The ANSWER Coalition is co-sponsoring the important events below and encourages our supporters to attend
The Grassroots Alliance for Immigrant Rights and allies are proud to host Project South's Azadeh Shahshahani in Columbia, SC for two important events on February 19, 2020. RSVP and share on Facebook here.
COMMUNITY FORUM -- YOU HAVE RIGHTS: KNOW THEM & DEFEND THEM
Wednesday, Feb. 19
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
School of Journalism and Mass Communications (SJMC) 321 (800 Sumter Street, Columbia, SC)
Shahshahani will present a forum to several student associations at the University of South Carolina on the issue of state surveillance and rights violations impacting Black, immigrant, and Muslim communities. Join us at noon and learn about your rights and how to defend them!
FILM SCREENING -- THE FEELING OF BEING WATCHED
Wednesday, Feb. 19
6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Indie Grits Lab (1013 Duke Ave, Columbia, SC)
In the Arab-American neighborhood outside of Chicago where director Assia Boundaoui grew up, most of her neighbors think they have been under surveillance for over a decade. While investigating their experiences, Assia uncovers tens of thousands of pages of FBI documents that prove her hometown was the subject of one of the largest counterterrorism investigations ever conducted in the U.S. before 9/11, code-named “Operation Vulgar Betrayal.” With unprecedented access, The Feeling of Being Watched weaves the personal and the political as it follows the filmmaker’s examination of why her community fell under blanket government surveillance. Assia struggles to disrupt the government secrecy shrouding what happened and takes the FBI to federal court to compel them to make the records they collected about her community public. In the process, she confronts long-hidden truths about the FBI’s relationship to her community. The Feeling of Being Watched follows Assia as she pieces together this secret FBI operation, while grappling with the effects of a lifetime of surveillance on herself and her family.
While the focus of the film is on Arab immigrant communities, state surveillance is targeting Black, Immigrant and Muslim communities all over the United States. Now more than ever, we must come together to hold law enforcement agencies and local governments accountable for violations of our constitutional and human rights.