Darakshan Raja
Darakshan Raja is Co-Founder/Co-Director of Justice for Muslims Collective.
Bio
From the Justice for Muslims Collective website:[1]
- Darakshan Raja is a community builder and organizer who is committed to building institutional power of Muslim communities in the region, with a particular focus on the leadership of Muslim women. Darakshan co-founded JMC after witnessing the lack of institutional support for Muslim women committed to organizing against state violence and gender-based violence. Darakshan currently serves as a co-director of Justice For Muslims Collective and leads JMC’s strategic visioning, power-building and leadership development efforts in the greater Washington region. She also leads JMC’s organizational development, and advocacy on issues around gendered Islamophobia, immigration, surveillance and the Muslim Ban.
- Darakshan formerly worked at the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center on evaluating the implementation of legislation and programs for state and federal government agencies. In this capacity, she served as the Project Director for evaluating the implementation of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) nationally and a provision on payment for sexual assault forensic exams. She also led an evaluation on the impact of interventions to address sexual assault and violence within the Texas Juvenile Justice Department’s state facilities as a project funded through the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Prior to joining the Urban Institute, Darakshan worked as a Sexual Assault Response Team advocate in the Bronx.
- She currently serves on the DC government’s Street Harassment Advisory Committee as a religious tolerance appointee to implement the Street Harassment Prevention Act in the District of Columbia. Moreover, she currently serves on the board of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) and Consumer Health Foundation.
- Darakshan holds a Masters in Forensic Psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and is a graduate of the Rockwood Leadership program for South Asian, Muslim and Arab women leaders.
DSA Muslims Town Hall - ABOLISHING THE WAR ON TERROR
Join the DSA Muslims working group Monday 6/14 at 6pm ET/5pm CT/4pm MT/3pm PT to discuss how state surveillance has harmed our communities and our demands for its abolition. ✊
As the Biden administration marks over 100 days in office and continues harmful surveillance programs while considering new domestic terrorism and surveillance initiatives in the aftermath of the January 6th coup, we must understand how mass surveillance has come to be ubiquitous in our society. At this town hall, we’ll take a historical lens to understand why state apparatuses created mass surveillance programs, how those programs evolved in the aftermath of 9/11, and what the future of surveillance will look like.
Our ultimate aim is to harness the power of our communities to abolish the War on Terror, including mass surveillance. The second half of our town hall will be a community discussion on how state surveillance has harmed our communities and on the demands we want to raise against it.
Speakers:
- Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Executive Director, Equality Labs
- Myaisha Hayes, Campaign Strategies Director, MediaJustice
- Meral Kocak, Legal Fellow, Project South
- Yazan Za3za3, Community Organizer, Vigilant Love
- Darakshan Raja, Co-Founder/Co-Director, Justice for Muslims Collective[2]