From left to right: Hawa Adam, Kiran Waqar, Balkisa Omar, Lena Ginawi Credit: Courtesy of Kiran Waqar

Slam poets Muslim Girls Making Change were invited to dine and perform last week at the Burlington Elks Lodge — where a club officer called the police on them. The teenagers have slammed the incident as racial profiling.

“This kind of stuff happens all the time and we’re sick of it,” member Kiran Waqar told Seven Days on Monday.

“Being a woman of color, I’m going to be getting all these experiences,” said another one of the poets, Balkisa Omar.

The high schoolers were invited to a banquet hosted by the Women of UVM social group at the Elks Lodge on North Avenue last Wednesday. The quartet agreed to arrive early to help Omar with a school project. Since the event was scheduled to start at 6 p.m., the teenagers gathered at the back of the building, away from traffic, to do some audio recording.

“We were just talking a little bit, giggling … average volume of four teenage girls,” said Waqar. They were excited about their upcoming July trip to Minnesota, where they will join Michelle Obama and Colin Kaepernick in receiving awards from the National Education Association for their work in promoting human and civil rights.

At some point, a man later identified as lodge secretary Moe Decelles knocked on a window to get their attention, the young women recounted. A couple of minutes later, Decelles approached them and said, “I called the police on you. They’re coming right now and I told them you’re doing drugs,” Waqar recalled.

Decelles told Seven Days on Tuesday that a meeting inside the lodge had already begun and the noise from outside was distracting the attendees and a speaker. He said he’d been told the “UVM president’s wife” was scheduled to be the function’s guest speaker and said he was unaware that the Muslim Girls Making Change were involved.

Decelles said he thought the teenagers had wandered over from Burlington High School, as students frequently cut through the lodge property.

“There were some girls outside of the building … and they were giggling and laughing and jumping up and down, and the people in the room kept looking out and being distracted,” Decelles said. “So, I said, ‘I’ll go out and talk to them.’ I said to them, ‘OK girls, you’ve got to move on. You’re distracting the people inside the building who are participating in this meeting.’”

He added, “And every one of them started saying, ‘Why do we have to go?’ Whatever it was, they were all talking at the same time, so I really couldn’t understand them that well. So I said ‘Listen, you’ve gotta go, I just called the cops and told them you guys were doing drugs,'” he said.

“Now, I just said that to scare them and to move them along. I came into the building and did call the PD, but I didn’t mention drugs, I just said we have some disruptive people outside of the building and I’d like you to take a look at it.”

Confused and shocked, the teenagers sought out Karen Costello, the Women of UVM’s outgoing president. An officer from the Burlington Police Department arrived at the Elks Lodge and spoke with Costello, the teens said. Police Chief Brandon del Pozo confirmed an officer investigated a report of “children being disruptive on the property.”

In a report, the officer wrote: “The Club was hosting an event and I met with the staff. They advised the children were guest speakers at the event and were merely trying to access the building.”

The incident would have been a “non-story,” Waqar said, had Decelles simply asked them who they were and what they were doing.

Decelles, who was helping set up and serve food, said he later ran into the girls inside the building and they “started saying how dissatisfied they were with what I did, and there was no reason why I should have done it.”

“I said, ‘Look, if I offended you, I’m sorry,'” he said.


The quartet nevertheless sat through dinner, performed some poems and held a Q&A session. “[Decelles] worked the rest of the night like it was no big deal,” said Waqar.

When the quartet performed “Wake Up America,” one of their most well-known poems, Omar said, she teared up because of its message of racism and Islamophobia. “I can’t tape something to my forehead and [say], ‘These are all my achievements,'” she continued. “Success won’t stop you from having these experiences.”

Told the young women considered the incident racial profiling, Decelles became upset.

“I could care if they were green, red or blue! It didn’t matter to me,” he said. “They were disturbing the function. It had nothing to do with racial profiling, what kind of bullshit’s that? That wouldn’t even enter my thought process. It’s kind of upsetting. I think the whole thing is overblown, way out of proportion.”

The high school seniors said they didn’t publicize the incident on social media because they were afraid of possible repercussions. Two of their members — Omar and Lena Ginawi — will attend UVM in the fall.

Last Friday — two days after the incident — Cathy Morais, the new president of Women of UVM, and Costello emailed the Elks Lodge to express their “dismay” at how the young poets had been treated, emails the girls provided to Seven Days show. “This extreme overreaction on Mr. Decelles’ part is totally unacceptable and should be addressed by your organization through sensitivity and diversity training,” they wrote.

“We believe that your organization owes these young women a sincere apology. We are confident that your sense of justice will lead you to do the right thing and we await your prompt response,” they wrote.

Randy Corey, the club’s exalted ruler (or top officer) replied that he hadn’t been informed of the incident. “Please accept my apologies [on] behalf of myself and the Lodge,” he wrote back. “I will address this with the Lodge, [its] officers and Mr. Decelles personally.”

Waqar described the follow-up actions as “pretty minimal.” One email, she said, doesn’t make a difference. “I haven’t heard of any results.”

Corey, Costello and Morais did not respond to requests for an interview.

Decelles told Seven Days he wouldn’t have done anything differently. He said the young women never tried to tell him they were involved in the event and instead, “They just went into a rage, all four of them, all at the same time.”

“If they would have said they were part of the group, we’re just resting, getting ready — something — but nothing of that nature was said,” Decelles said.

He added: “It was an unfortunate event, and on behalf of the Elks, I do apologize.”

Ginawi said the incident is a “perfect example of hidden racism” that’s pervasive throughout Vermont. While many people praise the quartet, few have stepped up to help them continue to spread their message, she wrote in an email.

“Although what has happened was unacceptable, what we don’t want is people coming up to us and apologizing for what has happened to us,” she wrote. “What we want is for people to take action and to do something to prevent this from ever happening again.”

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Kymelya Sari was a Seven Days staff writer 2015-19.

Sasha Goldstein is Seven Days' deputy news editor.

23 replies on “Muslim Teen Poets Invited to Elks Club — Which Called the Cops”

  2. White friends – STOP CALLING THE COPS WHEN BROWN AND BLACK PEOPLE MAKE YOU NERVOUS. Just stop. You don’t even have to fully understand why, though there is this wonderful thing called “google” that can help you figure it out. Just stop. I remember having conversations with Mike Schirling 10 years ago and him telling me about people who would call BPD because more than one brown kid was in Roosevelt Park at the same time. And it’s still happening. We have to be better than this!

  3. I used to belong to the Elks Club Burlington I don’t any longer because I moved and disabled I can’t get around but I can tell you one thing I have never witnessed racism at that club

  4. He wonders why they were upset… “He added, “And every one of them started saying, Why do we have to go? Whatever it was, they were all talking at the same time, so I really couldnt understand them that well. So I said ‘Listen, youve gotta go, I just called the cops and told them you guys were doing drugs,'” he said.”

    Well, when you have spent your whole life dealing with racist people, maybe you are a little more quick to assume a “defensive” position? These girls are standing up for themselves, and perhaps because they are girls, and because they are not white, people expect that they should be meek and polite… and when that expectation is not met, they become a “problem”. I think this is exactly what some of their poetry is about- having to fight, every day, to be seen as the valuable contributors to our society that they are: not “outsiders”, not “other”, not people to be suspicious of, but people to be respected and looked up to.

  5. Why would anyone call the police on four teenage girls talking and laughing near your building? Racism is very much alive and well in Vermont. Enough.

  7. Is Decelles really thinking he would have called the police if 4 blond white girls were giggling and making a bit too much noise outside the club? Or perhaps he might have just explained that their noise was making it hard to hear inside? Of course this is racial!

  9. It sounds like miscommunication all around followed by a succession of overreaction tainted by the possibility that these girls were profiled at some level because they are female, Muslim, teen aged, have dark skin, or any combination of the previous.

  10. BDE: “Racism is alive and well throughout the entire U.S. Your point?”

    His point is that racism is alive and well in Burlington. What’s your point?

  11. Paul Gorton: “but I can tell you one thing I have never witnessed racism at that club”

    Well, if you’d been there that day, you would have. What’s your point?

  12. ” Some non-white people cry racism about every unpleasant interaction “

    I know, right? All brown people should run their responses to racism by you first for approval. Clearly.

  13. Mr. DeCelles, an officer of the Elks Club, should be charged with making a false report to the police. It is clear FROM HIS OWN MOUTH, that Mr. DeCelles called the police BEFORE speaking with the four girls, some of whom were wearing Muslim head covering. He did NOT ask the girls to quiet down or inform them that they were disturbing a meeting inside the building, nor did he ask them to move away from the window. Instead Mr. DeCelles diverted the resources of the Burlington Police Department for no purpose. This is unacceptable. I am shocked that the Elks Club has “officers” like Mr. DeCelles who unabashedly display their ignorance and their willingness to call the police on teenage girls who don’t dress like the women in his family.

    I am also disheartened that Burlington PD dispatchers are not trained to ask pertinent questions, such as, “Whats the age of the people you are calling about? Exactly what are they doing that concerns you? Have you spoken with them, asked them to quiet down? Are there any other events going on or scheduled to happen soon that these girls might be going to? Is the race or religion of these girls different than yours? We are happy to have our police officers go out for police matters, but are you sure that this is a police matter at this point?” There obviously was NO emergency that required police intervention. Taxpayer dollars and resources were wasted on “responding” where no crime had been committed and none was about to be committed. The police need to do better in using scarce resources. They are needed for real crime, not conducting on-the-spot seminars for people like Mr. DeCelles about profiling, about religious tolerance, about being welcoming.

  14. Racism and prejudice aren’t quite the same thing. Racism, rather, is best known as a system in which a racial majority is able to enforce its power and privilege over another race through political, economic and institutional means. Therefore racism can be described as “prejudice plus power,” as the two work together to create the system of inequality. For the revisionists, racism is prejudice plus power leveraged at an institutional level to maintain the privileges of the dominant social group.

    Most of the time, when the term “reverse racism” is brought up, it is in response to a slight that a member of the dominant group perceives has happened. But in reality, the United States has a long legacy of racism that makes it difficult for people of color to receive quality health care, access affordable housing, find stable employment and avoid getting wrapped up in the justice system. These examples of institutionalized racism don’t quite match with the examples of reverse racism, such as “Why don’t WE have a White History Month?”

    “There has never, ever, ever been a national set of laws or system put in place to systematically oppress white people or push them to a status that is ‘less than,'” senior editor Alexia LaFata wrote for Elite Daily. “Not once. Ever. So ‘reverse racism’ can truly never exist.”

  15. Racism is a concept that operates on both an individual and institutional level.

    At its core, racism is a system in which a dominant race benefits off the oppression of others whether they want to or not. We dont live in a society where every racial group has equal power, status, and opportunity. Yes, white people all over the world and throughout history have experienced atrocities like slavery and persecution. But in the very specific context of American history, white people have not been enslaved, colonized, or forced to segregate on the scale that black people have. They do not face housing or job discrimination, police brutality, poverty, or incarceration at the level that black people do. This is not to say that they do not experience things like poverty and police brutality at all. But again, not on the same scale not even close. That is the reality of racism.

    Whats astounding about the reverse racism argument is the way in which it reveals some racists deep need to deny the idea of having any privilege. Rather than acknowledging the realities of how people of color deal with racism, white racists do mental and hypothetical cartwheels in order to justify these injustices.

  16. The fact that a majority of white Americans believe discrimination against whites is as much of a problem as discrimination against minorities means we increasingly have to field questions that attempt to demonstrate the existence of reverse racism. It has become clear just how many white people see things as a zero-sum game. If things improve for brown and black people, they seem to think, “then, surely that must mean I have something to lose.”

    We need only look at the staggering incarceration rates among black and Latino men or recall the fact that unarmed black men are seven times more likely than whites to die by police gunfire to know that race inequality is everywhere.

    Since racism only works against people who are already oppressed, white people cannot possibly be its victims no matter how poor they are. In recent history whites have always held the most power, so the systems and institutions that exist today were all built around this assumption. Black people and Native Americans couldn’t even vote until the latter half of the last century, and still today we see voter suppression happening in many states. Sure, things are better for black and brown people than they were in the past, but better doesn’t mean equal.We all have hardships, but as the demographic that has historically held all the power and whose power has dictated the oppression of others white people simply cant be victims of racism. The idea of reverse racism is just a white person’s response to the threat of lost power not real oppression. The fact that so many in this country still cannot grasp this is bewildering.

  18. Frankly, this has not been a good week for cervid-based social clubs in Vermont. The Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks are self-reportedly besieged by women of color slam poets, following closely on the heels of the recent alarming news that deer ticks have decimated the states Moose population.

    From a conservation biology perspective, the national Elk meta-population has steadily declined for decades. And the recent backdoor Bull Elk bugling at the Burlington Lodge, witnessed by Muslim Girls Making Change, also hints at potentially dwindling, low levels of genetic diversity within the local Elk herd.

    Ultimately, perhaps, this could represent a fatal population flaw, which may be inherent in an aging membership consisting almost exclusively of self-professed god-fearing white men.

    Perhaps its time to cull the herd, Exalted Ruler Corey.

  19. Quite the opposite here, They were treated like all the High School kids are on that side of Town. Was it right the way he handled it? probably not, racist? No. They were being loud and distracting people as well as a Speaker at the time inside, then they verbally jump the Man when he comes out.
    I just love how they do what they are taught upon arrival here, jump to the racist bandwagon. This is the Culture that has been fostered and taught here and now you have Pols jumping on it as well.
    For Mr, Decelles sake I wish that someone from UVM had the nads to fess up to the truth, but Hey, that would be dangerous wouldn’t it?

  20. BDE –
    I wish it were, but apparently, you are the one that is uninformed. North Avenue is a tough place, Do some research! sad but true.
    and Please enlighten me, how is this an ignorant statement?

  21. BDE –
    NO! -and I don’t believe you. It is what it is and you cant prove me wrong.
    Not a criticism, many fine people it can just be a tough environment.
    Doesn’t matter tho, I know your mind is made up.

  22. It seems to me there are three things going on here, and all you need to do is read the headline to capture all of them. The first is that these girls were invited to speak at the Elks Club. Invited. So that suggests that the Elks Club saw this as an opportunity to be inclusive and welcoming to everyone in our community. Thank you for trying, Elks Club.

    The second thing is that some sexagenarian called the cops. Would he have done the same thing to a group of blonde white girls (or boys)? Maybe. We’ll never know. I imagine it was a combination of both racisism and agism. Something we are all guilty of to some degree, whether we admit it or not.

    The third thing is that maybe the girls were being disruptive while a meeting was going on inside. Is it OK for kids of any race/gender/age to carry on as they like, no matter what the circumstances? Is it possible the girls could have behaved better? What would you expect of your own children? I am only referring to behavior before Mr Decelles called the cops, not after. Then the rules change.

    In the end I just wish we could all just see things as they are: complicated. There is a lot of gray area between black and white.

  23. To all the people suggesting that this isn’t a case of racial profiling, why would Decelles need to tell the young women that he told the cops they were doing drugs? Why was that necessary? Also, it doesn’t sound like a lot of attempts were made to resolve the situation. Immediately calling the police because people of color are in the vicinity is the definition of racism. When will people learn?

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