Anera Stands in Solidarity

Standing in Solidarity with Black Lives

Anera is an apolitical organization, yet our staff are active and engaged members of the societies where we live. Many Anera staff members in Lebanon participated in the widespread protests last fall calling for change. In the US and in the Middle East, our staff resist occupation, militarization, and nationalism. Our team sees how systemic discrimination smothers and destroys lives and communities, ultimately leaving entire societies unable to breathe free.

Anera was founded in 1968, a few months before the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the tumult that followed. Our city, including the street on which our HQ office now sits, was burning. Fifty-two years later, Washington, DC, and the nation are again churning with protesters who demand accountability for many of the same, continuing injustices MLK fought against.

Palestinians, Lebanese, Jordanians and Syrians face many societal tensions and inequities and regularly confront racism and xenophobia, as do those diaspora communities in the US. Ongoing protests, sparked by the murder last week of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, highlight a great number of these problems.

Many of our US staff are actively demanding much-needed changes in American society. Anera stands with all who are advancing the ability of everyone to live with dignity and purpose. The countless violent acts committed against black and brown lives require justice and accountability.

Like many organizations, Anera also can and will do more to reflect and look internally, to ensure that we are not just non-racist, but anti-racist. And that we understand and seek to eliminate all forms of discrimination, including unconscious bias, that continue to permeate our societies and hold us all back from realizing the full societal potential that comes with full societal inclusion.