| | Events at the ACCC This Weekend! We are excited to present two events this weekend at the Center. On Friday night, please join the ACCC and the Arab American Institute for a panel discussion. Seasoned experts will discuss the way that racial profiling and Islamophobia are impacting both federal and local issues, ranging from national security to immigration and to police misconduct. Confirmed speakers include Dr. James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute, and Ms. Farhana Khera, Executive Director of Muslim Advocates. More panelists will be announced this week!
After the panel, the speakers will open the floor for questions from the audience. On Saturday, we will screen the documentary "Falluja: April 2004" by filmmaker Toshikuni Doi in an event co-sponsored by the Arab Film Festival and the Labor Video Project. We previously showed work by the same filmmaker on Gaza and look forward to another production with Doi's unique and penetrating vision.
PANEL DISCUSSION
Friday, March 18th at 6:30 pm
FILM SCREENING
Saturday, March 19th at 7 pm Be sure to read below to find out about the conference "Litigating Palestine" at UC Hastings, a concert in Sunnyvale and stand-up comedy in San Francisco! To stay connected and make sure you never miss an event, like us on Facebook! | | |  Dr. James Zogby Dr. James J. Zogby is the author of Arab Voices (Palgrave Macmillan, October 2010) and the founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community. Since 1985, Dr. Zogby and AAI have led Arab American efforts to secure political empowerment in the U.S. Through voter registration, education and mobilization, AAI has moved Arab Americans into the political mainstream. For the past three decades, Dr. Zogby has been involved in a full range of Arab American issues. A co-founder and chairman of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign in the late 1970s, he later co-founded and served as the Executive Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. In 1982, he co-founded Save Lebanon, Inc., a private non-profit, humanitarian and non-sectarian relief organization which funds health care for Palestinian and Lebanese victims of war, and other social welfare projects in Lebanon. |  Farhana Khera
Farhana Khera is the first Executive Director of Muslim Advocates and the National Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML). Prior to joining Muslim Advocates and NAML in 2005, Ms. Khera was Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights. In the Senate, she worked for six years directly for Senator Russell D. Feingold (D-WI), the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee. Ms. Khera focused substantially on the USA PATRIOT Act, racial and religious profiling, and other civil liberties issues raised by the government's anti-terrorism policies since September 11, 2001. She was the Senator's lead staff member in developing anti-racial profiling legislation and organizing subcommittee hearings on racial profiling.
Ms. Khera received her B.A. with honors in political science and economics from Wellesley College in 1991 and her J.D. from Cornell Law School in 1994. At Wellesley, she served as president of the student body and co-founded the first Muslim students organization, al-Muslimat ("The Muslim Women"). At Cornell, Ms. Khera was a finalist in the law school's annual Cuccia Cup Moot Court Competition and was an editor with the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. | | "Fallujah: 2004" In April 2004, Falluja, Iraqi was besieged and invaded by thousands of U.S. troops. Ten days after the siege had been lifted, Japanese journalist Toshikuni Doi entered the beleaguered city with his video camera. Doi edited his footage into a 55-minute documentary film, "Falluja: April 2004." With no added music or voice-overs, the film is intended to be a sheer record of facts. Facts like these speak for themselves. Toshikuni Doi is an award-winning Japanese independent journalist, documentarian and author. Since 1985, he has visited and lived in the occupied, reporting extensively from Palestinian villages and refugee camps, in addition to covering humanitarian crises in locations across the Middle East and Asia. | | | Litigating Palestine Conference at UC Hastings This one-and-a-half day conference – the first of its kind in the United States - will critically evaluate the strategies, limitations, successes and failures of efforts to vindicate Palestinian rights in a variety of different court systems in the United States and abroad. For example: Do law suits make sense as an instrument for achieving justice for Palestinians? Are there benefits to litigating even when the verdict is unfavorable? What other peaceful means of enforcing international law may be employed, if, ultimately, the tangible benefits of litigation for Palestinian rights prove elusive? What light does the experience of “litigating Palestine” shed on the capacity of courts to advance the rights of disempowered groups in other places? Speakers include: Diana Buttu, Noura Erakat, Jamil Dakwar, and George Bisharat.
For more information, visit the event's website. | | Arabs Gone Wild at Cobb's Comedy Club 915 Columbus Avenue San Francisco Arabs Gone Wild is coming to Cobbs Comedy Club for a full weekend (4 nights) of shows - March 24-27, 2011 3/24 at 8 pm, $18.50 3/25 at 8 pm and 10.15 pm, $20.50 3/26 at 8 pm and 10.15 pm, $22.50 3/27 at 8 pm, $18.50 The performance features three of the country's top Arab-American comedians: Dean Obeidallah, Aron Kader and Maysoon Zayid. The comedians take on topics from politics to pop culture to more personal stories like crazy mothers-in-law, all from an Arab-American point of view. As Obeidallah says: "The comedy is written for everyone to get - but if you are of Middle Eastern heritage, you not only will laugh, you will also relate to it." | | Naser Musa Performs in Sunnyvale March 26th at 8 pm in the Sunnyvale Theatre 550 E. Remington Drive General admission tickets are $28. Discount tickets for students and seniors are $22. Musa's show will feature music from many different Arab countries, including Egypt, Iraq and Jordan, performed on traditional Arabic instruments, along with stories about the traditions and cultures represented. Naser will be accompanied by Georges Lamman on violin, Loay Dahbour and Faisal Zedan on percussion instruments, and by local belly dance instructor Alcina. | | | | | |
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