Are you interested in the Desi Vote? How will South Asians vote come Nov 4th? Do we have critical mass to form a voting bloc? Join SAALT for A Pre-Election Online Conversation for Community Members & Media on October 30th.
Why: South Asian political involvement has been on the rise over the past decade, and the run-up to the November 2008 elections shows that South Asians have been increasingly engaged in the presidential campaigns, voter mobilization efforts, and bids for state and national office.Who: South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), with guests:
* Vijay Prashad, Professor of International Studies at Trinity College; author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World
* Karthick Ramakrishnan, Associate Professor of Political Science at UC Riverside; principal investigator on the first large-scale national survey of Asian American politics (2008)
* Ali Najmi, Desis Vote (New York)
* South Asian Progressive Action Collective (Chicago)
The call is open to everyone but you need to register online here to participate. You will be able to watch the webinar or listen in by phone. You will also be able to ask the speakers questions. The call is on Thursday, Oct 30th at 2pm EST/1pm CST/11am PST (the webinar should last an hour and 15 minutes), but you have to register by 10am Thursday morning to join!
SAALT has been mobilizing actively around this election cycle, and they have an Elections 2008 Online Resource Kit to make it easier for you to get involved (available in Hindi, Punjabi, Bangla, Urdu, and Tamil). They also have a pretty active blog, with entries on election activities going on across the country.
I’d be interested in hearing in the comment section how the online event goes for readers who are able to make it – I would even encourage commenters to live blog the webinar in the comment section for those of us unable to listen in on the webinar.
wow, saalt, a non-partisan advocacy group…like acorn*
*joke stolen from john mccain at that dinner joke thing.
I fail to see how the proletariat are served by a webinar conducted during office hours.
2 · Nayagan said
I believe the correct usage is “.. how the proletariat is served …”, old egg!
Rahul Da Elitist,
You are correct, old bean. I’m sure there will be a strong pipe-fitter presence among the webinar audience.
I wonder who Vijay Prashad is rooting for…my guess is Cynthia McKinney. To vote for an African-American candidate who could actually win would ruin his whole schtick.
You can do this:
to hear the guesses of a bunch of talking heads, OR
you could wait just 4 additional days and simply find out.
6 · Rahul the non-elitist plumber said
RuhSPECT the BLOC! Ruh-SPECT the BLOC!
I’m going to be late on the call but am excited. I think it’s easy to pooh-pooh SAALT, but they’ve begun to actively fill — and catalyze — larger questions on resource sharing and outreach in the desi community. While the growth is relatively slow, I think it’s meaningful, and I enjoy how they are able to bring folks together, particularly folks with incredibly diverse ways of self-identifying (and yet finding traction in a “South Asian American” package… hm!).
Wow, my sentences do not make sense at this time of night. I meant to say I like SAALT’s work, and I think they’re bringing people together in cool ways. Simple words, so much easier to handle.
makes perfect sense to me, camille. you can find traction in my package anytime 😉
More importantly, have we lost all our traces of individualism to facilitate the forming of any bloc?
M. Nam
Third question: Would you (anyone, not just Taz) want it to if it wasn’t voting the way you wanted it to? Strategic essentialism, baby.
Pretty cute–what a medley of voices! I wondered how many immigrant communities have historically been championed by an over-educated elite, and realized it was probably ever thus, but also suspect South Asians assimilation is accelerated via technology and the study of damned lies and statistics. So anyway, like I say, it was cute, but I want to object to calling anyone Car-thick or Uh-LEE. My daughter met a fellow in high school who begged her not to pronounce his multi-syllabic last name in anything but the rather alarming supposedly American way, especially over a PA system, but then at college she was able to persuade an entire department to call her friend Muh-neesh instead of Mannish.
…and of course I feel that conflating South Asian with “Asian” is was and ever shall be a mistake, especially when you’re identifying another group as, say, Italian– very much as hatchet to scalpel, to abuse a metaphor currently being bandied about.
ah yes, but do good things ever cum in small packages?
Manju, wow.
Amrita — immigration policy. 🙂
why is louiecypher passing up this golden opportunity to denounce prashad and a group that bills itself as a “progressive action collective?” has the recession so dampened our beloved pataka?
UPDATE: The Webinar can be viewed here. http://www.saalt.org/categories/South-Asians-in-the-2008-Elections-Online-Webinar-/