Hello everyone,

I have a number of cool updates on my end, that I’m pretty thankful for.

A couple of weeks ago I was part of two panels at this year’s Left Forum. I spoke on a session titled “Race in the Post 9/11 Era” and discussed the racialization of Muslims by the Left. I also moderated a panel that featured Black and Brown ladies who have been highly engaged with Occupy Wall Street, called “Our Occupy: Anti-Oppression and Racial Justice at Occupy Wall Street”. The panelists spoke to a packed room and detailed their experiences of external and internal struggles at Occupy. I think its the best session I’ve ever been to at the Left Forum in my three years of attending, because of the honesty and depth of the discussion.

A few days ago I moderated a talkback discussion that took place after a screening of Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, at the Schomburg in Harlem. The audience raised up lots of interesting points about Rustin not being included in the history books unfortunately. He was an activist that set a great example of connecting the struggles.

Upcoming, I’ve been invited to speak at the 6th annual NYC Asian American Student Conference. Check out this cute graphic:

Cool eh? Its happening Saturday, April 21st at NYU. I’ll be discussing one of my favourite topics: the misrepresentations of Muslims in the media and the burgeoning resistance by Muslim artists against such portrayals. Yeah!

Lastly, I’ll be in Hawaii next week to be a part of an ITVS workshop called “Diverse Muslim Voices X-Change”. Its basically a small forum to give Muslim filmmakers a leg-up. I’ll be going to help rep Muslim women (because there are very few Muslim women filmmakers in this country unfortunately) through my work Black Public Media. I’m really grateful and excited to be a part of this, and two years after I was sent to Malaysia, I’m being sent to the tropics once again. :-D

Wahey!

Hena