title
PROPOSED RESOLUTION
CONGRATULATING RAMI NASHASHIBI ON RECEIVING THE MACARTHUR FOUNDATION GENIUS AWARD
WHEREAS, the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award is a prestigious award given out each year in "recognition of exceptional creativity; promise for important future advances based on the recipient's previous track record; and the potential of the award to facilitate subsequent creative work"; and
WHEREAS, Rami Nashashibi, founder and Executive Director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), was announced to be one of the 2017 recipient fellows; and
WHEREAS, Rami Nashashibi received a B.A. (1995) from DePaul University and a Ph.D. (2010) from the University of Chicago and has taught at a number of colleges and universities across the Chicagoland area, and served as a member of President Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in 2016; and
WHEREAS, Rami Nashashibi's passion for social justice was ignited when he came to Chicago in 1990 and was exposed to the inequalities underrepresented communities face on the south side of Chicago; and
WHEREAS, Rami Nashashibi founded IMAN in 1997, in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood to confront the challenges of poverty and disinvestment in urban communities and build bridges across racial, religious, and socioeconomic divides; and
WHEREAS, Rami Nashashibi's leadership in IMAN has served to counter xenophobic misperceptions of immigrants with a powerful example of Muslim-led community activism and to demonstrating how Islamic spiritual ideals enrich American culture; and
WHEREAS, Rami Nashashibi's work in a diverse community of Latino, African-American, working class white and immigrant families of different religious backgrounds is an example of what happens when people see their commonalities rather than differences, bridging the gap between communities; and
WHEREAS, Rami Nashashibi's well-deserved award comes right on time as he is celebrating 20 years of grass-roots organizin...
Click here for full text