Arab Americans in Pennsylvania Must Realize Potential for 2020 and Beyond

posted on: Nov 2, 2020

By: Al-Sharif Nassef/Arab America Contributing Writer

Blocks away from the birthplace of modern democracy, where America’s founding revolutionaries signed the Declaration of Independence of the United States from the British Empire/colonial rule, amidst a sea of brick townhouses and once-industrial workshops turned galleries, lofts, and cafes are Philadelphia’s Old Kensington neighborhood. Hundreds of people line up in masks outside the Al-Aqsa Center to receive humanitarian assistance — 2020’s pandemic-induced economic crisis drives scores of immigrants and Philly locals alike into bread lines, often standing side-by-side.

These days, are at an unprecedented scale: hundreds of boxes stacked high with free fresh produce, milk, and food staples alongside rent support applications, protective personal equipment, and gun buyback programs are available to help get the community through tough times. While aid is dished out, tables staffed by energetic young volunteers donning “Yalla Vote” T-Shirts register droves of new voters each week and provide translated materials to help guide those eligible through the electoral process and voting by mail.

Within the embrace of turquoise geometric and floral vine patterns, and spanning across an entire city block, the Center hosts a full-time grade school active in interfaith programming, a mosque, a community development organization, a clothing store, and a family-run Arabic grocery market serving shawarma and falafel sandwiches nearly as good as those one could pick up fresh in the Levant. Over the years, this center alone has plugged tens of thousands of Arab immigrants into the political process, and its voting district hosts one of the largest Arab populations in the city — mostly of Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian, and Lebanese origin.

While the al-Aqsa Center serves a newer generation of Arab immigrants in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at large has been home to waves of Christian and Muslim Arab immigrants alike for the better part of a century. Lebanese Maronite, Antiochian Orthodox, and Egyptian Coptic Orthodox churches are scattered throughout rural towns across the Commonwealth.

Once bustling “rust belt” cities like Scranton, Erie, Bethlehem, Allentown, and Wilkes-Barre drew scores of immigrants, including significant numbers of Christians Arabs, to jobs in American industry from Belad al-Sham (Levantine nations) with some neighborhoods once rivaling Dearborn, Michigan’s invisibility of Arabic culture and language.

With the Arab American Institute estimating that over 182,000 are ethnically Arab back in 2016–and growing since–the potential of the Arab vote in deciding the electoral outcome of this key swing state must be fully realized. Arab Americans can unite and leverage collective power to advance critical policies of shared principal, human rights at home and abroad, and mutual interest.

United, we hold great potential for the community to influence policymakers in Pennsylvania and beyond, especially in other swing states with significant numbers of Arab and Muslim voters, like Michigan, Ohio, and Virginia. That influence is amplified greater with the development of regional and national Arab-American voting blocs.

In the 2016 presidential election, Pennsylvania was decided by a mere 45,000 votes. Now in 2020, famed statistician Nate Silver’s blog explains why Pennsylvania is more likely than any other to be the deciding state for the presidential election on November 3rd. A united Arab vote can thus tilt the tides of the election in Pennsylvania and even shape the future of the United States.

Given a large number of Arab Americans paired with rapidly growing demographics of immigrants from many non-Arab Muslim majority countries, including tens of thousands of resettled refugees, in tandem with the bastion of Black Muslim political power in Philadelphia—where the likes of Malcolm X and W.F. Muhammad and their students grew the ranks of city’s revert community—a durable Arab-Muslim-Black alliance could be a major force in Pennsylvania politics for decades to come.

And given the state’s swingable reality, well-organized multi-demographic alliances in PA can deliver the White House—or not—and therein lies potential to directly affect foreign policy while helping set the domestic agenda.

The groundwork for this alliance certainly exists, with decades of pioneering Arab-American organizations like the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Arab American Institute. Still, there is a need for more robust organizing operations to engage and mobilize the vast Arab base, foster consensus around shared principles and values, implement 21st Century movement-building tactics with data assets, organize money, and hold the capacity to endorse candidates, draw clear red lines on issues like Palestine, and demonstrably sway elections.

Relationships to root such a coalition in Pennsylvania exists today at a grass-tops level. However, many well-intentioned civic leaders and organizations are arguably co-opted by party elites and political machinery that often tokenizes minorities with public positions to appear inclusive, but effectively yields little real agency or decision making power, thus disempowering minority communities to actuate their demographic power.

The task of uniting a single community, like Arabs, is certainly no easy feat–let alone across sectarian, faith, and ethnic lines. Even justice for Palestine, one issue Arabs could agree on for many generations, seems (disgracefully) no longer a priority for the several Arab States.

Furthermore, effectively leveraging a united alliance in Pennsylvania and other swing states is a significant challenge in and of itself. Community advocates must delicately dance the capacity to influence relationships through friendship on one hand with concerted political pressure on the other. Otherwise, we must be capable of replacing policymakers with deaf ears through (an expensive) organizing muscle and an active grassroots base to match the forces of the status quo — while still ensuring access to policymakers and power.

Nevertheless, as interfaith and cross-class movements emerge to shape the future of politics in Pennsylvania and around the nation, such as the revival of Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy with The Poor People’s Campaign, a compelling new narrative ties together faith and rights while transcending sectarian divides.

A vision of radical equality that understands the linkage between ecological devastation and unfettered corporate power, the connection between poverty, militarism, and America’s disastrous support of chronic human rights abuses in the Arab World and beyond uplifts all marginalized communities as Arab-Americans have certainly been cast to the side for far too long.

A serious multi-ethnic alliance in Pennsylvania to echo the calls and robust policies proffered by the Poor People’s Campaign — one that revolves around values rather than party bosses, one that is as committed to upholding civil rights domestically as it is advancing human rights abroad–can be critical in shaping our country’s and the world’s future for the better.

With people awakened to the perils of complacency and armchair politics after four years of the Trump presidency and many disappointments during the Obama-Biden administration before that, the same urgency that drove dedicated levels of work against the budding fascist administration can continue to be driven into strategic work toward policies embodying the values of peace, justice, stewardship, compassion, and equality.

And if Arabs and other marginalized communities with decisive demographics in swing states can carry the torch of the movement forward, perhaps even the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice could weigh on our shoulders.

Al-Sharif Nassef is a  community organizer, advocate, and analyst with a background in environmental justice, peacebuilding, and international human rights. He works to uphold the voting rights of minority communities throughout Pennsylvania and protect democracy for all Americans. He is currently based in Philadelphia, USA. Twitter: @SansSharif

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