Rachid Moukhabir says his strength is his Moroccan origin, which is why he has spent the last two years paving the way for Moroccan Americans in Revere.
Moukhabir, Revere’s Person of the Year, is the president of Moroccan American Connections in Revere (MACIR), a grassroots organization established to inspire and empower Moroccan Americans in the city to integrate into the community.
His efforts have helped Moroccan Americans feel more a part of the Revere community in a number of ways, such as implementing an annual Moroccan Culture Day festival and opening the eyes of the city’s police department, which in turn brought them to hire their first officer of Moroccan descent.
“We feel very welcome here in Revere now,” said Moukhabir. “I can tell you that I’ve been treated better here than I was in my own country.”
Moukhabir immigrated to the United States in 2003 from Casablanca, and has rooted himself in Revere, the only place he’s ever called home since coming to the states.
Soon after his North Shore arrival, he began his educational career at Bunker Hill Community College, taking classes to learn English.
He moved on to Wentworth Institute of Technology, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in electronics and then a Master in Business Administration in management of engineering from Northcentral University in San Diego, Calif. Now, on top of running MACIR, he works as a technical service correspondent for Transmedics, a medical device company that makes organ care systems which preserve transplant organs outside of the human body, he said.
The idea for MACIR came to fruition in 2016, after Moukhabir started to see a shift in how his new country viewed certain aspects of his homeland, he said.
“At a certain time, I wasn’t happy about the negative profiles about the Muslim and the Arab community, not only in Revere but in all of America, and that started in 2013,” he said.
Moukhabir said when he sat down with many of the Moroccan residents in Revere, they all stated they felt segregated from the rest of the community. They wanted to find ways to integrate into American society while not forgetting their culture, he said.
Revere’s Moroccan residents told Moukhabir they wanted more inclusive programs for their children, ways to teach other residents their rich culture, and they wanted to implement relationships with all the different department heads in the city.
City officials were eager to jump on board with MACIR’s mission of bringing the community together, he said.
Two years after the organization’s inception, Moukhabir is proud of the progress that has been made, he said. Next up on their list of goals is getting their voices in City Hall and the fire department.
He said he is looking forward to raising his two-year-old son in a city that allows him to be American while continuing to embrace his Moroccan heritage.
“We did a lot of work, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done,” he said. “We are welcome. Now it’s time to be productive in the things that are going on in Revere.”
