(April 13, 2013, The Huffington Post)--This piece is a memorialized discussion between two activists -- one Ethiopian and one Lebanese -- brought together by the recent suicide of Alem Dechesa-Desisa.
Kumera Genet is an Ethiopian American from Austin, while Khaled Beydoun is an attorney from Detroit, Michigan -- home of the United States most concentrated Lebanese American community. Both reside, and live, in Washington, D.C. -- which boasts the nation's most populous Ethiopian community.
Alem was a 33-year-old Ethiopian domestic worker in Lebanon, who committed suicide on March 14. A video showing her employer, Ali Mahfouz, brutally beating her outside of Beirut's Lebanese Consulate, went viral on March 9 -- five days before her death.Below are Genet's and Beydoun's immediate responses to the video and Alem's death, and a discussion about how these events impacted their respective worlds as Ethiopian and Lebanese Americans.
The small Ethiopian Community in Austin, Texas where I grew up was integrated into and respected by the predominately Lebanese congregation of the only Eastern Orthodox Church in the city. At church events, we listened to the music of Tilahun Gessesse and Aster Aweke in addition to Umm Kulthum and Fairouz. In this spirit I reached out the Arab-American community in Washington, D.C. and was connected to Khaled, who I learned has worked on modern slavery in Lebanon since 2005.
It is the duty of the diasporas, Ethiopian and Lebanese, to use our professionals, resources, churches, mosques, and civic organizations to ruthlessly tackle this issue. It has been empowering to see the international outcry against the death of Alem Dechassa. This is the right response to visual documentation of the stories that we have been hearing from Lebanon and the Gulf for years. But more needs to be done, and the time is now. Read more from The Huffington Post »
Kumera Genet is an Ethiopian American from Austin, while Khaled Beydoun is an attorney from Detroit, Michigan -- home of the United States most concentrated Lebanese American community. Both reside, and live, in Washington, D.C. -- which boasts the nation's most populous Ethiopian community.
Alem was a 33-year-old Ethiopian domestic worker in Lebanon, who committed suicide on March 14. A video showing her employer, Ali Mahfouz, brutally beating her outside of Beirut's Lebanese Consulate, went viral on March 9 -- five days before her death.Below are Genet's and Beydoun's immediate responses to the video and Alem's death, and a discussion about how these events impacted their respective worlds as Ethiopian and Lebanese Americans.
The small Ethiopian Community in Austin, Texas where I grew up was integrated into and respected by the predominately Lebanese congregation of the only Eastern Orthodox Church in the city. At church events, we listened to the music of Tilahun Gessesse and Aster Aweke in addition to Umm Kulthum and Fairouz. In this spirit I reached out the Arab-American community in Washington, D.C. and was connected to Khaled, who I learned has worked on modern slavery in Lebanon since 2005.
It is the duty of the diasporas, Ethiopian and Lebanese, to use our professionals, resources, churches, mosques, and civic organizations to ruthlessly tackle this issue. It has been empowering to see the international outcry against the death of Alem Dechassa. This is the right response to visual documentation of the stories that we have been hearing from Lebanon and the Gulf for years. But more needs to be done, and the time is now. Read more from The Huffington Post »
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