The Feeling of Being Watched: A Town Hall Discussion on Profiling and Surveillance in Dearborn

The Arab American National Museum and Take On Hate invite you to a FREE Town Hall Discussion on profiling and surveillance, which affects many communities, including Arab and Muslim communities.

Award-winning freelance journalist and former Al Jazeera America producer Assia Bounadoui will appear to present a portion of her highly anticipated feature-length directorial debut, The Feeling of Being Watched. A town hall-style discussion with Bounadoui and Dawud Walid of CAIR-MI and audience Q&A will follow. Additional panelists to be announced.

Assia Boundaoui is an Algerian American journalist and filmmaker based in Chicago. She has reported from the Middle East and Africa on international affairs and the arts while her work has appeared on NPR, BBC, Al Jazeera, VICE and CNN among other outlets. She served as a producer on the HBO documentary film MANHUNT, which received the 2013 Emmy Award for best documentary.

Boundaoui is a recipient of the McCloy Fellowship in International Reporting from the American Council on Germany and received a Mark of Excellence Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for her reporting. She has an M.A. from New York University’s Graduate School of Journalism and is fluent in Arabic. Boundaoui is currently directing her first feature length documentary about growing-up under surveillance in her Arab American neighborhood outside of Chicago.

Dawud Walid is currently the executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is a chapter of America’s largest advocacy and civil liberties organization for American Muslims. Walid is also a member of the Michigan Muslim Community Council Imams Committee.

Walid has been interviewed and quoted in approximately 150 media outlets ranging from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, CNN, BBC, FOX News and Al Jazeera. Furthermore, Walid was a political blogger for the Detroit News from January 2014 to January 2016, has had essays published in the 2012 book All-American: 45 American Men on Being Muslim and the 2014 book Qur’an in Conversation. He was also a featured character in the 2013 HBO documentary The Education of Mohammad Hussein.

Walid has lectured at over 50 institutions of higher learning about Islam, interfaith dialogue and social justice including at Harvard University and DePaul University. He spoke at the 2008 and 2011 Congressional Black Caucus Conventions alongside prominent speakers such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Congressman Keith Ellison.