Meet Kifah Shah
Most days, you’ll spot political organizer Kifah Shah on one of the post-work walks she takes to distract her son and decompress after the day. Her favorite routes take her around Madison Square Park, down to Union Square, or through the West Village — often, with a stop along the way for a slice of pizza or a late-in-the-day coffee. We stopped by Kifah’s home to chat about becoming a mother, student organizing, and reading Marx when she was ten.
on her morning routine
My morning routine has changed a lot since becoming a mom. Before, I’d wake up, do a grounding exercise, set my intentions for the day, do a full skincare regimen, and make coffee with breakfast. Now, I wake up around 6 am or 7 am with my son Yusef, who’s six months old. We play together, sing songs, FaceTime my parents, and then he takes a nap around 9 am. The term “routine” feels very generous for how my life goes these days, but the mornings are the most reliable part of my day. I love that time together because the day is still quiet, he’s jubilant, and it’s the sweetest start.
on learning alternative political and social history
When we first came to the United States from Pakistan, from ages three to eight, we lived in a diverse part of LA. I still remember the townhouse we lived in and the neighbors I’d roller skate and play board games with after school; my friends were immigrants from Iran, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Japan. When we moved to Palm Desert, I noticed immediately that my school and neighborhood were no longer full of immigrants. My dad wanted us to live in that area because he thought the schools were excellent and he always prioritized education. When he moved to the U.S., it was on the heels of a lot of political and social unrest in the country, and he always imagined more opportunities for us. But my parents have never tried to assimilate. I love that about them. My dad is a socialist; he doesn’t subscribe to the mores of capitalism. He never wanted us to, either. Neither of my parents made a concerted attempt to be countercultural, it’s just how they were. I learned a lot about how to be in the world from them. At home, we received our own alternative political and social lessons; my dad would always correct the inaccurate history we were taught in school. He had me reading Marx, Chomsky, Zinn, and so many others by age ten.
Living in Palm Desert was the first time I noticed my own “difference” racially or culturally. That was the first time that I recognized that I'm not white. It became more solidified, of course, when 9/11 happened. I was 11. I asked my dad, “Should we put up a flag?” because I saw everybody doing it in school. And he said, “Why would you feel like you have to do that?” He was prompting me to interrogate why I felt like I needed to prove my Americanness. So I started to be a critical thinker at an early age, thanks to my dad. Soon after, during the invasion of Iraq, I had a teacher who said that one entire city in Iraq isn't worth the life of one U.S. soldier. It was such a jarring statement, and it made me really upset. In that moment, I didn't fully understand, but the reason why I felt so connected to Iraqis even though I'm not Iraqi is because of the general, growing anti-Muslim animus. It was because of Islamophobia and how Muslims are collectively othered that I knew that statement my teacher made was as much about me as it was about Iraqis in the Middle East. So I came back to class the next day and I said this war is in fact an occupation meant to extract resources. Invading Iraq was not about finding the perpetrators of 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction. I think I was 13 when that happened and I haven’t stopped pushing back since. Knowing early on that I will always been seen as “other” fortified me, so did what my parents taught me, pushing me to move towards organizing and towards a more critical stance on the U.S. government.
““I became really politicized at an early age, from seeing that I was different but also from knowing that my difference wasn’t something that needed to be muted or dulled. I think my parents taught me how to use that as a skill, as something that was to my advantage. That has shaped my entire life’s work.””
on student organizing
Going to Berkeley deeply informed the person I am and the work that I do. I was in Students for Justice in Palestine, and worked on divestment. I was also in a lot of other multi-racial and multicultural organizing spaces. All of those experiences really taught me how to be a field organizer because I worked on several campaigns and learned different strategies and tactics. As I get older, I’m still learning, and my work also looks very different now. Student organizing is some of the best organizing, though. It's deeply relational and loving. You learn so much from each other and you learn at a young age that the work that you do builds off of the work of people who came before you. People before me had done all this research so that we could meticulously plan for years for divestment to be proposed, and then in my last year, it failed, but then people came after us and got further. And now, seeing these encampments at Columbia and all across the world is demonstrative of the fact that the work that you do will not necessarily result in fruits anytime soon, but everything you pour in now will benefit others who come after you and will come to fruition eventually. It's so worthwhile. Learning that lesson early on was really important because it made me feel hope all the time. It made me feel like we always have to keep investing in each other and building an alternative reality for ourselves and each other because it will come true if we just keep going.
My experience at Berkeley was probably some of the best organizing that I've ever done. Students are powerful when they’re coordinated and they're fighting for a campaign. We see that today. I was approached by Columbia to teach a course on advocacy and organizing at the School of Public Health in early 2021. My class is called Spurring Social Justice in Public Health. The students are wonderful. It's refreshing to be around people who are not just curious and inquisitive, but really excited, optimistic, and creative about what change they want to bring about in the world. As we’re speaking, I am just leaving the People’s Graduation: a Gathering for Peace and Justice, organized by faculty and staff as an expression of the profound respect we have for our students. After Columbia canceled the general graduation, we did this to especially honor of all the students who were at the encampment, all of the work that they did, and how they are a moral compass for us all. Any time my own moral clarity has gotten fuzzy, I’ve looked to my mentors and my students to realign myself. Columbia is so lucky that its students orchestrated the Gaza encampment and set the nation's eyes on the genocide that's happening in Palestine. But we know the administration has been ruthless to those students. We are lucky to have the example they set so we can better understand what it means to be principled and clear in this moment.
““I think hope is the bare minimum. We have to keep on hoping that everything that we’re doing for a better world is going to work. I’m not somebody who’s being attacked, bombarded, or having entire generations of my family wiped out like in Gaza. I’m not living in the terrible conditions that many people in our own communities are enduring locally . So at the bare minimum, we have to keep up hope and do all we can within our power to change conditions people live under because we owe that to each other.” ”
on culture shock
I graduated in 2010, right after the economy collapsed. I'd majored in Ethnic Studies and I felt like my degree might not be legible in this new world. So I decided to study economic policy at the London School of Economics. I was interested in policy, and the degree also involved a lot of econometrics, which was a “hard skill” I really enjoyed. LSE wasn’t easy for me. I didn’t study economics much before, and at first I really didn’t understand what was going on. I was totally outside my comfort zone.
After I graduated with my MPA, I moved to Pakistan to do development work. All the romanticization of a young immigrant kid going back “home” just came tumbling down. I was slapped with a culture shock, which I hadn’t expected since I was born there, but we moved to the States when I was three. You can't just insert yourself somewhere all of a sudden and think you know exactly what the people and the culture and the place are all about. But that's also why development was problematic. A lot of money is poured into Pakistan, especially into education, which at face value seems like a good thing. But it's also laced with racist ideas, and it doesn't move people towards a better place for themselves and their communities. Outside interests were dictating what local communities need. That's a colonial mindset. I came to understand that development is not what I wanted to go into further. I, at heart, am an organizer and I really believe in creating solutions with and not for people. It reaffirmed the fact that I love to be relational, I like to build with folks, I like to organize.
on coming back to organizing
When I came back to the States, I started working as a digital organizer, which was a new arena for me. I learned a new skill — how to do digital campaigns. I worked at a place called MPower Change for three years and then I pivoted in 2020 to doing democracy defense work after co-authoring Hold the Line. During the 2020 uprisings after the police murder of George Floyd, I did a bunch of digital teach-ins with my friends Laura Li and Bianca Nozaki Nasser. We did this series called “Organizing From Where You’re At,” a series of introductory organizing coursesfor those who were new to organizing and becoming politicized and asking how they could support the Movement for Black Lives. I did that outside of my job, and it led to other wonderful opportunities. And so did Hold the Line. Thousands of people came to our teach-ins on how to do democracy defense work and more than 75,000 people read our Guide. That led to me meeting the Reimagine Collective team during the run-off election in Georgia and I’ve been working with them ever since.
““Islam is the basis for everything I do in my life. My intentions, my worldview, and my way of life are entirely based on being a Muslim. That means pursuing ihsan, excellence, in everything I do — from how I host a guest to how I progress in my career. It shapes every single aspect of my life, for the better.””
on moving to new york
When I left Pakistan, I moved back to California. I didn’t intend on living in the U.S. again, but I met Ali, my husband, on Coffee Meets Bagel, and he lived in New York. And I did a residency at TED in New York City in 2017. I lived there for about four months, which worked out well because it was a chance to get to know him in person instead of just on WhatsApp. So then I was going between New York and LA all the time, and when we got married 2019, I moved here. It had never been my desire to move to New York, but I’m really glad it came into my life. I feel at home here. I have such a wonderful community. I hesitate to say I am a New Yorker because I think real New Yorkers do not like that, so I say I’m pretending to be a New Yorker.
on motherhood
I love being a mom. I've wanted to be a mom for so long. We've been on our journey for a few years. IVF was illuminating and empowering for me when I finally did it. It gave me a lot of clarity about what was happening in my body and taught me so much about my own reproductive health. That's why I really care about bodily autonomy and abortion access for all. Whether it’s about having a baby through IVF or deciding not to have a baby through abortion, each of us deserves to determine that for ourselves. I was so thankful to be able to access IVF and the services that I need. I'm aware of how at-risk and inaccessible those resources are. It feels like I'm so lucky to be able to be here in this role.
My son was born on November 1st. At first, I was worried that I'd always feel sidelined. This season in my life, and I'm embracing it fully. I'm also trying to figure out how I can contribute long term and sustainably as a new parent. These are the same questions that other folks are asking themselves, including longtime organizers: Where can I be the most useful? How can I plug in best? I think that we need to keep asking ourselves those questions because our roles will change over time. That's what motherhood has taught me.
on her beauty routine
I try to get a facial once a month. I’m not sure if that helps my skin — I think it does, but it’s also just a relaxing thing I do for myself. My morning routine is washing my face with the First Aid Beauty Pure Skin Face Cleanser, followed by the Vichy Mineral 89 Hyaluronic Acid Booster Serum, and then a moisturizer like the Avène Cicalfate+ Restorative Protective Cream. I swear by sunscreen every day, and I use Elta MD SPF 50+. In the evenings, I will exfoliate three times a week with the Biossance Squalane + Glycolic Renewal Mask, then use a Vitamin C serum (currently the SkinCeuticals C E Ferulic), followed by my favorite moisturizer, the Murad Intense Recovery Cream.
on her style
I started wearing hijab right after college when I was 21. In the early years of wearing hijab, it felt like I hit puberty again because I was trying to make sense of my style and what I look good in — and more importantly, what I feel good in. I eventually figured it out and loved my style in my London years. The seasons made it easy to be modest and fashionable. Then, when I moved to Karachi, it was so humid and so hot a majority of the time but I also got to enjoy wearing Pakistani clothes that were lightweight, suitable for the weather, and still modest. Moving to NYC, I had to figure out how to dress for the hot and humid summers as a hijabi while ditching the Pakistani clothes, and it felt like puberty all over again. Then, being hijabi and pregnant during an NYC summer was a whole new frontier. I feel like I’m trying to adjust my style yet again, now with a new body since I’m a new mom. I know fashion is always evolving but I prefer a more consistent and classic wardrobe, which I am still trying to cultivate under the circumstances. Right now, I grab a good pair of jeans, an easy button-down, and some cute flats or sneakers and call it a (good) day.
““If new motherhood means that some other roles in my life are secondary, and this role is primary, I can embrace that because I know there’s no state that’s permanent. This is only the current season of my life.””
on what she’s reading
I love Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong, and Every Rising Sun by Jamila Ahmed. And especially right now, I suggest reading anything about Palestine, particularly by Palestinian authors. I love Edward Said’s The Question of Palestine. I don’t have the physical copy of the books right now because I’ve loaned them to friends, but everyone should read Salt Houses by Hala Alyan and The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi. Another book I recommend is We Do This ‘Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba, which includes essays and interviews with the author on topics like abolition, organizing, and liberation. Here’s an excerpt:
“Hope isn’t an emotion, you know? Hope is not optimism…. The idea of hope being a discipline is something I heard from a nun many years ago…. ‘Hope is a discipline and we have to practice it every single day.’ Because in the world we live in, it’s easy to feel a sense of hopelessness, that everything is all baked all the time, that nothing is going to change ever, that people are evil and bad at the bottom…. I just choose differently. I choose to think a different way, and I choose to act in a different way. I choose to trust people until they prove themselves untrustworthy.”
For news, it’s Democracy Now!, always. Any time I wasn’t at the Liberated Zone on campus, I was glued to WKCR and the excellent student journalism from Columbia University students who were reporting live while the university’s administration kept the press out of the Gaza Solidarity encampment. The bravest, most heroic journalism right now is from those on the ground in Gaza like Bisan Owda, Hind Hassan, Hind Khoudary, and many, many more.
kifah’s favorite spots in new york city
Coffee/Cafes: Arabica, Black Fox, La Cabra, Librae, Coffee Project, Variety.
Desserts: Lysée, Caffè Panna, Morgenstern’s, Little Cupcake Bakeshop.
Restaurants: Buvette, Crown Shy, Golden Diner, Minetta Tavern, L’Industrie, Gramercy Tavern, Ci Siamo.
Parks: Madison Square Park, Little Island, the Highline.
images by clémence polès, interview by meghan racklin