April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 26

EQUITY
The Practice of Kinship
By Yakuta Poonawalla
"
I
s the park ready for 50 women in hijabs, Yakuta? " It was a phone
conversation, so I couldn't see her face or her gestures as she asked
this very perturbing question. But her tone was more like joy, as
I think she was visualizing her beloved community running and
roaming freely in nature, far from the drug- and trauma-riddled streets of
the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, which they now called home. Her
beloved community - a mix of Syrian, Lebanese, Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi
and Yemeni families, many of them escaping their war-torn countries,
pining for a normal and safe life for their children and elderly in America.
I knew very little about " Sharifa "
and her Yemeni roots, and what
inspired her to be the voice for her
community at the Cross-Cultural
Community Center, where she serves
as a fierce yet compassionate teacher
and community builder. I knew that
fate had brought us together for a
reason back in 2017. Our first meeting
prior to this phone conversation
had been a video chat with a group
of other community leaders from the
Tenderloin Community Benefit Dis26
Parks & Recreation | APRIL 2 0 2 3
trict (TLCBD) and Arab Resource
and Organizing
Center (AROC).
Our collective dream at this meeting
was to transport the residents of
this neighborhood to a wonderland
in nature where they could celebrate
Eid-ul-fitr without the worry of being
attacked or surrounded by hostility,
violence and racial slurs.
One of the earliest teachings for
our Muslim brothers and sisters involves
the five pillars of Islam. These
pillars of Faith (shahada), Prayer
| PARK S ANDRECRE AT ION . OR G
In San Francisco, women from local
Muslim communities came together to
conduct habitat restoration as part of an
Eid in the Parks program.
(salat), Alms (zakat), Fasting (sawm)
and Pilgrimage (haj) form a way of
life. While I had religiously practiced
some of these pillars until I was a
teenager, the connections started to
happen only when my childhood
upbringing, both in my community
and my family, started to meet my
adulthood spiritual practice and my
growing love and connection with
the more-than-human world. At this
internal junction was where the inner
layers of cultural and social identities
within started to peel, even melt, taking
new shapes and forms, remerging
with renewed and beautiful ways of
seeing and being.
A scribble from my daily journal
reminded me of that dawn morning
when I sat cross-legged on the
floor at home, staring at my window
landscape - a buckeye, a pine, half
a sky - listening to the aural land

April 2023 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of April 2023 - Parks & Recreation

April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - Intro
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - Cover1
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - Cover2
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 1
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 2
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 3
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 4
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 5
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 6
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 7
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 8
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 9
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 10
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 11
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 12
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 13
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 14
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 15
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 16
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 17
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 18
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 19
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 20
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 21
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 22
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 23
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 24
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 25
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 26
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 27
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 28
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 29
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 30
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 31
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 32
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 33
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 34
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 35
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 36
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 37
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 38
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 39
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 40
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 41
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 42
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 43
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 44
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 45
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 46
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 47
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 48
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 49
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 50
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 51
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 52
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 53
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 54
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 55
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 56
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - Cover3
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - Cover4
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/april-2024
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/march-2024
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/february-2024
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/january-2024
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/december-2023
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/november-2023
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/october-2023
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/september-2023
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/august-2023
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/july-2023
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/june-2023
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/may-2023
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/april-2023
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/march-2023
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/february-2023
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/january-2023
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/december-2022
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/november-2022
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/october-2022
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/september-2022
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/august-2022
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/july-2022
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/june-2022
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/may-2022
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/april-2022
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/march-2022
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/february-2022
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/january-2022
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/december-2021
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/november-2021
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/october-2021
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/september-2021
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/august-2021
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/july-2021
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/june-2021
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/may-2021
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/april-2021
https://ezine.nrpa.org/nrpa/ParksRecreationMagazine/march-2021
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