Taneeza Islam addresses the Sioux Falls City Council in January 2020.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO.com) – A Sioux Falls advocate has received special recognition from a national civil rights group.
Taneeza Islam, executive director of South Dakota Voices for Peace, will receive the COVID-19 Response Award from Muslim Advocates in a ceremony on October 14.
Islam receives the award for her work on behalf of workers at the Smithfield meatpacking plant in Sioux Falls, at one time the largest COVID-19 hotspot in the nation. Many of the workers at the plant are immigrants.
Through her organization and with the South Dakota Dream coalition, Islam worked to form a worker relief fund, translate COVID-19 information into different languages, and advocate for government officials to protect workers.
“When her community was hit harder than any in America, Taneeza Islam stepped up to protect the most marginalized and exploited people in South Dakota,” Scott Simpson, public advocacy director for Muslim Advocates, said in a release. “When South Dakota needed an advocate, Islam went to work to protect people’s health and wellbeing, raise relief funds, and push for the basic protections these workers have the right to. She took on big business, state and local officials and the White House all at once—and these families are healthier and more stable because of it.”
“Over 90 percent of the workers in Smithfield are immigrants and refugees. Our positive COVID-19 rate peaked at 70 percent people of color, in a state that is 82 percent White/Caucasian,” Islam said in a release. “The organizing efforts we’ve implemented since 2017 prepared us to assure that impacted voices in our community would be heard. The immense and immediate philanthropic generosity to assist meat processing plant workers motivated us to work day and night to build the Emergency Relief Fund for Immigrants in SD.”
