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 17 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.

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.