Kafia Ahmed

cOMMUNITY ORGANIZER

Listen Now

There is often a belief that refugees find refuge after resettlement into American cities. Kafia’s story clearly denotes another experience in which refuge is never found. Instead, Somali Americans in Minneapolis are enlisted in a battle for the right to the city for which they are expected to be grateful.

What does Kafia’s story tell us about resettlement in the aftermath of displacement? How do themes of ingenuine gratefulness show up in mainstream organizing for Muslim Americans?

Kafia’s Story Offers Lessons in:

• Coalition building through community-based knowledges and histories

• Organizing against CVE programming  in times of democrat-backed neoliberal leadership

Kafia spoke to how CVE programs in Minneapolis were cyclical in that communities were socioeconomically deprived, which made accepting counter-violence-extremisim funding ideal.

What does this tell us about how counter-terrorism programs operates when uniquely targeting the working class?

If you, the listener/reader, were an organizer interested in coalition building with activists in Minneapolis, you would be considered an outsider to many. This is due to warranted mistrust for people who have abused uses of power in the past.

How does this affect your ability to organize? What would you do to build relationships in the city? What does this exercise teach us about relationship-building in high-context situations?

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There’s a 2015 FBI report. It’s like this long, long report. But somewhere in their there’s like a sentence, which is like, my favorite sentence of all time. And it essentially says, despite all of our research and our work with academics, there is no scientific way to tell who will be radicalized.