Dear Friend,

Arab American Heritage Month, April, is normally a time of celebration, community events, and sharing our culture, cuisine, music, and accomplishments with friends and colleagues at work, school, and in our neighborhoods. This year, however, with the Palestinian people in Gaza facing man-made famine, there is no room for celebration. Instead, Arab Americans are reaching out, sharing the story of the Palestinian struggle, the story of Palestinian resilience, and the call for Palestinian freedom. 

During Arab American Heritage Month, it is critical that you, and all of us, use our voices to bring about change.  There is no question there is deep disappointment among Arab Americans toward the neglect we and our concerns have received from this Administration. It is too late to save the more than 32,000 Palestinians who have been killed or the 70,000 who have been wounded in Gaza. However, it’s not too late to save those innocents who will surely perish from more bombings, disease, and starvation if the Israeli assault on Gaza is allowed to continue. 

We have been speaking up during this unprecedented crisis and we have come together with some of our national Arab American partner organizations to give voice to our collective concerns through an Arab American Agenda. You can endorse this agenda either as an individual, as an organization or as an ally. We ask that you please share it widely so that the voices calling for accountability and justice can be heard.  

The Arab American Agenda for Justice calls on the Biden Administration to take concrete measures both at home and abroad to address their failed response to the devastating violence in the region. You can learn more about this agenda by clicking here. We urge you to sign on and share it with others to sign as well.  

If this were a normal April, Arab Americans would reflect on how our community arrived here, some of whom came before the founding of this nation. We’d remember their courage, and sacrifice and be grateful for their notable contributions to American society. We’d honor Arab American artists, poets, authors, educators, public servants, and frontline workers. And we’d take great pride in sharing our heritage all month long.   

Indeed, something we have been working towards for more than four decades, the just-announced addition of the MENA (Middle Eastern or North African) category to all federal data collection forms, including the U.S. Census, is a hard-won victory. This category means Arab Americans will finally be visible in U.S. data. With visibility comes better policy making, allocation of federal resources to schools and local communities, improved civil rights protections, increased health research on our community, and so much more.  It is tremendous progress but there is a lot more to be done here to make sure the category itself and the way it will appear on data collection forms will allow for accurate data collection about Arab Americans. Please know we will continue to lead on this until our government gets it right.  

Just last year, in a historic first, the Biden Administration issued a presidential proclamation officially honoring April as Arab American Heritage Month. It was a proclamation decades in the making.  In that proclamation, the President called upon, “all Americans to learn more about the history, culture, and achievements of Arab Americans and to observe this month with appropriate programs and activities.” We agree and for us, the Palestinian story is the Arab American story, and the Arab American story is the American story.  

For the remainder of April, AAI will host several virtual events highlighting our culture and spotlighting some of our most cherished voices. These include a conversation with local Arab American elected officials MONDAY on April 15th.

We will also have a new poll release on April 25th and an extraordinary session with Arab American poets on April 29th. We hope the public, the media, and our elected officials join us for these events to really hear our community.   

You can find more information on Arab American Heritage Month events by clicking here.  

You can sign up to join our first event on Monday at 6PM ET with Mayor Abdullah Hammoud (Dearborn), State Representative Abdelnasser Rashid (IL-21st district), State Representative Ruwa Romman (GA-97th district), and Mayor Andre Sayegh (Paterson) by registering here.

Maya

The Arab American Institute is a national civil rights advocacy organization that provides strategic analysis to policy makers and community members to strengthen democracy, protect civil rights and liberties, and defend human rights. AAI organizes the 3.7 million Arab Americans across the country to ensure an informed, organized, and effective constituency is represented in all aspects of civic life. 

Arab American Institute Foundation
1600 K Street, NW, Suite 601
Washington, DC 20006
United States