People's Power Lab

Organizing Against Shaw Rezoning and Defending King Khalid Masjid The following letter-to-the-editor was published in the News and Observer on June 25, 2023. The Raleigh City Council’s decision to rezone Shaw Unive rsity’s properties was a massive disappointment for Black, Brown, Muslim, and working-class community members. Opposition to rezoning brought together a diverse coalition, ranging from Shaw students and alums who want to maintain the historic character of their campus, Muslim community members who want to save a mosque on the campus, and Raleigh community members who are opposed to gentrification in downtown Raleigh neighborhoods. Opponents of rezoning organized multiple protests against it and expressed their opposition to it during city council meetings. After the divided vote favoring the rezoning, coalition members will redouble grassroots organizing against policies and elected officials who value development over people. Protest in defense of King Khalid Masjid in Rale...

 Organizing Against Religious Extremism in Pakistan On August 16th, a mob attacked 22 churches, 50 Christian homes and even a Christian graveyard in the Pakistani city of Jarranwala in response to accusation of “blasphemy” (sources: AlJazeera, Reuters). As a response, many South Asian and Muslim community members joined a protest in Raleigh, North Carolina, to condemn the attack against the Christian community in Pakistan. We drew connections between inequality and rise in violence in Pakistan and other parts of the world. Participants resolved to continue organizing against extremism and violence at home and abroad. We look forward to continuing to organize for social justice with you all! Check out an article and pictures by Rohingya refugee organizer, Arafat Islam, on the protest against anti-Christian violence in Pakistan. Peoples Unite Against Religious Extremism  by Arafat Islam We all gathered up in Downtown Raleigh, and we were protesting on the sidewalk about the viol...

Local to Global Perspectives: Challenges Faced By the Healthcare System in Pakistan by Minal Zaman Cheema* Healthcare in Pakistan faces several challenges, including inadequate infrastructure, limited access to quality healthcare services, and major disparities between rural and urban areas. Pakistan has a mixed healthcare system comprising of public and private healthcare facilities. The public sector includes government-funded hospitals and dispensaries, while the private sector includes privately owned setups, clinics, and laboratories. The public system and infrastructure in Pakistan is often overburdened and vastly under-resourced. Government hospitals can face issues such as overcrowding, lack of essential medical supplies, and long waiting hours. The quality of care can also vary between different public setups. The private sector offers a range of services and is often perceived to have better facilities and shorter wait times compared to the public system. However, private he...

The Story of My Life by Arafat Islam*   We are Rohingya refugees who have risked a lot of things to be where we are now. It’s all thanks to God that we have come this far and are in a safe place now. In our country (Myanmar), there are a lot of things going on. We could barely be outside or even go anywhere without feeling scared and afraid. Most of our villages get burned down by the military when they see us; they do not recognize us as people. Instead, they probably think we are some kind of people that do not belong in this world, but we are all still human beings, just like everyone else. Many of our people get killed whenever they lay their eyes on us or spot us. We could barely be anywhere because they made us fear what they would do to us if they found us. We went through so much trouble to escape because if we got caught, it would be all over for us. So many days went by, and after so much traveling, we finally made it out safely to Malaysia. In around 2007, my dad went t...

Welcome to the Blog of People's Power Lab. The People’s Power Lab is a Triangle, North Carolina-based organization with a mission to build the power of Black, Brown, and Muslim working-class youth and adults through political education, media justice, and recruiting them to the broader progressive movement. Goals - Build consciousness of our crises and solution to our crises through political education. - Develop grassroots media strategies to amplify our message. - Organize our people to take actions against crises faced by them. - Recruit community members to the broader social justice movement with an intersectional lens. PPL organizes working-class African American; South Asian/Middle Eastern immigrants, and refugees in the Triangle area of North Carolina, and Rocky Mount, NC. Many of refugee members in our base include Rohingya, Afghan, Syrian, Somali, Congolese, Rwandan, and other refugees. Some of the crises we organize for include healthcare/mental health justice, worker...