New York City, U.S.A. — I sat inside my friend’s dorm on the edge of Union Square the other night, eating dinner and chatting about homework, when a slow drone of police sirens started to fill the air. As we ventured outside, we were loudly greeted with shouts of, “Hands up, don’t shoot!” It was the day after the grand jury in Ferguson, U.S.A. ruled to not indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed the unarmed Michael Brown in August of this year. Crowds of protesters filled Union Square demanding justice. Protesters carried signs and chanted slogans as they marched, surrounded on all sides by watchful police officers.

As I walked through the streets of New York that night, I wondered about my role in all of this. As a non-U.S. American, am I justified in participating in these protests? If so, what role should I play in them?

While my own country, Canada, has its problems with racism and violence, the shooting of Brown seems to me to be a problem rooted in context — the result of distinct race relations and the militarization of the U.S. American state. I returned home, feeling satisfied that the citizens of this country were actively fighting for change.

The eruption of anger in the U.S. over Wilson’s ruling placed NYU Abu Dhabi students studying in New York in a particularly conflicted position. Our cosmopolitan lives, characterized by frequent trips abroad and total financial independence, can often undermine our attachment to local conflicts. Struggles rooted in systematic oppression can be untenable for us. As global citizens we are often characterized by our ability to move beyond what is local.

At NYUAD it is easy to feel isolated from local conflicts, feeling as if it is not our place to participate in protests, demonstrations or teach-ins in our host country. Yet every time revolutions and protests break out back home, wherever that home may be, I see my classmates glued to their computer screens. They follow the news as closely as possible, trying to feel as if they were actually there — from Egypt to Venezuela to Ukraine.

In her recent article about the protests in Mexico, sophomore Dominique Lear comments, “Had I been in Mexico City on November 20 — and I can’t believe I am writing this — I would have walked down to the center of the city with my fellow Mexicans asking, begging for change.”

This points to the second conundrum of activism in the cosmopolitan age: How does one participate in struggles back home, from the other side of the world? Are we even justified in participating, given our different realities and separation from our home countries?

I have struggled with these two issues: wondering if I am justified in participating in local struggles, and lamenting the fact that I cannot participate in action back home. In Abu Dhabi, I worked with the Student Interest Group Ecoherence to organize Biiah, the first ever youth environmental conference in the Gulf.

With little support from the broader UAE community during the planning phases, we often felt like we were starting from scratch. When we did have support, we felt guilty for working with partners who may not have the best environmental track record. Most importantly, as a non-Emirati citizen, I wondered whether I was justified in starting an environmental movement in a country I still knew little about.

In New York I was quickly swept into NYU Divest: a group of students, faculty and alumni who are pressuring the university to divest their 3 billion U.S. Dollar endowment from the top 200 fossil fuel companies. I first met the group at their August retreat where I learned about the campaign and gained skills for environmental activism including rallying, petitioning and action-planning.

While NYU Divest works towards many of the same goals as Ecoherence, such as halting climate change, our approaches were virtually opposite. It was not the objectives of our campaigns that required translation, but our methods.

I realized that if I was going to be able to call myself a New York activist I needed to be well versed in the history of the field. I needed to know the U.S. American canon of activism, including the women’s suffrage movement, the civil rights movement and the AIDS recognition movement. This history is particular to this country, and what many activists fail to recognize is that some of these struggles are not universal. It is naive and inappropriate for organizations abroad to emulate a U.S. American style of activism; what works in the U.S. will not necessarily work internationally.

This is a complex reality for NYUAD students, staff and faculty to navigate. Not only are the struggles from home different from those in other countries we inhabit, effective systems to create change are also foreign. In order to grant each social justice movement its own legitimacy, we must broaden our perspectives.

We must recognize that oppression and injustice occur because of the particular realities of a region. Assuming that struggles are homogenous around the world often serves to discredit local activists who seek equality on their own terms. Too often international activists impose their own conceptions of freedom and justice upon local struggles.

Perhaps most pertinently for NYUAD students, we must develop methods of affecting change within the cultural and political context of the country at hand. Without forgetting their commitment to creating a better world, social justice oriented SIGs at NYUAD must develop methods that work and are formed within the context of the UAE. This is why organizations such as Ecoherence will continue to work with their government partners to create long-lasting change. Antagonism is not effective in this context.

It is important to be critical of how global activism is presented in the dominant Western media. How are local activists framing their struggle? What particular actions are these activists taking to create change? How might local political and cultural systems augment particular forms of injustice?

Budding activists at NYUAD have one particular advantage: the diversity of our student body. Reach out to your classmates and ask for their opinions, they can explicate conflicts in their own terms, informed by their understanding of their own country. Question how media from your country is framing an international conflict. Is that how locals might frame it? Most importantly, ask how you, as an outsider, can stand in solidarity with their struggle. We’re all working towards a more just and equitable world, after all.

Finally, it is important to stay connected to political, social and environmental justice movements back home. Do not see yourself as separate or above struggles in the communities you used to call home; global change always starts with local movements. We can fight for a better world by fighting for justice in our own communities.

At the time of writing, it is now Friday, four days after the news of Darren Wilson’s ruling and activists in New York are staging “Blackout Black Friday.” They have refused to buy anything today and will gather later in the evening for a large rally in Mike Brown’s memory. I will be there, and so will many other NYUAD students.

So long as I am in the U.S., I will continue to stand in solidarity with U.S. American struggles. I will continue to fight for environmental justice and will continue to push for political reform. Here, my frustration takes the form of physical protest and bodies in the street, but I realize the futility of transplanting these methods to other contexts. Stand in solidarity and demand a better world, just remember to do it in a language that makes sense for the country you are in.