really heavy and it's it's massive and it's honestly so much to pack in two hours don't let this be the only time right that you're exploring this this um the world of oppression and privilege and charity versus justice and the minority um model i i personally just feel super honored to share this space and i thank you guys um for also allowing us to kind of play the roles um i know it wasn't always comfortable so um but yeah that's all i have for you guys i'm about a happy end can we have a quick round of applause for Fatima real quick oh thank you guys