El Mahaba Center

In this episode, Lydia talks about the development of inner peace through advocacy and vocalization. She gives the example of June Jordan’s poetry.

In this episode, Lydia discusses the power of peace in several Biblical passages and also in modern attributions and ideas of peace.

Lydia discusses the importance for each individual to operate in our communities with holistic care as our aim. She defines holistic care, provides examples, and ends with what individuals can do.

In this episode, Lydia defines what is generational trauma, what the implications of its importance, practicing an awareness of generational trauma in differing fields, and valuing healing through social justice work and advocacy.

Lydia discusses, in this episode, what acceptance could look like. Acceptance/denial are often used as community markers for inclusion/exclusion and freedom/oppression, and so it’s important to check what’s at the heart of our acceptances.

In this episode, Lydia discusses how to model and practice an empathetic freedom for others that is far from the oppression we see today.

Lydia discusses women in the Bible who did not replicate gender hierarchies, but rather deconstructed them into something stronger. We read from Luke 10:38-42 about the ultimate Biblical story about deconstructing gender roles.

Lydia discusses what gender roles are, their constructions, and the anti-Christian nature of enforcing gender roles on communities.

Trigger warning: violence, murder, guns, armed robbery. Lydia discusses the murder of Ustaaz Maged Ghaly, a Coptic storeowner, who was murdered in late August while attending his store. She discusses the details of the case and the social media reactions, while incorporating next steps to healing and stability in Nashville.

Lydia discusses why intersectionality brings about solidarity, which is ultimately the work of any service or social justice work. Intersectionality is a word coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 to describe the nuanced position of Black women in race and gender.

Lydia discusses how identities, multiple in nature, are channeled through equality (the idea of sameness) and equity (the idea of difference), and she supports her argument for equity with Biblical passages from the New Testament Gospels.

Triggering warning: discussion of rape/sexual assault without details Lydia discusses the opposite of community-building being violence, and she begins with a discussion of Sally’s recent bravery in outing a Coptic priest for pedophilia, rape and assault. We discuss Esther, Daniel and Exodus alongside Franz Fanon’s Towards an African Revolution.

On 4th of July, Lydia discusses how our community must be radical in realizing its history, in connecting our affinities, in creating belonging, and in offering contributions to each other.

Our last introduction to our series on Social Justice and Christianity, this episode follows the redefining of the term “political” or “politics,” which is often misused to fit Western democracies’ boxes of political participation and to erase our interdependency on each other. We read from 1 Corinthians 12.

In this episode, Lydia argues that social justice is an inherent part of Christianity and actually can deepen our understanding of Christianity and what it means to be Christ-like. The two Biblical chapters she refers to are: Isaiah 1 and James chapters 1, 2, and 5.

Our hearts are with George Floyd, the protestors, and Black lives. We recognize that these events aren’t incidents, but patterns, and we begin Season 2 with a mindset of action and affirmation. Lydia answers the question: Why is social justice important?

Lydia discusses the loss of life and sanctity of life in the face of COVID-19 and the push “to be faithful.” She charts how, in two months, the Coptic Orthodox churches in Nashville failed to respond effectively, share resources, be transparent about financial and material resources, and, therefore, hurt the community. She argues that faith should not be and is not blind, so as to control God, but rather faith begs to question, begs to see the glory that is revealed.

Lydia looks into the responses of the federal, state, local and employer responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and why this has led to a crippling outbreak among Copts in Nashville.

Lydia discusses her time on a panel at Vanderbilt University in which a question of Orthodox responses to social justice was asked. We look at notions of what allyship means based on this question.

Using the example of Elizabeth Warren, Lydia outlines how NOT to be an ally in order to argue that an ally has to be more than a self-seeking individual. Allyship is an action.

Lydia discusses a very local story that happened in December and January 2020 at Lipscomb Academy, where Dean Paschall, a Black woman with a PhD, was fired after a multi-millionaire white father and country music singer, John Rich, wrote an email to the Lipscomb administration about her teaching students about white privilege. The response from the Academy and local news sources show how white systems of power, historically and currently in Nashville, construct and deconstruct the power to be diverse, to be represented, to be heard. Lydia concludes that the real loss is the white systems that govern not just the educational spaces in Nashville, but also the national and local media that positioned the story as neutral.

Lydia argues in this episode that, similarly, as representation politics works as a tool for white supremacists (systems and societies) to manufacture identities of color, diversity too works as a tool to include white people in spaces of color and to force people of color into white economies and white politics. She advocates for the change needed to view diversity in different ways than what is dictated to us.

Erinie and Lydia discuss the pitfalls of banking and the circulation of US dollars through the banking system and ways to, first, decolonize our thinking surrounding the US dollar, and secondly, how reparations and solutions can bring a radical change.

Erinie and Lydia discuss interlaced connections between money, capitalism and empire-making with a particular focus on how they change our views on human value, environmental worth, and labor value.

Lydia brings three introspective solutions to the table: renewal of the mind, listening/conversing stories, and understanding power/privilege beyond meaning. Internalization, though beginning from the outside, can have internal roots and internal solutions.

With a Coptic-Nashville-centric lens, Lydia focuses on defining and identifying internalized racism as an underlying aspect of immigrant communities, how it avoids conversations of race and racism, how it is cruel to our own.

Erinie offers her perspective on humanitarianism, good intent, and the corrupt power of the US dollar. We offer more solutions, but also another mode of thinking: instead of good intent, let’s be aware, conscientious and woke.

Lydia discusses, with plenty of stories, the ways in which humanitarianism, born out of the colonial era, embodies and sanctifies domination and a savior complex, and, therefore, is a form of colonialism. From the Rwandan genocide to wells in Nicaragua to midwives in Egypt, humanitarianism displaces, ignores, and worsens experiences of life.

Lydia discusses capitalism’s prosperity gospel in the United States (from last week) and how that seeps into our mentality surrounding Black Friday and its necessity—and almost its sacredness as an unofficial holiday.

Lydia looks at the reasons, rhetoric, and legacies that make colonialism look good, focusing on histories of the United States and Egypt, so that, when discussing colonialism, we don’t miss the realities and histories that shape(d) us and our ancestors.

Lydia and Erinie, sisters, discuss fear—in their lives, as definitions, in history, as women.

In this episode, Lydia discusses the colonial apparatus of white fear and its modern actions of order and imaginary safety.

In this episode, we explore, first, the definitions of capitalism, socialism and communion, and then we focus on the determents of capitalism on immigrant/refugee societies, particularly on the Millwood community as it undergoes gentrification. Join another of our directors, Lydia, engage in the conversation our communities of color need.

Roni here! taking over the podcast to nerd out about all things labor organizing.

In this episode, we look at the history and philosophy of the Zapatistas in order to understand their radical approach to education. The Zapatistas are a revolutionary group in Chiapas, Mexico, made up mostly of poor, indigenous farmers — and they declared independence from the Mexican government in 1994, after the Mexican president signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Though the Mexican military continues to intimidate them, the Zapatistas have managed to exercise autonomy (self-governance) by creating their own schools, health clinics, and justice system. Their schools are especially unique in their approach to education. The Zapatistas place a large emphasis on language learning—no student is ever told to give up their native language and learn any “dominate” language. Since all languages are accepted and encouraged, many students in Zapatista schools are polylingual—they know more than one, two, three, or even four indigenous languages. Furthermore, Zapatistas don’t see knowledge as a commodity that can be bought and sold. If someone has knowledge, they are expected to pass it down to the next generation—for that reason, students are never charged for education, nor are “education promoters” make a profit. Education promoters of course have all their needs (food, clothing, lodging) met by the Zapatista community, but they do not receive excess pay—a very different model than what we have in the US, where college tuition can reach $58,000/year. Zapatista lessons, moreover, often happen outdoors, where children receive plenty of visual and kinetic stimulation—which they absolutely need to learn. The Zapatista model of edcuation reminds us that there are alternatives to public education in practice, that we can have an education that centers student dignity—but it also reminds us that we cannot rely on the government to ever provide us with it.

In this episode, we investigate the liberal and the radical approach to public education. Liberals see public education as a good, democratic idea, and even as a human right; they believe the issues with education stem from certain school policies (such as funding, teacher training, and school discipline); and they believe that we can solve the issues with public education by convincing our Congress and Board of Education to change these policies. Radicals, however, see public education as indoctrination by default. Even if public schools had the most updated facilities and the latest technology, they would still be institutions of control and discipline, designed to prepare children for a life in the workforce. Unlike liberals, radicals don’t believe the issues in public school come from specific policies; they believe the issues are inherent. As a result, radicals believe we need an entire restructuring of our political system in order to fix the problems—and until that political upheaval happens, radicals say we must always remain critical of the education we receive in schools.

In this episode, we investigate different ways of looking at revolution, particularly the mainstream “idealist” view and the less popular “materialist” view. While both views of revolution are valuable, we conclude that we need a more materialist approach to revolution—and that the revolution begins at home.