Harlem Solidarity with Baha’is in Iran

The United Nations General Assembly is underway in New York, with world leaders set to arrive over the next few days and formal sessions to take place starting on Monday, September 19. 

The Not A Crime campaign, launched in Harlem earlier this summer, uses street art to raise awareness about human rights violations against Baha’is in Iran. Iranian Baha’is, Iran’s largest religious minority, are not allowed to teach at or attend university, they are arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned, and their businesses are often confiscated. 

“Two people look physically different, they have different experiences, and they’re from different places. But at the root, they’re suffering from the same issue. The world is not a safe place for them,” said Ayana Hosten, the community outreach and education coordinator for the campaign. 

Hosten stood outside Democracy Prep, a Harlem, drawing contrasts between the experiences of students of colour — particularly young black males in Harlem — with the experiences of Baha’is in Iran.  

“It’s so important to draw these connections between people across the world because there’s so many policies and structural reasons for the way that history’s been framed that we sort of divide these struggles,” she said.

“But what would the world look like if we made those connections?” she asked. 

Hosten recently spent two days facilitating a workshop for seventh and eighth-grade students at Democracy Prep. The workshop looked at the history of the campaign, including general information about Iran and the persecution the Baha’is, and included an art project that asked students to look at and talk about what issues were important to them. How should these problems be tackled?

“We talked about very specific examples of Baha’is, their persecution — not only that they’re not allowed to go to university, but about the violence and everyday discrimination that they feel,” said Hosten. “About their ostracization, and the propaganda that exists in the media against them, that dehumanizes them, and demonizes them.” The students were encouraged to discuss these issues, to expressed how it made them feel, and to offer up possible solutions. They were then taken on a walking tour of the Harlem murals the Not A Crime campaign commissioned. The students were then encouraged to discuss the artistic merits of the paintings, and their meanings. 

“The next day they were asked about what issue they would like to address and how they would artistically express it,” said Hosten. When IranWire entered the classroom, filled with about 40 students, there was a large list penned on the whiteboard with different issues affecting the world today, including gang violence, rape, racism, Black Lives Matter, terrorism, and LGBT rights. The seventh and eighth graders were hunched over their desks painting tiles that they would use later to create a larger piece of art. The small paintings reflected the list on the board, and were used as a way for students to express their frustration with current injustices faced in their own lives —  and solidarity with Baha’is in Iran.

“My tile is about unjust incarceration,” said Justina, 14. “It’s about how, because of who you are, people judge you, and what the police do to black people, like arrest them,” she said. Her painting was of a bright orange, blue and green flower getting cut by a pair of shears while plant killer was being applied to it. Etched along the bottom were the words, “Unjust Incarceration.” She told IranWire that the shears and plant killer were symbols of the people who falsely accuse black people of crimes, and get them sent to jail. 

“My tile is two hands shaking. One hand is the NYPD [New York Police Department], the other one was our people, black people, everyone,” said a student named Muhammad. “If our people were to get along with NYPD we would end a lot of gun violence, [and] unjust killing from the police,” he said. 

Another student, Jason, painted his tile to depict a similar message. He painted a basketball court with a basketball and a gun on the ground. He told the classroom that his painting came from an experience he had at a park where one of the players got angry after a game, pulled out a gun, and started shooting. 

Kenya painted a picture of Trayvon Martin, who was killed by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in 2012. Martin had a bag of Skittles with him when he died. “I drew the Skittles about Trayvon Martin because I was trying to say that black lives matter,” said Kenya. Her painting shows a black silhouette of Martin wearing a hooded sweatshirt. “Trayvon and the Skittles are black,” she said, “because he’s dead.” 

“Students in this neighborhood don’t feel safe. They feel dehumanized,” said Hosten. “There was a shooting across the street from the school the day before we came,” she said. 

After working with one student who said he wanted to paint a tile in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, Hosten said that she couldn’t help but think of a video clip of a young Baha’i female, Nasim Biglari, who said that she lived in constant fear in Iran. 

“Essentially, the idea of unsafety was everywhere for this young man as well,” Hosten said. “This brought me back to one of the Facebook videos where Nasim is talking about the unpredictability of life as an Iranian Baha’i, and how you never know what’s going to happen to you.”