My name is Linda Sarsour. I was
born in the best neighborhood in Brooklyn, Sunset Park. Why was it the
best neighborhood? Tell me about it when you were growing up.
It is the place that I wish everybody in the United
States lived in. It is
one of the most diverse communities in New York City, but also
it reminded me of the villages that my parents came
from. And my mom and dad who came from living under military occupation
in Palestine from a very small village called Al Bireh in the West
Bank, my parents believe that our Sunset Park neighborhood was Al Bireh.
Not only was it home to a very large Palestinian community that also
shared the same village my parents came from but even the way in which
we interacted with our Puerto Rican neighbors, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Honduran
neighbors, there was a community feel to it. Your
parents yelled at other people's kids.
Your kids, if you were at home, someone else picked up your kid from
school. There was just this kind of village feeling, that I think my
parents yearned to find when they came to the States and they absolutely
found that in Sunset Park.
And the village mentality came for us because in Palestine, when you go
to our village, your parents don't care about you. They let you run
the streets because they know that the neighbors are gonna watch out for
you, and that everybody kinda knows each other. And that's kind of how
it was on my block, even though the people on my block weren't all
Palestinians, they were Yemeni. I had a lot of Puertorican neighbors,
Dominican, Ecuadorian, Honduran neighbors. My mom let us run on the street,
and on our street, and she would know that if I was messing
around or my sisters did anything that the
Mexican mom of the block was gonna let her know, or the Yemeni mom,
two houses down from us was gonna say something. So
it really was a community feel like I felt like all the moms
in the neighborhood, we actually used to call them auntie because...
And they used to be like, "Why do you call me auntie?" And
I'm like, "That's just how we do with my culture. If you're older,
my mom makes us call you auntie." And it
really was that feel. People sharing food in the neighborhood,
especially when we had... My street always had block parties. We had a
block party every weekend. Starting in June, July, August, every weekend
we had a block party.
And just watching the moms come out and share food across the street,
it always reminded my mom of being in Palestine.