Seven days a week, at eleven in the morning, Imad Khachan opens the door of his Greenwich Village chess shop. Chess Forum is the last of the old-style chess parlors in New York City—a holdout in the Big Apple’s rapidly homogenizing retail scene. It’s a place where grandmasters, beginners, celebrities, students, seniors, kindergartners, subway train engineers, policemen, and firemen rub elbows at the well-worn tables. At Chess Forum, $5 an hour gets you a spot for a game of pickup chess or backgammon. If you’re a senior, you’ll get your board time discounted for $1 an hour. And true to Mr. Khachan’s commitment to families and his hope that one day he’ll be lucky enough to help mentor the next big chess champ, kids play free.

Most days, it’s midnight when Mr. Khachan closes up shop. Sometimes, if the competition gets intense, Mr Khachan keeps the lights on until dawn—or at least until the last of the most indefatigable and determined of his regulars have exhausted either their game strategies or their caffeine-induced wakefulness.

Mr. Khachan, a Palestinian immigrant from Lebanon with an abiding love of the written word, emigrated to America with the intention of earning a PhD in literature. Instead, he became a shopkeeper and a chess vendor with writers’ portraits and quotes lovingly arrayed across his shop’s walls. It’s a display that not only seems to broadcast Mr. Khachan’s lifelong commitment to writing and writers but also serves as a gentle nudge to his patrons to take some time out from the game and the daily grind to reflect on some of life’s lessons as illuminated by the writings of some of the greatest of America’s wordsmiths.

In the bittersweet video below, directed by Molly Brass and Stephen Tyler and featured on The Atlantic’s online video series, we get a glimpse into the life of the extraordinary Mr. Khachan.  The portrait of this warm and reflective gentleman is deeply moving. As we get to know Mr. Khachan, it seems inevitable to be reminded of how little many of us know about the distinctive life stories of the millions of immigrants, both legal and illegal, living amongst us as our neighbors or working alongside us or for us. After watching the video, I was struck by how important it is not just to listen to the stories of immigrants but also to actively seek out and share those stories as the most powerful antidote to the corrosive and false anti-immigrant rhetoric bandied about by Trump and others. If the intention of Molly Brass, Stephen Tyler, and Imad Khachan was to encourage us to question   stereotypes and to always be reminded of the distinctiveness of each individual’s life experience, then they have succeeded in that and more.

Immigrants’ economic contribution to society

There is another dimension, too, to Mr. Khachan’s story that goes beyond a single individual’s life story. There is the much larger narrative of how essential immigrants like Mr. Khachan are to the economic life of their adopted homes—whether that’s New York City or cities, towns, and villages across the country.

And how essential to New York’s powerhouse economy are individuals like Mr. Khachan and others who make up the city’s immigrant communities? The answer is unequivocally that immigrants are an irreplaceable part in the engine that powers the city’s economy. The numbers are simply staggering. The facts are nothing less than a deep rebuke to the false narrative that paints the immigrant as a burden to society.

Here are the facts—not the spin—according to the New York City Comptroller’s Office:

• 3 million workers, or 46% of workers, in New York City are immigrants.
• There are 83,000 immigrant business owners, representing 51% of all New York City businesses.
• Immigrants account for $100 billion in earned income in New York City, or 32% of the city’s total earnings.

Watch the video here:

The post Getting to know the lives of immigrants appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A short primer on countering some of the anti-Muslim myths and misinformation politicians and the media are feeding us following the terrorist attacks in Paris:
Fiction
America is a shining example of religious tolerance for all.

Fact
There are 784 known hate groups in the U.S. In 2014 Muslims were the targets of 154 hate crimes. In 2015 there have been 63 recorded attacks on mosques in the U.S. Since the horrific attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis on November 13, 2015, there have been 71 documented Islamophobic attacks in the U.S., many of them involving women wearing hijab.

Fiction
Only “real” Americans belong in America.

Fact
Out of a total population of 308.7 million Americans, 305.8 million of us are either immigrants or refugees or the descendants of immigrants, refugees, or slaves brought to these shores involuntarily. Only 2.9 million of us can claim historically to be “real” Americans.

Fiction
Muslims and Islamic organizations are failing to speak out against terrorists and terrorist organizations.

Fact 1
Brave and determined Muslim journalists are risking their lives to expose the crimes of ISIS—journalists like Syrian Ibrahim Abdul Qader of the journalist alliance Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, who along with his friend Fares Hamadi were brutally murdered in Turkey after smuggling news of ISIS crimes out of the Islamic State.

Muslim academics, politicians, and ordinary citizens of all ages in countries around the world, sickened by the crimes perpetrated against innocent Muslims and non-Muslims, are risking—and sometimes losing—their lives to speak out and reject the violence and those committing it.

Fact 2
Following the attacks at Le Bataclan, the list of Muslim organizations issuing unequivocal condemnations of terrorist tactics and attacks has grown ever larger

Here is just a partial list culled from various online sources:

United States
American Muslims for Palestine
Council on American-Islamic Relations
Islamic Circle of America
Muslim American Society
Muslim Alliance in North America
Muslim Umman of North America
Muslim Legal Fund of America
Mosque Cares
The Council on American-Islamic Relations
Republican Muslim Coalition

Germany
Muslim Coordination Council of Germany
Milli Gorus Organization
Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat

Netherlands
Council of Moroccan Mosques
Liaisons to Muslims and Government

France
Etudiants Musulmans de France
French Muslim Council
The Grand Mosque
Islamic Centre in Courcouronnes

Great Britain
Muslim Council of Britain
Representing 500 affiliated Muslim organizations and communities

India
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community

Ireland
Al-Mustafa Islamic Center
Irish Muslim Peace and Integration Council

The post Anti-Muslim myths and misinformation in post-Paris America appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Nothing can be un-american if everything is American. Yet people feel the need to create their own convoluted presumptions as to what should and should not be permissibly “American” (often including, but not limited to: McDonalds, dieting, money, the homeless, guns, world peace, blue jeans, bikini tops, and baseball). Those that say, “You must not be an American if you don’t like [insert “American” thing here]” are actually the anti-Americans themselves.

America is illustrious because this is where people don’t see appearances; they see personality, potential, and capacity–where skin color is irrelevant and egalitarianism abundant because everyone has an equal opportunity for success in America. Americans are singularized by multitudes: of people, of beliefs, of hopes, of dreams, and furthermore, by our acceptance and equality for those multitudes. So who is anyone to limit that multitude in any way? To turn America’s back on the very core principle it was founded upon with just one utterance?

There is a reason people leave the homes their ancestors have lived in for decades and move to America. There is a reason America is “the best country in the world.” There is a reason America is synonymous worldwide with liberty and justice for all. That reason is not because someone took something fundamentally American- because everything is American- and deemed it “un-american.”

So, if there is anything that is truly, honest-to-goodness “un-american,” it is dubbing someone or something “un-american.”

The post “Un-american” appeared first on Occasional Planet.