Category Archives: Politics

The Homeless Sikhs of Southall

Posted on by

I recently spent an evening with twenty hearty souls in steady British rain to sleep out in a park to raise awareness about the plight of the homeless Sikhs of Southall.

Actually, there was not much sleeping — it was more of a Hang Out than a Sleep Out and we had pizza and burgers — but the issue wasn’t lost. Finding warm and dry shelter is a challenge for an increasing number of South Asians, mostly Sikh men, in the southwest London neighborhood of Southall.IMG_6358.jpg

Lodging isn’t supposed to be a problem. Southall is the center of London’s vast Punjabi community, one of the most significant Little Indias in the world, home to one of the largest gurdwaras outside India, and a cultural nexus that brought the bhangra phenomenon to nightclubs around the globe. It’s also a hardscrabble quarter that, like New York’s Lower East Side, gave immigrants the means to establish themselves in a new land. The community took care of its own and looks back fondly on its achievements.

So it has come as a shock that in 2010 there are about a hundred homeless men, mostly Sikhs but including Sri Lankans and Somalis, sleeping rough in one of London’s proudest immigrant neighborhoods. Continue reading →

FreeFahad

Posted on by

SAMAR Magazine just dropped their latest issue and highlighted a campaign I knew little about – the FreeFahad Campaign.

On February 10, 2010, SAMAR in collaboration with THAW (Theaters Against War) put out a call for letters to be sent to Fahad Hashmi at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC). Fahad has been held in pre-trial detention at the MCC for over 850 days in severe solitary confinement. He has been detained over 1,350 days in all (more about Fahad’s case: freefahad.com). [samarmagazine]

The following mini-documentary enlightens us more on the who Fahad is and the situation he finds himself in.

It’s a horrible situation, and the charges against him are reflective of a civil rights injustice that continues to establish how Desis, 2nd-generation immigrants, and Muslims are not given equal rights provided to the “other” Americans. At nine years after 9/11, this case is clearly evidence that the South Asian American community is still feeling the repercussions of the Patriot Act, at least in the legal system.

The FreeFahad campaign is asking for people to write a letter to Fahad in prison. Though the chances of Fahad receiving the letter is slim, the campaign hopes the act of writing the letters will “offer a simple and necessary challenge to the inhuman conditions of Fahad’s detention and help send a message to Fahad’s jailers, the U.S. Government and Attorney General Holder, that the world at large cares for Fahad and is outraged at the violations of his civil and human rights.” Continue reading →

Housing discrimination near Dallas?

Posted on by

Straight out of Euless, Texas (which it turns out borders DFW Airport and is kind of part of Dallas) comes this discouraging news video about alleged discrimination against South Asian Americans and Muslims:

A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization today called on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to investigate allegations that a Texas apartment complex had a policy of refusing to rent to Muslims or segregating them in buildings away from other tenants.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called on HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity to determine whether StoneBridge at Bear Creek apartment complex in Euless, Texas, violated federal fair housing laws.

According to an investigative media report, former leasing agents for the complex say Muslims, whom managers referred to as “curry people,” were routinely refused apartments even when there were vacancies. The leasing agents said they were told by their supervisors that they could only rent to Muslims if they were all kept in two buildings of the 21-building complex. [Link]

The one thing that is obvious from the story is that when it comes to even talking about discriminations, Muslims, South Asians, Arabs, etc. are often all conflated. Any shade of brown with a “funny” name or associated with “smelly” food falls into the same category.

The folks at CAIR weren’t too surprised that this type of thing happens given some Gallup Center for Muslim Studies poll data from last month:

More than 4 in 10 Americans (43%) admit to feeling at least “a little” prejudice toward Muslims — more than twice the number who say the same about Christians (18%), Jews (15%) and Buddhists (14%). The findings are based on a new Gallup Center for Muslim Studies report, “Religious Perceptions in America: With an In-Depth Analysis of U.S. Attitudes Toward Muslims and Islam,” released Thursday. [Link]

That being said, if these allegations turn out to be true it is encouraging that these two women were willing to stand up and blow the whistle on such practices. As for the Curry smell, Pavani points me to a similar incident in California a few years ago.

Continue reading →

A marriage of East and West

Posted on by

Earlier this month, the NYT ran a wedding announcement for the marriage of Nicolette Bird and Ravi Mehta. At first this seemed like the usual thing: one person with family in Calcutta, went to college in Calcutta, marrying another person with family in New York who went to Harvard.

Except …

In this case it was Nicolette Bird who is from Calcutta and works in Bollywood, and it’s Ravi Mehta who was born in Colorado, with his parents and job in New York City.

The bride, 25, is an actress and model and has had roles in the Bollywood films “Rock On,” released in 2008, and “Striker,” released earlier this month. As a model, she has appeared in television commercials and magazine advertisements in India. She graduated from Bhowanipur Education Society College in Calcutta. She is a daughter of Edwina Bird and Nicholas Bird of Calcutta.

The bridegroom, 28, is the founder and managing director of Steadview Capital Management of New York, a hedge fund that focuses on companies in India. He graduated from Harvard. The bridegroom is a son of Geeta Mehta and Krishen Mehta of New York. [NYT]

And why not? We hate it when people ask us “Really, where are you from” do we think this only happens to brown folks in America? Heck, this week people sent me two links to Indian TV ads which had anxiety about hybridity as their main theme:

No word yet on what the Mehta-Bird’s will be eating at home, but given that he grew up in Japan I imagine their dinner table negotiations are quite intense. Or maybe they just get takeout.

Continue reading →

Supporting your causes

Posted on by

Ruchira from the Accidental Blogger called me up the other day to tell me she was very passionate about a new cause she was supporting called Save A Mother. She asked if I could highlight the cause here on SM (I urge you to check their website for more info):

India Development Service (IDS) Save-A-Mother project aims to minimize suffering and death associated with pregnancy and child birth. We have been working in partnership with local NGOs in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, which has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Many other regions in India and rest of the world are in a similar situation where this program can be replicated.

Save-A-Mother programs educate women about pregnancy, nutrition, immunization, delivery and care of the child. Save-A-Mother has a complementary benefit in saving the child also.
Our Objectives

1. Decrease maternal mortality by 50% in Sultanpur in 5 years. (Pilot Project)
2. Replicate this model to two more districts in 2 more years and institutionalise the program.
3. Replicate the program to vulnerable districts where mortality exceeds the national average.
4. Partner with NGOs in other high MMR countries [Link]

Ruchira said that the Chicago-based organizers are primarily looking for involvement via the donation of money. They have a dedicated core of organizers and volunteers, including Ruchira, but they were having some trouble spreading the word and gathering contributions for their efforts, especially from the younger demographic. This led to a conversation between myself and Ruchira as to why it is often difficult to find donations from the under-40 crowd. I attribute it to several reasons:

1) Younger potential donors usually want to donate more than money. They typically have youthful energy and a full supply of idealism. Thus, they want direct involvement, not simply involvement by proxy. Continue reading →

Last Day to Make Your Voice Heard, Cali

Posted on by

CA Redistricting.jpgFor the Californians – you have only a day left to apply for the Citizens Redistricting Commission. You don’t remember? We voted on this change to legislation with Prop 11 in the Nov. ’08 elections. Instead of state government deciding on our district lines, it is now in citizen hands.

February 16 is the last day for applications to California’s new Citizens Redistricting Commission–a body that will have sweeping powers over the way state legislative and Board of Equalization district lines are drawn for the next 10 years. In other words, this commission of 14 ordinary Californians–5 Democrats, 5 Republicans, and 4 independents or voters from other parties–will shape California’s political future.

> What’s the big deal? Well…here’s what’s at stake. The district lines that are drawn could significantly affect election results for the next 10 years. In the past, states like Texas have redrawn the lines so that a majority of the residents in a single district hail from one party. As a result, in those districts there is no real competition in elections–which ultimately decreases the power of individual voters. [[nam](http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=66a6c5e6d03921921dce6e31984b9acf)] I’m posting this up at Sepia Mutiny because according to the latest figures a low amount of AAPIs and women have applied and I would like to encourage our Californian readers to apply today. Though the data for South Asian Americans that have applied is not disaggregated,[ we do know that 4.47% of the applicant pool are Asian American and 31% are women](http://www.wedrawthelines.ca.gov/images/WDTL_WeeklyTracker_021110.gif). In comparison to California’s state wide population according to 2000 census, 13% are Asian American and of that, about 10% are South Asian*. Continue reading →

Khan Signs Nude Pics of Self at Airport

Posted on by

SRK.jpg

What next? No, really. I want to know. What next? First SRK announces he’s releasing a movie called My Name is Khan that has to do with issues of terrorism post-9/11. Then SRK gets detained by guards at Newark airport. Now, days after SRK wraps up a publicity tour in NYC, we hear that our friend is once again in the news? Life imitating art? Stranger things have happened.

Claims on behalf of authorities that naked body scanner images are immediately destroyed after passengers pass through new x-ray backscatter devices have been proven fraudulent after it was revealed that naked images of Indian film star Shahrukh Khan were printed out and circulated by airport staff at Heathrow in London. Continue reading →

A gaffe with his staff

Posted on by

When I saw the headline “U.S. Congressman asks Clinton to shah.jpgdemote Rajiv Shah,” I thought that the USAID director had done something seriously wrong. Perhaps Shah had bungled the U.S. relief efforts in Haiti, sending too much rice but not enough beans. Or perhaps he had handed a reconstruction job to an Indian-American Contractor who doesn’t do any contracting. But no, nothing of that sort.

U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Detroit) is calling on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to demote the official coordinating relief efforts in Haiti, Dr. Rajiv Shah, for a lack of diversity on his staff. [Link]

In his letter to Clinton, Conyers wrote: “As you know, the 42 member Congressional Black Caucus met with Rajiv Shah, the Administrator of the U.S. AID yesterday to discuss the crisis in Haiti. I was alarmed and chagrined to learn that none of the approximately dozen staff he brought with him were African American. This is so serious an error in judgement that it warrants his immediate demotion to a subordinate position at AID. It is well known  that there has long been an under-representation of minorities in key positions within the State Department. I am confident this Administration will immediately begin addressing this problem.” [Source: The Hill]

Poor Shah. Perhaps someone had told him that he’d be appearing in front of the Congressional White Caucus. Perhaps he was under the mistaken belief that race doesn’t matter much in 2010, that he just has to surround himself with qualified people. Or perhaps he took his resemblance to Obama a little too seriously and forgot to speak with the right dialect.

Continue reading →

Zardari Tells Crowd to Shaddup

Posted on by

There’s an amusing YouTube video going ’round the Interwebz that I thought you mutineers might enjoy. It shows the President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari addressing a crowd of supporters. In the middle of a speech about democracy he interrupts himself to shout “Shaddup” to the noisy crowd. As the blog CHUP put it, “maybe the President should consider being a little nicer to people, especially those who show up at his rallies.” Hmm, somebody’s momma didn’t teach him manners. My little cousins (who aren’t allowed to say the word) would be appalled. Or perhaps Zardari is just plain sick in the head? Either way, the clip makes for a good remix, don’t you think?

(h/t Anil) Continue reading →

Could Scott Brown be any Browner?

Posted on by

Did anyone catch the speech of Massachusetts’ new Senator-elect, Republican Scott Brown last night? I just saw the video of his speech and I think I was as shocked as anyone when he veered off-script to pimp out, I mean talk about his two daughters. But it did sound awfully familiar. Hmm, could Brown be ‘browner’ than we all thought? Who among us hasn’t heard a desi parent laud the virtues of their single child on the marriage market?

Brown, during his jubilant acceptance speech on Tuesday night, did the right thing and paused to acknowledge his family.

“As always, I rely on Gail’s love and support, and that of our two lovely daughters. So I want to thank Ayla and Arianna for their help as well,” Brown said, turning to his wife, TV reporter Gail Huff, and their daughters, Ayla, 21 – a one-time “American Idol” finalist – and Arianna, 19.

But then Brown went horribly wrong, at least in the Dad department – adding that his daughters were both “available.”

“Just in case anyone who’s watching throughout the country, yes they’re both available,” Brown shouted. [Link.]

Continue reading →