My name is Mishka Banuri and I’m the daughter
of Pakistani Muslim immigrants.
And before I start, I need all of your help.
Those who know me know that I am—I owe so
much to my family, and so I want all of your help
in thanking my mother, who is here somewhere
in this crowd, for everything that she’s done for me.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you all so much.
Yes, I don't know who said that, but I love
you, Mama, thank you.
The place that I call home and currently live
in is Salt Lake City, Utah, [CHEERS]
which is on occupied Eastern Shoshone and
Goshute land.
I moved there when I was 12 and completely
fell in love.
For almost 12 years of my life I was raised
in a suburb of Chicago, in a cookie-cutter
suburb of Chicago where I didn’t have much
access to nature other than my front lawn.
And when I came to Salt Lake City and I was
suddenly surrounded by mountains that hugged
the valley that my family now lives in, I
could leave my house and hike to overlook
the valley in a matter of minutes.
And my favorite time in Utah is right now
– fall – the mountains become ablaze with
red and orange and auburn colors, and if you
go into the canyon, the aspen trees are the
most gorgeous golden-yellow color.
They’ve brought me safety and regeneration
in really tough times in my life.
It’s my absolute favorite tree.
And one thing that I love about aspens is
that in a forest of thousands of seemingly
individual trees, they actually have a singular
root system.
They’re all connected and they have the same roots.
It is an incredibly resilient and beautiful
tree that reminds me to stay strong in the
face of adversity.
I owe some of my connection to the natural
world and Earth to my grandmother.
She’s a botanist, and growing up, I remember
going on long walks with her, and she taught
me about the different plants around me, and
the medicinal qualities of the plants in Pakistan
that I still use today to nourish my body.
In Utah, I currently organize with an organization
called Utah Youth Environmental Solutions,
also known as UYES.
[CHEERS]
I also work with Uplift, which is a youth-led
climate justice organization based in the
Colorado Plateau and greater Southwest.
Utah and the Southwest have long been 
a sacrifice zone.
The area is rife with fossil fuel extraction.
Salt Lake City has some of the country’s
worst air at times, and Utah has seen its
public officials try and push a tar sands
mine – what would have been the first in
the United States.
Nuclear waste and extraction devastate frontline
communities, specifically indigenous communities
whose water and health are impacted by uranium
extraction, refining and transportation.
What I do is to help mobilize young people
in Utah around climate justice issues because
the impacts are so tangible for communities
all over Utah.
One main motivator for my work is my faith
– Islam.
I grew up as a Muslim in the United States
post 9/11, and I’ve struggled growing up
in a country that is loyal to the Islamophobia
industry.
Muslims, like so many other people, have to
constantly prove our humanity so that our
sacred spaces are not vandalized, so that
we can get jobs, and so that we can stay alive.
I struggled with internalized Islamophobia
until I came to the realization that if anyone
is a threat to white supremacy, to the patriarchy
in all systems that are the foundation for
our soundings, we are all labeled as terrorists
rather than the people who terrorize our communities every day.
To be clear, 9/11 is not the beginning of
Islamophobia or anti-Muslim racism in this country,
but it marks a significant shift
that continues to justify the treatment of
Muslims all over the world.
It was also a huge motivator for the war on terror.
And it wasn’t the only one.
The other huge motivator for the war on terror
was oil and resources that the United States
believed it could take for its own benefit.
And I’m specifically talking about the Iraq War.
Before the Iraq invasion, oil was nationalized
and inaccessible to foreign companies like
Exxon Mobil, the same company that also funds
climate denial.
After the war, oil in Iraq and other countries
was privatized and continues to be commodified,
and is now in the ownership of Exxon Mobile
and other companies.
When people contribute to Islamophobic ideas
that Muslims are not able to govern themselves,
that they need some outside forces to bring
democracy on them, it justifies intervention,
or the idea that the West needs to liberate
Muslim women from these countries,
we justify the intervention that causes a
cycle of violence for oil and resources.
This colonial and imperialistic behavior of
the United States is not new.
Literature has shown that the military has
adopted a metaphor of referring to places
with resources ripe for intervention, like
the Middle East as “Indian Country.”
The behavior modeled is not new because it
is how the US exists in the first place, stealing
land, resources, and the lives of indigenous
and black people.
So while we continue to see privatization
and extraction on indigenous land, we will
also see privatization, militarization, extraction
and thievery from ethnic minorities, Muslims,
and the Global South.
Many of you know of Blackwater, a company
that provided arms to the US military and
massacred Iraqis in the invasion.
Democracy Now! reporters say that Tiger Swan, the private security company that surveilled and infiltrated
Standing Rock has connections and comes from Blackwater.
There are wars being fought on this soil and
abroad for the same greed.
As I think about the awful projects that are
happening in the backyards of frontline communities
in Utah and the Southwest, I also think about
what’s happening abroad, because it is the
same system.
The Prophet, may peace be upon him, once said:
Muslims are like a body of a person.
If the eyes are afflicted, then the whole
body is affected.
If the head is afflicted, then the body is afflicted.
We are all connected, and these same systems
affect so many different communities.
To me, this realization is overwhelming and scary, and so I come back to think about the
aspen trees in my home.
Like the roots of the aspen, I recognize that I am connected to everyone here and all over the world.
As a Muslim, it is so important for me to
stand up for my Muslim siblings facing threats
to their livelihood all over the world, and
my siblings on the frontlines of white supremacy
and ecological devastation.
I’m not liberated until everyone is liberated.
By having strong, local climate justice movements
that are in solidarity with each other, we
are dismantling this global system.
[APPLAUSE]
And I remind everyone to have hope, because
I have hope.
And I have hope in young people that are destroying
the status quo and business as usual.
[APPLAUSE]
We are demanding justice, and we are right.
And we’re seeing people change and mobilize
every single day.
I’m going to end a quote from a song.
I’m not going to sing, [LAUGHTER]
but a quote from a song that was written by
a local organizer in Utah, that says: The
oceans are rising and so are we.
Thank you so much.
[APPLAUSE]
