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Amaha Kassa
Community organizer
Amaha Kassa is the founder and Executive Director of African Communities Together. Amaha has 25 years of professional experience as a labor and community organizer, nonprofit director, and social entrepreneur. For nine years, Amaha directed East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, a workers’ rights nonprofit in Oakland, California, growing it from a startup to one of the leading organizations in its field. Prior to launching ACT, Amaha earned his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School. He is an immigrant from Ethiopia.
Events featuring
this guest
Friday Sept. 18 2026 • 2:00 PM | Institute of African Studies, Columbia University
The Stranger at Home: Afrophobia and the Limits of Black Solidarity
Sisonke Msimang · E. Tendayi Achiume · Sean Jacobs · Amaha Kassa · moderated by Abosede George
Across the twentieth century, Pan-Africanism imagined a commons linking Africa and its diasporas through shared histories of dispossession, resistance, and return. The present has strained that promise. With South Africa as a central point of departure, this conversation examines how African migrants are made into strangers within African and Black political life. Bringing together writers, scholars, and migrant-rights organizers, the session asks how citizenship, labor, class, borders, national injury, and state failure shape the limits of solidarity, and what solidarity requires if it must transcend slogans into law, shelter, public services, political voice, and everyday infrastructure.