AARCCorner Blog

On April 1st, 2024, I visited the Disability Cultural Center in BSB. Unlike other Cultural Centers, it was my first time going to the center and learning about it. I did not think there was an event but it turns out there was one. When I entered there were only a few kids there and the space was relatively empty. This contrasts my experience with the Arab Center and AARCC where it can be somewhat full usually. The people there were nice and it had a unique feeling. They had a digital sign-in system probably as accommodations for those who were disabled. The staff welcomed me in and there were three separate rooms by each other separated by walls with a staff member in each. The inside of the centers gives a warm feeling with banners and pictures all over the walls. What remains surprising to me is that the director of DCC has their own office and it’s open which tells you the size of the center. I had accidentally walked in thinking it was a part of the center but I was told it was not and apologized profusely. It was not very small but still the smallest of the cultural centers I have been visiting. Unlike the rest of BSB the inside of the DCC is not brutalist outside of the doors. It was clear the employees wanted more students to come and in a building with many oases and seating it sounded like it was a struggle to get students to even be aware there was a center in the building. Due to the community it comes from, there are many accommodations made for the people with disabilitiesdisabled in the center. Such as headphones and masking is still required in the center for who I assume is those who are immunocompromised.

I visited the third room and came across an event on intersectional sustainable art led by Mariam. Mariam is a student at the Art Institute and leads this same workshop every two weeks. She complimented my keffiyeh and we both talked about the intersectionality of struggles. I talked to her about her experience being a student at SAIC. She guided me through her art program using pieces of string dipped in paint and pulled through a folded paper. It creates unique symmetrical patterns and can be interpreted how you like. Mariam was encouraging us to use whatever we wanted and any markers as well. One other student joined who did not want to be in the picture and he talked about his unique classes as well as helping out the DCC. The experience was overall very calming and I felt very welcomed. The experience also showed how much of a disadvantage the DCC was. It’s in an area that doesn’t get much traffic and is incredibly small. Ironically, it is by a set of stairs and not by the elevators of BSB. In the photo I had taken there is a picture of me, Mariam, and a DCC director who was also engaging in a conversation with us.

On 2/29/24, I visited the Arab Center for their showcase of art. Each art piece was unique in its way and had a different theme but they were all mostly sad and connected to current world events. From people making a bombed house to poetry about the current citation in Palestine, they were all very interesting. Not every artist was Arab with one being South Asian and another being Ethiopian. The central theme was around resilience and hope, so there was an element of that. There was food and refreshments there for all the students as the cultural centers usually describe. The center would quickly fill up and with music, we would look at the art, interrupted by one of the artists stopping by and explaining their art piece. The mood was remorseful and in deep distress as it had always been since October 7th. Yet there was a celebration of youth with so many young faces fighting for the same cause. A place where we could be open, emotional, and feel safe with the support of the staff there. We had many discussions about mental health and our feelings about the ongoing genocide in Palestine. The picture I took is with Abdal Rahman a good friend of mine and a dedicated member of SJP. I liked his poetry piece and encouraged him to upload it for the event. Behind us is the tree with the Palestinian keys of return, the keys of the people, and the family names of those who fled their houses during the Nakba.

For many students especially those who are Palestinian, this was the last place on campus that felt safe for them. They did not feel safe in other places, their classrooms had become battlegrounds against zionist professors and students. The general campus itself became hostile to them and their identity, with UICPD arresting a Palestinian student for simply drawing on the wall expressing her frustration on the university investments funding Israel and weapons manufacturers. The Arab Center would remain the last area they felt safe, becoming a bastion of the people’s and the student’s desires for activism. The Arab American Center would become a center of activism with those being there from the staff, the student workers, and even the regular students visiting being activists in some type of organization. It then remains questionable why the University is tearing Taft Hall the entire building of that center down and making the center smaller. The Arab Center remains the area where SJP as well as the other progressive organizations have a strong relationship on campus. The Arab Center remains small and swells when there is an event not to mention it has HVAC problems so when it is hot outside it is hot inside and the same when it’s cold. The University does not give enough resources and space to the Arab Center so often there is a struggle to know what to do. It remains concerning that this would be reduced further making it look deliberate on the university’s part that it is reducing one of the bastions and safe spaces for student activism on campus. The progressive values the center promotes also shield the students in it from targeting opponents and rivals of those specific organizations on campus. However, as I visited more centers I would see that the Arab American center is in a relatively better position than other centers.

By Yusuf Masood, UIC AARCC Diversity and Community Engagement Program Intern

I was one of the main organizers of this event. A zikr is a form of remembering God through chants out loud. A dua is essentially an Islamic ask for help from God. There are different duas, the one we read was called dua nasiri and was made by Moroccans resisting French colonialism. It was so revered that the French attempted to ban it too. This was done alongside and with the advice of the chaplain because he is the central authority of Islamic practices on campus as well as navigating the politics of Islamic and Muslim groups here. The chaplain is a central advisor of Tassawuf and helps determine which practices we should introduce to campus and which we should not. Tassawuf is considered an Islamic science but in recent years has come into contestation by a group financed by Middle Eastern governments called the Salafis, the situation can be complicated but that is the basics of it. The chaplain and Tassawufs goal is to be open to all so we have to methodically choose what practice to do so as not to isolate ourselves, especially from other Muslims despite it being an inevitability among some people. This is further complicated by a hyper-politicization of groups like the MSA or Muslim Student Association. The chaplain as well as Tassawuf have to navigate this complicated climate without creating cliques that can compromise our goals. The event itself was a success in inviting these different and competing groups while maintaining a sense of respect for our event and the nature of the issue of Palestine. From the beginning where I gave a speech on ways to advocate for Palestine and the intersectionality of the occupation to the end, it was a relaxing and calming environment open to a sense of reflection on yourself. After that, we had some food where us organizers reflected on the event. We determined it an overwhelming success, in the lead up to the event I was stressing out due to the low number of RSVP’s but only 24 hours before the event our numbers shot up to over 20. Planning for the event was a bit stressful because we wanted the event sooner rather than later due to Ramzan (Ramadan) being so soon. This is because usually other Muslim organizations on campus hold iftars(where people break their fasts at sunset) and people will go to that instead. Due to the number of Muslim organizations on campus the number of iftars has increased. The number has increased partly due to the recent developments in the MSA but also due to the general increase in Muslim students on campus and more students being born and raised here. However, it will remain a problem especially due to the Center for Students Involvement or the campus institution that registers student organizations being skeptical and concerned about the number of Muslim organizations on campus.

By Yusuf Masood, UIC AARCC Diversity and Community Engagement Program Intern

Apartheid Week is four days of back-to-back events where we organize events in Palestine. Usually celebratory, this year we decided to focus on education due to a celebratory environment feeling inappropriate from the current genocide. The week was very much like a retreat and I was a central organizer and facilitator of the events. Months of planning had led us to have a movie and paint night watching the film Gaza, a political education event diving deep into what led up to and consequences of what happened on October 7th, another political education event where we look into how life is from people who lived in Palestine, finally the last event is our formal event where we interview people who lived through events in Palestine such as the intifada. I will talk about the last two as the themes are common among them all. Planning for this week took months of Zoom meetings and a week before, we had the event, we set up a booth to raise funds because it was Valentine’s Day and we advertise our events. During it, we had been heckled by a zionist. Msa members had also been acting weird. Our advocation for intersectional problems is also seen as problematic to them because we focus specifically on lgbtq freedom too. Which according to their fundamentalist interpretation is not something any Muslim should advocate for. These were two groups we had to look out for in our programs. While the MSA did not show up, Hilell a zionist group did. They came to our day in the life event and we had to keep an eye on him. He sat for a bit and left. In the case SJP is harassed we have developed our own plan that does not include calling UIC security or police. This is due to us having very little faith in them from recent incidents such as the Palestinian who was arrested. Many other organizations both political like SDS and apolitical like PCRF or Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund had joined us and attended. Both events went extremely well with applause from the audience. The first event a day in the life heard relatively younger people from the West Bank, Gaza, and 48 land or occupied Palestine/ Israel describe their experiences and personal life beyond (but still including) the tragedy. The second event described and focused more exactly on political events between Palestine and the occupation. We interviewed people who live in Palestine through Zoom and ended with interviewing Nesreen from the Arab center and Batool Elagha a person from Gaza.  Nesreen focused on the intersectionality of our movements which to our diverse crowd was particularly interesting (as well as to me too). The last interview of Batool Elagha who’s family is from Gaza and she visited many times. Her family is still stuck there and her cousins and uncles who are American citizens were kidnapped by IOF soldiers in a camp in Gaza. After the event ended we were relieved and the outgoing seniors who were gonna leave felt sentimental and emotional. We took a bunch of pictures together many of us in cultural clothing. We had many allies come to our events and the crowd was incredibly diverse.