An American political and human rights activist of Palestinian origin, the former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, and the founder of the first online Muslim organizing platform called “MPower Change.”
She gained wide popularity after the September 11, 2001 attacks after participating in media discussions and campaigns against policies targeting Muslims. She was also active in defending the rights of women, blacks and minorities, opposing police violence and participating in building alliances between different ethnic communities in the United States of America.
She was one of the leaders of the 2017 Women's March on Washington, the largest women's protest in US history to defend the rights of women and minorities.
Due to her intense civil and human rights activism, American media likened her to prominent American civil rights activists such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.
She is distinguished by her boldness in presenting her ideas and her independence, and she is proud of her hijab and her religious and ethnic affiliation, which made her break the stereotype of the Muslim woman.
She was awarded the Obama Administration's Champion of Change Award, named one of Fortune's 50 Greatest Leaders, and named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2017.
Birth and upbringing
Linda Sarsour was born in 1980 in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest of seven children of Palestinian immigrants from the West Bank city of Al-Bireh.
Her father owned a small market in Crown Heights that he called Linda's Market.
Study and scientific formation
She attended John Jay High School in Brooklyn, married at 17 and had 3 children in her mid-twenties.
Sarsour attended college at Kingsborough Community College and Brooklyn College with the goal of becoming an English teacher.
Legal experience
Linda Sarsour began her human rights activism by joining the Arab American Association as a volunteer in 2001, one of the largest Arab social and human rights organizations in New York.
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, she participated in extensive discussions about the rights of Muslim and Arab minorities in the United States of America, and criticized in television programs and newspaper interviews the extensive spying operations carried out by the New York Police Department against Arabs and Muslims after these attacks.
After the death of the association's executive director, Basma Atwa, in a car accident, a 25-year-old woman was appointed to succeed her. She spent 16 years in this position, during which she was at the forefront of participants in major civil rights campaigns.
She played a prominent role in defending black Americans, joining the Black Lives Matter movement and co-founding the Muslims for Ferguson organization to build solidarity among American Muslims and work against police abuses following the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in 2014.
Sarsour was one of the organizers of a demonstration that went from New York to Washington in April 2014 to commemorate black people killed by American police.
In 2015, she organized a campaign to raise funds to rebuild churches for black Americans, which were burned after a white American opened fire on worshipers in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, motivated by hatred. The campaign was able to raise 100 million US dollars.
She was one of the most prominent advocates for the need for schools to respect the religious rights of Muslim students, and after 10 years of work and struggle, she was able to obtain a decision from the New York City Council to make Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr official holidays in public schools, which was achieved in August 2015.
She co-founded the first online Muslim organizing platform, mPower Change, and Until Freedom, an organization that advocates for “intersectional racial justice” and focuses on direct action among African Americans.
Since Donald Trump took office, Linda has organized and participated in campaigns and protests against many of his administration’s decisions, such as ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects young immigrants from deportation, the policy of separating immigrant families in the United States, and the decision to nominate Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court, despite his being accused of sexual assault.
In a 2018 article for Time magazine, Linda Sarsour said that since the September 11 attacks, Muslims have faced racial and religious profiling from all levels of law enforcement, endured unwarranted and sweeping surveillance, deportation and registration programs, been wrongfully placed on no-fly lists, and been victims of hate crimes.
She explained that for the first time in 2018, Muslims saw allies rallying for them and fighting against racism and bigotry against them.
Women's marches
A day after Donald Trump's inauguration as US President, women's marches, dubbed the “Pink Marches” by the media, took place in protest against Trump's positions and statements, which they considered hostile to women.
Linda, along with Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez, led a massive protest march in Washington on January 21, 2017, which was estimated to have attracted about half a million people, most of them women.
The march called for women's rights, immigration reform, health care, environmental reform and racial equality, and millions more took part in about 300 parallel marches in other cities including New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle and Denver, in what was considered the largest single-day protest in U.S. history.
Similar large marches were held in 2018 and 2019 to denounce sexual harassment, violence against women and Trump’s policies in the country. Sarsour resigned from the Women’s March board of directors in July 2019 due to internal disagreements and accusations of anti-Semitism.
Attacks and threats
As a result of her civil and political activism in defense of Muslims, blacks, and minorities, and her participation in protests against the Trump administration, Linda Sarsour has been subjected to vicious attacks, smear campaigns, and death threats.
Her public stances on the Arab-Israeli conflict and her vocal support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement have exposed her to vilification and accusations of anti-Semitism.
Sarsour told reporters that she was threatened with death in September 2014 when she left her office to give a lecture on minorities. She said that a strange white man followed her and threatened to cut off her head.
awards
Fortune magazine named Linda Sarsour one of the world's 50 greatest leaders, and Time magazine named her one of its annual 100 Most Influential People of 2017. She has won a number of awards, including Champion of Change from the Obama administration.
Her remarkable activism in defending the civil rights of blacks and minorities led American media to compare her to prominent black human rights activists such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.
Authors
She published her book, We Are Not Here to Be Spectators: A Memoir of Love and Resistance, in 2020, in which she shares the memories that helped shape her into a prominent activist, and how these pivotal moments in her life led her to become the organizer of one of the largest single-day events, the Women’s March.