Valarie Kaur

Remembering the Oak Creek Tragedy in Film

2013-02-05T14:51:20-05:00

Six months ago today, a small Midwestern town was rocked by a mass shooting at a house of worship. The massacre in Oak Creek, Wisconsin that claimed the lives of six people on August 5, 2012 is only one in a tragically long list of recent mass shootings.

Yet in this political moment - when sustained public pressure could lead to real gun control reform - the Oak Creek tragedy and response offers a vital lesson: the efficacy of resilience.

We are filmmakers who spent weeks on the ground with the Sikh community in Oak Creek, WI, documenting and reporting on the shooting. The victims' families gave us permission to enter their lives and film the aftermath of the tragedy from inside their homes and gurdwara (house of worship), where media cameras were not allowed. Although we had spent the last decade filming stories of minority communities to help advance civil rights in the U.S., we had never seen such depth of sorrow result in such unity, strength and hope.

This nine-minute short film presents an intimate portrait of the Sikh community in the 45 days after the Oak Creek shooting:

Throughout the aftermath, we witnessed the Sikh spirit of Chardi Kala -- an everlasting hope and optimism even in the face of bloodshed. Sons carried their fathers' coffins, reciting the name of God together. Women and men hummed prayers as they cleaned blood-stained carpets inside a bullet-ridden house of worship. Families gathered together in the same space where their loved ones were massacred to pray for the soul of the fallen -- including the gunman. Young people who just lost their parents faced a sea of cameras to explain the tenets of their faith. Community organizers asked our government to do more to protect its citizens against hate crimes, profiling, discrimination, and gun violence.

And an 18-year old boy who lost his mother in the massacre traveled to Washington, DC to amplify this message. On Sept. 19, 2012, Harpreet Saini became the first Sikh in U.S. history to testify before the Senate in a historic congressional hearing on combating hate in America.

On this six month anniversary, as we honor the lives lost to violence, may we also remember the spirit of Chardi Kala to quiet the impulse to anger and revenge, cultivate an ethic of acceptance and grace, and most importantly, embolden us to organize -- and not give up.

Click here to sign up for updates on Oak Creek: In Memorium and upcoming films.

Underneath The Turban: Why Sikhs Do Not Hide

2012-08-13T08:00:32-04:00

Why do we wear turbans?"

Nearly every Sikh American who grows up in the U.S. asks their families this question and as two Sikh Americans who maintain our faith, we were no different when we were little. This week, as Americans join in vigils for the six murdered Sikhs in another violent act of hate, many are now asking us this same question.

"Our ancestors were beheaded so that we could practice our faith without fear," our grandparents told us, detailing stories of torture and heroism, martyrdom and sacrifice, in 500 years of Sikh history. These stories gave us a legacy that infuses the turban with deep meaning: it embodies our community's commitment to devotion, honor, and service to all, a gift made possible by those who died to protect the practice of our faith.

While some non-Sikhs wear turbans as cultural garb, Sikhs are the only community for whom the turban is religious and nearly every person who wears the turban in the U.S. is Sikh. For many of us, abandoning this visible identity is equivalent to abandoning our faith and core values, including the commitment to protect the right of all people to practice whatever faith they choose.

But in the wake of the shootings of Sikh Americans in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, many Americans may silently wonder: If turbans mark Sikhs as targets for hate and violence, then why not take the turban off? Through a vibrant oral tradition, we Sikhs are emboldened by the stories passed down to us through the generations about why we keep the turban:

During a time of tremendous religious strife, a man named Nanak was born in 15th century Punjab (now Northern India and Pakistan). Guru Nanak expressed a unique vision of unity: Na ko Hindu, Na ko Muslim. There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim - beneath all husks and labels, humanity is one. He carried his message across South and Central Asia, rejecting all social inequalities, including caste hierarchies, gender discrimination, and religious persecution. He called for devotion to the One Divine, justice and equality of all people, and a commitment to seva or divinely-inspired service. And he taught that each person has the potential to develop his or her own relationship with the Divine. His followers were called "Sikhs," or disciples and seekers of truth.

As Guru Nanak passed his leadership on to a succession of teachers, many people embraced the Sikh faith and began wearing turbans to represent their devotion. Through the 16th and 17th centuries, thousands of Sikhs died fighting alongside people of many faiths against political oppression, and the ninth Sikh leader, Guru Tegh Bahadur, was executed by the state for defending the right of all communities to freely practice religion.

"The Guru was beheaded before a big crowd," our grandparents would tell us. "When one brave man brought the Guru's head to his young son, his son asked, 'Were there any Sikhs in the crowd to stand up to this injustice?' The man said he didn't know. The young boy responded, 'From now on, Sikhs will never hide.'"

As the story goes, the son grew up as the tenth Sikh leader, Guru Gobind Singh. In 1699, he called all Sikhs together and formalized a standard identity. He gave Sikhs five articles of faith, including kesh (uncut hair), meant for women and men equally. Men traditionally wrapped their long hair in turbans. Some women wear turbans too, but most simply cover their heads with headscarves when praying. Guru Gobind Singh requested all Sikhs to drop their surnames (a marker of social status), and instead, embrace a shared surname: all women adopted the last name "Kaur" and men took the last name "Singh." He declared that our eleventh and lasting teacher would be the sacred scriptures - the Guru Granth Sahib. Sikhs pray together in houses of worship and learning called gurdwaras [Doorways to the Divine] to study and sing devotional prayers from scripture.

Through the 18th century, Sikhs were captured, tortured and executed before giving up their turbans or their faith. The Sikh ideal became the warrior-saint: to live a life devoted to God and fiercely committed to fighting injustice in all forms. When India was conquered by the British, Sikhs joined fellow Hindus and Muslims to fight for independence. In recent history, Sikhs have continued to struggle for rights in India, and many Sikhs fled religious persecution in the 1980s to settle in the U.S.

Today, Sikhs belong to the fifth-largest organized religion in the world and are more than half a million strong in the U.S. However, Sikhs continue to encounter racism and religious bigotry since landing on American shores. Early Sikh pioneers, including one of our grandfathers, waited for decades before they were permitted to become citizens or own land. In our own childhoods, we remember racial slurs and shattered windows in the aftermath of the Iran hostage crisis, the first Gulf war, and the Oklahoma City bombing. In the immediate and long-term aftermath of 9/11, Sikhs have been bullied in schools, profiled at airports, barred from workplaces like the military, and targeted in hate violence - including the brutal massacre last Sunday.

In Oak Creek and across the U.S., Sikhs have drawn upon their history of struggle and resilience to rise up in the wake of this tragedy. We witnessed this in person on Thursday morning, when Sikhs were allowed to return to their gurdwara for the first time since the attack. They walked into a crime scene: there was still blood on the carpets and bullet holes in the walls. In an instant, the community burst into action: they ripped out and replaced carpets, scrubbed the floors, painted over bullet holes, and repaired broken windows. We literally watched a community rebuild itself before her eyes.

The Sikh community in Oak Creek reflects the broader Sikh community in America. Some choose to wear only one or two articles of faith; some wear turbans and others don't. Like all faith communities, ours is wonderfully diverse. But all Sikhs, no matter how they practice their faith, share in the spirit of "Chardi Kala" - a rising optimism even in dark times - and are coming together so that good can come from tragedy.

We believe that hate crimes against people who wear turbans, veils, yarmulkes, or robes are attacks on all communities marked as "other" in the American psyche. In a time when the economy is struggling, guns are easily accessible, and ideologues drum up votes through fear-mongering, we must renew our commitment to building safe and caring communities - for Sikhs and for all Americans.

So perhaps by passing along our story to you, it will embolden you the next time you see a turban. Perhaps you will think about the layers of history and resilience wrapped within - and offer a nod of recognition.

Follow Simran Jeet Singh on Twitter: www.twitter.com/simrancolumbia

My Neighbor's Faith: Double-Edged Daggers

2012-06-04T07:27:49-04:00

This essay is based on an excerpt from the author’s journal when she was sixteen years old.

Usually on Sunday mornings, my father's outside on a tractor, my mother's making aloo pronthas, my brother's watching cartoons, and I'm sleeping in. Sometimes, my mother crams the whole family into Baba Ji's room to sing shabads and recite Scripture together. But on this Sunday morning, my grandfather has asked me to come with him to the gurdwara, a Sikh house of worship some miles away. At sixteen years old, I dutifully follow.

I'm still rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I slip off my shoes. Wrapped in a long head scarf, I follow my grandfather inside. One step takes us from our small farming town in California's Central Valley into an entire world transported from India.

Inside, the congregation sits on the floor. On the right, a sea of men in turbans of black, saffron, blue and red cloth; on the left, women in silk and cotton, solid-colored, tie-dyed and embroidered chunnis of all different colors draped over long braids and jooras. Children sit next to their mothers and fidgeted. A little boy runs around islands of praying people before escorted out to the jungle gym. The elderly lean against the walls, eyes closed; while the younger folks listen to the prayers, the older ones seem to reside within the prayers.

The whole room revolves around the sacred space that holds the "living Guru": the 1,400 pages of Sikh verse known as Guru Granth Sahib Ji. The sacred book sits on a table draped in fine silvery blue cloths folded back to reveal the sacred lines of Gurmuki script whose poetry is read, sung and contemplated. Hanging from the ceiling over the sacred book is a magnificent blue canopy embroidered with a single brilliant character in Punjabi script, the first mysterious and profound word of our holy text. Ek Onkar: God is One. As ever, its two linked circles dropped from a top line, the stem connected those shoots up and umbrellas over in a long elegant stroke.

As I wait in line to bow my head before the Book, my eyes fall on the swords and daggers displayed at its base. Sikhs wielded these kirpans to defend the faith for hundreds of years in India, and I grew up hearing epic tales of battle and torture and martyrdom: Guru Arjan Ji tortured in a red hot caldron, Guru Gobind Ji's young sons bricked in alive, Baba Deep Singh holding his own severed head in hand as he fought in battle. These blood-soaked legends of Sikhs resisting the Moghul empire came down to us as stories of resilience and sacrifice -- our ancestors died so that we might live. The kirpans represent an enduring commitment to fight injustice and stand tall for faith and community. But it's hard for me to eye the sharp edge. Sikh girls aren't taught to fight like that. I drop my dollar on the pile of donations, close my eyes, bow my head to the floor and whisper the only words I can summon: Ek Onkar.

I follow my grandfather and sit with him on the men's side -- my modest act of defiance in a culture that too often divides women from men despite the Scripture's teachings on equality. We listen to the granthis, singers flown from India to sing shabads from the Scriptures accompanied by the tabla and harmonium; their voices -- sad, meditative and beseeching -- rise, dip and waver. As the voices soar, I close my eyes and move into deep reflection.

First I see my mother, bathed in light, hands moving swiftly over the harmonium in our little prayer room. I can hear her voice merge with the singers.

Then I picture my high school and remember what happened last year. In my freshman year, after a lecture on evolution in Biology class, my friends and I fell into a heated debate that led us straight into religion. As the conversation intensified, I held my half-eaten sandwich and looked up at them dumb-founded, heart thumping in my ears, and said, "So you think I'm going to hell?" They nodded and shifted uncomfortably. The bell rang.

That's when the nightmares began -- dreams of Judgment Day where golden staircases to heaven disappeared before the hellfire consumed me. From then on, I talked and pleaded with friends and teachers who tried to convert me, begging them to see that my family was good and did not deserve damnation.

The worst was when my Godmother brought home a strange guest: a large and powerful older woman with light skin, thick black eye-liner and wild hair. Before I knew it, she had wrapped her arms around me, was rocking me back and forth, and in a trance-like state asked me to repeat her words: "I accept Christ as my Lord and Savior."

I stopped. I couldn't accept. "Christ is one of many paths to God."

"You are confused. Any time you are confused, the devil is speaking to you." She began to speak in tongues to banish the demons from tormenting me any longer. And I ran away through nearby fields, praying for sanctuary.

The memories jolt me; my eyes shoot open. I catch a glimmer of light on the polished kirpans, and for the first time, I don't want to run away. I feel the blood of warriors and soldiers course through me, and I don't want to beg or plead anymore. My grandfather once told me of Mai Bhago, a great Sikh woman warrior who led armies into battle. I want to fight like her. I want to defend my family and community against those who condemn us, starting here and now. Where can I find them? I will go to the local church and confront the priest and the whole congregation on this Sunday morning.

As the sangat rises for the final prayers, I hurry out of the gurdwara and rush through the gates of this little island of India out into the town, still in my red salwar kameez. A group of Mexican-American kids on bicycles stop and turn their heads as I pass. I run down Dakota Street, my chunni now draping over my shoulders, my long black hair waving, my brow furrowed and march up to the church. I am standing on the edge of a dagger, absolutely reckless, ready to demand an answer from the priest.

I knock. The door is locked, but I hear hints of organ music inside. I knock again, filled with indignation. The door opens, revealing a white woman with fluffy grey hair and a flower-printed dress, startled to see a dark-eyed Indian girl at the doorstep. This is not the priest I was expecting. I'm tongue-tied.

"Can I come in?"

She nods and lets me in. The church is grand -- and empty. I slip into the hard wooden pews and notice a grand organ bathed in the light slanting through the stained glass windows. The woman positions herself in front of the organ, closes her eyes, and resumes her practice, the music is haunting yet steadily rising.

As the organist plays, I gaze at that symbol of judgment and damnation, the cross, in front of the church, and above it, the figure of Christ himself. The lines engraved around the figure of the Christian messiah seem to reach out and surround me. The nimbus unfurls into patterns of red, gold, green and purple that curve and stretch and canopy over me like the embroidered Ek Onkar in multiple dimensions, moving and expanding with the music, surrounding the picture of the man with sad eyes and outstretched arms and this sobbing girl sitting in the pews.

I experience a moment of absolute spiritual wonderment: the organ flows into the music of the harmonium, gurdwara into church, Word made flesh into Word made infinite. It's a glimmer of Oneness. I'm overcome with an ecstatic love, tinged with melancholy, soaked with the blood of those who have died for it.

As the last note of the organ echoes through the grand church, she turns around and sees my tear-stained face.

"Are you OK?"

In this moment, she becomes every Christian, every church, every possible judgment. And I am an ambassador come to present my case.

"How can there be an exclusivist God?" I hear myself ask. "I don't think it's possible."

There's a pause as she considers me with a compassion I cannot express.

"I don't either," she says. "You know, I think that there are many paths to God. It just doesn't make sense otherwise. Of course, some people don't agree."

I cover my mouth and laugh. I had marched up to this church prepared to fight the priest who I thought would condemn me, and instead I found a Christian woman who met me in that borderland between our faiths -- and embraced me. She is an ambassador too. And she had transported me up into my first spiritual experience of Oneness, the mystical vision that lies at the heart of my faith.

In her presence, the battlefield had melted into the sanctuary; the courage to fight had led me to the meaning of surrender. My ancestors must have whispered to me, "You want to experience God as one? Then to go the place where God has damned you, where God has threatened to swallow you up in hellfire. Go with your sword in your hand and your head in your palm. In that place, you will sit at the feet of Jesus and let Him do to you what He will."
And what did the messiah do? He did not send me to hell. He opened up as the gateway to the experience of Oneness I had always craved: He took me to God.

When I return to the gurdwara, I find my grandfather waiting for me under a great tree with roots knotted deep into the earth. I take his hand and thank him.

This column is an excerpt from 'My Neighbor's Faith: Stories of Interreligious Encounter, Growth, and Transformation.'

10 Sikh Women You Should Know and Why You Should Know Them

2012-03-22T08:08:57-04:00

If you ask a Sikh about their religion, the first thing you will hear is belief in the Oneness of God. The second is that Sikh men wear turbans to cover their long hair, an article of faith which tragically became a target after 9/11 (See, I just did it). But if you linger a minute longer, you will hear us beam about the equality of women in our faith. Unlike in most other religions, our scriptures are explicit about women as equal in the eyes of God.

What if you asked for names of famous Sikh women? You will hear a short pause. Then, a slight effort in concentration, before: Ah ha! There's Mata Tripta, the mother of the first Guru! And Mata Nanki, the sister of the first Guru! And Mata Khivi, wasn't she the second Guru's wife? You will hear an earful of mothers, sisters, and wives of the Ten Gurus, or teachers of the Sikh faith in the 15th and 16th centuries. As the list ends there, you may begin to sense there is something amiss.

It's time to confront the gap between our ideals and how we live them.

Sikhs Americans like me talk a great deal about women's equality, but we are steeped in an old patriarchal culture that makes us complicit in the erasure of women, past and present. Even the few famous women in our history are defined in relation to their men. Their full contributions as thinkers, poets and warriors unto themselves are eclipsed by the men they supported. The real life consequence? Sikh girls today are told they're fully equal, and yet many are expected to carry out traditional gender roles -- with few role models to suggest otherwise.

We would never tell you this, of course. You can't blame us. There are so few of us, it's hard to air our community's problems -- especially after 9/11, when explaining that "Sikhism" is a religion in the first place became a matter of daily survival. In fact, as a third-generation Sikh American activist, it took me nearly a decade after 9/11 even to begin talking about women again. After the terrorist attacks, we women tacitly agreed to put our issues on hold. We needed to protect our men first -- our brothers and husbands and sons whose turbans and dark skin marked them as primary targets for hate in the years after 9/11.

This was a mistake. As we waited (and are still waiting) for the discrimination to pass over us, some of the cultural dysfunctions in our community worsened. Women are girls are always the first casualties within minority communities under siege. That is no different in ours. Just as in most patriarchal traditions around the world, the bodies of women have been considered vessels of honor in Punjabi culture. When riots and massacre swept Punjab during the 1947 Partition of India, some Sikh men poisoned their daughters before letting them fall into the hands of Muslim rioters. Today in America, while many Sikh families champion education and freedom for sons and daughters alike, others have tightened control over women and girls in the 9/11 decade. In the worst anecdotes, domestic violence is an outlet for men who bear racism on the street, intermarriage an act of betrayal, and honor killings an actual threat.

But there's another story too. The call for liberation pulses through the Sikh tradition: it's in our scriptures and songs and stories. Hearing the call, a new generation of Sikh women has emerged as lawyers, artists, entrepreneurs, doctors, filmmakers and more. They have found brave new ways to defend their communities while offering their own unique voices to public discourse. I am proud to call them my contemporaries -- they are sources of inspiration, wisdom and leadership in their communities who deserve to be known.

Here are 10 Sikh women who embody the highest Sikh ideal of the warrior-saint. Half are legends from early history -- women who we will never fully know but whose deeds ignite our imagination as the first female warrior-saints. Half are modern-day heroines -- each one stands for hundreds of Sikh women who are blazing their own paths as the warrior-saints of our era.

My hope is that the next time you ask a Sikh on the street about their religion, they will be able to name all these women. And you will already know their names.

An Open to Letter to Steve Hafner, CEO of Kayak

2011-12-19T15:12:29-05:00

Dear Steve Hafner:

Let me first say that Kayak.com is bookmarked on my computer. I think it's the best travel site out there. I've used Kayak for every single flight I have ever booked since 2005. And I travel a lot -- at least 50,000 miles a year. You provide a tool I use all the time.

So when I read your blog post defending your company's decision not to renew advertising of All-American Muslim on TLC, I was furious. I was troubled when anti-Muslim groups like the Florida Family Association (FFA) began to target the show for depicting Muslim Americans as regular people. But I didn't think it would actually work! First Lowe's withdraws support. Now Kayak, one of my favorite companies?!

Now I know that you handled the matter differently from Lowe's, who openly acknowledged that it gave in to pressure. Instead, you stated that your decision, which came three days after Lowe's, "was in no way influenced by demands from third parties such as the FFA." You explain: "We do try to avoid advertising on shows that may produce controversy... We simply don't want people to confuse our choice of where we spend our TV dollars with a political or moral agenda."

So, not only did your company cave into bigoted demands, but you covered it up with spin. The deception makes your decision even more morally outrageous.

Mr. Hafner, you say that you want to avoid a "political or moral agenda," but in fact, your decision makes a strong political and moral statement. We hear it loud and clear:

It shows that you find a portrait of everyday Muslim American families "controversial."

It implies that any media that shows Muslims as ordinary people, not terrorists, has a "political or moral agenda."

Worse, it tells fringe hate groups that mainstream companies will cave into bigoted demands, even if they don't admit it publicly.

Please understand that your company's decision has real-life consequences. You are not just a travel site company, as you try to explain in your blog post. You're a player in the world at large. Your decisions spill over into our social, political, and ethical landscape, and people like me bear the costs and benefits.

I am a Sikh American woman who has watched her community targeted in beatings, bullying, profiling, and killings since 9/11. The stereotype of the "Muslim terrorist" still dominates the media and seizes our nation's imagination. It makes some see my family and community -- people with brown skin or turbans -- as automatically suspect, perpetually foreign, and potentially terrorist. I am not even Muslim, but I bear the brunt of that bigotry and I want it to end.

And I am not alone. There is a groundswell of people out there who are tired of the politics of fear. People of faith are tired of their religion being used as a tool of oppression. What's more, a new generation of young people -- the largest, most diverse and open-minded in the nation's history -- can't stomach hate groups. Most of us don't like decisions that give in to their bigotry, no matter how you cover it up. And a whole lot of us use Kayak.com.

Mr. Hafner, you say: "We're not bigots." I don't think you are. You just committed a moral failure that allows bigotry to win the day. In the end, I'm not sure there's much of a difference. But you have a short window of opportunity to prove me wrong:

1. Issue a public apology immediately.
2. Renew your support of All-American Muslim.
3. Devote a portion of your profits to combating religious and racial bigotry.

I offer you a meeting with myself and/or my peers to talk about the right thing to do. Until then, I am boycotting your website. I will call upon all people who care about religious diversity in America to do the same.

Sincerely,

Valarie Kaur
Former Loyal Kayak Customer
Director of Groundswell

P.S. I have sent your office a copy of my film Divided We Fall, a documentary that chronicles anti-Muslim hate violence after 9/11 through real stories. It shows just why television shows like All-American Muslim are so important.

One Child Is Too Many

2011-10-25T15:11:13-04:00

By Valarie Kaur and Jessica Jenkins

It is a basic fact of the moral universe that children should not be sold for sexual
exploitation. However, in America, girls and boys are regularly manipulated, coerced, and forced into sex for money. Most are trafficked from within the United States, not far off foreign lands. Many are as young as eleven or twelve. And many are sold on prominent Web sites such as Backpage.com, owned by Village Voice Media.

This morning, an unexpected coalition of faith and moral leaders -- Mainline Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Humanists, and Evangelical Christians -- published a full-page ad in the New York Times calling upon Village Voice Media to shut down their adult services section. They amplify the opinion of fifty-one State Attorneys General that Village Voice Media should follow Craigslist's example and take down the adult services section of Backpage.com because it is used as a prominent
commercial platform for sex trafficking of girls and boys.

Today, we have an opportunity to join the groundswell and ask Village Voice Media to do the right thing. As parents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, and caretakers, we share a moral imperative to protect children from exploitation. But there are many children who we fail to protect. They are neglected, abused, abandoned. They grow up in tumultuous, unstable homes, bounce around in the foster care system, and run away from home. Many of them are abused or cast out because they identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer. Many wind up on the street and seek temporary respite through alcohol and drugs. They become easy prey for greed-seeking adults who lure them into the sex industry with big promises of love, protection, and security, only to endure physical and sexual violence, disease, and isolation. They are robbed of their childhoods.

In nearly any other context, our legal system considers children under eighteen too young to consent to sex -- they are treated as victims. But minors forced into sex work are routinely arrested, jailed and convicted by local law enforcement officials, while their pimps and adult customers are rarely punished.

Incarceration and prosecution re-traumatizes them. Those who do eventually leave "the life" find themselves stymied by their long rap sheets.

Child sex trafficking is rooted in many other social injustices -- poverty, homelessness, homophobia, racism, and violence against girls. The systemic forces perpetuating the exploitation of children are complex, so we need multiple approaches to stop it. We must insist that local, state and federal law enforcement collaborate to better identify victims of trafficking and to offer them safety and support, rather than criminalization, incarceration and further abuse. We must work harder to stop the cycles of abuse, violence and community disintegration that make children vulnerable to exploitation in the first place. And we must support organizations like Girls Educational and Mentoring Service (GEMS),
who are already doing amazing work to empower and protect young victims of sex trafficking.

But that is not all we need to do. Websites like Backpage.com legitimize the sex trafficking of minors by giving a prominent commercial platform to their pimps and adult customers. We need a groundswell to end this practice -- a groundswell of people who share moral outrage that this violence is happening in our own backyards. This is not a conservative issue, or a liberal issue. This is about ending an unconscionable practice.

As moral outrage at economic injustice inspires mass protests, people are hungry for direct concrete solutions. In a country where the top one percent have as much income as the bottom 60 percent -- a level of inequality not seen since before the Great Depression -- children are the ones who suffer most from gross inequality and social instability. We know we must do much more to end the structural inequalities and abuse at the root of the sex trafficking of minors, and even more to build a moral economy that honors the dignity of all. But through persuading a company that their profit margin is not worth maintaining a prominent platform for trafficking, we can take one significant step toward that goal.

Today, Groundswell is calling on Village Voice Media to follow the example Craigslist.com set last year by shutting down its adult section, in order to prevent the exploitation and abuse of one more girl or boy via its Web site. Join us. Together, we can send a clear message that putting kids at risk for profit is always immoral. One is too many.

Jessica Jenkins blogs regularly for Groundswell. She graduated from Fordham University in 2010 with joint degrees in law and social work and is pursuing a career as an immigration lawyer.

This Is What a Groundswell Looks Like

2011-10-09T09:30:00-04:00

In my travels across the country, I've been speaking about a rising generation ready to emerge from the shadows of the last decade and enter a new era of social change. Now we are seeing something emerge -- a grassroots campaign has caught fire, turning out thousands of people, young and old, to create a free democratic space called Liberty Square on Wall Street.

All kinds of people are protesting that Wall Street has been rescued but there has been no help for most Americans. And city after city is joining them. Their statement:

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we are working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

This is what a groundswell looks like. This is a moment that could spark a broader movement that reaffirms the human dignity of all people. In a time when the top 1 percent have as much income as the bottom 60 percent -- a level of inequality not seen since before the Great Depression -- it's a matter of moral imperative to help fix a broken system.

Oct. 4 was a major day of action in New York, where an estimated 15,000 people marched for reform. I'm inspired by Jesse Jackson's editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times about the protesters:

"The discipline of their demonstrations, the clarity of their moral voice, has touched a chord. Occupy Wall Street is in that tradition of nonviolence with a moral voice organizing to challenge entrenched power and privilege, a movement that stands with the majority against a powerful elite."

But let's be clear: This isn't about bad people, it's about a broken system that isn't working to encourage opportunity for all Americans and rewarding hard work with decent pay.

Last month, our country marked the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 as the end of one chapter of history and the beginning of a new one has yet to be written. At Groundswell's teach-in at The Jerome L. Green Performance Space in September, I shared a vision of what a groundswell feels like. I said, "A groundswell is a broad swell in the sea, due to a distant storm or gale. It's a response to something. A groundswell is not self-generated but comes out of the zeitgeist."

We did not know what would come next or how it would happen -- we only knew that we were hungry for a movement that wasn't about a political party or a single issue, but a shared moral vision for a better world. We have taken the first steps together, now let's keep walking.

From Ground Zero to Gays in Uganda: A Millennial Response to Modern Moral Crises

2011-02-01T14:31:14-05:00

In the weeks following 9/11, a Sikh man named Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot down at a gas station by a man shouting "I'm a patriot!" In 2009, a 9-year-old girl named Brisenia Flores and her father were murdered in Arizona, allegedly at the hands of anti-immigration crusaders. And just last week, a gay activist named David Kato was bludgeoned to death in Uganda after his picture was published in a magazine article outing and encouraging the execution of LGBT individuals.

What do these three disparate acts have in common? They were rooted in fear and hate, represent humanity at its worst ... and they brought together a 29-year-old Sikh woman and a 23-year-old gay atheist.

At first glance, we may seem an odd duo. One of us is a Yale law student and dedicated filmmaker who has spent years raising up the stories of people swept up in hate crimes, racial profiling and domestic violence since 9/11; the other is a queer interfaith activist from the Midwest with more tattoos than fingers, who is working to bridge the cultural divide between the religious and the nonreligious.

We first met in September of 2010, when Park51, or the "Ground Zero Mosque," came under national scrutiny and a pastor gained prominence by threatening to burn Qurans on the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Looking for a compassionate place to form a response in the midst of cultural strife and increasingly hateful rhetoric, we gathered in a living room and drank hot tea, brainstorming with a group of peers across the country over Skype and e-mail. The result was the Common Ground Campaign, a youth-led coalition speaking out against anti-Muslim bias. In a few short weeks, more than 1,000 people from all walks of life signed on to the Common Ground Campaign charter, and the movement continues to grow.

We both began our activism shortly after 9/11. One of us, shaken by the hate murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi, began a journey across the United States with a camera to shed light on what happens when the world is divided into "us and them." That journey inspired the award-winning documentary film Divided We Fall. The other, 14 at the time, started the process of coming out of the closet and grappling with the relationships between religious communities and the LGBT movement. That journey inspired a vow to bridge the seemingly insurmountable distance between queer and straight, religious and atheist -- the subject of an upcoming memoir.

Nearly 10 years later, our work brought us together. As anti-immigration rhetoric reaches a fever pitch across the country and LGBT bullying comes under a microscope domestically and abroad, we know that it is not enough to simply speak out against anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence. Today, it couldn't be any clearer that hateful rhetoric and violence targeting Muslims is inherently linked with rhetoric and violence that target LGBT and immigrant communities.

The recent tragedy in Uganda is just the latest example of the violence that spills forth when we allow our moral imagination to create "others" -- those who are "not like us," whose very existence seems to threaten our religion or our country. David Kato was murdered because a shrunken moral imagination had already cast him from the circle of who counts as "one of us." Just like Balbir Singh Sodhi and Brisenia Flores.

We refuse to sit silently while members of our communities are killed and ostracized because of fear of the foreign. Our generation has grown up in the shadow of 9/11, the politicization of LGBT identity, anti-immigrant fervor and a devastating economic recession. We are the most diverse generation in the history of our country. Our worldviews transcend the social categories we've inherited -- right and left, religious and secular, black and white -- and yet we came of age in a time defined by terror alerts and 24-hour news, when the world was divided along the most rigid of those ancient lines: us and them.

In a time of economic instability, when the coffins of our peers continue to come home, many Americans are afraid. People build walls when they're afraid -- fences to keep "them" out and keep "us" safe -- and these walls rend the fabric of our society. We see it in anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence following the Park51 controversy. We see it anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona, spreading to Mississippi, Georgia and beyond. And we see it in the brutal murder of a gay activist in Uganda. David Kato's murder is part of a much larger pattern of hostility, abuse, and discrimination against LGBT people globally and right here at home.

Our generation can no longer afford to cede authority to the angriest voices, whether they broadcast from down the street or across the ocean. In a globalized world, oppression at home is linked with oppression abroad: for example, the key organizer of the National Prayer Breakfast inspired the gay-death-penalty legislation in Uganda. Our virtual communities make it so that the old boundaries aren't so rigid. As this week's uprising in Egypt demonstrates, youth are mobilizing across all conceivable boundaries, including geographic ones. What happens in Uganda and Egypt matters here, now -- we are closer to it than ever before.

Amid the political rancor and sharp moral tensions that surround us domestically and abroad, our generation is ready to act. Today, the Common Ground Campaign is teaming up with Auburn Theological Seminary to convene a summit of millennial generation activists, religious and secular thought leaders and interfaith advocates. We will be brainstorming strategies for moving forward, and we invite you to move with us.

As a first step, please join us on Thursday (Feb. 3) for a nationwide day of prayer or reflection to remember the death and honor the life of David Kato. David was one of the few openly gay Ugandans willing to speak out against the anti-gay legislation and violence in his country. His death reminds us that we need more voices, not fewer. We pledge to carry forth the cause that he championed: the idea that we must all be free to live honestly and openly, together.

Joining forces, we can help define a new narrative, globally and locally -- one that bridges our communities rather than threatening the "other" with extinction.

We're stepping out of the shadow of 9/11, out of the closet and across the borders intended to keep us apart. In the light, we're finding one another, and a solidarity that compels us to act. Please join us.

Top religious leaders are calling for a nationwide 'Day of Prayer for David Kato' on Feb. 3, the first day of the National Prayer Breakfast, to honor the Ugandan gay rights activist who was killed last week, amidst a storm of anti-gay sentiment in his country. Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson and Auburn Theological Seminary are spearheading this nationwide call for prayer and remembrance. For more information, visit this website

Shadow Generation

2010-09-15T10:06:48-04:00

September 15, 2010 -- Nine years ago today, the murder of a family friend changed the course of my life. His name was Balbir Singh Sodhi. Four days after 9/11, he was shot in the back in front of his gas station by a man who yelled when arrested, "I'm a patriot! Arrest me and let those terrorists run wild."

Sodhi was a turbaned Sikh man.

His murder, combined with thousands of hate incidents and crimes that broke out onto city streets in the days and weeks after 9/11, paralyzed me. As a twenty-year old Sikh American, I grew up with my mother singing mystical poems from the Sikh tradition, where women and men often wrap their long hair in turbans to mark their commitment as saint-soldiers, sworn to love God and serve others. But I also inherited my family's deep roots in American soil: my grandfather sailed by steamship from India to California to tame the dry Central Valley floor nearly 100 years ago, and I was born and raised on the land he farmed.

I felt that America was wide enough to embrace my diverse identity -- until 9/15. After Sodhi's murder, I saw myself and my family through the eyes of others -- our brown skin and turbans marked us as perpetually foreign, automatically suspect, and potentially terrorist. I needed to reconcile the America I knew and loved with the fear hijacking my country. So I grabbed my camera, left college, and drove across the country to make a movie about "who counts" as American in times of crisis.

In the last four years, I have toured with my film Divided We Fall to 150 U.S. cities, speaking to thousands of students in wide-ranging arenas -- Ivy League auditoriums on the east coast, university theaters on the west coast, college classrooms in the South and Midwest, private high schools in the wealthy suburbs of Boston and Detroit, and urban elementary schools on the South Side of Chicago. I listened closely to the voices of my generation.

I discovered that I was not alone.

Like me, young people across America have grown up with multiple racial, religious, cultural, and virtual identities that our parents could not have imagined. As the most diverse generation in the history of the world, our plural identities and inclusive worldviews resist the social categories of our parents' generation: liberal and conservative, black and white, religious and secular.

We still hold passionate beliefs, even exclusivist beliefs, but most of us don't question whether we can live alongside, befriend, or love people who live differently or disagree strongly with us. In a Web 2.0 world, pluralism is not novel -- it's the norm. It is a way for us to feed the most fundamental human desire: to be seen the way we see ourselves.

And yet, my generation's diverse sensibilities have been kept in the dark. In response to 9/11, institutions of power divided the world along crude lines: "us and them." I found myself on the wrong side of that line, alongside millions of young people with brown skin, but all young people felt disoriented by the world's sudden realignment. They call us the Millennial Generation, or Generation Y, young people born in the 1980s and 1990s, but I call us the Shadow Generation: our lives have been shaped in the shadow cast by 9/11.

Nine years later, our voices are still not represented in mainstream media, which prefers screaming heads and dueling rallies to respectful dialogue. As the national firestorm around the "Ground Zero Mosque" gave way to anti-Muslim hate speech and violence across the country -- protests and vandalism of mosques, burnings of Qur'ans, and at least one stabbing -- I found myself paralyzed once again. Islamophobia is resurgent, not under the radar as it was after 9/11, but broadcast and accepted in the mainstream.

It is time for young people everywhere to emerge from the shadows. We know how to form common ground with people different from us, whether Muslims or Evangelicals, conservatives or progressives. We can draw upon these experiences to help overcome the fear driving hateful expression on both sides of the debate. We can invite opponents of Park51 to dialogue with Muslim Americans, so as not to conflate Islam with the acts of those who have committed violence in its name. And we can ask Muslim allies not to denigrate opponents of Park51 as ignorant or racist, and instead engage directly with the anxiety and misinformation driving Islamophobia. But only if we commit to action.

In this spirit, I have joined forces with a coalition of young people to launch the Common Ground Campaign, urging other young people to stand against anti-Muslim violence and pledge to create common ground in their schools and communities through compassionate dialogue. Our aim is to find common ground in all 50 states. You can sign our Charter and join our campaign here.

Today, on 9/15, may we remember the street corner where Balbir Singh Sodhi fell as a second ground zero - a site that honors the memory of all the men and women whose lives have been lost or damaged in the aftermath of 9/11, in hate crimes at home, terrorist attacks abroad, or in two wars raging in far-away lands. After Balbir Singh Sodhi's murder, neighbors had planted a Christian cross on that piece of land, that second ground zero - not as a sign of conquest but of compassion. This is, after all, common ground.

Valarie Kaur is an award-winning filmmaker (Divided We Fall, 2008) and part of a coalition of students who launched the Common Ground Campaign. You can read her blog at ValarieKaur.com.