Bassem Kawar
Bassem Kawar, was in 2018, national coordinator of the Campaign to TAKE ON HATE, a project of the National Network for Arab American Communities.[1]
May Day 2022
May 5, 2022 Chicago, IL - 40 people gathered in the office of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR) to celebrate International Workers Day with Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Speakers included Maria Moreno, financial secretary of the CTU; Bassem Kawar, political director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights; Frank Chapman of CAARPR, and Roni Thrailkill, the mother of Chaz Thrailkill, a prisoner in Menard Prison who is suffering abuse at the hands of the guards in addition to having been wrongfully convicted.
Dod McColgan of Freedom Road Socialist Organization/FightBack! also spoke.[2]
Iosbaker's network
Joe Iosbaker April 4 2020.
From A worker at Trader Joe’s:  Hey will you please share these things? We're trying to show our coworkers fearing retaliation that they have people on their side.
Sean Orr, Daniel Ginsberg-Jaeckle, Kristen Jefferson, Benjamin James, Dave Schneider, Cherrene Horazuk, Richard Berg, Sarah Justice, Michael Sampson II, Mike Kramer, Regina Russell, Cathleen Jensen, Gabriella Killpack, Frank Chapman, Aislinn Sol, Sol Mar, Bassem Kawar, Martha Iosbaker, Mary Iosbaker-Azzouzi, Kas Schwerdtfeger, Tracey Schwerdtfeger, Tomas de Bourgha, Michela Martinazzi.
Pro-FRSO
Bassem Kawar supports Freedom Road Socialist Organization/FightBack!.
AAAN Board
Arab American Action Network staff, as of 2016;[3]
- Executive Director - Hatem Abudayyeh
- Associate Director - Rasmea Odeh
- Lead Case Manager - Samira Ahmad
- Youth Services Program Coordinator - Halima Bahri
- Citizenship Project - Ayeda Alwan, Muna Hammad
- Youth Organizers - Nesreen Hasan, Bassem Kawar, Muhammad Sankari
- Youth Services Program Associate - Sundous Daghash
- Case Managers - Rowaida Nofal, Fatmah Tabally
Palestine visit
Members of the U.S Palestinian Community Network from Chicago (USPCN) reported, August 24 2018, on their summer delegation to Palestine. Bassem Kawar stated at the beginning of the event that their purpose was “to take our leading members and organizers to get a firsthand understanding of the occupation and the resistance on the ground.” They met with over 20 Palestinian organizations in the different “Fronts of Struggle,” which was the title of their talk.
Muhammad Sankari opened by talking about the 6000 Palestinian political prisoners, and the occupation’s use of administrative detention. These prisoners are held under what is called “secret evidence” by a military court. “This policy is used to break the back of the Palestinian liberation movement,” explained Sankari.
Adameer is the organization that defends Palestinian prisoners, including the case of Ahed Tamimi, the 16-year-old imprisoned after a video was released showing her slapping the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldier who had shot her cousin in the head with a rubber coated, metal bullet, causing severe damage to the boy’s skull.
Danya Zituni spoke about Jerusalem, “where we witnessed some of the most ugly faces of settler colonialism.” She said, “The apartheid wall is being used inside Jerusalem so that there are less Palestinians inside, and more and more Jewish only settlements,” and “The construction of the Jewish only settlements in Jerusalem in particular, and Palestine as a whole, is very strategic. They’re built on the edge of a village in order to encircle and isolate them, or they’re built in the middle of the village in order to fragment them. This policy makes a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.”
Bassem Kawar described a recent incident there. “We learned in our first day in Palestine that a family was welded shut into their home, and they had to dig under the wall of their home to get out. It was then turned into a military check point.”
Finally, Sankari spoke about the struggles inside 1948 Palestine, the area identified as Israel, where the Palestinian people have never given up on their struggle for a free Palestine, “From the river, to the sea.”Chicago delegation sees Palestinian resistance first handBy Joe Iosbaker | August 27, 2018]</ref>
“The right of return for all the Palestinians is a non-negotiable demand,” Sankari declared. He closed by listing the three principles that USPCN is guided by: “Self determination and national liberation for the Palestinian people; the end of Israeli colonization of all Palestinian and Arab land; and the right of return of all Palestinian refugees and their descendants to their original homes and lands.”[4]