Stumbling into the meeting as the two most overdressed people in the room with suits, ties and turbans, it’s safe to say that Jasjit Singh and I made an entrance. We were at the Congressional Hunger Center near the Capitol and were surrounded by people casually dressed in bright colors, reminding me of a typical California beach day. SALDEF often presents at conferences and events around town. This particular panel dealt more with the empowerment and civic engagement aspect of SALDEF rather than the legal. The goal of the panel discussion was to openly share with the various community members sitting in the audience the challenges our respective communities are facing and what we, as a larger society can do to come together to help our fellow minorities. SALDEF’s Executive Director Jasjit Singh helped to expand my own notions of community organizing and how we can use our own political and social means and resources to create change at a grassroots level. Jasjit immediately delved into the origins of Sikhism followed by a discussion on the Sikh American identity and how it’s been in a state of uncertainty in the aftermath of 9/11. He talked about the distinct look of the turban and how racial profiling was exacerbated in the Sikh community in the events following the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi.
Two other esteemed panelists that sat alongside Jasjit were Stephanie Gonzalez of the Equal Rights Center, whose objective is to advance the civil rights of all immigrant communities and Tram Nguyen of the Virginia New Majority, who is instrumental in developing a recovery program for Vietnamese immigrants affected by Hurricane Katrina.
The afternoon was spent discussing the prominent issues that our ethnic communities face, all problems that seemed to overlap between the three panelists represented. Such issues included community empowerment and how to get civic and political participation from the Asian American community in particular, one of the most underrepresented voter communities. Each panelist discussed their own outreach efforts and what they’ve done to address their community’s issues. Jasjit addressed the issues of racial profiling, hate crimes and the misrepresentation of Sikhs in the media in a post 9/11 world and he discussed just what SALDEF is doing to help subdue some of these challenges that so many Sikhs are faced with on a daily basis. Some of these solutions include advocacy and educating both Sikh and non-Sikh populations, media watch and youth empowerment, so that our future generations may never have to face some of the realities we must face today. Welcome to the age of solutions. Manjot Singh