Resilience was top of mind for many at this year’s new Eid festival in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, an event marking the end of Ramadan.
Thousands, mostly immigrants, filled the blocks of Jones Street between Eddy Street and Golden Gate Avenue, dressed to the nines, munching on locally made Arab dishes, and determined to celebrate amid a difficult political climate — from deportations here to war against their people abroad.
In the neighborhood that is home to the most children per capita in the city, much of the event catered to them: Small kids holding flags of their native countries took to the stage for a fashion show; others screamed with joy in a bounce house; two boys in costume danced shyly, out of sync, as a man tried to guide them in how to twirl their wrists.
And MC Abdul, the popular 16-year-old Palestinian rapper and headliner of the event, offered a message likely familiar to many of the youths growing up in the Tenderloin.
“I may be young,” he rapped, waving a keffiyeh and his voice ringing clear over the crowd of mothers, fathers, and children that gathered around him. But: “I had to grow up fast.”
MC Abdul left Palestine to focus on his music in 2023. Onstage, he announced his gratitude for more recently getting several members of his family away from his war-torn home to California.
Neighborhood groups began hosting an Eid celebration a few years ago as an ad hoc celebration at the park or recreation center, and that grew into Saturday’s event under the city’s first Muslim American supervisor, Bilal Mahmood.
The day wasn’t just for the kids, or even for practicing Muslims.
“The community outpouring and warmth that we’ve been able to experience, especially during this time, it is something that can help buoy the spirit,” said Annicia Smith, a resident originally from the East Coast who heard about the event and decided to come out, in full West African-print cloak and headdress.
Early in the afternoon, a Public Works employee approached a stand run by an older Palestinian woman selling jars of olives and za’atar.
“Where’d you get that?” he asked, nodding to the scarf her partner, a jovial young salesman, was sporting. It came from back home.
Before he knew it, the pair had pressed a brand-new packaged keffiyeh into the worker’s hands, free of charge. “Thanks for representing,” they told him.
The festival felt like “all humanity under the same cause,” said Sundus Ruiz, who worked at the Halal Bites and Bazaar stand, among others selling a blend of Western and old-world, traditional goods. “The world needs that, with all of the crazy nonsense that’s happening.”
At the mic on stage, a young girl recited the call to prayer: “God is the greatest, god is the greatest,” she declared. Another city worker rolling a trash bin recited the words from memory under his breath.
In addition to the mix of the Muslim and greater Tenderloin community, the festival was also an opportunity for community members to get to know their local politicians, and for politicians to express their solidarity with them.
Supervisor Mahmood, who launched the festival for its first year as an official city-sponsored event, lamented that “for decades, this community has not seen the same love” as other parts of the city.
Mahmood and others he brought on stage — City Attorney David Chiu, Public Defender Mano Raju, Mayor Daniel Lurie — assured the hundreds listening that they had the community’s interests at heart.
Chiu condemned President Donald Trump taking away rights, and Raju emphasized that his office would “zealously” represent its clients and any immigrants who needed legal assistance.
Radwa Hussein, who works at the Tenderloin Community School, the neighborhood’s only public elementary school, called the event and its expansion an example of the neighborhood’s strength and resilience.
“We also carry heavy hearts for our brothers and sisters in Gaza,” she said. “Our joy today is not disconnected from their pain, it’s an act of resistance.”
But, in many ways, the event was just an example of a normal, sunny day in San Francisco, the kind that residents of the Tenderloin, with all its challenges, don’t always see out on the street.
Niqabi women dragged their tables and chairs to sit in the shade and chat. Teens manning the popcorn and snow-cone stand asked excitedly what time MC Abdul, the main event, would be arriving. That, they insisted, was when they would be “clocking out.”
An elderly hijabi woman sat with her shopping bag among the audience near the stage with her head back, mouth open, snoring.
For the day, things were just good.
Fantastic event. Can’t wait until next years.