“If there was ever a time when we needed massive mobilizations and strong strategies to go hand-in-hand, it’s now.”
2016 Kairos Fellow Iram Ali shares why it’s critical to use digital tools to combat Islamophobia and build the strength of Muslim communities.
When Iram Ali happened upon a listing for the Kairos Fellowship late last year, she immediately knew she wanted to apply. At the time, Ali was working for Iraq Veterans Against the War as the Associate Director of Operations and Development, but she had been wanting to shift into the digital campaigning field “after seeing how social media and digital tools were used to highlight certain issues, like Black Lives Matter but also how the Arab Spring used social media to communicate with each other and build alliances,” Ali explained.
“All of these different movements were popping up through the use of digital tools,” she added. “I realized the importance, especially for minority communities in this country, of using digital tools to connect internally and also externally to build movements and push campaigns.”
For her fellowship, Ali was placed at MoveOn.org, one of the nation’s oldest and largest digital campaigning groups. Working at MoveOn allowed Ali, who was fairly new to online campaigning, to quickly gain the skills and knowledge to run campaigns that could reach millions of people.
“I’m coming in to learn digital organizing skills and digital campaigning skills, and MoveOn is the perfect place to learn that. I appreciate being in a place where I get to experience all the skills that I need, right on the spot,” she said.
Today, she’s leading campaigns that are directly challenging Islamophobia in the aftermath of the presidential election, including a joint campaign with New York City-based Desis Rising Up and Moving that is working to prevent Donald Trump from ever implementing a Muslim registry by calling on President Obama to shut down the Bush-era post-9/11 registry program known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, or NSEERS. NSEERS, which predominantly targeted Muslim immigrants based on their countries of origin, could be used by Donald Trump’s administration to, in the words of the online petition, “target, register, and deport Muslims on a much larger scale than previously implemented.”
“It’s important to start the resistance to Trump’s policies now, not wait until the policies are being implemented,” Ali said. “Although the show of solidarity from Muslim allies who are expressing interest in ‘registering as Muslim’ is great, we also need concrete actions to stop the registry from ever happening. Getting Obama to end the already-existing registry that targeted predominantly Muslim immigrant men is our starting point in making sure it’s harder for Trump to ever start a Muslim registry.”
She added, “If there was ever a time when we needed massive mobilizations and strong strategies to go hand-in-hand, it’s now.”
Her time at MoveOn has reinforced her belief that online tools and platforms like MoveOn are critical in bridging the gap between the digital and the grassroots.
As an example of the ways that digital tools and resources can amplify work that’s happening at the grassroots level, Ali referenced the campaign that she and MoveOn ran to support the organizers and activists who disrupted many of Donald Trump’s campaign events earlier this spring and summer. In the case of the Chicago protest in March 2016 that was organized primarily by college students (and led to Trump canceling his planned event at the University of Illinois), Ali worked directly with the student organizers to see what they needed to elevate and amplify their messaging, whether it was media support or funds to print materials. MoveOn played an important support role, but it was largely in the background. “We wanted to make sure the student organizers were known for their work,” she said.
Ali plans on staying in the digital campaigning field (and shortly after the fellowship ended, she was hired by MoveOn as a full-time campaigner). “There’s a long way to go,” Ali said, speaking of the potential of digital tools and campaigns to help build and support movements. “We need new ideas. There are new platforms that have developed recently, new things that can be done, and that’s what excites me.”
One new digital initiative Ali has spearheaded is Muslims Rising, a monthly newsletter she created that has the goal of “cultivating shared knowledge and digital community building to awaken the spirit of justice, collective liberation, and people power.”
“Because Muslim communities in the U.S. are so diverse, it’s hard to build collective knowledge — knowledge and understanding that can then be used to organize and mobilize,” Ali explained. “The newsletter intends to fill the gap here by providing readings each month to Muslim subscribers. The intention is to build this collective knowledge base and then be ready to build forward.”
She credits the Kairos Fellowship with much of her ability to grow as a relatively new digital campaigner. “The network that the fellowship provides is really key to your success in the digital campaigning and organizing space,” Ali said.
And for Ali, prioritizing racial equity in the digital field is much broader than organizations simply hiring more people of color. “This is a space that has been predominantly occupied by White people,” she said. “For people of color, it’s important to get these skills and harness these digital tools to push our own issues and campaigns and communities forward. Because our communities do a great job of grassroots organizing, and what is the next step? This is the next step our communities need to take.”
