Each year, at the start of the fall and spring semesters, the TCNJ Bonner program holds an orientation for Bonner Scholars to further immerse and broaden their knowledge and understandings of their roles in service. With several engaging workshops and speakers directly related to the issues they combat on the daily, orientation is a day in which all Bonner Scholars look forward to. For our 2021 spring orientation, we were able to have a conversation with a Chicago-based Iranian-American writer, abolitionist organizer, and creative educator, Hoda Katebi. Her work can be seen across the world, hailed from the BBC to the New York Times to the pages of VOGUE and featured and cited in books, journals, and museums around the world.
A few Bonner scholars who organized the keynote, wanted to continue the conversation on ways which we all can combat Islamophobia and Anti-Shi’ism, a presentation which was given by Bonner scholars during an all-Bonner meeting at the end of the 2020 fall semester. As this was a major takeaway from our speaker, the keynote also addressed ways in which we can align our work and passions with community organizing and advocacy. Hoda is the host of #BecauseWeveRead, a radical digital book club and discussion series with 20+ chapters globally; founding member of Blue Tin Production, an apparel manufacturing workers co-operative run by working class women of color; a national lead with Believers Bail Out, a bail fund using Zakat to bail Muslims from pretrial & immigration incarceration; and organizer with the No War Campaign. Through her various projects, Bonners were able to learn more about sustainable fashion, what it means to be a creative educator, and how to advocate for oneself as well as how to uplift the voices of marginalized communities.
Third year Bonner Scholar, Sreenidhi Viswanathan talks about her takeaways from the speaker, “I think it was really important to hear from someone who is our age and is living up to the word “activism”. She was really inspiring to see how she was able to give us concrete steps to take in order to hold ourselves more accountable as well as those around us”.
Fourth year Bonner Scholar, Megan Scarborough reflects, “I thought Hoda was brilliant. She was so charismatic and authentic, I found learning about her experiences and her work to be compelling and was left thinking about it for days afterwards”.