Leaders from several of the Triangle’s human rights and social justice organizations gathered in Raleigh for a press conference Thursday to demand an end to growing attacks on immigrants and refugees, international students, Muslims, and other vulnerable communities, and to protest U.S. wars abroad.
The gathering came as federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raid homes, workplaces, and public buildings; international students are being deported; and crimes against Muslims are rising.
Just this week in North Carolina, ICE agents raided a Kings Mountain fire equipment company and took more than two dozen people into custody. Numerous international students studying at Triangle universities have had their visas terminated, and at least two international students have left the United States. This spring, a 15-year-old Muslim girl was injured in a fight in her Charlotte high school classroom that triggered a federal hate crime investigation. In a March report, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) found that there were 8,658 complaints about anti-Muslim or anti-Arab incidents in the U.S. in 2024, an increase of 7.4 percent year over year, and the highest number since CAIR began gathering data in 1996.
“We feel that these are attacks that emerge from U.S. policies, at home and abroad,” says Manzoor Cheema, an organizer with the grassroots groups Muslims for Social Justice and People’s Power Lab. “The way the USA conducts wars against our people, and then the way the U.S. implements those policies against us, like the Muslim [travel] ban, or an anti-Sharia law that was passed even in North Carolina In 2013.”
Cheema says these policies, and the attacks on people that come out of them, are rooted in “the original sin of this country,” slavery and anti-Black racism. One of his group’s goals, he says, is to educate people, through the media, that Islamophobia is a form of racism.
To that end, Muslims for Social Justice works with a coalition of groups who are organizing to address issues ranging from educating people about their 4th Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure, fighting against surveillance and overpolicing, and pushing back against racism and Islamophobia. The coalition—composed of churches, Jewish, Muslim, and atheist organizations, labor unions, and queer groups—comprises what’s collectively known as the People’s Power Lab.
“We have to organize the taxicab drivers, the low-paid, unemployed, people lacking healthcare, people whose family members are incarcerated, those are people we prioritize,” Cheema says.
One group in the coalition is Reform Raleigh, a grassroots activist organization that has been lobbying the Raleigh City Council to reallocate resources currently dedicated to policing, in part by creating a crisis response program, like Durham’s HEART program, that’s housed outside of the police department.
“We want folks to understand that we have the ability to create systems that help us thrive and not have such a heavy reliance on the police force,” said Nique Williams, an organizer with Reform Raleigh. “Although we are young Black people who believe the police can not exist, we have some elders in certain Black communities that have a different perspective. So that comes with a lot of political education and just connecting different things so folks understand, we take care of us, the police do not.”
Muslims for Social Justice, the People’s Power Lab, and other North Carolina-based social justice organizations have the following list of demands from local, state, and national elected leaders:
- An end to the United States’ unjust wars abroad
- An immediate halt to attacks against Black, Brown, Muslim, women, working-class, and other impacted communities
- Full funding for public schools, healthcare, and housing for all
- Union protections, fair wages, and dignity for all workers, regardless of race, zip code, religion, or immigration status
“The main message that I want to get out is, what we are seeing against Muslims is not in isolation,” Cheema says. “It’s also happening in Latinx communities and Black communities. If you’re seeing injustice, don’t be silent. The first thing is to speak out. What is happening today against one community will most likely be replicated.”
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