Fall of Freedom: A Community Conversation within Talkin’ Bout A Revolution Presented in conjunction with Pyaari Azaadi’s solo exhibition at Pen + Brush and DRUM Beats - a sibling organization of DRUM - Desis Rising Up & Moving, and builds on its legacy of organizing working-class Indo-Caribbean and South Asian communities to build movements, and our capacities to transform political systems so that they serve our collective needs.

We’re confronted by uncertainty everywhere we look. What can you do right now? What should you be doing?  Hear from longtime activists and organizers in conversation with local artists as we make sense of the moment. Many of the panelists are featured in Pyaari’s exhibit Talkin’ Bout A Revolution and are testaments to the fact that our communities have and will continue to survive crises in by uniting. 

Meet and celebrate artists, organizers, and change-makers whose community is finally being recognized for their work.

Panelists include:

• Mohiba Ahmed, Volunteer of DRUM + DRUMBeats

Mohiba Ahmed, a dedicated volunteer at DRUM Beats. Ahmed brings extensive experience from grassroots feminist movements and student rights organizations in Pakistan and is a founding member of the Progressive Students’ Collective and Haqooq-e-Khalq Party Pakistan.

• Zubi Ahmed, Comedian

  
  

Zubi Ahmed is a Bangladeshi-American writer, comedian, and filmmaker from New York City. Short in height and temper, Zubi is most aptly described as a homicidal softy on stage and in real life. She effortlessly connects to audiences from all walks of life with her relatable and belligerent humor. As a filmmaker, Zubi was the recipient of the BBC Diversity Scholarship for her short film Rupali V. Society, and her web-series, Polterheist, was selected to screen at South Asian Film Festival of America and NY Lift-Off Film Fest. Zubi is also one of the co-creators and hosts of popular NYC comedy show, Kutti Gang which has been featured on New York Times and PBS AllArts. Zubi’s writing has most recently been recognized by The Blacklist’s Muslim List for her unique and tumultuous dark comedy pilot Brooklyn Bengalis. You can catch Zubi on an episode of Ramy in Season 3, on stage somewhere in the city, or loitering at a local coffee shop attempting to manufacture a meet cute.

• Nabila Chowdhury, DRUM + DRUMBeats West Queens Youth Organizer

Nabila Chowdhury is a Bangladeshi-American organizer from Queens, New York, who has been part of DRUM’s community since 2014. After years of organizing as a youth member, they joined staff in 2022 as a Youth Organizer. Nabila is deeply rooted in DRUM’s gender justice work through Ekshate, and today they lead the summer youth program, help build student-led organizing across school sites, and recently supported DRUM’s young leaders to win a historic victory through DRUMBeats in electing Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

• Yashica Dutt, Author and Journalist

  
  

Yashica Dutt is an award-winning author of Coming Out as Dalit, an internationally acclaimed Dalit journalist and among the most recognized global voices on caste. Dutt’s work has been published in the New York Times, Foreign Policy and The Atlantic, and has been featured in the Guardian, BBC and Lincoln Center. Coming Out as Dalit, first published in South Asia in 2019, became a best-seller and is currently part of the curriculum in over 50 universities worldwide, including Harvard and UC Berkeley. Coming Out as Dalit was the first book written in English by a Dalit author to win the prestigious Indian Arts and Letters Award for young writers in 2020 and Dutt was involved in the passing of the first-in-nation anti-caste bill in Seattle in 2023. A revised and updated version of Coming Out as Dalit was published worldwide by Beacon Press in 2024. She graduated from Columbia Journalism School and lives in Brooklyn

• Nadine Faraj, Artist

Nadine Faraj is an artist of watercolour, installation and video. She is best known for her depictions of the human figure in varying degrees of abstraction where subjects emerge as deeply psychological beings. Faraj is a person of Iraqi-Jewish and German descent who says “Never again means never again for anyone”. 

• Chaumtoli Huq, Professor of Law at CUNY, Founder of Law@theMargins

Chaumtoli Huq is a leading expert on labor and employment law, migration, and human rights, with a focus on how law and social movements advance justice for marginalized workers in the U.S. and South Asia. She is a Professor of Law at the CUNY School of Law and the Founder and Editor of Law@theMargins (www.lawatthemargins.com), an innovative law and media platform amplifying grassroots voices and movement lawyering.

Bridging scholarship, media, and activism, Huq uses multimedia storytelling and community-engaged research to document struggles for labor and migrant justice and collective power. Her work Sramik Awaaz: Workers’ Voices (https://lawatthemargins.com/2015/09/07/video-sramik-awaaz-workers-voices-documentary-short/) , and her digital archive, Chai Justice (https://chaijustice.com/), highlight the lives and organizing of garment and tea workers in Bangladesh. 

A long-time movement lawyer, Huq has dedicated her career to advancing workers’ rights and building community power. She has held leadership roles at Legal Services NYC and MFY Legal Services, and founded the first South Asian Workers’ Rights Project at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund as a Skadden Fellow. She was also the first staff attorney for the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. Today, she continues to advise grassroots movements and independent collectives in the U.S. and Bangladesh, including recent efforts to support employment lawyers defending political and Palestine-related speech.

Huq has been recognized with the 2019 Access to Justice Leadership Award (South Asian Bar Association of New York), the 2020 Daynard Public Interest Visiting Fellowship, the 2022 Wendland-Cook Academic Fellowship at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and as a 2023 Fulbright U.S. Senior Scholar in Málaga, Spain and Visiting Scholar in Sicily, researching South Asian migration to Europe.