PHOTO ESSAY: JUSTICE FOR ALL FEATURING RASHIDA TLAIB
PHOTOS & WORDS BY: ERIK PAUL HOWARD
The following was originally published in Palestine in America’s politics edition (December 2019). Please support our publication by downloading a digital copy, ordering a print copy and or becoming a monthly subscriber.
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election to the office of president of the United States, and his rolling out of several early discriminatory policies that were met with intense protest across the nation, Rashida Tlaib announced her candidacy for U.S. representative for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District. In 2018, Tlaib, together with Ilhan Omar from Minnesota, became one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. In fact, the 2018 midterm elections resulted in the 116th Congress being the most racially and ethnically diverse ever.
Detroit, Michigan
Tlaib’s 13th Congressional District includes Southwest Detroit, where she grew up, as well as much of the rest of the City of Detroit and a significant portion of Wayne County, including the cities of Highland Park, Ecorse, River Rouge, Inkster, Wayne, and Westland, among others. The diverse communities across the district experience many of the rest of the nation’s issues, but in many cases they experience them earlier and feel them harder. From environmental pollution, divestment in public education, over incarceration, and declines in general public services to redlining, foreclosure, and water shutoffs, communities across the district are hit hard by policies and protections that favor the profits of corporations over the health of constituents. While the impact is wide and those affected are diverse across geographies, ages, and ethnicities, communities of color are consistently and disproportionately bearing the brunt of the burden. Knowing this — and given a chance to do something about it — Tlaib is determined to help such communities fight back.
Washington, D.C.
Tlaib’s legislative agenda, the Justice For All Civil Rights Act, is essentially updated civil rights legislation that addresses modern concerns that have posed technological, policy, and legislative challenges to the civil rights progress we’ve made. According to Tlaib’s website, the Justice For All Civil Rights Act reflects Tlaib’s promise to “propose legislation to drastically expand U.S. civil rights protections to cover discriminatory impacts, in addition to discriminatory intent.” This means that when communities and individuals of color are disproportionately impacted by injustices (social, environmental, economic, etc.) legal provisions would protect them without requiring proof of intent to discriminate. Demonstrating the impact of systemic oppression would be sufficient to summon civil rights protections.
Contemporary American politics and rhetoric are straining many of the systems in place to protect the most vulnerable. The political climate and resulting realities are, perhaps now more than any time in the past, illuminating the complex intersection of struggles between various groups across the district, the nation, and the world. Our adopted political values and policies boil down to injustice for profit and are adversely impacting generations through varieties of for-profit prison, environmental injustice, and occupation/settler colonialism.
In Detroit and throughout Michigan’s 13th Congressional District residents are strong and engaged. Across the country community organizers and activists are realizing, acknowledging, and studying the interconnectedness of their ongoing struggle for civil rights. They’ve become allies for others’ fights for liberation in the face of systemic injustices that are preventing them from living free under oppressive structures. They’re not only in service of their own interests, but they’re in solidarity with others marginalized by a system that values profit over people. That mantra — profit over people — is the driver of the violence that enslaves people, robs them of quality of life, and ultimately sends people to early graves without a voice. However, it also unites communities in struggle, forging communion and challenging the chains that bind toward freedom and justice for all.The following photo-essay shows Tlaib engaging with her Southwest Detroit community amid her rise to Congress and highlights some parallels — in oppression and resistance to oppression — between her district and Palestine, Tlaib’s ancestral home.
