For months, the humanitarian and security crisis in Haiti has been on the minds of thousands of Haitians who live in Metro Atlanta. About 1.5 million people in Haiti are on the verge of famine, and more than 4 million require food aid, sometimes eating only once a day or nothing at all, according to the World Food Programme. Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital, is in the grip of pervasive gang violence, and the situation is deteriorating in other parts of the country. More than 1500 people have been killed in 2023 alone. 

Many Haitians have been fleeing if they can and an increasing number have been arriving in Atlanta looking for refuge, as the crisis has intensified.

The recent escalation of violence and level of anarchy in Haiti comes as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention, said Watson Escarment, a Haitian-American who migrated to Florida as a kid and now lives in Metro Atlanta. But still, seeing it all unfold is heartbreaking, he said. “I don’t remember Haiti being in this state ever.”

Watson lives in Buford with his wife and two of his three kids (the third lives on campus at Georgia Tech). He was recently joined by two relatives, who he helped bring over from Haiti just a few months ago, through the Biden Administration's humanitarian parole program, which went into effect in January 2023. 

He is the Chief Operating Officer of the Good Samaritan Haitian Alliance Church in Lawrenceville. Among the largest Haitian churches in Metro Atlanta, it serves a Haitian community that has grown from 17,000 to nearly 27,000 in the last decade. He is also the co-founder of The Samaritan Heart’s Foundation, a nonprofit that supports people who have recently arrived from Haiti with everything from housing to utility assistance to transportation. 

285 South spoke to Watson this week about what the past few months have been like for him and other members of Atlanta’s Haitian community. 

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Can you describe your connection to Haiti?

I was born in Haiti. But I grew up in Miami, primarily the South Florida area. And it was not until the 2010 earthquake, that I really reconnected to Haiti, physically, and also on a more emotional level.

And so that started me on a journey, to really be of service to not only Haitians living in Haiti, but also those living abroad wherever they may be.

What has it been like for you to see events unfold in Haiti over the last several months?

It's been very difficult. In the country, those who are experiencing it, the trauma that they're experiencing, and we hear these stories often through our church, to those who have family members there. It's been gut-wrenching for us as a community to really see the country spiraling. 

For example, those who have family there, that have not been able to visit or care for them. [They’re] not able to even send funds to them in a consistent manner, and not able to physically travel because there's been a shutdown all of the commercial airline flights to Haiti in the past month. And so that's created hardship.

And obviously, it's created an economic downturn for the country. So it's just all of these things combined with many others, it's been really hard on the community to process what's going on. 

How has the situation impacted your family members in Haiti? How have they been doing? What are you hearing from them?

One of the few silver linings is the humanitarian parole program. So I've been able to sponsor a couple of family members. And so they are really fresh from the situation. They're more in contact with their family members, which is my extended family. So I'm hearing more and more from them, because of that connection.  It's hard for people to feed themselves, my family lives in the countryside. the entire country is impacted. They're not spared from any of this. They're experiencing economic hardship, [struggling to] to care for themselves on a day-to-day basis, in the basic necessities of food, water and shelter.

Have you been able to send funds back to them? 

I have, but it's very unreliable. For a while, if you sent funds, the people in Haiti received the funds in Haitian gourde. They don't receive it in American dollars because of the shortage of dollars in the country. And so if you send that money, [it] immediately gets devalued on top of what you're sending. People are standing in long lines waiting for hours, even those very few who have bank accounts. If you do a direct transfer from a US the banks may not even be open for days at a time due to the instability and insecurity in the country.

I know in the last few years, there's been a lot of migration from Haiti, and the church has been supporting some of the people who've arrived here. What have been things been in the last six months or so, are you still seeing people coming? Is the church and samaritan’s heart supporting them? 

As I mentioned, my relatives came through the humanitarian parole program. The last two years, there's been an influx of those coming through the US Mexican border. And so really, our efforts intensified.

So the impact for us is, we really have to intensify how we provide help. One of the things that we've done, this was created organically, the Haitian community rallying together, we hold monthly seminars and information sessions [at] different churches, from Austell to Atlanta to Lawrenceville. Every session probably has about 300 plus individuals. We help them complete paperwork to help get a job and get a work permit. And we also connect them with local lawyers, because some are seeking asylum.

One of the things that we've been doing is we ramped up our housing efforts. [The] church purchased a home, specifically for this purpose. And the church, also rented a home for those in need of housing. We provide transportation for those who are able to legally work. There's those who need health care. So we have individuals that attend church, nurses that help them go to their appointment, who will translate for them.

So we really rally around this need, because it's just growing, it's continuing to grow. And it's not letting up.

What is the most challenging part about helping people navigate this entire process of starting their lives here?

One of the biggest challenges is the lack of institutional aid, specifically, in Georgia. They're here as law abiding citizens and they want to integrate, and they're fleeing a country that's in turmoil, that's at war. There's a lack of resources and a lack of focus on the migrant communities throughout Metro Atlanta, and really, throughout the country. There's some states that do a better job at it than others. But we can't continue to politicize these things and make it about politics, because these individuals are here, and they will continue to come here. There's really not a lot of local, statewide and national services set up for them. So we deal with that the best we can [with] our own local resources, tapping into individuals, churches, local communities, and other local organizations that can help. That's only a drop in the bucket of what could be done and should be done.

What gives you hope right now?

I think what gives me hope is when I go and see the effort that others are doing, and I visit other local, migrant communities, and I see the passion with which people are serving those in need, and providing the care and doing it enthusiastically. The way that they're giving up themselves and giving up their time to serve their fellow humans.

How have your two relatives been doing - the ones who recently came here from Haiti?

I'm expecting [them] to get their social security numbers any day now. That also brings us hope. Every time I talk to them, the joy that they now have…when they hear the news and the despair that's [in Haiti], and they contrast that against where they were, versus where they are now… Even [though] everything is not there for them, there's a roadmap that we're helping to build.

They’re able to plan out a future. They can say, hey, when I work, I want to buy a car, I want to learn how to drive, I want to do this, I want to do that. So right now they're planning out all the things they're going to do once they're able to go get a job ,once they're able to move about without depending on a ride from myself or my wife. So they have that sparkle, that hope.

Is there anything else you think people should know about the situation or what people in the Haitian community do right now?

I just want people to realize that the people that are here, are here to really integrate into society. I want people to know that they're here, they're suffering, they have children, they have lives that have been uprooted. At the base of it all, we're all human. So I want people to really think about it from that basic, deep-rooted level - that these individuals are no different than they are.

For people who want to help or support, what can they do?

There's various ways to help, through The Samaritan’s Heart Foundation and Good Samaritan Haitian Alliance Church. They can donate to the work that we do and also email us, or they can contact me directly at watson.escarment@gshac.org.

Writer/reporter: Sophia Qureshi. Editor: Sam Worley.

On any given day, Xan-Rhea Bilal might be at a mosque, school, or a community event, trying to connect members of her community with the political process. A senior organizer for the Georgia Muslim Voter Project, a nonpartisan nonprofit, Bilal heads up a team of up to 11 canvassers who register Muslim Americans to vote, provide them information on candidates, and let them know where and how they can cast their ballots.

It can be a difficult job: Together, Bilal and her team are responsible for reaching more than 70,000 Georgia residents on their list of Muslim voters, in addition to constantly identifying and registering more. 

But now, five months into Israel’s war in Gaza, she’s in unprecedented territory.

 Many of the voters she speaks with, Bilal says, are both fatigued and frustrated—so much so that asking them about their feelings on the democratic process can seem almost triggering. “We may be at a masjid on Friday, or we may be at a festival. They just aren’t prepared for somebody to come up to them and ask them about voting,” she said.

Many of the people Bilal speaks with have been making their voices heard—calling lawmakers, writing emails, and engaging in coordinated actions in support of a permanent ceasefire. With none in sight, Bilal says she’s coming up against a lot of frustration. “We are doing everything we can to end this absolute carnage,” voters tell her. That the U.S. hasn’t wavered in its support of the Israeli siege is “the main frustration we are seeing.”

Now, a coalition of groups is channeling that energy into Georgia’s primary election, which is just days away. They’re promoting the Listen to Georgia - Leave It Blank campaign, which urges voters to do just that: go to the polls on Tuesday, ask for a Democratic primary ballot, and leave it blank. The idea is to send a message of disapproval to President Joe Biden, who won Georgia in 2020 by a margin of less than 12,000 votes—with the support of many minority communities now strongly opposed to the war, including thousands of Muslim voters.

Leave It Blank follows a similar initiative in Michigan—where more than a hundred thousand people voted “uncommitted” in last month’s primary—that’s spreading to states around the country: This week, hundreds of thousands of voters in Minnesota, Massachusetts, and elsewhere also selected “uncommitted” or “noncommitted” options on their ballots. 

Georgia’s primary election will be the first for Alisha Hussain, an Augusta University medical student who grew up in Gwinnett County. Since October, she hasn’t been able to look away from the images coming out of Gaza, where over 30,000 people have been killed. “I’m usually not very attached to my phone. But it’s so live, and so visual on social media, and you see it everywhere,” Hussain says. “The bombing, people injured in hospitals, limbs being severed, children passing away, mothers crying for their children—it’s just one of the worst sights to ever be seen.”

At school, she’s attended protests, organized campus teach-ins, and is now volunteering for “Leave It Blank.” She’s a part of the campaign’s youth outreach group, which communicates mostly through WhatsApp; she’s using Instagram and hopes to coordinate with Muslim Student Associations across the state to get the word out. 

“It will be a very frenzied campaign over the next week, God willing, but we are hoping that a noteworthy number of Georgians will take the step to send a message to the president,” Edward Mitchell, the former director of the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told 285 South. He’s now a board member of CAIR Action, which is among the organizations involved in the campaign. Mitchell says a coalition of local and national groups—including Voices of Muslims, the Peach State Muslim Coalition, and the Arab American Anti Discrimination Committee—are spreading the word through social media, public events, and door-to-door interactions “to make sure people know this is an option.” 

Though Arab American and Muslim American groups are leading the charge, they’re not alone in their efforts to bring about an end to the war. 

“This is a movement that speaks to a lot of different people—young voters, particularly,” says Marisa Pyle, a voting rights organizer and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, which has staged pro-Palestine protests around the country. Pyle grew up in Dahlonega, where her family started a synagogue. On Tuesday, she joined around 20 other people for a phone banking initiative for Leave It Blank. “You don’t have to have an identity that is immediately tied to one side or the other of this crisis,” she says. “There are also just folks who are just Georgians and voters and [are] horrified.” 

Whatever happens in Georgia on Tuesday, it's clear that people across the country have been able to mobilize, in a very short time frame, without much money behind them. “I think in Georgia, we can turn that vote out very quickly, because we are very socially connected,” said Samia Abudulle, a Gwinnett County resident, originally from Somalia.

For many in Georgia, like Alisha Hussain, nothing is more important right now. Encouraging voters to use their leverage “could be the difference in showing politicians that, hey, we’re here, and we stand behind something,” Hussain says. “And your power comes from the people.”

On Christmas Eve morning, hundreds of congregants gathered at the New Birth Missionary Baptist church, which has been described as the largest land owning Black church in America. 

The 10,000 member megachurch in Stonecrest, GA, about 20 miles due east of Atlanta, was lit with brightly colored spotlights, huge screens broadcasting the service, and booming music filling up the space.  

Today's service though, was unlike any other. Images of the Palestinian flag were on the stage and on the screens. Church choir members wore keffiyehs. And the call from the pastor was clear: a ceasefire in Gaza. 

“We cannot ignore that up to this moment, 20,000 lives have been senselessly killed in Palestine,” said senior pastor Jamal Bryant, opening up the service. “If Jesus were born today he would have been found under rubble…because of bombs that this nation paid for and provided.” 

Bryant said he had had conversations about “Christmas being canceled,” because of the war. 

He ending up taking New Birth on another route. “Today we are calling for  America, we are calling for the world to insist that a ceasefire take place immediately. That’s what we want for Christmas.”

His call echoes hundreds of black spiritual leaders across the country. 

Among the attendees were a number of Palestinians, seated together. Bryant welcomed them, and congregants raised their hands in prayer. 

“I have family still in Gaza…I come from a long line of Christians in Gaza,” said Lydia El-Sayegh, to the crowd of congregants from the stage.

Reverend Fahed Abu-Akel gave congregants historical context of the conflict, “American television tells us that everything started October 7.” He spoke about memories of him and his family being expelled from their home in Palestine in 1948, when he was four years old. “When I see the kids in Gaza, I see myself, leaving my home.”

He was inspired, he said, by Martin Luther King as a child, from 10,000 miles away. “We want American Christians to know that Palestinian Christians are in existence in Gaza and all over Palestine.”

“Embarrasingly there has been a silence from the church. The Christian church has really not echoed and amplified its voice to this genocide that is happening in broad daylight,” said Bryant. But on this Christmas at this sprawling megachurch in Dekalb County, there was anything but silence.

Trailer for “The Third Country” - a documentary about how three young Burmese in Georgia have navigated growing up in the South. Produced by Tomorrow Pictures, in partnership with 285 South, with support from The Pivot Fund. Full film to be released in 2024.

Kaeden Tun left Burma when he was 13 years old. The initial years in Metro Atlanta weren’t easy for him and his family - they encountered many of the challenges so many newly arriving families face - language barriers, navigating schools, and building a life here with news out of Burma ever present in their minds, hearts, and phones. 

Now, as a 28 year old, he works as a data manager at the CDC and is on track to receive a Masters degree in Public Health from Georgia State University next year. But life for the friends he went to school with as a child has turned out very differently. Some of them, he said, are hiding in Burma, for opposing the military led government. Others are living in refugee camps in Thailand. 

These days he’s worried for them and his relatives, who are part of the Karen minority, even more than usual. 

Since October 27, fighting between Burma’s military junta and a coalition of armed resistance fighters, made up of members of different ethnic minorities, has escalated. The violence has been spreading - from Shan State to the northwest and southeast parts of the country. Over half a million people have been displaced since then, and nearly 200 civilians killed.  The UN has said the violence is “the largest in scale and most extensive geographically” since the coup in 2021. And the human rights situation is “bad and getting exponentially worse.” 

The fighting hasn’t reached his extended family who live in the cities of Yangon and Pyay, but it has had an impact on their lives. “They’re saying how hard it is, how expensive everything is,” he said. “If you go outside, it’s much stricter now because of everything…it’s going to be much harder each day, because the fighting is coming.” 

For more than a decade, Burma has consistently been one of the top three countries of origin for refugees arriving in Georgia, and many of those who have arrived here are from the country’s minority groups and have fled state repression - like the Karen, Chin, and Rohingya.

Kaeden said his mom is fearful of the growing violence. “The older generation is still struggling with being scared because they don't want what happened in the past [to happen] again because they know how gruesome it can get.”

Some community members here are organizing to provide humanitarian assistance to those impacted by the violence back home, but, says Kaeden, it's all done quietly. “It is hard to do it openly, because I don't think people want to get targeted.

Kaeden says he isn’t scared, partly because he left so long ago. “I just want to raise awareness about what's been happening over there. Because with everything else going on in the world…you don't hear about [Burma] anymore…but the fighting is still escalating.”

Learn more about Kaedun, and other young Burmese who grew up in Georgia, in the upcoming documentary “The Third Country,” produced by Tomorrow Pictures in partnership with 285 South, with support from The Pivot Fund. 

The documentary, filmed over the course of a year in partnership with community members, zooms in on how they’ve navigated life in the South - from starting school without knowing English to seeing the toll chicken factory jobs took on their parents to forging a future that includes Georgia, and Burma. 

Check out the trailer (at the top).  The full film will be out in January 2024.  Stay tuned for more details. 

In downtown Alpharetta on Sunday, Asra Mansoor stood beside more than 400 pairs of childrens’ shoes spread out on the grass. At one end of the square hung a banner with the names of some of the more than 4,000 children who have been killed since the Israeli government began its bombardment campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7.

Asra had worked with other volunteers from Voices of Muslims (VoM), a grassroots civic engagement organization in Georgia, to set up the exhibit. They gathered the shoes from local mosques and from community members over the course of a few days to set it up. Their goal, they said, was to help inform passersby about the humanitarian toll of the war, and to encourage them to join the call for a ceasefire in the region.

“It’s very disappointing to see that’s not happening,” said Asra, who voted for Biden in 2020, and lives in Cumming. “He’s not even paying attention…no way will we vote for him again.” 

Asra represents a growing and critical minority in Georgia—Muslim Americans, over 60,000 of whom showed up to vote in 2020. In a state where Biden won by just 12,000 votes, the historic turnout in minority communities was heralded as instrumental in swinging the state blue. 

But the Administration’s stance on the Israel-Gaza war has changed political sentiments: Muslim Americans in Georgia who spoke to 285 South said they felt “betrayed” and “disappointed” by the White House’s stance, and can’t imagine voting for him again. 

“We are done,” said Asra.

That change has come swiftly. Just four months earlier, she was emceeing a gala dinner in downtown Atlanta, celebrating with fellow VoM volunteers. Over 400 people were in attendance at the event, including Senator Jon Ossoff, who gave the keynote address, the Mayor of Suwanee, and several state lawmakers. They were all there to mark a milestone in the community: 30 cities and six counties in Georgia had issued proclamations declaring July to be ‘Muslim American Heritage Month.” The event was sold out.

That hasn’t been the only accomplishment of the increasingly active community in the past two years. 

The state boasts the second largest number of Muslim state lawmakers in the country, after Minnesota. In 2022, halal options were officially added to school lunch menus in Gwinnett and Cobb Counties. The effort to get Eid recognized as a day off on the school calendar, as well as other religious holidays, has also been building momentum. (On November 16, the Gwinnett school board will announce whether the ‘inclusive calendar’ has been approved or not.)

But with the Israeli military campaign in Gaza underway, focusing on local issues is hard. Many have been shaken by the war, and frustrated that the Biden Administration hasn’t called for a ceasefire. “Stand with Israel” proclamations or resolutions in counties like Cobb and Fulton, that did not immediately or explicitly condemn the loss of civilian life in Gaza, have contributed to feelings of frustration and disillusionment.

But the disillusionment hasn’t led to inaction. Palestinian American Ibrahim Awad was among a group of people who spoke to Cobb County commissioners on why the Israel resolution it was considering should include language condemning the loss of innocent Palestinian lives. The commissioners withdrew the resolution, at least temporarily.. 

Fulton County’s Board of Health’s district director issued a public apology for an initial statement that she said characterized Muslims “in an unflattering way,” after hearing from community members. 

Ibrahim, who had spoken to Cobb County commissioners, grew up in Dalton and has family in Gaza. One of his relatives was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a mosque, he said, and he hasn’t heard from his mother’s side of the family, who live in Gaza, for the past two weeks. He voted for Biden in 2020, and says he feels ‘betrayed.’ “Even though he has said some very bad things…Trump is looking really good right now, I'm putting the bar really low.”

In 2020, when Biden was elected, Asra said she was excited. “My kids in elementary school were jumping for joy…we were hopeful the administration would support everyone, including Muslims.” Now, standing at the Alpharetta memorial to the dead children, she feels differently. 

This moment, she says, has been a wakeup call.

On election day on Tuesday, she said a lot of fellow community members in Forsyth County had contacted her. “They were asking me who to vote for, in even these local elections. This [has been] a wakeup call for Muslims, for all voters, to see and think twice about who they vote for. It starts from a very local level. I was happy that our community…is now calling and trying to figure out who we should vote for. That is the biggest shift I've seen since all this started.”

Amenah Arman is a mental health professional with her own therapy practice. A Palestinian American who lived in the West Bank as a child, she moved to Metro Atlanta, via Chicago, in 2003.

On Saturday, in a room at the Alif Institute, a non-profit that promotes awareness about the Arab Middle East, she was leading a group therapy session.

Around a half dozen middle school and high school students, all with Arab roots, sat around a table to talk about what has been consuming their thoughts over the last two weeks: the deaths of over 5,000 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis. 

In Gaza, currently under Israeli bombardment after the October 7 attacks by Hamas, local psychiatrists are reporting that kids they’re seeing are experiencing “serious trauma symptoms such as convulsions, bed-wetting, fear, aggressive behavior, nervousness, and not leaving their parents’ sides.” 

The trauma of the war is traveling and reaching kids here - through their phones and through the stories they’re hearing from their families. And Amenah has decided to offer free therapy to community members, in this case, youth. 

The kids, five of whom were Palestinian American and two of whom were Syrian American, had taken time out of a sunny Saturday afternoon to come to the session. As they nibbled on chocolate chip cookies, they began to share some of the issues they had been grappling with recently. 

Many had been struggling to balance what they were hearing from their families and seeing on their social media feeds about the violence in the region, with their everyday lives. 

“I act sad [at school]. But I don’t really want to talk to anyone about it,” said an 11-year old Palestinian American girl. “It’s hard to be with people who are complaining about dumb things. Why complain when people are dying? It feels so ridiculous.” She was struggling to see the relevance of the subjects she was learning. “How can math or geography help people who are dying?”

The high school students in the group had their own phones, and said they compulsively checked their TikTok and Instagram feeds throughout the day. One student said that in the initial days after  October 7, he had to restrict his phone use, because the images and videos were overwhelming. Now, he said, videos of the violence were mixed in with photos his friends were posting of their dogs and hanging out. 

Amenah says what the kids - as well as many adults - are experiencing is secondary trauma.

“When you're subjected to these images, technically, you're not there. But your nervous system doesn't necessarily understand that. So you're absorbing it, the sounds, the graphic details, the colors, the tears, you're absorbing it as if you are there. Even if you tell yourself to put the phone down, you're going to pick it back up, or you're going to hear other people talking about it.”

Amenah said her own child was impacted, complaining of feeling listless and sometimes having difficulty breathing. 

Some of the kids talked about how the violence thousands of miles away was impacting their relationships here.

“Friends think of our culture in a way that’s not positive,” said one high schooler. 

Another high school student said she didn’t want to share her thoughts on the war with her Jewish friend. “I knew if I said anything, it would ruin our friendship.” She wasn’t sure if she had done the right thing. “Maybe I was cowardly,” she added.

Amenah herself has been at a loss of how to act. “I am forcing myself to show up for salah (prayer). I'm forcing myself to take a shower. Everything is forced right now. Nothing feels natural.”

Her dad, she said, has been burying himself in work. “Everyone has different ways of processing it.” What’s important, she said, is giving yourself the space to grieve and not isolating yourself. “It’s a united grief.”

At the end of the two hour session, the kids were in agreement about what they needed: more time with people who understood what they were going through.

It’s been more than 10 days since a 7.8 magnitude earthquake shook Syria and Turkey, but Loganville resident Mouaz Ghouthami knows he’ll be feeling its impact for the rest of his life. His sister, aunt, and nephews live in earthquake hit regions in Turkey and northern Syria.

He didn’t realize the extent of the devastation until his mom, who lives in Jordan, called him in the middle of the night. “She said we lost this guy and this guy, this guy was saved in the hospital, your sister slept outside…” He couldn’t quite believe what she was telling him. “It was like a dream. It made me crazy.”

His family members are safe, though they lost their homes. But one of his friends, his sister told him, lost his son, daughter, and wife. “He woke up in the hospital and people asked him what happened and he said I don’t know.” Mouaz has reached out to him but he hasn’t responded. “I sent him a text and I said I'm sorry. If you need any help we are ready.”

The death toll from the quake has surpassed 40,000, in Syria and Turkey, and search and rescue teams are continuing to pull survivors from the rubble. Aid is coming into both countries, but in opposition controlled northern Syria, it hasn’t been straightforward.

Between 3,000 and 4,000 Syrians live in Georgia, according to estimates from the American Community Survey. Many of the Syrian refugees who have resettled here have family in northern Syria and Turkey - where the earthquake hit the hardest - said Emad Sabbah, the co-founder of Ethaar, a refugee and immigrant support organization in metro Atlanta.

Among them is a Clarkston resident he spoke to who lost 25 members of his family. “He was in shock… the whole building where his family members lived collapsed.”

Mohamed Alo, a GSU student and assistant at a pharmacy in Smyrna, also has family in northern Syria. “It’s hard, being here, and seeing everything happening over there. If I wasn’t here, I would be living through this moment over there,” he said.

“Imagine the city you grew [up] in and you spent your childhood in… how it went from a very beautiful place to what is going on now,” said Alo, who moved to metro Atlanta with his parents and brother in 2018.

Since he left, he’s watched the country suffer through war, an economic collapse, and now this - “God knows what else is gonna happen.”

In the immediate days after the earthquake, his mother was awake from 2 to 6 in the morning, communicating with his grandmother, who lives in northern Syria, via Whatsapp audio messages. “Everybody was nervous,” he said. They’ve had to flee their homes, but still, they were lucky. Nobody was injured or killed.

In the past week, community groups, mosques, nonprofits, and individuals across metro Atlanta have been raising money and collecting donations. They’ve been asking for winter clothes and medical equipment. The challenge, says Imam Arshad Anwar of Masjid Jafar in Johns Creek, will be sustaining people’s concern and commitment to help. 

 “Media cycles change and soon this will not be front page news anymore. We know this will take years of support for the people to have any real chance at recovery,”  said Anwar, who helped organize a donation drive in collaboration with a Turkish community member this past weekend.

For Alo, helping those in the country of his birth isn’t dependent on circumstance. It’s how he orients his entire life here. 

“What you can give back to them?...It’s a blessing, the opportunity to be here gives you motivation. The best way to be grateful and thankful is to give back.” 

Mouaz agrees. He’s been doing what he can. “For two days we called family, we called friends, we watched social media. After that me and my friend decided to make a group and collect money to send to them.” Here’s a link to the their fundraiser.

More local community members have shared these ways to help:

Donate to Medglobal, a medical nonprofit working to support victims in northern Syria.

Masjid Jafar is collecting items through February 19th.

Donate supplies through Mercy without Limits

*Know of any aid efforts? Respond to this email, leave a comment below, or send me a message at qureshi.sophia@gmail.com*

Over 200 Pakistanis from across metro Atlanta gathered in Decatur Square on Sunday, in a show of support for Pakistan's recently ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan. The rally was in response to the removal of Khan from government on April 9th, which his supporters say was a result of U.S. interference (an allegation that both the U.S. and Pakistan's National Security Agency have refuted) and corruption within the parliament. They called for immediate elections and for Pakistanis to unite and come out in support of Khan.

The recent political turmoil has stirred emotions not just within Pakistan, but across the diaspora. Though not without his critics, Khan has managed to sustain steady support from many overseas Pakistanis - with rallies of Khan's supporters popping up everywhere from Houston, Texas to Melbourne, Australia.

There are almost 12,000 Pakistanis in the metro Atlanta area, up from about 9,000 a decade ago. Almost half of these families live in Gwinnett County, and the rest are spread throughout the metro region. "Our presence is segregated and in different spots," said Hasnain Shaban, one of the organizers of the rally in Decatur Square. "When we get together, we are huge."

Shaban said that the local supporters of Khan's political party PTI - Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (which translates to Pakistan Movement for Justice) - hadn’t been active in organizing any events. About a month ago, he and several others in the community took it upon themselves to get organized, "We just made a group ourselves, and got together and said, let's do this."

They organized via zoom meetings and phone calls and spread the word through social media. "It's all social media - Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the PTI official account tweeted us," he said.

The grassroots group, Atlanta Supports IK, now has around 200 members, according to Shaban. At the rally on Sunday, there were at least that many people, some traveling from as far as Alabama and Tennessee, he said.

"People who have never seen each other before, came together for this cause," said organizer Momina Niazi, who lives in Johns Creek. "I especially want to thank all of the volunteers…some of whom I've seen today actually in person for the first person," she said over the loudspeaker to the crowd.

One older gentleman who has lived in the U.S. for over 30 years said it was his first rally. When I asked him what he thought of it, he said "I love it!" a giant smile spreading across his face.

Here in Georgia, primary elections are coming up and a nationally watched governor's race could mean dramatic changes for the state, but for many people, it's what's happening back home that is at the forefront of their minds.

People leave their homelands, cross oceans, and make arduous journeys to come to Metro Atlanta for so many reasons. And though they build new lives here, in suburbs and small towns in and around I-285, it’s impossible to ever leave where they left fully behind. Sometimes events that unfold thousands of miles away have a way of reaching across borders and turning their lives upside down.

That's what it's been like for Saiba Abbas. For two weeks, she hadn’t been herself. Her regular routine was the same- juggling taking care of her 1-year old son while driving between her home in Watkinsville, to Agnes Scott College for classes, to her internship at New American Pathways in Tucker. But her mind, and heart, were in a different world.

Saiba’s father, Yassin Bakhit, was in Sudan on October 25th when the Sudanese military dissolved the transitional government and took control of the country. Internet outages have been reported, phone lines have been blocked intermittently, and civilian leaders have been detained. Thousands of people have been out on the streets, demonstrating against the coup. At least 12 people have been killed in the last 10 days.

Bakhit had boarded a flight at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport in early October, eager to visit his mother in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. He’s been making the trip almost every two years, ever since he moved to Georgia more than two decades ago. He had packed a suitcase full of school supplies and medicines and also had plans for visiting his hometown in Darfur.

Saiba’s mother found out about the coup through a Whatsapp message - an old friend from Sudan said that the military had taken over. “We opened the news and found out it was true.” Immediately after, Saiba said, they lost contact with Bakhit. “When my mom called it said this number is not working. So any phone calls from outside of Sudan - it gets blocked. Because they don't want people to know what's going on.”

They weren’t the only ones in Georgia trying to reach loved ones in Sudan. There are almost 2,000 Sudanese living in Georgia, many of whom live in Clarkston, Stone Mountain, and Tucker. The Sudanese community in Atlanta has been growing since at least 1979, when the International Rescue Committee (IRC) opened its office here. Since then, IRC-Atlanta has helped resettle 686 individuals from Sudan. And throughout that time, there have been waves of refugees from Sudan coming to the U.S. “My mom says she’s been going through coups since her childhood,” said Saiba.

Saiba relied on Twitter and limited news reports to get any info from Sudan, “Only through Twitter, whenever people have the internet for a couple of seconds they can upload something. That's the only way we could find out what's going on and reports from places like Al Jazeera.”

When the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum advised its citizens to shelter in place and flights out of the country were suspended, Saiba and her family were frustrated, but undeterred. She downloaded Boss Revolution, an international calling app, and was finally able to speak with her father, though the conversations were short. “We didn’t talk about any politics, we were like okay, do you know if any flights are coming out of the country?”

As news of the coup raged on her phone, Saiba struggled to focus in her classes at Agnes Scott, where she majors in Social Innovation. “I couldn’t concentrate on assignments. I was going to tell my teachers what was going on, but I didn’t want to tell anybody about a coup.”

When she finally did, she was surprised by the response, “I told them guys, I'm going through something right now.” Her professors asked her to explain what was going on to her classmates, so Saiba provided them with a synopsis. She was surprised by their response, “I was like, oh, wow, they really want to know.” She encouraged her classmates to follow specific social media accounts, like @BSonBlast on Instagram, because “you won’t get the details on CNN.”

On November 2nd, the airport in Khartoum opened up - a few flights were taking off to neighboring countries. The roads to the airport were risky, but Bakhit took his chances. “He said I’m just going to take my luggage...wait at the airport and if there’s an airplane available I’ll just hop on,” said Saiba.

He was able to get on a flight to Doha, and around 9pm on Wednesday night, he landed in Atlanta.

Saiba’s relieved to have her father back home in Watkinsville. He’s taking a few days off - he needs to do the required COVID testing before going back to his job as a lab tech. But she still has one foot in Sudan. “I would always consider myself Sudanese. Even though I do have a U.S. passport, I’m in between. Yeah, I’m in between.”

In the last 10 days, more than two dozen Afghans have arrived in Atlanta, according to two of the four major Atlanta based resettlement agencies - The International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Atlanta and New American Pathways.

Both organizations say they expect many more to arrive in the coming weeks but it’s hard to know exactly how many because of the chaos of the evacuation process.

Justin Howell, executive director of IRC Atlanta said, “....we received notification on Friday at 5pm that a family would be arriving that evening. This is not what we would normally see as part of the refugee/SIV resettlement process, but that's because the events on the ground have caused quite a bit of disarray. Under more routine/normal circumstances, we would have 6-8 weeks advance notice of an arriving family.”

The Afghans arriving will join a relatively small, yet growing community in the Atlanta area, the majority of whom originally resettled in places like Clarkston, Stone Mountain, and Tucker.

S. Mohamad, his wife, and four children are one of those families. As soon as he heard the news that the Taliban was sweeping into Kabul, Mohammad made a phone call from his home in Gwinnett County to his elder sister and brother in Afghanistan’s capital. His sister, who teaches science to high school aged girls in Kabul, hasn’t left her house. “It’s not safe for women to go out and do their jobs,” he said. “Schools are closed. Everything is closed. Nobody knows what’s going on.” He says his wife hasn’t stopped crying for days.

He’s been anxious, but he says he isn’t surprised by what’s happened. Before immigrating to Atlanta in 2014, Mohamad was a driver and administrative assistant at the U.S. embassy in Kabul. He applied for a special immigrant visa as soon as he was eligible. “I knew this would happen in Afghanistan. I had a good job and a good salary, but I knew this time would come again one day.”

Mohamad joined other Afghan families in protests over the last week in Atlanta. This past Saturday, the community came together at the Woodruff Arts Center for a “Stop Killing Afghans” protest and a week earlier, organizers say at least 600 people gathered for a “Peace and Justice” demonstration outside the CNN Center.

Afghans demonstrate outside the CNN Center on August 15, 2021. Credit: Khushal Gurbaz

Here are some ways to help: Donate to the women, immigrant, and refugee led organization Refugee Women’s Network - the funds will go to basic necessities and social adjustment services. Email IRC-Atlanta to help set up apartments or donate furniture: atlanta@rescue.org. And check out New American Pathways’ action alert, which details other ways to help, including ways your faith community can partner to welcome newly arrived Afghan families.efforts, and could be evicted any day now.