The Muslim Caucus Education Collective is a 501(c)3 non-profit founded on the belief that social change happens when we organize and empower people to give voice to the change they desire in their communities. We believe race, gender, class, and religion are inextricably woven together, and that the participation, organization, and leadership of people from Muslim American communities is essential to achieve real change. Today Muslim youth and families face some of the gravest threats in modern U.S. history. We have recently seen, and will inevitably see more, waves of policy proposals designed to roll back the past 50 years of advances in civil rights, racial and religious justice, voting rights and immigrant rights, that are vital to America's democracy. The stakes are enormous.
John C. Green, the senior research adviser at the nonpartisan think tank Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, says that while voters are primarily concerned about jobs and the economy, they may also feel growing anxiety about Islam and the cultural and ethnic changes in the country. "I think that the negative rhetoric is likely to die down after the election," he says. "But I suspect that these issues will continue for several years because the underlying trends are unlikely to be altered." Public opinion of Islam has not changed that much over time.
While the 2018 midterm elections were historic with a record number of Muslims running for office and American voters electing Ilan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to Congress, we cannot forget that our community is targeted by the highest leader of the land with rising fears of Muslims.
Fear pervades Americans’ lives—and American politics, too many political actors invoke fear in a concrete and abstract way, laying bare the normalization of nationalistic, xenophobic, racist and anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic rhetoric. Against this backdrop of these larger forces, we face an acute, existential threat to racial and religious equity. At this pivotal moment, we need power grounded in political education, community self-determination, civic participation, and state-level organization en masse.
Are you interested in learning to create social change through collective action, with a strong commitment to community, turning resources into power by strategizing; turning intentions into effective action; and structuring organization in order to develop leadership, mobilize constituents, and achieve goals. Become a change maker, sign up for Organize to Win and bring the training to your community.
About the Training Program
Organizing to Win is a leadership, organizing and action training to mobilize Muslim Voters.
The Muslim Collective for Equitable Democracy is excited to announce a very grassroots hands-on movement building training for Muslim American Voters. The program focuses on working with local leaders including 1:1 coaching and tactics to develop a shared story, shared commitment, shared structure, shared strategy and shared actions to organize as one constituency.
Learning to organize is not only a matter of the hands and the head but also of the heart. Our approach is rooted in a faith tradition that values people struggling interdependently to claim their dignity, a civic tradition claiming an equal right to self-determination, including holding leadership accountable, and a popular tradition of people finding ways to use their own resources creatively to effectively assert their interests.
We believe that no one person or group of people can hold all the power, responsibility has to be shared in a sustainable way, and structure aimed at developing mutual accountability through a distributed leadership model.
If you are ready to lead change in your community, please complete this application. Training will be launched in the fall of 2019. Applications are reviewed on an ongoing basis.