About

Jamila Hammami is a cross-movement grassroots community organizer, border abolitionist scholar-activist/organizer, writer, educator, strategist, researcher, resistance archivist, a member of the Resistant Communiques Podcast Collective, a member of the Open Borders Conference Steering Committee, and a Frederick Douglass 200 Bicentennial Honoree.

For 20 years, Jamila’s cross-movement organizing, teaching, and writing have bridged interconnected topics and struggles, including border and carceral studies and abolition; anti-imperialism/militarism; political economy; racial, immigrant, and queer justice; and bridging the prison-industrial complex, military-industrial complex, and border abolition movements.

Jamila’s scholarly writing and research encompass a broad range of interconnected topics, including human rights, race, the MENA region, migration, political economy, empire, militarism, fascism, surveillance, labor, community organizing, movement strategy, borders and boundaries, LGBTQI/PLHIV communities, and carceral studies.

A Sundance Creative Change and an Opportunity Agenda Communications Institute alum, Jamila focuses on movement, narrative, and communications strategy, dedicating themselves to building People Power to make fundamental change.

Jamila’s several scholarly book chapter publications and journal articles include a co-authored chapter in the just-released Resistance and Abolition in the Borderlands: Confronting Trump’s Reign of Terror (2024), a co-authored journal article in Radical History Review’s Special Issue: Alternatives to the Anthropocene: A Roundtable on Environmental Injustice and Border Abolition (2023), solo-authored chapter in Queer and Trans Migrations: Dynamics of Illegalization, Detention, And Deportation (2020), and co-authored chapter in Queer Activism After Marriage Equality (2018). Jamila’s additional written work is in Common Dreams (2022) and Left Voice (2019). 

Jamila has given numerous talks, seminars, and panels, including testifying at the UNHCR Convenings in Geneva, Switzerland. Receiving international recognition, the International Detention Coalition’s 2016 LGBTI Position Paper Report cites Jamila’s work with LGBTQI/PLHIV in post-immigrant prisons as best practices for LGBTQI/PLHIV-sensitive case management support. 

Jamila has led numerous workshops and seminars, training thousands of people over the last 15 years, locally, nationally, and internationally, on topics including Know Your Rights, migration, borders and the carceral state, border abolition, political economy, labor, LGBTQI+/PLHIV migratory communities, community organizing, and resistance.

Recently, Jamila spoke at the Stockton International Workshop on Refugees and Displacement to Mark 70 Years since the U.N. Refugee Convention, on “Queer and Trans Displacement, Pandemic Politics, and Racialized Borders”, as a part of the workshop, Protection Gaps: Politics, Law, and Activism. Jamila was also a part of the 2022 #ImmigrationAND Scholar Series, speaking at the closing scholar panel event, #ImmigrationANDAbolitionistFutures.

In 2021, Jamila provided a keynote address with Karma R. Chávez at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication Conference at the University of Pennsylvania, entitled “Communicating Abolition: Radical Possibilities for Post-Pandemic Futures: A Dialogue with Jamila Hammami and Karma R. Chávez.” In 2020, Jamila spoke on austerity and labor alongside Dean Spade, Hannah Appel, David Xu Borgonjon, Sami Disu, Nicholas Mirzoef, Yuh-Line Niou, Sandy Nurse, and Naomi Zewde at the Vera Institute’s ART • WORK • PLACE: Emergency Sessions II, chaired by Nikki Columbus. 

Jamila is humbled to receive awards, honors, and recognition for their organizing, community, and advocacy work. Including the 2023 Recognition for Arab American Heritage Month from Pride at Work Philadelphia, the 2019 Frederick Douglass 200 Bicentennial Abolitionist Honoree from Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives, and the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in Washington, D.C., among others.