11-Sep
Untitled
You are not meeting my eyes. They are beneath the cloth I wear on my head, actually.
No, I am from America.
Yes, it is called a hijab.
No, this cloth is not hijab.
Hijab is not a covering, a hiding-away, a flinching-back. It is a coming-out, a blazing-through.
Hijab is not here for you to fetishize taking it off with your fingers/armies/democracy.
Hijab is suffering for democracy.
Stop Urban Shield, Stop Violence Against Our Communities
If there is anything that Urban Shield and the racist history of policing in the U.S. teaches us, it is that the police and military are two faces of the same system of global repression and racism.
Lean Left: Young Radical Voices
Flash back to the first time you met another Desi lefty. Can you remember the quickening of your heart? Your excitement at finding someone who cared about the same issues and communities? For most of us, the moment we realized we weren’t alone in the world, struggling against the conservative expectations of our parents, aunties and uncles - when we realized that we had sisters and brothers in the cause who understand where we come from and where we wanted this world to go - was life-changing.
Drifting Across Desi Youth: Youth Activists Reflect on Social Justice, Resistance and Solidarity
Over one weekend in August 2015, three South Asian American youth camps took place across the US: Bay Area Solidarity Summer (BASS) in Oakland, CA, Chicago Desi Youth Rising (CDYR) in Chicago, IL and East Coast Solidarity Summer (ECSS) in New York City, NY. In an effort to collaborate long-distance, camp organizers asked the youth participants to collectively define three key concepts at the beginning and end of their camp expereinces. Below is a summary along with reflections on the camp experience.
Book Review: Corona by Bushra Rehman (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013)
This fragmented, musical novel breaks the prettiness of memory, brings irreverent humor where it should, shows the crisscross of ethnic neighborhoods in New York City, and celebrates love in the midst of violence.
The Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour: Building Our Movement, One Story At A Time
Anirvan Chatterjee takes us on a tour of Berkeley’s radical South Asian American history, and argues that historical memory is one of the key inspirations for contemporary political movements
Purvi Shah / To shine a light / It is not that
Poems pass through moments, as do our lives. Both poetry and justice necessitate a vision, a series of quiet actions built from contemplation and our own observations. Both poetry & justice necessitate desires, this wanting & wanting more, this knowing & knowing more. This stitching between – a kind of locking of skewed, errant and yet beautiful tiles – is the movement between the world of poetry & this world itself, between the world itself & the world we desire – the world we will one day make.
Long-Distance Radicalism: In Conversation with SAMAR’s Virtual Editorial Collective
Anantha Sudhakar's "Long-Distance Radicalism: In Conversation with SAMAR’s Virtual Editorial Collective," provides a glimpse of SAMAR's volunteer editorial collective, which has sustained the magazine over the past 20 years and contextualizes SAMAR within South Asian Diasporic progressive activism.
To celebrate our 20th year, SAMAR collaborates with the SAADA, the South Asian American Digital Archives! Check out an issue from 2002!
In honor of SAMAR's 20th year, we bring you an issue from the past via SAADA, the South Asian American Digital Archives!
Letters to a Desi Radical (in the Making): Review of Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today by Vijay Prashad
Junaid Rana gives his take on Vijay Prashad's latest text, Uncle Swami
