Muslim Teen Poets Invited to Elks Club -- Which Called the Cops...
Slam poets Muslim Girls Making Change were invited to dine and perform last week at the Burlington Elks Lodge — where a club officer called the police on them. The teenagers have slammed the incident as racial profiling.
"This kind of stuff happens all the time and we're sick of it," member Kiran Waqar told Seven Days on Monday.
"Being a woman of color, I'm going to be getting all these experiences," said another one of the poets, Balkisa Omar.
The high schoolers were invited to a banquet hosted by the Women of UVM social group at the Elks Lodge on North Avenue last Wednesday. The quartet agreed to arrive early to help Omar with a school project. Since the event was scheduled to start at 6 p.m., the teenagers gathered at the back of the building, away from traffic, to do some audio recording.
"We were just talking a little bit, giggling ... average volume of four teenage girls," said Waqar. They were excited about their upcoming July trip to Minnesota, where they will join Michelle Obama and Colin Kaepernick in receiving awards from the National Education Association for their work in promoting human and civil rights.
At some point, a man later identified as lodge secretary Moe Decelles knocked on a window to get their attention, the young women recounted. A couple of minutes later, Decelles approached them and said, "I called the police on you. They're coming right now and I told them you're doing drugs," Waqar recalled.
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https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2018/05/08/muslim-teen-poets-invited-to-elks-club-which-called-the-cops
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