An interfaith effort to fight against hate crime, eradicate misconceptions

A day after UC Davis’ Muslim Student Association (MSA) had one of its biggest charity programs, an unidentified female broke the windows, slashed bike tires and hung bacon strips on the door handles of the Islamic Center of Davis on Jan. 22.

“A lot has happened in the past week,” said Omar Abdel-Ghaffar, a fourth-year political science major and board member of MSA. “I think one thing right after another has been a lot for MSA to deal with. Every time you try to stabilize yourself you are hit by something new.”

Soon after this event came news of President Trump’s executive order banning travelers of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

“I am anticipating really good [campaign] work to come in response to the travel bans,” Abdel-Ghaffar said. “I think this is something that hits a lot of students. There are plenty of Iraqi, Iranian, Sudanese and Yemeni students on this campus, and it’s important for us to address their concerns, and see how we can support them.”

The magnitude of these events requires a community effort. MSA has been active in establishing a network of Muslim students on campus to provide self-empowerment and to establish spaces where people can ask questions about Islam to dispel misconceptions.  

“These types of events are really disgruntling to a lot of Muslim students,” Abdel-Ghaffar said. “And I think we as Muslims have to take the steps necessary to ensure that we are safe and can live normal lives.”

Members of MSA table at the Memorial Union several times a week in collaboration with campus administration to ensure that students feel safe and comfortable on campus.

“[The members] are there just to answer people’s questions,” Abdel-Ghaffar said. “Someone can come and say, ‘Hey, I was watching the news yesterday and I saw this.’ It has been really incredible to see people who keep coming with more and more questions.”

Even before the incident at the Islamic Center, MSA had been working on various projects focused on educating others about Islam and counteracting Islamophobia. These projects include “The Davis Muslim,” a month-long series of lectures and panels focused on  sharing the lives of Muslim students with the rest of the campus.

In addition to their individual efforts, the Muslim community has received aid from an interfaith support system of campus religious groups. MSA has raised almost three times more money than needed to repair the damages to the mosque.

“We’ve had a lot of support from different religious groups, and that’s really heartwarming,” Abdel-Ghaffar said. “Jewish Voice for Peace has been amazing, along with Orthodox Christian Fellowship, who has also reached out. In the wake of the attack, I spent hours and hours the day after just answering emails. There were so many people that were concerned and wanted to help out.”

Sigma Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish-interest sorority on campus, has had its own experience with intolerance on the UC Davis campus. Julia Lopez, a first-year economics major reflected on an incident in which swastikas were written on the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity house.

“I don’t really know why someone would go out of their way to put someone else down,” Lopez said. “We as a Jewish population understand what that feels like.”

The sorority sent the Islamic Center of Davis a letter of support because they could resonate with the feelings of hate crime.

“We sent them a letter saying that we stand behind them, and that no one should feel unsafe or scared about where they come from or what they believe in, especially on our campus,” Lopez said. “We apologized for what happened, and sent along some cookies.”

The Interfaith Campus Council (ICC) is a group of religious organizations that work together in programming and exploration across multiple faiths. They believe in different faith groups and non-faith groups collaborating for the common good and in the value of building relationships with one another.

“Our community is obviously devastated that this happened,” said Reverend Jocelynn Hughes of The Belfry, a campus chaplain and convener of the ICC. “In January of last year, we put this sign on our building saying that we stand with our Muslim siblings against fear and hatred, believing that we were responding to a candidate [Trump] that would eventually dissipate. It’s shocking that a year later, that sign is still necessary, and that in light of this crime we have to double down harder.”

The ICC had planned a World Interfaith Harmony Week and, in wake of the attack, doubled its efforts in fostering interfaith conversations. It also planned an interfaith Shabbat at the Hillel House followed by an open mic night during which people could address their recent fears.

“We have more in common than not at the end of the day,” Hughes said. “When religious groups are under attack, especially when it is seen as driven by another religious group, it’s really important for those of us that disagree with that to stand up and say that’s not us, and that’s not acceptable.”

Hughes believes in building relationships between different religious groups.

“When we are working together, even when we have some distinctions and differences amongst us, it makes all of us better [to do so] and it gives students the opportunity to live into what UC Davis is about as a community,” Hughes said.

In times when one religious group is singled out for hate, Hughes chooses to focus on how similarities can bring different communities together in support.

“I think that all the major world religions have some version of the golden rule,” Hughes said. “In their scripture or important writings, there is some instantiation of the idea that one should treat people well. I think that’s the basis that we all build upon.”

Written By: Sahiti Vemula—features@theaggie.org

Profiling student-led movements that have shaped UC Davis

At the Memorial Union (MU), the eyes of important global and local activists gaze upon passersby to remind them that UC Davis students of both the past and present have felt compelled to advocate for change. “The Unfinished Dream,” a mural at the MU that depicts multicultural art pieces like Greek and Egyptian busts alongside portraits of activists like Harriet Tubman, was commissioned in 1991 to celebrate diversity and acknowledge the importance of activism.

“We wanted [to convey] that things were not perfect, that one always has to keep agitating and going forward,” said Kim Anno, one of the artists who co-created the mural. “This idea of a utopian society, where all people sit around a table, is not yet achieved. We wanted to make something that was triumphant.”

A look through Shields Library’s Department of Special Collections will show UC Davis’ history is deeply characterized by student-led movements. A 1969 protest which confronted then-Chancellor James Meyer in regard to the excessive use of police force at People’s Park was attended by his own children. The 1969 March for Peace at Sacramento, organized by UC Davis, was attended by between 6,000 and 8,000 people. In 1970, the Rally on the Quad for Vietnam involved the planting of 500 white crosses, symbolizing war deaths, which were subsequently uprooted and carried to then-Chancellor Meyer to demand that the university cut ties with the war effort. After the Kent State shootings in 1970 and the deployment of US troops in Cambodia, two molotov cocktails were thrown at the UC Davis Reserve Officers’ Training Corps building.

Students gathered in the 1980s and ’90s to protest Apartheid in South Africa, the first war in Iraq, sexism, racism and in support of Affirmative Action. In 1989, students protested the presence of Robert Bork, the rejected Supreme Court Justice nominee who opposed federal anti-segregation laws, when he came to campus for a university-funded event.

“What the demonstration [showed] to the university leadership and the greater community was that people were not going to be silent and let their rights be squashed to protect the rights of others,” said William Schlitz, who graduated in 1993 and who was involved in the protest. “Just because you have your rights and I have my rights doesn’t mean asking for my rights infringes on your rights. I tell people, ‘What the nation is experiencing now, California went through in the ’80s and ’90s.’”

Four students in 1990 began a water-only hunger strike that lasted six days and called for an investigation into alleged racism in the Spanish Department against native Spanish speakers, the establishment of an on campus ethnic and cultural center and an increase in full-time ethnic studies faculty members. Andrea Gaytan, one of the four hunger-strikers and now the director of the AB540 and Undocumented Student Center, said that the effect of the strike was greater than the granting of the three demands.

“The whole gist of the protest […] was really the mobilization and awakening of the community,” Gaytan said. “Afterwards, […] we had a humongous coalition for the anti-war movement. When we had the anti-fee hike protest, students and the campus community mobilized faster. We had members of the community and staff and faculty […who] became more widely-known as advocates and allies for students.”

Shortly after the hunger strike, the Office of Student Affairs and the Campus Art in Public Places Work Group decided to commission a piece of art that would both celebrate achievements and inspire further advocacy. This piece became “The Unfinished Dream.”

“The demand and the desire to have a mural was part of showing an unfinished dream [for] real equity and international respect and collaboration,” said Miranda Bergman, who co-created the mural alongside Anno. “[The mural] was combatting Eurocentrism in education and also remembering and honoring both students from the school and people throughout history who took that step to stand up for equality.”

Today, Gaytan said that she sees a large difference in modern UC Davis student activism as compared to the activism of 1988 to 1992, when she was a student. The AB540 and Undocumented Student center she directs is the result of student advocacy.

“Watching the students originally organize and […] write a plan and proposal for this AB540 Center was so different from what my experience had been,” Gaytan said. “It’s been really full-circle. Davis has made a lot of progress, just for Davis, but we’ve made even more progress compared to other universities in California and across the country. I feel extremely proud of what we’re doing now.”

More recent movements include the Occupy UC Davis movement with regard to tuition hikes in 2011, during which students were pepper-sprayed by university police. Evan Loker, a 2012 graduate who was involved in the Occupy movement, said that this event resulted in a mobilization similar to what Gaytan described after the 1990 hunger strike.

“What made Occupy unique from other cycles of political resistance was that it localized these new connections and energies into a particular territory — traditional political actions like marches and pickets taking place alongside micro-political processes […like] building relationships alongside ideologies and strategies,” Loker said. “The UC movement and Occupy shared a set of political concerns, symbols and tactics [which] created a set of common experiences and images that offered many millennials and older folks an entrance into radical politics.”

Just last year, the “Fire Katehi” movement played a part in the resignation of former Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi. Even more recently, student protests manifested in opposition to the highly-controversial scheduled appearance of far-right conservative Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, accompanied by entrepreneur Martin Shkreli via invitation from the Davis College Republicans (DCR).

“We decided to host [Yiannopoulos] in order to allow our fellow students the opportunity to hear about ideas, policies and theories that may be entirely alien to their background,” said Deborah Porter, a fourth-year biological systems engineering major and political director for DCR. “We had hoped that liberals alongside conservatives would attend Milo’s talk with the purpose of pondering his ideas, asking difficult questions and promoting UC Davis as a place where we challenge the ideas set before us rather than blindly accepting them.”

Eric Gudz, who graduated in 2016 and who provided support and assistance to event protesters, said that he is opposed to the presence of “hatred and bigotry” on campus.

“[Not] having the platform for that speech is not the same as losing your right to be able to conduct free speech,” Gudz said. “[I] wanted to show my support and solidarity to resisting and voicing my concerns over what I see [is the] proliferation of hateful and fearful rhetoric that is becoming more […] normalized in our communities. This provides other communities an example of how [they] can be powerful enough to really counter the spread of hate that’s happening and demonstrate that everybody has that ability to be able to […] stand up for what they believe in and what they know is right […] for the community.”

One day after the cancelled speech, Yiannopoulos returned to campus for a free speech countermarch, during which the 2011 pepper-spraying incident was reenacted with silly string. The “Shkrelopoulos” event directly referenced recent student movements at UC Davis and was similar in character to speaker-related protests like the 1989 Robert Bork controversy. According to Porter and the DCR, the re-enactment “especially reiterated” its rights.

“Just as the Occupy protesters had a right to be there, so did we,” Porter said. “It doesn’t matter the material they discuss, they have a right to peacefully do it.”

According to the UC Davis Policy and Procedure Manual, anybody may exercise First Amendment rights — including free speech — on all public university grounds. Symbolic structures are permitted at a designated site on the Quad meant for “symbolic speech,” but acts of civil disobedience are not condoned. Though the manual acknowledges that civil disobedience has played a historic role at UC Davis, it is not specifically protected.

For those looking to get involved in the future of activism on campus, Gudz recommends that students join established groups and organizations first before launching their own movements.

“Organizing in this era is going to be critical to move things forward,” Gudz said. “A good first place to start is to check in with those pre-existing activism groups. One of the big keys for activism [and] advocacy going forward is that these struggles are intersectional whether we want to realize them or not. The struggles of all these different groups are […] intertwined and they must be treated as such to be able to advance the causes forwards.”
Written by: Hannah Holzer— features@theaggie.org