I have yet to finish all my Democratic National Convention posting since I’ve been on near constant travel ever since I left Denver (I’m in Alabama right now in a hotel where some Gustav refugees are also staying). I am however, in touch with an Indian American woman (let’s call her PK) who is in Minneapolis this week. PK is at the RNC as a medic who is treating protesters (and possibly some anarchists) who are at the convention. I asked her if she’d be nice enough to send me a dispatch and she sent the following last night:

Today I spent most of the day at a street clinic, organized by local and national activists concerned about the health of those involved in protests, especially those subject to police brutality. We’re housed in a church, right across from one of the main hospitals in St. Paul (this is where I do some of my medical rotations). We’re close to the capitol building, but a mile from the Xcel Center. This center is here to address the acute needs of those in medical need, but either unable (due to lack of health insurance) or uninterested (due to lack of trust with the medical establishment or record system) to access their medical care at the mainstream health center.

Yesterday, many of the medics out on the streets were taken in with the protestors. The general belief is that medics are being targetted for arrest particularly because without the support staff there to help the “rioters”, the protestors will be less likely to attempt further action.

The Poor People’s March for Economic Human Rights took place today. It was notably smaller than yesterdays demonstration, and the arrests and retaliation was smaller, though the police presence is out of proportion to the number of marchers. In clinic, the entire afternoon and evening we kept getting texts that tear gas was used at this-and-that street and we were expecting a deluge of tear gassed individuals to show up, any minute. But we had very few visits, mainly because people are being decontaminated on the streets. At the clinic, we have a larger makeshift decontamination center (basically, the person strips, we hose them down to remove all residues of the gas, clean out their eyes with solution, and have them put on new clothes), and it seemed to attract a lot of unneccessary attention late in the evening because we had all the “fresh clothes” set up on the grass and the Poor People’s March veered towards our street. A collection of police came by and began asking what we’re doing, who is renting the space, and other unnecessaries. They were told to return with a warrant, and the remainder of the evening was high stress, as the main organizers began to prepare us for being taken in, in the case of a raid. My main worry through this whole thing was typically desi– I’m studying for the USMLE and can’t afford to go to jail right now! AND WHAT WILL MY PARENTS THINK??!

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I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed that three days in to this I haven’t seen any Molotov cocktails, police beatings, tear gas, or plastic handcuffs being used(particularly where desis were involved). I think Ravi and I would have loved to have interviewed a desi protester if we had found one. The only thing I have seen thus far have been some extreme “anti-sinners” and a few anti-abortion trucks with shock-value images on their sides driving around town. As expected, there were several pro-immigrant groups carrying signs around, but this was a friendly crowd. As for me, I picked up a button from the CNN booth that I proudly started wearing around town to announce the issue I support.

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After the Asian American caucus meeting on Wednesday morning I had the chance to speak with Democratic superdelegate-at-large Kamil Hasan (appointed by Howard Dean). Hasan is an entrepreneur from the Bay Area and a partner at HiTek Ventures. He is also a member of the IndoAmerican Council whose mission is as follows:

iForum is a non-partisan organization with a mission to:

1. Empower the Indo-American community to be more active in public service so that it can influence the future strategic direction of our country and major policies of our government.

2. Inspire and mentor aspiring young Indo-Americans to get involved in public service and run for office, and to provide them material and strategic support to ensure their success.

3. Identify and prioritize issues of major importance to the Indo-American community, develop white papers on these issues, and develop a mechanism to address them.

4. Create a forum for exchange of ideas between the community, elected officials and influential leaders on issues important to the community. [Link]

Hasan warmed to me when I told him that I grew up in the Bay Area. Ravi and I (and several journalists here reporting for Indian newspapers) have found that the South Asian American finance folks (the top fundraisers) are pretty tightly controlled and so the press (when acting in an official capacity) is kept at arms length from them. Mr. Hasan however, was kind enough to speak with me.

Hasan raised a lot of cash for Kerry back in 2004 as a top bundler. His wife also hosted fundraisers for Hillary Clinton in their Bay Area home (with Bill in tow). Then, on June 1st of this year with Clinton’s fate sealed, Barack Obama called him up for his delegate vote. Mr. Hasan told me that he spoke to Obama for a few moments to make sure he supported the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal and a few other issues of importance, especially to Indian Americans of his generation. Since then Hasan has been a top bundler for Obama, in fact, he was the one that organized and hosted the “I’m a desi” event in San Francisco a few weeks ago. We both found a lot of humor in Obama’s comments about making dal. My last question to Hasan was if he had any children and if they were as in to politics as him. Hasan has two daughters. One is an attorney in the bay area and the other is still in school as a poli-sci major. The younger one was already raising funds for California state level candidates when she was just 19. Seems like we have a dynasty in the making here.

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Less than an hour ago I finished listening to Bill “Bubba” Clinton give his speech. Old boy can still bring the house down can’t he? Right before his speech I went on to the floor because I spotted a brilliant orange turban in the California delegation and knew I had my next post for our readers. The distinguished gentleman from California was Harpreet Sandhu, council member of the City of Richmond and a delegate:

Harpreet S. Sandhu is the first Asian, Sikh, and South Asian city councilperson of Richmond, California and a major city with over 100,000 people in Northern California’s San Francisco Bay Area. He was sworn in on January 16, 2007… He is the only currently serving sikh politician in the entire state of California and one out of only a few in the United States. He served on the human relations and human rights commission. Sandhu has been working to help out taxi drivers since recent crime has targeted them, both for opportunity and alleged hate. [Link]

This is Sandhu’s first convention, although his daughter attended the previous one. I asked him why he got in to politics and he said it was Jimmy Carter that inspired him in 1977 when he was only 18 years old. And here is the best part, the part that I find very refreshing after the last few days in which I’ve been a little turned off by certain aspects of politics (I will explain in a later post): Sandhu comes from a humble professional background. He worked for the post office, like my grandfather:

While raising a family and working full time for the U. S. Postal Service, Sandhu has compiled an impressive public service résumé during the past 20 years…

Sandhu is probably best known as a strong advocate for creating safer working conditions for West County taxi drivers. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, taxi drivers in West County — 90 percent of whom are Sikh — increasingly became victims of attacks. One driver was killed in 2003, and one was shot in the face in what appeared to be hate crimes, Sandhu said. [Link]

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