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ajnabiehLast Monday, I attended a rally calling for the New York City schools to close on the two Muslim holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. The rally was organized by the Coalition for Muslim School Holidays; catchy, no? Unfortunately, my photos turned out pretty poorly; I'll see if I can find some better ones and post them. However, I want to make a few observations about the event, the cause, and the politics around it.
1) Like any ethnographer working in a fieldsite that is reasonably keyed into information technology networks, I googled the coalition and event before I went. Most of what I found was news articles on previous steps taken by the group, including the 15-0 vote in favor of the holiday by the city council (see this NY Times article). Nearly all these articles included Mayor Bloomberg's quote, "If you close the schools for every single holiday, there won’t be any school." And every article, without fail, followed this immediately with the information that the NYC schools already take off for Christmas, Good Friday, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Passover. Clearly, Bloomberg's attempted framing isn't getting any traction in the media.
2) The Coalition's framing of the issue, on the other hand, was clear and consistent. This issue is about equal treatment and respect for the major communities of the city; about 12% of the students in the school system are Muslim. However, a subargument was made that I found very interesting: that the effects on the school system would be minimal. Over the next 12 years, one speaker said at the rally, only 10 instructional days would be lost, due to holidays falling either on weekends or during summer vacations. What's interesting about this is that it's a classic claim that the desired action is a minimal one. This is an easy claim to accommodate, in addition to being one justified on grounds of mutually agreed upon values (multiculturalism). Social movement theory: always relevant.
3) There was clearly an effort made to emphasize the diversity both of the Muslim community in the city, and the members of the coalition. The rally was co-emceed by a gentleman who appeared Arab to me (though he might have been South Asian, and I didn't get his name, and a woman who was East Asian. At least half the speakers were non-Muslim allies, self-identified. There were both Muslim and non-Muslim teachers, both Muslim and non-Muslim parents, and two non-Muslim representatives of unions (the teachers' union and the public employees' union). There were two other Muslim speakers, a coalition member giving the calendar data, and an imam talking about how many elected officials supported the measure. Of the Muslims who spoke, one was Latino by last name, one was South Asian, two were black, and one was Arab; of the non-Muslims, two were black, one Latina, one East Asian. The crowd was as ethnically mixed as this implies, and was prone to break out in spontaneous chants of si se puede.
3a) Yet the largest gap I saw was in getting Muslims there, particularly young Muslims. I attended with staff from the Arab-American Association, where I've done a great deal of my fieldwork, but unfortunately they weren't able to get their substantial youth base to show up. Among the reasons? An Eid trip to Six Flags. Frankly, there weren't a lot of young people there at all; elementary school students with parents, but not a lot of teenagers. Some of this might be reluctance to go into the city, which many outerborough teens have; some of it might have been the fact that it was the second (or for some, the first) day of Eid, and they were busy with holiday activities; some of it, I'm sure, was Six Flags. Teens can be a hard crowd to mobilize, as I remember from my own high school organizing days. But it was too bad more of them couldn't get out there.
4) Another interesting language/identity issue is what, precisely, to call the holidays that are being asked for. You'll note above I say "Eid al-Fitr" and "Eid al-Adha." I spell them this way because I'm a speaker (so to speak) of Arabic, and that's how one transliterates the names into English from Arabic in most general usage. But the Coalition's website says "Eid Ul- Adha and Eid Ul-Fitr," which strike me as South Asian transliterations. The NY Times as "Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha," which strike me as stupid transliterations; I think you need a character there to represent the ع in عيد , and skipping it looks just...wrong. (Perhaps this is a common transliteration in some context?) The Examiner link has both the second and the third. I don't have any conclusions yet on what these differences mean, but I want to flag them. Perhaps you, my almost non-existent readers, have thoughts on this question.
5) And a final note to self: maybe the next time you bring the baby to a fieldwork-protest, bring a tape recorder. It's hard to take notes and give a bottle simultaneously.
1) Like any ethnographer working in a fieldsite that is reasonably keyed into information technology networks, I googled the coalition and event before I went. Most of what I found was news articles on previous steps taken by the group, including the 15-0 vote in favor of the holiday by the city council (see this NY Times article). Nearly all these articles included Mayor Bloomberg's quote, "If you close the schools for every single holiday, there won’t be any school." And every article, without fail, followed this immediately with the information that the NYC schools already take off for Christmas, Good Friday, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Passover. Clearly, Bloomberg's attempted framing isn't getting any traction in the media.
2) The Coalition's framing of the issue, on the other hand, was clear and consistent. This issue is about equal treatment and respect for the major communities of the city; about 12% of the students in the school system are Muslim. However, a subargument was made that I found very interesting: that the effects on the school system would be minimal. Over the next 12 years, one speaker said at the rally, only 10 instructional days would be lost, due to holidays falling either on weekends or during summer vacations. What's interesting about this is that it's a classic claim that the desired action is a minimal one. This is an easy claim to accommodate, in addition to being one justified on grounds of mutually agreed upon values (multiculturalism). Social movement theory: always relevant.
3) There was clearly an effort made to emphasize the diversity both of the Muslim community in the city, and the members of the coalition. The rally was co-emceed by a gentleman who appeared Arab to me (though he might have been South Asian, and I didn't get his name, and a woman who was East Asian. At least half the speakers were non-Muslim allies, self-identified. There were both Muslim and non-Muslim teachers, both Muslim and non-Muslim parents, and two non-Muslim representatives of unions (the teachers' union and the public employees' union). There were two other Muslim speakers, a coalition member giving the calendar data, and an imam talking about how many elected officials supported the measure. Of the Muslims who spoke, one was Latino by last name, one was South Asian, two were black, and one was Arab; of the non-Muslims, two were black, one Latina, one East Asian. The crowd was as ethnically mixed as this implies, and was prone to break out in spontaneous chants of si se puede.
3a) Yet the largest gap I saw was in getting Muslims there, particularly young Muslims. I attended with staff from the Arab-American Association, where I've done a great deal of my fieldwork, but unfortunately they weren't able to get their substantial youth base to show up. Among the reasons? An Eid trip to Six Flags. Frankly, there weren't a lot of young people there at all; elementary school students with parents, but not a lot of teenagers. Some of this might be reluctance to go into the city, which many outerborough teens have; some of it might have been the fact that it was the second (or for some, the first) day of Eid, and they were busy with holiday activities; some of it, I'm sure, was Six Flags. Teens can be a hard crowd to mobilize, as I remember from my own high school organizing days. But it was too bad more of them couldn't get out there.
4) Another interesting language/identity issue is what, precisely, to call the holidays that are being asked for. You'll note above I say "Eid al-Fitr" and "Eid al-Adha." I spell them this way because I'm a speaker (so to speak) of Arabic, and that's how one transliterates the names into English from Arabic in most general usage. But the Coalition's website says "Eid Ul- Adha and Eid Ul-Fitr," which strike me as South Asian transliterations. The NY Times as "Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha," which strike me as stupid transliterations; I think you need a character there to represent the ع in عيد , and skipping it looks just...wrong. (Perhaps this is a common transliteration in some context?) The Examiner link has both the second and the third. I don't have any conclusions yet on what these differences mean, but I want to flag them. Perhaps you, my almost non-existent readers, have thoughts on this question.
5) And a final note to self: maybe the next time you bring the baby to a fieldwork-protest, bring a tape recorder. It's hard to take notes and give a bottle simultaneously.