A Palestinian you should know: Reema Ahmad
State Advisor, Movement Voter Project & Organizing Strategist, Action Center on Race & the Economy (ACRE)
The following was originally published in Palestine in America’s 2021 Politics Edition. Order a print copy or subscribe today!Palestine in America (PiA): What balad(s) is your family from?
Reema Ahmad (RA): Anabta
PiA: Was there a moment(s) that drove you to begin your career?
RA: I reflect a lot on the purpose of anger. Audrea Lorde described it as a corrective surgery, something that, when harnessed, can change the world.
I still remember sitting in the high school auditorium where Daniel Pipes was speaking. My dad, sister, and I were among the few people from our Arab and Muslim communities that drove out to the event that winter night and actually got seats to listen to the former Bush Advisor on the Middle East and well known Islamophobe.
PiA: What is your earliest memory of participating in political work?
RA: Once, a school administrator asked me why all the events I ever planned had a political tone. I shrugged and replied “to be Arab is to be political.” It feels like a snarky response in retrospect, but there is some truth to it. Everything I have learned about my heritage, about my dad’s side of the family, why they live where they are, why we live where we are, the stories my Tata and Ceedo would tell: there was politics woven into all of it. I can’t date my earliest memories of bearing witness to our displacement and othering… but I can remember looking up while at a protest and seeing the props of baby coffins passed above my head. Palestinian flag in hand, I shouted what I could decipher of the chants that were called out, as I stayed close to my dad’s side. It was sometime in a middle school civics class that I started putting together how political power in a US context works -- and how communities like our own could get in on the process. I would obsess about power at the ballot box, but knew that electoral efforts would not provide us the platform we needed to build real, longterm, and lasting political power. So I’ll keep protesting and registering people to vote and rallying and mobilizing our communities for a liberation that includes us all.
PiA: How has/does Palestine play a role in your work?
Palestine is the beginning, the middle, and the end. If history plays out in a circle, then it’s the place I keep coming back to. While the work I currently do does not center Palestine, my heritage and history is always in the back of my mind, playing out in the connections I see across struggles in other communities, lifting up the importance and value of collectivism, and in the examples of what true solidarity looks like with movement siblings.
PiA: What’s your advice to folks looking to deepen their political journeys?
RA: Take the fails with as much enthusiasm as the ‘w’s.
We all want to win, but I’ve learned and grown the most from experiences where I put my all into something and it still didn’t turn out the way I wanted. It has been a long road in retrospect, but every campaign or election that didn’t turn out has been one that I can look back on and point out the deep relationships that were built, skills that were honed, and tactics that were tried...aaaaand maybe won’t be used again. :)
PiA: What do you want people to know about you/your experience as a Palestinian in this work?
RA: It can be really easy to fly under the radar. But every time you do, ask yourself what you are saying yes to in that process. Is it your safety in a moment of vulnerability? Is it storing your energy for a more important fight? When you choose to hold your identity front and center, do it when you have the wind at your back and your comrades by your side.
