Spring 2025 RRS Newsletter

I was born and raised in Sacramento, California by my mother who built community around me, hustled to create as many opportunities as possible for me to grow, and who taught me the power and responsibility of the word — both in speaking and in writing. My mother was my first teacher and first editor, and I carry both her care and sharpness with me, even as this year (2025) marks 15 years since her passing. It was through her that I was connected to and cared for by many different and loving communities. She made it possible for me to learn and practice music, persevere in school, and get connected to my father’s side of my family — my Tongan family and community — as a kid growing up in South Sac. So many patterns of my life now were started with the insistence and persistence of my mother, and I always want to start any story about me by starting with deep respect and love for her. I miss her, and she is still teaching me today.

It is through the love and care of my families and communities in South Sac and Elk Grove that I was supported to succeed in school and feel that I could see education as a critical site of struggle for accurate narratives, self-determination, and organizing. My elders are all teachers, nurses, caretakers, and organizers. It was through their love and support that I was given time and space learn about and connect to my Tongan roots. My father is from Kolomotuʻa, Tonga, and I was able to connect with my Tongan family in Sacramento by playing rugby and being folded into Pacific Islander organizing for our own cultural spaces like language classes, dance and community events. It was through our families coming together to organize for our own space that I was exposed to Tongan cultural values, histories, and ways of caring for one another so far from our ancestral islands. 

With the support and love from my communities in Sacramento, I did well in school and ended up doing my undergrad in Providence, Rhode Island at Brown University. It was through spaces and programs at the Third World Center (now the Brown Center for Students of Color) that I was politically educated by fellow students around issues of imperialism, racism, heterosexism, ableism, and Islamophobia in ways that were relevant to our everyday lives as students of color navigating not only the university, but our own communities back home. I was cared for and educated by professors in the East Asian Studies and Africana Studies departments who deepened my understanding of structures of power, oppression, and the strategies of resistance that come from our communities. 

What was missing in my undergraduate experience was the community and understanding of Pacific Islanders — none of my classes came close to mentioning, let alone studying, the histories and knowledge systems that I had been exposed to in Sacramento from my own Pacific Islander community. I never saw us, and I needed us. For my senior project, I chose to shift my focus to understanding the erasure of Pacific Islanders, and organized a series of events through the Third World Center to bring Pacific Islander narratives to my campus. I am so grateful to have been able to connect with Dr. Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu and Kumu Kawika Alfiche, who came to my campus to share their experiences and knowledges as Pacific Islander teachers and community organizers. It was through Dr. Niumeitolu that I first heard the work of Epeli Hauʻofa — Tongan scholar and activist, whose words changed the course of my life. It was Dr. Niumeitolu and Epeli Hauʻofa words that encouraged me to do graduate work at the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. 

I had the great privilege of completing my Masters and Ph.D. in Hawaiʻi, where I was surrounded by Pacific Islander teachers, students, and communities who were deeply dedicated to defining education on our own terms as Islanders. I was held by and educated by aloha ʻāina whose fierce resistance to U.S. imperialism and strategies of resurgence I carry with me every day. I was held by my Tongan family living in Hawaiʻi throughout my journey through graduate school, and their love and direction are a key reason for my perseverance through my programs. I graduated with my Ph.D. in English, focusing on Pacific Islander literature, Indigenous epistemologies, and decolonial creative writing pedagogies. I graduated from my programs with people who are my chosen family, and I have brought their lessons and relationships with me to my work at SFSU. Kū kiaʻi mauna. Wansolwara. Papua Merdeka. 

I am so deeply grateful to have the opportunity to apply the training and knowledge I’ve received from my communities — from Sacramento to Tonga to Providence to Hawaiʻi — to serve as one of the faculty members of the Critical Pacific Islands and Oceania Studies (CPIOS) minor program at SFSU, housed in the Department of Race and Resistance Studies. This program was fought for and is sustained by student organizing, deep solidarity work between staff and faculty, and the continuing love and support of our communities in the Bay Area. Our work is built on the decades-long work of our Pacific Islander communities to create academic programs that reflect, examine, and apply our community’s deep histories. My work as an artist, teacher, and organizer is dedicated to the continuance of the spaces our communities need to struggle, heal, organize, love, and steadfastly determine our just and liberated futures. Mālo e ʻofa, mālō e ngāue lahi. ʻOfa lahi atu.  

Ossama graduated from SFSU with an M.A. in Ethnic Studies. Ossama is an Afro-Arab, multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer raised in South Sacramento. He has a strong passion for rescuing beautiful cultural furniture and art from the clutches of boho chic minimalists on the internet.

Ossama’s day job is dedicated to grappling with the tensions of organizing against cruel and oppressive systems in the United States. In service of this, Ossama works with organizations and autonomous formations on the left with the hope of aligning and cohering our intellectual and infrastructural resources, materializing radical liberatory frameworks and principles, and building alternatives that address material conditions.   

Ossama believes that we have a duty to translate our theories into plans and models that prove to our communities that our imaginations and dreams can be actualized through sustainable models for a just and liberated world.  

Ossama says he chose San Francisco State University, for two reason: (1) The historical significance of SFSU in the liberation struggle makes this institution a necessary site of continued power, investment, and community control, and (2) the establishment of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora Studies program (AMED) at the university reflects a powerfully rooted and urgent center for the study of empire’s warfare against Black and Brown bodies, both within its occupied territories and across the world. 

His thesis, titled “The Non-Profit Industry is Failing the People's Hopes and Demands for Liberation,” was an opportunity to research and document some of the deep wounds within the non-profit sector — a sector that he believes too casually positions itself as the voice of marginalized peoples while also relying entirely on the legitimacy and permission from the state to achieve wins and secure victories for the community.  

He believes that by experimenting internally with our organizational models and externally with our programming we could build alternatives that threaten State control over our lands, labor, bodies, and psyches.  

Ossama hopes to continue his graduate education journey in fields related to decolonial studies. 

For those interested in checking out his poetry and reading his rants on food, organizing, and politics, and/or if you want links to art and furniture that he doesn’t have room for in his home, you can reach him on Instagram at @kamelo.o.