A Palestinian you should know: Ahmad Jitan

The following was originally published in Palestine in America’s 2021 Politics Edition. Order a print copy, download the digital version or subscribe today!

Community Organizer, Inner City Muslim Action Network (IMAN)

Palestine in America (PiA): What balad(s) is your family from? 

Ahmad Jitan (AJ): Nablus!

PiA: Was there a moment(s) that drove you to begin your career?

AJ: As a Palestinian who was raised in the United States South, I was politiczed from a very young age-- feeling very sharply the pain of exile and what it means to be the son of Palestinian refugees. Our family was separated in our move to the United States because of a travel ban that was in place during the First Gulf War. I remember my parents showing me the letters to local representatives and newspaper clippings telling the story of a Palestinian student, his wife and their children petitioning for the two youngest members of the family-- twins who were less than a year old at the time-- who were denied visas due to “national security concerns.” 

A moment that really stands out in my politicization is the summer of 2000. It was my first time visiting the homeland and connecting with all of my family and my people. Literally hundreds of family members whom I hadn’t seen since I was a toddler came to greet my family at Queen Alia airport when we landed. I had the blessing of spending time in Jerusalem with my late-aunt and will never forget the feeling of the first time getting lost in the Old City or the humiliation experienced at border crossings and checkpoints. When I returned home, it was only a month before the Al-Aqsa Initifada began. The murder of Muhammad al Durrah and the images of his martyrdom are seared into my mind. From that point forward, and with September 11 occurring just a year after, my childhood consisted of trying to make sense of a homeland that was on fire resisting occupation and the racism, xenophobia, and war-mongering I witnessed growing up in the South.

PiA: How has/does Palestine play a role in your work?

AJ: A lot of my organizing involves working with Palestinian storeowners in predominantly Black neighborhoods, but Palestine figures into my work in a deeper way than just our shared identity. Confronting the issue of ‘food deserts’ -- more appropriately called food apartheid-- in low income Black neighborhoods in urban centers like Chicago means addressing issues around racism (both interpersonal and structural), food justice, and land sovereignty that animates the movement for Palestinian liberation.

I hope that my work also opens up a broader conversation for Palestinians here in the States, not just store-owners, into thinking of what our liberation means once we’ve immigrated here. We carry with us a history of ethnic cleansing, of being separated from our land, and of being dominated and exploited by colonial, capitalistic, and white supremacist structures. How do we challenge ourselves once we come to this country not to fall into the trap of exploiting Black folks in an attempt for us to enjoy a semblance of human dignity or chase the “American Dream”? How by just existing in this country do we benefit from generations of exploitation and subjugation of Black folks in this country and the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people here? How do we instead see our crucial role here in the States to build solidarity with those who are the most oppressed in this country so that we can undo these structures both in our local contexts as well as back in our homeland?

PiA: What’s a Palestinian adverb/quote/person/poem/song that you often reflect on in this work?

AJ: The poem I find myself returning to the most is Mahmoud Darwish’s “Jidariyya” or Mural. As always, he is a master of not just beautifully reflecting upon the Palestinian experience but the human condition and what it means to look death in the face.

I carry the last refrain with me wherever I go:

فلستُ لي . أَنا لَستُ لي أَنا لَستُ لي

 ّfor I am not mine, I am not mine, I am not mine ...

PiA: What do you hope to achieve in your line of work?

AJ: I strive to transform Chicago’s corner stores from sites of mere transaction or exploitation to ones of solidarity and healing and a model for racial and economic justice. 

PiA: What’s your advice to folks looking to deepen their political journeys?

AJ: Start with the set of relationships that you are already enmeshed in. Who are your people? Yes that means family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors. It also means the relationships you may not be so conscious of because our world has set us up to be alienated from each other: who cleans your roads, who feeds you, who makes it possible for you to survive another day. How do you begin to deepen those relationships and how do you create or join the spaces that allow you in a collective to tackle what separates and humiliates us. And how do you do it with a spirit of imagination, self-reflection, and care so as not to be weighed down by mechanical processes and bloated institutions. Start with focusing on changing something small, connected to your own and your co-conspirators’ everyday reality and watch that collective power grow and materialize so long as you cultivate it to ultimately radically change the world we live in.

PiA: How would you define solidarity?

AJ: Solidarity means showing up. Not just showing up, but really showing up in full presence to who we are and how we relate to others. To show up fully internalizing the reality that there is no way I am free without the freedom of others. It also means resisting against the structures of capitalism, racism, and colonialism that artificially alienate us and prevent us from showing up for each other and ourselves. You can show solidarity through statements of support, but I am more interested in the quality of the relationships we are building and uncovering the ways that we are actually connected (often through relations of exploitation or domination) and transforming them into ones of care, mutual support, and shared resistance.