At 10 Year Celebration of CAIR-Massachusetts, Time Is of Essence
- Adam Smith
- 12 minutes ago
- 3 min read
For a decade the Massachusetts chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' mission has been advocating for the civil rights of Muslims in the state. But on the 10-year anniversary banquet for CAIR-Massachusetts on Nov. 22, it was all about the preciousness of time – and, more precisely, how the time to defend civil rights is now.
This point was driven home when the group’s executive director, Tahirah Amatul-Wadud revealed she had just days earlier had a health emergency after collapsing on her kitchen floor. The doctors told her she had had several strokes, and while she ended up getting the all-clear, the incident was a reminder of the vulnerability of life.
“I am the personification that time is sacred,” she said to a large crowd inside a University of Massachusetts-Boston event hall, adding she was thankful to be alive following her stay in the hospital.
Amatul-Wadud said, among the lessons she learned upon reflecting on her time in the emergency room: “I did not leave that hospital in vain … We must never be afraid of the attacks on civil rights.”
Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, second slide, at CAIR-Massachusetts 10th anniversary banquet, which included keynote speaker Chris Smalls, third slide, as well as Massachusetts State Sen. Jamie Eldridge, pictured below, and members of the Boston Workers Circle Center for Jewish Culture and Social Justice members including Susan Etscovitz, last slide.
CAIR-Massachusetts -- which raised $200,000 at the event -- has been especially active over the past two years, amid anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia, doxing of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, and attacks on those critical of the genocide in Gaza. CAIR-Massachusetts was formed in 2015, decades after the founding of the national CAIR nonprofit. The civil rights and advocacy group’s stated mission is to “enhance understanding of Islam,” defend civil rights, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.
After Amatul-Wadud spoke, the night’s keynote address came from workers’ and human rights activist Chris Smalls, who famously took on Amazon during the Covid-19 pandemic, and, more recently, joined the Handala vessel to stop the block-aid on Gaza, as part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
For him, the preciousness of time felt more about the moment that American society is in – after two years of U.S. support for the genocide in Gaza, the ongoing immigration raids and the struggles of many American workers.
Smalls told of his battle trying to make ends meet while working at the retail giant that at the time created the richest man in the U.S., Jeff Bezos. He spoke of his later Amazon Labor Union victories, and he recalled the leaked words of an Amazon attorney who allegedly said Smalls was “not smart or articulate.” He also spoke of the stigma that Black men in America face, and why he chose to join the flotilla trip to Gaza that ended up getting stopped by Israeli naval forces, and how he was treated as the only Black crew member during that time – getting dumped in Jordan instead of sent back to the U.S.
“It’s all connected,” he said of racial and labor struggles.
Smalls spoke of how people can seize the moment and make change by joining together to make their voices heard. Worker stoppages and boycotts are tools the common people have, he said.
For others at the 10th anniversary banquet, however, traditional political and legal tools were also options for fighting for civil rights. For example, Attorney Mahsa Khanbabai, who represented Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk after she was abducted by immigration agents in the early spring, was a featured guest. And so was Massachusetts State Sen. Jamie Eldridge, who co-sponsored a bill promoting the civil rights and inclusion of American Muslims in part by creating a “Muslim Commission.”
CAIR-Massachusetts, he said, has for a decade been “empowering Muslim voices.”
But, Eldridge added, the group has also "stood with Christian and Jewish partners."