Bashir Mohamed's Advice for Activists
While working this July, I spent most of my time sending follow up emails rescheduling interviews, I’d worked my email game down to a T and planned each interview basically by the second. So, when I finally got on the phone with Bashir Mohamed, after many failed attempts of connecting, I was ready to ask him four rather simple questions:
Tell me about yourself. Who are you? What do you do?
What got you involved in writing, specifically writing about your activism?
What can you suggest for young writers who'd like to pursue the field?
What can you suggest for youth trying to get more politically active/ into the world of activism?
About an hour later, I’d only asked him two questions and he’d told me all of the information I’d needed and so much more. Everything from delightful ramblings to delving deeper into further contexts, this fascinating phone call left me speechless. Originally, I’d expected a short question and answer interview but emerged with answers to questions I didn’t even know to ask and even more importantly, four pieces of stellar advice.
Before we begin, some context is needed. Bashir Mohamed is an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement and aspiring lawyer in Edmonton. Starting off with a job as a research analyst for the Canadian government, he continuously found himself in the position of the middleman; he was an avid activist thus, people with conflicts began to see him as a resource, and he was happy to help. He spent plenty of time connecting people in need with lawyers and other resources and in some cases, the media got involved. The most popular of those cases being Una and Emmel, a mother and son fighting against discrimintion from the Catholic School Board. Mohamed told me that Una Momolu contacted him to request his help, and nine months later they finally received justice. Mohamed claims that part of the conflict dragging on for so long was the involvement of public media.
He explained to me “everything I’ve done, all of the attention it’s gotten has never been the main goal,” and that “the only reason I guess I have this profile is because the other side, these institutions, usually react very aggressively.”
Mohamed is also very well known for his most recent blog post Edmonton Anti-Black Racism Toolkit, his findings on Edmonton's carding data and his recently muted Twitter account.
"Before I deleted my twitter account, I had 18 000 followers and most were local… these institutions that I would ask questions to, were afraid of that number," he told me when asked why he’d delete such a large local platform, "I had to lean on clout to get something basic while if I was a lawyer, I could use that actual legal status."
Simply put, that’s Bashir Mohamed. Now, his advice:
“Understand what they're not giving you... focus on what they're not showing you”
“Organizations thrive on people not knowing what's going on,” he told me when discussing Edmonton’s carding data. For context, carding is essentially intelligence gathering, the police will stop someone on the street and take identification to document individuals when no particular investigation is underway. Like most police related issues, anyone can see that racial bias would surely come into play. Mohamed was convinced of this and dug deep into finding the data. Through his research he found that, while numbers were available, the police chief claimed race was not documented. After weeks of research it was finally found that race was referred to as “complexion” as in the officer’s assumption of race based on skin tone.
While said information was incredibly difficult to find, other crucial data can be simply found online. He explained to me that the numbers on Student Resource Officers used in his most recent blog post were available online after a search with open source intelligence.
“If you're going against any institution, look at what they're not providing you and think of ways to get that data. There's FOIP but there's also just Google and open source intelligence.”
“Play it slow, let them show their hand”
In 2012, the chief of police, while discussing Student Resource Officers, mentioned that "only" 2% of students who interact with SROs are charged. This is data that people like Mohamed had been researching for months.
"These organizations are not used to resistance, so once you show them a little bit of resistance, they get arrogant and often play their card," from that you can see that just a little bit of pressure, letting corporations and institutions know that you are paying attention is enough to intimidate.
"You know that viral tweet 'I've been working on this for years and he just tweeted it out', that's how I felt.”
“Look toward the past”
“Everything that is being talked about now has been talked about before, learn those lessons.”
Even though most would say that the present moment is the most important, that staying updated in the now is the most essential part of activism, the past is still a necessary part of a movement.
Understanding the past of oppressions and resistance is beyond important. As Mohamed mentions, considering the way past activists fought is a source of intelligence; not just the way they achieved but the way they fell and how to avoid that. Another key point of the past includes facing oppressions as they are, to understand the LGBTQ+ pride movement, you must understand Stonewall, the AIDs crisis, conversion therapy etc. To understand the current pain you must analyze the past injuries.
More simply put, Mohamed said: “everything that is being debated about now has been debated, in some form, in the past. For example, trans rights, there were trans activists in the 60s- 70s; look into the archives and see what they were talking about. A lot of the things that they were talking about back then is still applicable now… Obviously it's not the same but you can learn a lot from past social movements.”
“Don’t burn yourself out”
If you read my last article on activsim you’d know that self care, community care and avoiding activist burnout are all very important topics to me. In the last five minutes of our phone conversation, he snuck in his final piece of advice. He also told me, “I say this from experience, I’m only 25… In hindsight, I should have leaned on more people, don't be afraid to take a break.”
