Protesters downtown urge Charlottesville to open its arms to Afghan refugees. Photo: Eze Amos.
Since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan a few weeks ago, more than 100,000 Afghans have fled the country, fearing for their lives. Many are currently going through strict immigration and security screening in other countries, like Qatar and Bahrain, but thousands who are further along in their applications for Special Immigrant Visas—which allow interpreters, translators, and others who aided U.S. forces to become permanent residents—have been permitted to enter the U.S., and go through processing at military bases across the country.
According to the local International Rescue Committee, a dozen Afghan families have taken refuge in Charlottesville. However, the agency expects to welcome up to 250 Afghan evacuees in the coming weeks.
“Several families had their visas issued already, so they were able to get on the last commercial flights out, walk into our agency, and ask for services,” says Charlottesville IRC Executive Director Harriet Kuhr. “We thought we were going to get a lot like that, but the commercial service got cut off so fast…so a lot of people who would have done that ended up on the early evacuation flights.”
Though the other SIV families who have arrived in Charlottesville were only on a military base for a few days, “the people who are eligible for [SIVs], or maybe started their applications and aren’t very far along, they’re going to be on these bases for several weeks until their processing is completed,” Kuhr says. “There’s been this big empty space in between waiting for the next wave.”
Over the past few weeks, the IRC has received a large amount of in-kind donations from the community, as well as financial support. The agency plans to reach out to community groups soon to find sponsors for individual Afghan families in Charlottesville.
“It’s just so heartwarming to see the people throughout the community reaching out, and how much they want to help,” says Kuhr. “It says a lot about Charlottesville as a welcoming community.”
“We’re trying to figure out what we still need more of,” she adds. “The best place for people to look is at our webpage…We’ll be posting updates on what we do and don’t need.”
International Neighbors, another local refugee resettlement group, has also been active in helping families as they arrive. The group reports that 200 locals have reached out to assist with completing paperwork that will help bring Afghan families across safely. They’re still looking for people to donate money and time to help with the resettlement efforts.
At the University of Virginia, the Afghan Student Association has hosted two rallies on Grounds to raise awareness about the crisis in Afghanistan, and organized social media campaigns to educate people on ways to support refugees. In addition, the group has been working with fellow student group Muslims United to collect donations and provide assistance with translation.
“We’ve been trying to keep in contact with [the families], meet them, and let them know they have people in the community and UVA students they can count on who have access to a lot of resources here,” says fourth-year student Wanna Wardak, president of the ASA.
Wanna Wardak is president of the UVA Afghan Student Association. Photo: Eze Amos.
UVA’s Muslim Students Association has also been supporting ASA’s protests, and providing donations to the Islamic Society of Central Virginia and Muslims United. It plans to soon host its own supply drive for local refugee families, says president Shahira Ali, a fourth-year student.
In addition to providing donations, Kuhr encourages community members to get involved in advocacy work by urging their senators and representatives to support progressive immigration legislation, which may make it easier for immigrants and refugees to come to the U.S., and bring their families with them.
“Picking up the phone and calling your congressman still has power,” Kuhr says.
Wardak and Ali stress the importance of listening to and rallying around Afghan voices at this critical time.
“We always need to be asking refugees directly what they need,” says Ali. “They are the ones who need the support and the aid.”
“We just want people to care,” Wardak says. “People are desensitized to what’s happening in Afghanistan because it’s been 20 years of conflict with the U.S., and 40 years of non-stop war and terror.”
That constant drumbeat of news can obscure the human cost of the conflict, Wardak says. “We have real people, here in Charlottesville, who do need help, and have had no choice in what’s been happening in their lives.”
Over the weekend, activists gathered in downtown Charlottesville to draw attention to the crisis in Afghanistan, where extremist Taliban forces recently seized control of the government following U.S. withdrawal of troops after two decades of war.
The activists called for the United States and the Charlottesville area specifically to accept as many Afghan refugees as possible. The International Rescue Committee says that internal displacement in Afghanistan has risen 53 percent in the last two weeks. Local refugee support nonprofit International Neighbors reports that two families of Afghan refugees have already been housed in Charlottesville, and that more than 150 people have donated to the resettlement efforts.
Playground groundbreaking
On Tuesday, Walker Upper Elementary School unveiled a crowdfunded playground, the culmination of a multi-year effort spearheaded by Christa Bennett, a local mom, advocate, and chief operating officer at the Strive for College nonprofit.
In 2018, the school held design thinking sessions with students on how to improve their school. The students decided a playground would enhance their learning experience at Walker, but only had a $6,000 grant to pay for the playground. Bennett, who has a background in grant writing, stepped in, and was able to secure $26,000 from Charlottesville City Schools, $15,000 from the City of Charlottesville, and additional time and resources from local businesses.
Walker has the second highest number of students of color in the district as well as a higher-than-average number of economically disadvantaged students. “Walker students not having a playground when they wanted one was a big problem,” Bennett says. “I think it was an equity issue.”
Bennett emphasized that the community rallied around the cause and support the Walker students. “I thought that it was really important to make sure that our students have all the resources they need in our public schools,” Bennett says. “I want to tell the kids that the community did this for you, because we love you and we believe in you.”
In brief
JMU paper sues JMU
The Breeze, JMU’s student newspaper, is suing the school, alleging that the university administration failed to release data about the spread of COVID on campus last year. “This data is crucial to the public’s right to understand what COVID-19 looks like in this community,” said editor Jake Conley in a story in The Breeze. “We are fully willing to seek a redress through the courts in the name of transparency and accountability.” A JMU spokesperson downplayed the suit, saying the school “engaged in several conversations” and “attempted to work with [The Breeze] in good faith” throughout the last year.
Mailing it in
Senator Mark Warner appeared at a Charlottesville post office on Monday afternoon to address the consistent mail delivery delays that some city residents have complained about in recent weeks. The area’s post offices are understaffed, Warner reports, but he says he’ll be back in three months to make sure things have turned around.
Albemarle bans guns
At their meeting last week, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to enact an ordinance that bans guns on county property. Pro-gun activists rallied against the ordinance last month, but many residents, including the county commonwealth’s attorney, spoke in favor of it. Charlottesville passed an identical ordinance last year.
Quake anniversary
Monday, August 23, marked the 10-year anniversary of the 5.8 magnitude earthquake that shook central Virginia on a sunny Tuesday morning in 2011. The rare East Coast quake didn’t result in any serious injuries, but Louisa County High School, near the epicenter of the quake, sustained serious damage, and the school district held a commemorative ceremony on the anniversary this week.
International Neighbors volunteer Deborah Jackson has delivered sewing machines to dozens of area refugees who use them to make clothing and household goods for their families and others. Photo: Eze Amos
This is a story about sewing machines and a woman who repairs and gives them to Charlottesville’s refugees. That might sound like a paltry gift. But to a refugee who sold her clothes in her home country to help pay for her family’s journey to escape violence, institutionalized misogyny, and possibly death, a sewing machine is a powerful tool. It is a source of personal pride, an instrument of creativity and independence, and a means to stitch back together a war-torn life.
Najeeba Popal uses the sewing machine she got through International Neighbors to make dresses for her daughters. She arrived here from Afghanistan five years ago, and now her work as a seamstress also provides a source of income. Photo: Eze Amos
The sewing machine lady is Deborah Jackson. On a sunny afternoon in late November, she sits on the living room couch in her Belmont home, cradling a squirming baby, Taraawat. Next to them is the child’s mother, Najeeba Popal. Popal, 32, arrived in the United States five years ago, on a special immigrant visa, or SIV, for helping the U.S. military. She and her daughter have the same round face, dark hair, and chestnut-colored eyes—but now Popal’s are clouded with tears.
She choked up while telling the story of saying goodbye to her family in Herat, her hometown in western Afghanistan. Popal had lived almost her whole life there, graduating from the local university and working for four years before meeting her future husband and moving to Kabul, where they had their first child. But nearly all of her friends and family still live in Herat. It’s where her mother, a seamstress, taught her to sew. But Popal, fearing her work for the U.S. would be discovered, had no choice but to leave—on a plane the next morning, she told her family.
“I was thinking about my child,” she says, dabbing away tears. “She was newborn. I thought, What if something happens to me—if she were not to have a mom? That would make her life horrible.”
Today, that child and her sister, the one Popal was pregnant with when the family fled Afghanistan, both attend Clark Elementary School. “They love it,” Popal says. Her husband has a full-time job, and Popal takes care of Taraawat and works at home. Like her mom, she is a seamstress.
It’s difficult to convey the monumental contrast between life in Kabul, where terrorist bombings dismembered people and destroyed families, and Charlottesville, where Popal and her family are not only intact but have a growing network of friends. Popal and Jackson are particularly close. They met three years ago through International Neighbors, a local nonprofit that supports refugees. When Jackson discovered Popal knew how to sew, she gave her a sewing machine that had been donated to IN.
“My husband and I delivered two machines yesterday,” Jackson says, handing off Taraawat to Popal. “I always drop them off with bobbins, extra needles, fabric, and things like zippers and buttons.”
Jackson gave her first machine to a refugee three years ago, when another IN volunteer told Jackson that a grandmother had asked for one. The nonprofit had one, but it was broken, so Jackson—who had learned to sew and maintain sewing machines as an 11-year-old—fixed and delivered it. “She was so happy,” Jackson says. “I’ll never forget the look on her face!”
Since then, Jackson has handed out 48 machines and has 15 more at her home, awaiting repair. In the early days of the program, Jackson used nextdoor.com to request donations of machines and fabric. The fabric flooded in. Machines were left on her porch. And now, what started as a one-off has become a meaningful service, enabling refugee women (and a couple of men, notably, a tailor from Congo) to provide clothing and household goods (curtains, furniture cushions, sheets, and more) to their families and other refugees. Some people, like Popal and the tailor, sew as a source of income, finding clientele by word of mouth and through IN, which plans to give sewing lessons at its Fifeville headquarters in January.
Jackson considers the success of her efforts a blessing, but she can’t keep up with the demand, and she hopes others will step up to help. It wouldn’t require a big time commitment, and Jackson can attest to how gratifying it is to help refugees and their families. The things that Popal and others sew are staples of life. But the network that has formed and the friendships made are just as important. “People don’t have family when they come here,” she says. “They feel sad and lonely.”
In time, those feelings diminish, if only a stitch at a time.
Editor’s note: The print version of this story, published on December 18, notes that Jackson had distributed 38 machines to date. After the newspaper had gone to press, she recounted—and came up with 48.
Harriet Kuhr is the executive director of the Charlottesville International Rescue Committee. Photo: Nick Strocchia
The 2020 federal fiscal year begins October 1, marking the deadline for Donald Trump’s presidential determination on the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States for resettlement. Virginia has already taken a hit from previous reductions by Trump, with Richmond’s Church World Service—one of nine State Department-designated resettlement agencies in the U.S.—announcing that it will close even before Trump makes his determination public.
“We’re turning our backs on a core American value,” says Harriet Kuhr, executive director of the Charlottesville International Rescue Committee. She cites the precipitous drop since Trump took office in the number of people allowed to enter the U.S. after fleeing violence, persecution, and famine in their home countries.
By the end of September each year, the president is required to announce the limit for refugee admissions to the U.S. The determination process is mandated by the Refugee Act of 1980, and requires that the president consult with Congress to reach a decision that is “justified by humanitarian concern.”
In September 2016, President Barack Obama significantly increased that limit to 110,000 for fiscal year 2017, responding to the Syrian refugee crisis. But shortly after taking office, President Trump lowered the refugee ceiling to 50,000 by executive order. In September 2017 and 2018, respectively, Trump cut the maximum number to 45,000 and 30,000.
In recent weeks, rumors have swirled around reports that the Trump administration is considering one of two options for fiscal year 2020: reducing the cap to 10,000 to 15,000 refugees, or dismantling the U.S. refugee resettlement program entirely. Prominent voices have risen in opposition to the anticipated cuts, including high-ranking former military leaders, who argue that failing to accommodate asylum-seekers who have helped our defense, diplomatic, and intelligence efforts could erode national security.
Here in Charlottesville, Kuhr says our local IRC office is not threatened with closing, but she still worries as this year’s deadline draws near. “We don’t know yet what the numbers will be,” she says. “But what we do know is that it seems there is this intention to again significantly reduce the number of refugee admissions at a time when more people are in need than at any other time in history.”
Numbers from the U.N. Refugee Agency back her up. By the end of 2018, the agency reports, 70.8 million individuals worldwide had been forcibly displaced. These included 25.9 million refugees, less than 1 percent of whom have the opportunity to resettle in another country.
“Even before any of this started with Trump, the number of refugees who ever get resettled in a third country—that’s including the U.S. and Canada, all of Europe, and any other country—was already a tiny, tiny number,” says Kuhr. “But now that solution for some of the most vulnerable people in the world is under threat for no apparent reason.”
“We have people who have already been vetted,” she continues. “They have already gone through a stringent security process. They have been found to be in dire need of a new start and a new life—and we’re basically turning our backs on them.”
In 2018, the IRC resettled 154 people here, far below its capacity of 250. “Charlottesville has been a wonderful place for refugee families,” she says. “They feel safe here. They feel welcome. The kids are thriving in school. The parents are working. We know there are people in need of what we have to offer. Yet we’re not being allowed to [offer it].”
Kuhr hasn’t given up hope, but neither is she optimistic. “My expectation is that no matter what happens, the IRC is not going away. We will still be here. We are still resettling a significant number of people, but a lot less than we were two or three years ago.”
Sheria and Sylvan Kassondwa in the living room of their Fifeville home, with (from left) Syvlie, 12; Cherubine, 9; Cecile, 7; Charline, 3; and Seloe, 1. Photo: Eze Amos
Sylvan and Sheria Kassondwa’s 860-square foot, three-bedroom apartment would be fine, they say, if they had one or two kids.
As it happens, they have five.
“In my country, time is not money like here, you can spend more time with your family,” says Sylvan, who is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “And then here you find that you spend more time with work. So when you have more kids, you find that you have a big problem here.”
He laughs—what can one do? On a rainy afternoon in early March, his children, ranging in age from 1 to 12, pop in and out of the tiny living room to greet their guest, then disappear upstairs. They are charming and well-behaved, but their parents lament how cramped they are at home.
“The kids, they don’t have space,” Sheria says. “They have nowhere to keep their shoes, it’s a mess.” She indicates an overflowing shoe rack on the stair landing and waves her hands dismissively. “This does not really look like a place where you can breathe, feel fresh air.”
When the Kassondwas moved to this apartment in Fifeville, in November of 2017, they’d hoped it would be a step up.
Sylvan and Sheria had fled their home in the Congo more than a decade earlier, seeking refuge from the war and violence there. They landed in Uganda and applied for refugee status in the United States. It took 12 years.
“We were struggling to live,” says Sheria. “But we had this hope, that one day we would be fine.”
They were thrilled to finally get to the United States, and the family (by then, the Kassondwas had four kids) came to Charlottesville in September of 2016. The International Rescue Committee helped them settle into an apartment off Hydraulic Road, and paid their rent for the first three months while they found work.
“Then, thank God, we met International Neighbors,” says Sheria.
Founded by local educator Kari Miller, International Neighbors helps support refugee families once the IRC is no longer involved in their cases. The organization connects new arrivals to local “family friends” and helps them navigate the complexities of American life, from school forms to local events.
“She helped us a lot,” Sheria says, “but she can only do so much.” The two-bedroom apartment was a tight fit for their family of six, with another baby on the way. So the couple took it upon themselves to try to find a bigger place, searching apartment listings online.
With their limited budget (Sylvan was working as a tailor, while Sheria cleaned houses and took classes to improve her English), there were few affordable options.
Eventually, they found a three-bedroom for $830 a month, only $100 a month more than their two-bedroom, in a complex aimed at low-income renters called Greenstone on 5th.
“It’s cheap for the area, that’s why we are here,” Sylvan says.
They applied online, but after moving in, they realized how small each of the rooms was (the bedrooms fit little more than a bed and a dresser, with only a foot or two of space in between), and that there was no washing machine in the apartment.
Doing laundry in the complex costs $3.75 per load, Sheria says, and, “I have this many kids. It’s going to be five loads.”
As the children get older, having only one bathroom for all seven of them is also a problem, but apartments with two bathrooms and washing machines cost $1,200 a month, Sylvan says—out of reach for now.
The apartment has a roach problem, and maintenance is slow to respond to calls, Sylvan adds. But his number-one concern is the neighbors. He says people are often hanging around the complex smoking marijuana.
“This day, it’s good,” Sylvan says with a smile, indicating the gloomy weather outside the window.
“Cause it’s cold outside, everybody’s doing it in the house,” his wife explains. In summer, they say, it’s terrible.
“It’s not a good environment for my kids,” Sheria says. “But we don’t have a choice for now.”
She’d prefer to rent a duplex, but she doesn’t think it’s possible. “In Charlottesville, it’s very expensive,” she says. “We’d never afford that.”
“Every family here is squeezed,” Sylvan adds.
After taking English classes, Sheria trained to become a certified nursing assistant, and now works full-time at UVA. Sylvan hopes that, before his children become teenagers, they’ll be able to afford another place.
“I’m trying to plan, but I don’t know if I can afford to move,” he says. “Maybe next year, or two years.” He’s thinking about getting a second job. “But also, when you have a second job, you have little time with your kids,” he notes.
Still, the couple does not want to complain too much—their home is an improvement over what they left behind in Africa, and Sylvan takes a philosophical view. “If you can’t afford the house that is fitting your family, you need to [be] content with the one you have,” he says.
His wife, who would also prefer a roomier kitchen, interjects: “But you are not happy about it.”
Sisters Khadijah Hemmati and Jamileh Amiri know how to cook for a crowd. Photo: Levi Cheff
Charlottesville chef Gabe Garcia sits at a table in the dimly lit dining room of Kitchen Catering & Events, which he co-owns and operates with his wife, Morgan, also a chef. It’s early evening, cold and drizzly outside, but the air inside is warm and redolent with the smell of a simmering savory soup.
Garcia, 42, explains that Kitchen will host a pop-up dinner on February 26 for Taste of Home, a non-profit started in early 2018 by then-UVA student Mayan Braude. It will be the organization’s third event showcasing home cooking by refugee chefs, who receive all proceeds. Garcia, who moved to the United States from Mexico about 20 years ago, and his wife kicked in use of their dining room and kitchen for free.
“As an immigrant myself, and in the current political climate, I thought it was the right thing to do,” he says.
As if on cue, Jamileh Amiri, 34, and Khadijah Hemmati, 33—sisters and Afghan refugees—step through the front door.
“Smells good in here,” Amiri says cheerfully.
“Feels good, too,” Hemmati says, shrugging off the cold.
Garcia greets the women with handshakes, and they all take seats at the table.
Though they offer few details of their lives in the Middle East, it is safe to say that Amiri and Hemmati undertook remarkable journeys to arrive where they are today. “We left home because we were in danger,” Amiri says. “Afghanistan is a very dangerous place, especially for women. That is why we decided to leave our country—to find a peaceful place for growing our family.”
Hemmati lives in a townhouse in Albemarle County with her five children, a third sister, and their mother. Amiri shares an apartment with her three children and husband. Those simple facts belie the epic story of Amiri and Hemmati’s 14-year separation and subsequent reunion in Charlottesville.
Hemmati was born in Afghanistan in 1984, after which her parents moved to Iran, where Amiri was born, in 1985. Hemmati married when she was 18 and returned with her husband to Afghanistan, within months of the post-9/11 U.S. invasion there. Amiri and her family made plans to immigrate to the United States. After three years, and by then with three children in tow, she succeeded, arriving in the U.S.—Rochester, New York, to be precise—in the fall of 2013.
“It was so cold,” says Amiri, hugging herself as if she could feel the frigid air.
Luckily, she connected through social media with a friend who’d previously immigrated to Charlottesville. “She told me, ‘It’s a small town, it’s nice, and it’s warm,’” Amiri recalls. She moved here immediately, living briefly with her friend before finding subsidized housing. Meanwhile, Hemmati was also trying to escape the conflict-stricken Middle East. For five years in a row beginning in 2011, she applied to immigrate via the U.S. State Department’s Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, commonly called the visa lottery. “Finally, we were winners!” says Hemmati.
In November 2016, the sisters were together once again.
Avid cooks accustomed to preparing food for large family gatherings, Amiri and Hemmati both landed jobs at UVA dining facilities, cooking three meals a day for about 2,000 people. In the spring of 2018, a volunteer with the International Rescue Committee introduced the women to the founders of the Taste of Home program, which had already held its first pop-up at The Southern Crescent, in Belmont.
Taste of Home tapped Amiri and Hemmati for Pop-Up #2, also at Southern Crescent. About 50 diners paid $25 apiece to attend the event, enabling the cooks to pay to study at Piedmont Virginia Community College, among other things. “Jamileh and Khadijah were so lovely to work with that we decided to do another dinner with them,” says Nima Said, 21, a senior studying foreign affairs at UVA and co-director of Taste of Home.
For Pop-Up #3, Garcia says he hopes to fill Kitchen’s 2,500-square-foot dining room, which seats up to 80 people.
“This is something we can definitely handle,” Hemmati says, shooting a glance at her sister and smiling.
Diners can expect chicken kabobs with saffron-infused rice; qabuli pulao, a rice-based dish with carrots and raisins; falafel; dolma, the Afghani version of the Greek dolmades; and for dessert, baklava and fereni, a pudding subtly flavored with honey and rose water.
There’s a lull in the conversation at the table. Hemmati raises her head and sniffs. “The spices smell familiar,” she says.
“Black bean and squash soup for tomorrow’s lunch,” Garcia says.
“Maybe we will come,” Amiri says. “This is a good place.”
Hungry yet?
Taste of Home Pop-Up #3 takes place at 7pm on Tuesday, February 26. Tickets ($20 each) are available through taste-of-home.org.
A group of local teens traveled to Washington, D.C., a week after the election to lobby for refugees’ rights as part of Amnesty International. Courtesy photo
Elizabeth Valtierra was nervous.
Like many across the nation, the Charlottesville High School senior spent election night with her family, gathered around a television in the living room. As the earliest states were called for Donald Trump, her family made jokes and tried to laugh it off. They thought Hillary Clinton would pull ahead, as the polls had predicted—she had to. But as the night wore on and state after state went to Trump, the mood grew somber.
“When they announced the president-elect, we were shocked, disappointed,” Valtierra says. “We’re Mexican. We look Mexican. We were scared we might encounter people who might be bold.”
It didn’t take long for Valtierra’s fear to materialize. On November 11, just a few days after the election, she went to the McDonald’s on Pantops with her mother and younger siblings and cousins. It was a Friday, and the family was enjoying time together after a tense week.
Elizabeth Valtierra. Photo by Jackson Smith
The conversation turned to politics, as every conversation in the aftermath of the election seemed to. Valtierra’s young cousins began badmouthing Trump, repeating things they had heard adults say at home. Suddenly, Valtierra and her mother became aware that a nearby group of men was listening.
The women grew tense as the men fanned out, blocking each exit to the restaurant while staring the family down. One man stood directly behind the family’s table, which was out of sight of the restaurant’s employees. Afraid to leave or separate, the two women called Valtierra’s father to pick them up.
“We were pretty shocked,” Valtierra says. “Charlottesville is generally a safe city. You don’t encounter many racist people or intimidating people.” After the incident, her mother bought her pepper spray.
Atiqullah Mohammed Nasim went to sleep before the election results were announced. He hoped he would awake to find that the country had elected Clinton, but instead he woke to a text from a friend at 3am: “Bro, Trump won.”
Nasim’s father fled the war in Afghanistan in 2009. It took two long years for the rest of the family to join him in the United States, and longer still to adjust to life in a new country. Nasim’s schooling was interrupted by the war, and he arrived in the U.S. unable to speak English. In the beginning, he remembers morning bus rides to Charlottesville High School, when some students would mock his name. Though he never felt his safety was threatened, the taunts were emotionally taxing.
“If you can’t speak the language, how are you going to go and complain?” says Nasim, who graduated from CHS in 2016 and is now a student at Piedmont Virginia Community College. “I had friends who would say, ‘What can we do? This isn’t our country. We have to go with the flow until we know the language.’ Well, we are also part of this country now.”
Nasim found the suggestion of a Muslim registry, which first surfaced as a comment by a member of the president-elect’s transition team, alarming. He finds solace in the Quran’s teachings on nonviolence and finds a certain irony in threats to investigate mosques.
“The beauty of our religion is that we welcome people inside,” says Nasim. “We are not making bombs—we’re praying, and when we pray, we are all one race. Short, tall, disabled, all races—we are together.”
Atiqullah Mohammed Nasim. Photo by Eze Amos
Nasim says he is more concerned than ever about how Trump’s comments toward women could affect his sisters, who are 6 and 8 years old. “It’s going to be challenging for [my sisters] to wear hijab,” he says. Like Valtierra, he worries that his sisters will face harassment from Trump supporters emboldened by their win.
Valtierra and Nasim are linked not only by their experiences, but through youth lobbying efforts after the election, led locally by Kibiriti Majuto, a relentlessly energetic senior at Charlottesville High School whose family arrived in the U.S. from the Democratic Republic of the Congo as refugees in 2011. In the weeks leading up to the election, Majuto devoted several hours to phone banking for the Clinton campaign.
“I was in grief,” Majuto says of the election result. “I wanted to turn back time; I could not believe it.” Although Majuto is 18, he will not be able to vote until he acquires citizenship in two years. Like Nasim, Majuto and his family are Muslim.
A week after the election, Majuto, Valtierra, Nasim and a few other students boarded a northbound Amtrak to Washington, D.C., where they joined forces with high school and college students from up and down the East Coast. On behalf of Amnesty International, they urged legislators to enact laws that would prevent discrimination against refugees. Through the years, bills supporting refugees have surfaced, gained support, failed to pass and surfaced again; on any given day, lobbyists from the International Rescue Committee and similar groups are on Capitol Hill tracking legislation concerning refugees.
Majuto, who is president of the Amnesty International Club at CHS, had first heard of the trip during a webinar for the group’s Virginia coordinators and members. He connected with Sam Steed, a William & Mary student currently serving as a legislative coordinator for Amnesty International, and asked if he could bring a group of students from Charlottesville along.
Valtierra says that Majuto didn’t ask her to come, per se. “He just told me, ‘Hey, you’re going to come with me,’” she says. “I wasn’t really sure what I was getting myself into.” Nasim heard about the trip through another friend and was intrigued by the possibility of meeting Senator Bernie Sanders. (They did not end up meeting the senator.)
After the election, Nasim felt defeated and questioned whether he would follow through with the trip, but he had already booked his ticket. “Kibiriti is very passionate,” says Nasim, whose worldview skews toward pragmatism. He says that Majuto believes one person can change the world, but “if Gandhi was by himself, he would have ended up dying.”
As the group entered the Capitol Building, Valtierra’s heart pounded. The Charlottesville students were among the youngest people in attendance; other campus Amnesty International groups had arrived from the University of Mary Washington, University of Maryland and campuses as far away as Massachusetts.
The Charlottesville students were paired with students from Washington and Lee University, and Majuto, Valtierra and Nasim instantly connected with the older activists. Energized by a common passion for human rights, they met with a series of legislators, at times sharing personal stories to illuminate their message.
Of the legislators the group met with, most were receptive and friendly. However, all three students were quick to recall one woman in particular. Majuto had shared stories about his experiences as a refugee in South Africa when the conversation began to unravel.
“Some of the stories were very horrible and graphic,” Valtierra says. “He [Majuto] was beat up to the point where he had to be at the hospital for three days. The woman had the nerve to say, ‘Are you sure?’”
Prior to the trip, the students had prepared by studying materials Amnesty International provided. “They taught me to be calm,” Nasim says. “We learned how to talk to people [while] lobbying and how to control our emotions.”
Both Nasim and Valtierra also kept Michelle Obama’s advice from the Democratic National Convention in mind: “When they go low, we go high.”
Over the course of the day, Majuto noticed patterns at the Capitol Building. He saw far more men than women, and also noticed that many of the people of color were working food service or janitorial jobs.
But, ultimately, Majuto came away troubled by the legislators’ notion of compromise. Throughout the day, he heard variations of a certain phrase—that two sides should agree to disagree and respect one another.
“What do they do when they disagree based on ideology?” asks Majuto. “It left me wondering where other party members or constituents go from here.”
Kibiriti Majuto. Photo by Jackson Smith
On the day after the presidential election, neither Valtierra nor Majuto felt up to attending school in the morning. When they arrived at CHS in time for their afternoon classes, the campus was quiet. In Charlottesville, 80 percent of voters cast ballots for Clinton. CHS Principal Dr. Eric Irizarry characterized the mood at the school as shocked and disappointed, though he points out that the CHS community also includes students and staff who were pleased by the outcome.
Near the end of the school day, guidance counselors sent a note to all faculty and students. “On a day when many in our school are feeling a bit lost, perhaps wondering what comes next and how we’re going to respond, your counselors, your teachers, your administrators, and all the adults at Charlottesville High School who are about you want you to know something,” the note said. “You are not alone. Whatever comes next, we’ll face it together and we’ll do so with respect, mutual appreciation, and kindness.” The note went on to acknowledge CHS’ diversity and encourage students to talk to guidance counselors.
Valtierra found the note comforting. “I felt like, ‘Yeah! That’s my school,’” she says. Irizarry reports that an above-average number of students sought out counselors in the weeks following the election.
And as teachers guided classroom discussions, a student response to the election began to take shape. In a class called Becoming Global Citizens, Valtierra and Majuto helped design a project with the goal of creating a message to unify the CHS community. While searching online for examples to build from, Majuto came across a project from a school in Alexandria that featured posters that presented different identities. Soon, they got to work creating their own posters acknowledging differences represented by CHS students. Each poster began with the phrase “We are” followed by a broad range of identities.
The decision to use “we” rather than “I” came in reaction to the class’s observation that students unintentionally tend to segregate themselves—Latino students sitting together at lunch, or white students clustering together. There are more than 400 students in CHS’ English as a Second Language program, and they collectively represent 34 different languages, including Spanish, Nepali, Arabic and Swahili, the top four languages spoken.
“We are diverse, and we are proud of it,” Valtierra says. “Our identities are on the same level.”
Irizarry found the project to be constructive. “My sense is that the poster campaign went a long way towards shifting the mood of the school,” he says. “Though individually we may be white, black, immigrant, Christian, Muslim, disabled or more, we are all unified, together, proud, American, Black Knights.”
The response was in keeping with a core value CHS tries to instill in its students: That getting involved in the community and driving positive change are worthy goals. In a statement to C-VILLE, a spokesperson for Charlottesville City Schools clarified that although CHS does not encourage students toward any particular political affiliation or political goals, teachers and administrators hope to give students the tools to “develop the research, critical thinking, problem-solving and rhetorical skills to propose and advocate for improvements in our world.”
Beyond CHS, the larger Charlottesville community has shown support for refugees like Majuto, Nasim and their families. After the election, the International Rescue Committee received a flood of donations and volunteer applications. Seventy first-time applicants completed volunteer forms online in the first three weeks after the election, compared with 25 applications in October.
In addition to new volunteer applications, the IRC has seen an uptick in donations. Often, the amounts are small—between $10 and $25—but recently the surge in donations came ahead of the IRC’s annual appeal letter.
IRC Executive Director Harriet Kuhr says the outpouring of support has been remarkable. “We’ve been seeing it here, but it’s been happening in other cities as well,” she says. The total number of volunteers is already greater than the number of newly resettled refugees in Charlottesville.
Until the Trump administration is in place, the IRC can only watch and wait with the rest of the country. “We’ve been reassuring people that they’re here legally and they have protections,” Kuhr says. “They just need to do everything to keep themselves in legal status and do all the things they’re supposed to do with immigration. Anyone who is here on legal status has rights.”
Majuto, Valtierra and Nasim all say the trip to D.C. was energizing. They acknowledge that the movement to persuade people across the United States to embrace refugees and immigrants must operate in a time frame longer than a single election cycle or a president’s term.
Valtierra says the trip left her with a tangle of emotions, from exhilaration to discouragement to anger. “This was a life-changing experience,” she says. “I want to work behind the scenes and get involved.”
At one point during the day in Washington, Nasim said to Majuto, “‘Dude, imagine our dads seeing us [here]. They would be so proud of us.’”
Nasim, who is completing his general education courses at PVCC, plans to pursue a career in law. He hopes to follow in the footsteps of his father, who worked in the government in Afghanistan, and his uncle, a general in the Afghan National Army. After spending a day with students from Washington and Lee, he has his eye on the school as a possible place to transfer to pursue a juris doctor degree. Overall, he hopes to expand other people’s notion of what a refugee can achieve.
“I have to work hard, study more,” Nasim says. “My voice does matter.”
As for Majuto, the election result failed to shake his enthusiasm for analyzing politics. In addition to his classes and extracurricular activities, Majuto, who is CHS’ senior class president, has continued to devour post-election news from The Nation, MSNBC, NPR, Blavity and more. Although he doesn’t have any single political hero, he is enamored with the provocative ideas of political activists ranging from Karl Marx to Nelson Mandela.
“How am I going to deal with this when I one day maybe run for Congress?” asks Majuto. “How are we as a nation going to compromise for the common good?”
Even if Majuto doesn’t run for office, he plans to seek ways to create positive change. He’s troubled by the state of the American education system in particular. “The death of any superpower is the ignorance of the people if they aren’t well educated,” he says. “That’s what I worry about.” Women’s rights and improving the lives of the incarcerated as they re-enter society—particularly securing them the right to vote—are also issues frequently on his mind.
Majuto’s enthusiasm is infectious, his optimism seemingly unshakable. He thinks of elected officials as true public servants who should have to answer to the will of the people. When it comes to the president-elect, Majuto urges everyone to keep one thing in mind: “He works for us,” Majuto says. “We don’t work for him.”
