October 2000
Flyer, meeting summary, and contact sign-up for the Muslim Education Coalition & Community Alliance (MECCA).
Notes: MECCA was an organization established to address the labor needs of Muslim employees of New York City's Board of Education. Majida Abdul-Karim, daughter of Aliyah Abdul-Karim, Umi's close friend and mentor, was teaching at the time and got, to quote Fannie Lou Hammer, “sick and tired of being sick and tired” of being penalized for taking time off to celebrate Muslim religious holidays. Unlike Christian and Jewish employees, Muslim teachers and school staff had to take from their 10-day paid leave time to attend their holidays and Muslim students would rack up absences on their school records. Accordingly, one of the key issues at the advertised meeting was receiving time off, without penalty, for Friday prayer, the two Eid holidays, and for the Hajj. After Majida reached out to her sister, Aisha Toure, and got Umi and her mother, Aliyah (a long-time education activist and leader in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville struggle) on board, MECCA was born. Majida even typed up these minutes. While the organization was established in 2000, small cohorts of Black Muslim educators in NYC public schools had already been advocating around these issues of religious equity for at least two decades. The early work of these teachers and paraprofessionals set the foundation for the official recognition of the two Eids as public school holidays in New York City in 2015.