Articles
WRMEA, Sept/Oct 2010, Page 52
Arab-American Activism
ADC Chicago Hosts Journalist Anisa Mehdi
Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) Chicago was proud to host a July 20 membership night meeting and dinner at the Bawadi restaurant in Bridgeview, IL with Anisa Mehdi, a daughter of the late Iraqi-American journalist Dr. M.T. Mehdi, her sisters Laila and Janan, and their mother, Beverlee.
The event, featuring Mehdi, an Emmy Award-winning journalist specializing in religion and the arts, drew many new ADC members. Mehdi had just returned from a 2009-2010 Fulbright Scholarship in Jordan, where she worked training TV news and documentary filmmakers in advanced storytelling techniques and styles. She also worked with Jordan Radio & Television, the Royal Film Commission, and the Jordan Media Institute.
Mehdi, artistic director of "Documentary Voices: Pulling Focus," Dubai 2008 <www.documentaryvoices.com>, is also media consultant to the Abraham Path Initiative <www.abrahampath.org>. For more than 20 years she has reported, written, directed and produced television news and documentary programs for major American media outlets, including National Geographic, PBS, ABC News, and CBS. Her commentaries have been heard on NPR's "All Things Considered," and she has written perspective pieces for newspapers, magazines and Internet sites. Founder and president of Whetstone Productions, a New Jersey-based production and consulting company, Mehdi is also adjunct professor of communications at Seton Hall University.
"My father was very active in the 1960s," she recalled. "He would often bring us to protest the actions of the government of Israel in New York, and we would work with him handing out flyers and urging Americans to understand the real issues regarding Palestine," Mehdi told the crowd.
Mehdi related how she, her sisters, mother and father were harassed because of their activism. M.T. Mehdi produced the popular English-language ACTION Newspaper, which was distributed nationally throughout the American-Arab community. His daughter recalled the family being ostracized and even attacked many times because of their outspoken support of the Palestinian cause.
"It was frightening," she said. "There were times we had to sleep in a hotel because of the threats....We faced the same kind of intimidation at school and in the neighborhood where we lived. It was a difficult time period. We'd sometimes be the only people protesting, and then there would be a hafli [party] and we would see all these American Arabs and wonder, where were they?"
Hatem Galal, ADC Chicago president, said that many of today's generation of American Arabs have forgotten how difficult it was back in the 1960s to advocate for the rights of Palestinians. "It was a much smaller community," he said, "but they were often more unified and focused on issues."
M.T. Mehdi was one of the first real role models for those in the Arab community who aspired to pursue mainstream journalism as careers, attendees said. His informative ACTION Newspaper was one of the few publications available in the 1970s. In those days activists working for the rights of Palestinians were targeted by the government and were the subjects of FBI reports and investigations. Some reports cited receipt of ACTION Newspaper as a reason why the investigations were originally initiated.
The Mehdis, along with the National Arab American Journalists Association, host the annual Dr. M.T. Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award competition [the Washington Report won the first award in 1999]. For more information on the ADC Chicago event, visit the chapter's Web site at <www.ADCChicago.com>
