i think the fact that we have a packed room here tonight really to me signifies the urgency with which we all feel that we need to have these conversations in america especially right now i have to say that when my book was released just a few weeks ago in early november little did i really expect that it's themes around islamophobia phobia and racial anxiety would be brought into sharp focus again as it has been with the backlash that we're seeing in our communities after the horrific attacks and para's and those you know phobic political rhetoric that we're also seeing but the truth of the matter is that what we're seeing today is actually what we saw yesterday and two years before for the past fourteen years the climate of fear and suspicion in this country has ceded what we're seeing today in a more more overt fashion there's a misguided perception that the post nine eleven backlash was limited to the months and years right after nine eleven but that's simply not the case as many of you in this room know and i know it firsthand because for over the past fourteen years i have had unfortunately a front row front line seat to the theater of post nine eleven america at the time of the attack i was actually working as an attorney at the civil rights division at the u s department of justice in washington d c and within two hours many of us began to hear about sick men who were being chased down streets of manhattan being called terrorists muslim an arab community members who were being detained and interrogated from their stores from their streets who were detained while they were traveling and we began to hear about and see images that i think have become entrenched in our collective national imagination of what quote a terrorist looks like and unfortunately it has many of those images happened to look like some of the people that are featured on this book cover so as i say in my book many of us entered a period of a double grieving in the days after nine eleven for of course what had happened on that day the horrible events of that day and the loss of life but then when we started to realize that our communities would actually be scapegoated for what occurred so in my time after d o j and at salt south asian americans leading together which is a national nonprofit that was really shaped by the post nine eleven moment i along with other south asian muslim arab and sick american activists realized very quickly that post nine eleven america is a daily phenomenon for our communities it's one in which hate my alliance or the threat of it has become ever present this is a picture of one of the relatives of bob you're seeing so the who was the first man who was killed after nine eleven on september fifteenth it is an environment in which people from south asia and the middle east have become known as the disappeared because they were literally taken off the street corners from their stores and their homes interrogated profiled surveilled detained and deported by our government in the domestic war on terror which conflates national security and immigration policies and continues to do so with names such as the alien  absconder initiative and the special registration program names of policies and many of us don't even know about it's an environment in a country where our people are told time and again that safety is allusive whether it is within the walls of our gurdwaras our temples the safe spaces that we had built and we receive daily signals through political rhetoric in the media that this is not our country that we should go home that we're diluting the true nature of america that our languages customs traditions and back breaking work are all desirable and acceptable when it comes to couture cuisine and jobs that many americans don't want to do but it's not acceptable when it means accessing benefits rights economic linguistic educational opportunities and really just a country where we can feel that we belong and are safe and are welcome so this is the backdrop that  was occurring when i wrote this book last year and i think that what has happened over the course of the past fourteen years is a three different forces have come together and so the book actually has a couple of different goals in mind that i just wanted to share with you all one is to document the lived experiences as sawyer was talking about of south asian sikh arab and community members with the hope that their voices will fill in some of the knowledge gaps that exist about what post nine eleven america even is the second is to make the link between those three forces i mentioned islamophobia anti muslim sentiment zina phobia anti immigrant sentiment and racial anxiety due to the demographic changes that we're seeing in our country so in the book i explore how anti muslim sentiment has actually become a back door to putting in place legislation and policies that affect immigrants refugees and broader sets of communities and then to provide some call to action for south asian muslim arab and muslim and sikh community members in particular so i talk a little bit in the book about why we as a community have to dismantle the racial hierarchy in the united states one that is built on the foundations of anti black racism and that we need to do that by declining the offer to accept what scholars and sociologists call the racial bribe and honorary whiteness that we need to move beyond those exceptional narratives that we ourselves create about spelling bee champions and silicon valley entrepreneurs to make room for the experiences of nepali domestic workers or muslim community members or undocumented indian youth and the book also seeks to talk about how we win and we win when we actually organize across race across other sorts of lines that divide us and there are parts of the book there really center the participation of south asian muslim arab and sic immigrant communities whether it's in for example fights to end racial profiling or surveillance or whether it's around the immigrant rights movement or the movement for black lives and lastly the book asked some questions about how these communities in particular and our allies can really shape or a more inclusive democracy in the united states especially given those transformative demographic changes that we're seeing in the united states so given these goals the book is kind of heavy and conserves itself with you know some painful issues that affect many of us in a very personal deeply personal manner but for me what is most heartening to about this book are the voices of young people that animate people like druze a kurdish refugee in tennessee who has been pushing back against a very ill and anti immigrant anti muslim legislative campaign in tennessee people like bhupen who is an undocumented gay man in los angeles who through his courageous presence is actually pushing the immigrant rights movement to be more inclusive people like mostafa an egyptian american muslim advocate in st louis who is making important connections between the movement for black lives and palestinian liberation and kamel a young immigrant from oak creek wisconsin who experienced a significant personal loss at his local gurdwara which is a sikh house of worship so with that in mind and the goals of the book i wanted to read to you a passage a few passages that actually focus on kamel the young man in oak creek wisconsin and his story so this is from the first chapter in the book which is called not  wanted to sleep in a little longer so set out on her own to the local gurdwara the sick temple of wisconsin but indeed was a familiar presence there and it had become a second home to her family and to many other sikhs in oak creek which is a small city located in the outskirts of milwaukee the gurdwara built in two thousand and seven on thirteen acres of land by sikh immigrant families sits on south howell street just a few miles from the malaki airport and on weekends six families would gather at the gregoire to pray and connect with one another the dining hall was always filled with the sounds of people laughing and socializing during a longer which is a free meal offer to anybody who visits the group who are come all in her usually hung out with their friends and played football on sundays there while their mother helped in the kitchen and the prayer hall but august fifth two thousand and twelve would not turn out to be a normal sunday for prime gz family or for the  soon after his mother had left the house news reached kamel that people inside the sick temple of wisconsin were in danger details were scarce and panic stricken kummel rushed to the group to find the law enforcement vehicles had blocked off the driveway authorities asked him to wait across the street in the parking lot of a bowling alley where he joined others who were also anxious lee searching for information while waiting there kamel another speculated about what was happening inside the gurdwara some thought that perhaps a dispute between community members had gone awry then one of their friends curing the received a call from her father he was inside he whispered that he was hiding in the pantry of the kitchen because he had heard gunshots he was one of around twenty five people huddled terrified among bags of rice and fresh vegetables kiran the father said don't come to the gurdwara under any circumstances as the day wore on many of the people who had been inside were allowed to leave and a fuller picture began to emerge about the rampage that had occurred inside the gurdwara that sunday morning not seeing his mother and becoming increasingly anxious about her safety hummel left the parking lot he called his f and together they went from hospital to hospital hoping that had been brought to one it would be a full eleven hours before authorities finally notified kamel that his mother had been one of six people fatally shot inside the g when i first found out i passed out said i woke up in an ambulance and immediately thought of my little brother telling him was the hardest thing i've ever done this wasn't the future that had envisioned for her family when she and her two sons moved to america from india in two thousand and four to join her husband who owned a number of gas stations in wisconsin it wasn't the life that had planned to build when she mustered up the courage a few years later to begin working at a medical factory nearby but determination to care for her pat family is a point of deep pride for her two sons forty five days after his mother was killed harpreet spoke about her in testimony before the united states senate he said my mother was a brilliant woman a reasonable woman everyone knew she was smart but she never had the chance to get a formal education she couldn't as a hard working immigrant she had to work long hours to feed her family to get her sons educated to make sure that we could achieve our american dreams this was more important to her than anything else but now she's gone because of a man who hated her because she wasn't his color his religion she was an american but this was not our american dream now it's important to remember that what happened in oak creek was part and parcel of the post nine eleven backlash that we have seen over the last fourteen creek actually began more than a century ago in this country so south asian arab hindu muslim and sick communities experienced unprecedented backlash after nine eleven about hate violence targeting these communities has a much larger history arabs have faced high levels of suspicion discrimination and violence in the late seventy's and early ninety's when the iran hostage crisis in the persian gulf war occurred and for south asians including those who are hindu muslim or seek they have been targets of hate crimes from the bellingham washington riots of one thousand and seven to the scare in the one nine hundred eighty s in new jersey and street violence that's been targeting our community members in more recent decades the riots in bellingen which occurred in the early part of the twentieth century are meaningful to understand the roots of anti asian sentiment at the time as you all know all along the west coast chinese korean filipino japanese and indian workers were exploited for their labor but not welcomed as residen or us citizens these racist attitudes were reinforced by laws such as the chinese exclusion act and anti naturalization policies but they also often took the form of actual violence and that's what happened on september fourth  in bowling five hundred white residents rounded up around two hundred south asian migrant workers most of them seek some hindus and lock them in the basement of the city hall they intended to drive out immigrant laborers who worked under contract in bellingen number miles i'm surprisingly bellingham's the inner phobic reactions just south asian migrant labor reflected views institutionalized in laws and expressed in the media the bellingham herald for example published an editorial the day after the riots that read the hindu is not a good citizen it would require centuries to assimilate him in this country need not take the trouble our racial burdens all are already heavy enough to bear just a side note that about one hundred years later in two thousand and seven actually the bellingham herald did publish an apology for what occurred in the community yes hundred years not too bad of a time period right so i want to end the reading by by taking you back to oak creek wisconsin and talking a little bit about the the memorial service that occurred there so i arrived in oak creek five days after the massacre occurred to pay my respects at the memorial for the six victims of the tragedy as i approached oak creek high school the site of the memorial service i could see hundreds of people who were waiting in line outside people of all races and faiths had gathered in the quintessential american space high school gymnasium to mourn the six sick immigrants who had lost their lives to hate violence in america's heartland the gym echoed with the spontaneous call and response of bullies so in a hollow such three a call from the six in the audience as a memorial program began we were asked to pay our respects to the victims by lining up to view the open caskets i tried to prepare myself for looking into the faces of the six innocent people who had lost their lives but i was even more of comfort and reassurance that i could muster a community will stand by you i said and i believe these words firmly and fully in my heart but i also knew that they could provide little solace at the time for myself and other sick american leaders like just saying and saying we knew that we had many questions we asked ourselves how could this have happened again how can our community barrett what more could have been done after nine eleven to prevent these this massacre from occurring we would ask ourselves these questions for months and years afterward the memorial service proceeded with a number of speeches from community members and elected officials including attorney general eric holder and he said something of significance he said unfortunately this sort of violence has become all too common in recent years and it's true the public backlash that six muslims hindus south asians and arabs have experienced since nine eleven had indeed become all too common by tw but it's important to remember that it did not happen in a vacuum the violence was reinforced by racist anti muslim and xenophobia political rhetoric by media narratives that stereotypes and dehumanizer communities and by the government's own  programs that target and profile these same communities in the name of national security so the rest of that chapter talks about the way in which the community of responded how they have been trying to heal and it talks about how it is a community wide response to hate violence that they're trying to to actually model themselves after in that particular town and it also talks about the fact that in our country the biggest threat these days is actually around right wing domestic terror groups that are organizing that are focused on white supremacy that are focused on the demographic changes that are that we're seeing in this country so that's kind of how the rest of the chapter ends so at the same time that south asian muslim arab and sick immigrant communities have been placed into chaos and struggle in the years after nine eleven there have been significant meaningful transformative changes happening in our country the movement for black lives reminds those with urgency to stay woke to say her name to disrupt and muslim arab south asian communities are responding by standing firm in solidarity as allies and from palestine to fergusson justice for all the work claiming that we are not anyone's model minority and short we're making it plain that we stand with increasing power at the intersections of multiple movements as feminists and reproductive rights activists as immigrants speaking with confidence in the cadence of arabic bangla be and tom all as queer and transgendered people as undocumented people with intersectional identities as workers and as allies of global movements related to climate change the solidarity economy and human rights so that to me is the hope for how we press forward in our struggle for racial justice and equity and the book also includes as sawyer said do calls to action so it has some call to action for all of us not surprisingly i actually just want to read to you some of the calls to action that i've been hearing from people i've been talking to actually around the country the book asks that we are disruptors of kind of the prevailing cultural narratives and norms that we usually hear about muslim arabs how they should and sick immigrants and it also asks us to build bridges and on your seat you should have a postcard that has the picture of the cover of the book but on the back of it i'm actually asking each of you to take a pledge if any part of this conversation and the conversation we're about to have moves you that you take a pledge in terms of what you're willing to do to be a disruptor to be a bridge builder and if you don't mind if you put your email address on there or your mailing address i will be in touch with you in a few months just to remind you about your pledge you can count on that so these are some of the responses that i've been hearing from people i work with my state public schools to expand curriculum to include some of the issues affecting these communities where i have a hard conversation with my indian grandfather about anti black racism  i'll support a local mosque that's been the site of anti muslim or anti islam rallies which is actually happening all around the country these days i'll write letters to the local editor of the newspaper that perpetuates terrorists perceptions of our communities my elected leaders about their stance on domestic terrorism a final statement this is important to support muslim arab and south asian communities which is actually up right now on  dot com and there is a statement right now that we're asking folks to sign on to to show your support and solidarity with our community members we have some limited time and a lot of ground to cover so we're just going to jump right in so  you know for historical context just in the last week when we were planning to see this event we were talking on the phone and i think was trying to and he said well who knows what's going to happen between now and tuesday right and we did we saw the shootings  protesters in minneapolis we saw the shooting of the planned parenthood clinic in colorado and we've seen a backlash against muslims arabs and south asians including physical assaults vandalism at mosques and armed protests we've also seen chicago's cover up of a police murder of a sixteen year old youth and look juan macdonald a seventeen year old excuse me ongoing killings of black and brown  people detentions deportations but these things they're not new right and our resistance is also not new so chandan can you give us some historical context for what we're seeing today both in terms of the attacks and also the resistance that we're  and to think a bit about the origins of much of these discourses asian migration like much migration and i had states was calling labor migration in the period of the nineteenth century there were a migration happening in the in the east south east southern united states that was connected to the peninsular trade with the spanish galleon trades there was migration on the west coast and northeast and so forth it wasn't until the late nineteenth century that asians became targeted specifically as a form of racial otherness or as a form of form of foreign other that needed to be separated and segregated both politically and socially in the united states the idea asians and muslims as other to the united states as foreign is not coincidental but is really a consequence of the specific history of racialization of asians and muslims of middle eastern peoples which has been primarily through the immigration system as well as the history of u s wars abroad so even though we we continue to wonder how it is that asians appear to us as foreign others even when they're third or fourth generation we have to know that one of the reasons is because of the ways in which they've been racialized in this country and the specific apparatuses that have done that work which have been immigration and u s militarism abroad now for much of the nineteenth and twentieth century asians were considered excludable population which meant that they were allowed to be the united states as workers but they were not allowed to be participatory in the us as citizens or as cultural subjects and in fact he mentions in her book for example in bellingham the bellingham riots where they you know two people into the streets and they beat them and they took their things was preceded by laws that actually had stated that south asian laborers were allowed to be in bellingham during the period of the season in wh labor such as during the period of picking such as the period of canning or the period the period of cutting wood but that when there wasn't seasonal labor demand south asians were barred from being on the streets of bellingham so when they were literally labor that could be present during long history of racial lazing asians as others really continued much through the twentieth century up until nine hundred sixty five and some of the consequence of the way that asians have been racialized as others is asians were excluded through  and justifying migration and citizenship policies so nationality for asians is not arbitrary and the meaning of nationality and the production of needing to know people's nationality for asians comes out of this exact history and it's particularly relevant at this moment where you see that we are in a moment in which the multiplicity of asian identities and i think gibran and gabrielle really pulled this out the multiplicity of asian identities by co founding many of the ways people have come to know asians so asians are also muslim as much as they are national identity asians are also muslims are also black as much as they are asian refugees are as much people of color as they are so on and so forth and so what you're seeing at this moment is a radical confusing of the nationality logic that has racialization and it's been it's been the source of some of the most interesting cultural work that we've just heard as well as some of the most interesting important bridges in resistances that the book talks about and so moving on to the pitch the period the last thing i'll say about the period of exclusion is that the period of the late late nineteenth and early twentieth century exclusion had a very it had to tactics around asians one was to recruit their labor and to make their labor cheaper by being able to exclude them from citizenship rights to the exclusion of south asians was oftentimes a way of negotiating the dual demands for making white supremacy a meaningful doctrine so being able to give white people even working white people right above and beyond those of others  as well as needing to deal with the demands of a growing and expanding economy so the populist movements of white supremacy that you see in washington in california and elsewhere were precisely at this intersection of the need to support white supremacy and the need to grow the economy simultaneously and you're seeing reverberations of that in this contemporary mom as well the last part is that asians were racialized for us militarism as well as through western militar generally and u s participation in it and we can talk a lot more about how that works out in the contemporary moment but let me take you to the historical period and tell you a little bit that one south asians are very interesting population west coast  interesting population in this regard they came to the northwest meaning the u s side of the northwest washington state oregon california so forth mainly as derelict workers from the from vancouver and so most of those people have anti colonial labor and national organizing when they came to when they came to britain with british columbia they were the target of tremendous surveillance and the reason we have such high documentation of them is because of how much surveillance they were under and in fact one of the things that happens then is that they get kicked out of vancouver because of the activism they're doing and britain and the u s talk to share surveillance information with one another to track south asians between the border of canada and the u s so that the first beginnings of the modern surveillance state happen around the regulation of south asians and particularly around the regulation of anti colonial movements we that i've been talking about the period in which asians were denied the right of citizenship and were considered dangerous for another including japanese american internment during the surveillance a period that i was talking about in forty five we understand that period as having come to an end in hundred sixty five with the development of the nine hundred sixty five immigration act which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year now this is the five immigration act is seen as this kind of watershed moment in which asians are no longer racialized as the other even though if you read and you must book as one of the most amazing reads that i have had in the last two years of reading books it is one of the most important books you can read right now in our moment so i can't stress enough how powerful it  incredible and it shares with you this incredible activist history of asian immigrant and asian refugee and asian american organizing that is all too invisible and so has been part of the the miss recognition in history in asian politics  but just to go back to this period of five the one thing that you have to know is that the lifting of immigration restrictions and the sort of sort of call three period of the post sixty five has actually not been that at all and i'm not going to go too much into it because book shows a lot of but that information what i do want to share is one aspect of that which is or two one is the i know here we go again one is that post sixty five in which asians were being lifted from restrictionist quotas were but every nation was gaining its own quote us it was the first period in which latinos and mexican people were being counted by the u s state and the contemporary anti latino politics we have the contemporary politics of anti illegal aliens and so on is actually a consequence of the sixty five law they were not part of this before sixty five so the so called lifting of age and restriction coincides ication so you get recruitment of top and skilled labor and recruitment a body and labor and when you look at asian groups they are more stratified than any other racial group and when you look at the bottom th try for the bottom three fifths of the group they have higher rates of poverty higher rates of unemployment than even latinos and african americans at time in urban areas so so there are there in very situation i'm sorry tell us please talk a little bit about the importance of solidarity among communities of color right now what that looks like here in seattle in terms of the organizing that's happening what you feel like some of when i first came here to seattle i noticed my privilege and also the impact that the system here imposes on us and example of my own privilege i know this is like i didn't have to think about my blackness all my race until i came here until i had to fill in a job application and i had to check the books and i was struggling with and you just had african american actually didn't have luck and then was followed by me trying to fill out an application for a scholarship which was dedicated for african american and my counselor at the time was like you know your african immigrant you know america that makes you african american i struggled with it i e privilege from it i ended up applying for it but i notice right now as my boys are growing up here they were born here they actually struggle with their identity as early as kind know my oldest son noticed their disproportionality in this place when he was in kindergarten and he's like mom you know like we all do the same things but i notice that the boys look like me punished mo you know and fast forward five years later i came here at the age of fifteen nine eleven happened my community was you know like being privileged by the system you know but nine eleven happened and our communities started started thinking about the african american struggle the block struggle they've gone through centuries and centuries of these oppressive systems and no other communities of color has been able to go through that struggle the way that african americans went through so how do we combat this you know oppressions one of the ways that we do like as a person of organized through coalitions and multi ethnic and multi racial coalitions is like we build power through coalition right but we know that this challenge is in coalition buildings and things like that and one of the things that i've noticed and i like using my own examples and things like that is as communities of color as immigrants a figures but when it comes to like black crisis when it comes to black and after african american men being hit in killed in the streets we're like all of a sudden wow that's not my issue let me use the east africans for example like i say we are black as you can see but a lot of times when things like that happen we're like wait a minute i'm somali american wait a minute i'm kenyan american you know this is not my issue you know and i actually the last year and a half as i you know prominent raising my own kids struggling with what is my place in this movement you know is my plays trying to figure  in the united states from from from from india and he was just like taking a walk when he was a neighbor called the police because of a suspicious skinny what he a quote unquote called  men the police came here and there there was me screaming misunderstanding because they didn't understand the law he didn't understand the language you know they ended up you know he ended up being part of lies because of the way they handled him you know what i  and they were able to like make it happen aware that they were able to make the police officer ended up being indicted this year right so a lot of the and i'm not saying let us call conflate you know our struggles our issues with the african american issues what i'm saying or black issues what i'm saying is because the people who are most impacted by this systems  africans are black americans if we work together in black lives mara through coalition building through multiracial coalition building will elevate all our needs that's what i'm saying talk about the moment now in terms of opportunities for movement building with within asian american lands just i think given the work that we're we've been doing a change lab and so i guess i want to say that you know for a while there has been a sense that the asian american politics of say the late sixty's a commitment to interracial solidarity a commitment to fight greed and capitalism and exploitation and imperialism and war that those those things kind of american leaders sort of stopped talking about those things as explicitly i mean as did a lot of people right for for various reasons but i think that there's a new year inning and a new hunger to kind of revitalize and rebuild the asian american movement and given what's happening in south asia in sic muslim and arab communities and the ways that those issues have not by and large been taken up and centralized by by more mainstream asian pacific islander organizations and leadership we have an opportunity to learn from the experiences and make the connections that chandra was helping us to make to our own histories right and see this as our fight in the same way that we have the opportunity to see what black lives matter that movement is doing and how we have a real investment in actually throwing our weight down behind that fight as well so there are organizations you know we are seeing growing asian american  organizing another very exciting development that's happening is with the southeast asian community which this is now the fortieth anniversary of the arrival of the first of these asian refugees after the wars in vietnam the wars in southeast asia and for a long time  about you know since two thousand and two there has been a deportation crisis in the cambodian community and people have responded by really trying to fight that in congress and what's happening this year in a new campaign that the southeast asian freedom network and one love movement in philadelphia is really leading is a campaign to end deportations of people in southeast asian communities who have criminal convictions this is as it were as a result of one thousand nine hundred six laws that massively expanded the grounds for deportation with people for people with criminal convictions with no judicial review and makes it retroactive right so this is a crisis in the community and they're moving shifting away from congress where really the battle is how tough can you be on immigration right the battle is not about human rights or kind of you know a moral commitment to humanitarianism even right it really is a contest over how tough can you be we saw this even in obama's executive latest executive action where he did provide relief to certain undocumented people but using the tagline felons not families right well felons have families right i mean that  false division and it only serves to criminalize segments of our communities right so they have decided to abandon you know for now the congressional fight and really shift their focus on these repatriation agreements between the united states and cambodia vietnam and laos and in those repatriation agreements which are literally six to eight pages long compared to like a one thousand page bill in congress for example by shifting the attention to those repatriation agreements it also shifts the frame to frame of war and imperialism and western intervention and that and america's obligation in light of those in light of those things right so that's one exciting opportunity i also think that there are amazing conversations and organizing and activism happening across the board in asian and pacific islander communities in solidarity with black lives matter one example of that that's happening now which seems small but actually really is very important for to mention dealing with empty blackness in our own communities and i know there's a group called a p i resistance that is actually having these conversations over you know thanksgiving dinner with your family members about how you feel about black people where those ideas come from and it's they actually wrote a blog post about it and you know i'll share on facebook if you guys are my facebook friends it's really great you know it's very powerful and it's very complicated and it's shaped by some of the things that that in this moment we're talking about this more because black lives matter has opened up new political space for all of us to have these conversations and to take bolder action but there are also organizations like this these rising up and moving alike organizing asian communities in new york that have for a long time made a commitment to police accountability in solidarity with black and brown communities because they understand of that this system avoid supremacy is built on anti blackness and the economic and political structures that people are fighting whether it's you know fighting for tenants rights or low wage worker rights is grounded in a system that has been that has been constructed on white supremacy so that's all i have to say about that and i think at this point we could have this conversation with these you know three billion people out here all night long but we want to open up the conversation with all of you hi hello and yes i'm fearless going first because i know that as a as a black man i mean we're ethiopian so we're both second generation you know i have this thing like oh he has to represent you know he has to be in the system to make changes otherwise i'll be as upset at him as i happen to be just random policemen and women i see on the street so i guess my question because he does educate himself and he does to educate his communities and push you know his peers to be able to think more justly about these issues if any or all of you had any advice pacifically for someone like that who wants to be in the system and wants to create that change but possibly knows that they're going to get all different kinds of pushback going to be in a different kind of a difficult situation thank you very much like i mean i saw all this disparities all this iniquity is happening but until i got there race and class analysis of what's happening and connecting it with the history i wasn't able to question the system but if he gets that and doesn't act as a gate keeper i think that there's a way that he can i don't want to say the system but benefit the people by  actually you know educating his the people that he works with you know why is he doing this work you know why is he working within this system that he believes in like for example like for me as an east african as an immigrant i came from a corrupted government a government i saw the corrupted government i saw the government topple up and it wasn't benefiting anybody but what is illusionary in this system it it's a system that is full it's working but it's set up you know way that it's benefiting certain people but oppressing others over and over and it's evident in the court system in the justice system here so i think it's really important to understand that and be able to educate the folks that he's working with that that's my take without being at article you thank you are just learning so much and so i lived i lived for six years in bellingham and i also worked for western in their office of admissions doing multicultural so so a whole lot of like taking in everything you're talking about a lot of that i'm curious to know and i'm still really bad at reading on what he does on a completely one hundred right now i don't read very often so when i find a good book to read i definitely want to pick it up a lot of that may have been perpetuated by faculty south asian faculty and i'm interested to know on your own experiences of what what that looks like on the faculty level is there know i was incredibly alienated from the south asian organizing that was happening in these clubs and one of the things that people need to know is that these clubs are really being sponsored structurally movements from india so part of this is space and so one of his way to do is figure out the relationship between indian nationalism and that to blackness at this moment and i think we've always been making mention again that if you work on black li matter you might actually be able to undo something about indian nationalism and so i think that is some of the hopeful stuff that we're at this moment in terms of faculty you know i don't know about particular south asian faculty i think there's an important study to be made about the political ideologies of indian scientists and how they have shaped the racial politics of universities particularly for example in the u c system what is what has been the relationship to the ending of affirmative action where you know what has been their position as they've been recruited so i don't have that answer for you but i think it's a really important question what i would say to could concur with you is that the idea that there are differences between south asians and african americans that there are forms of of cultural superiority and cultural dysfunction these all came from the university so it should not surprise anyone that the university has the locus of these kinds of  inequalities we have to make that fight happen there i would just quickly add i think that there is a lot of room for south asian campus organizing i would even say asian american campus organizing i think th n i think it's bleak you know in terms of people being politicized and actually having conversations like these which they should be having on campuses but one one best practice that i have noticed is actually through muslim students association zx and i think muslim students association and many parts of the country have been able to grapple with issues of islamophobia and xenophobia but i think that the challenge there i many and hopefully we can talk about this a little bit morbid many black muslims who are actually not immigrant muslims right but black muslims who are african americans a third of the muslim community in this country often feel that there is no space for them in terms of the muslim students association or other sorts of associations on campuses but when that space is made to make these connections between black struggle as you were talking about and also the struggles of muslim immigrants or south asian immigrants i have seen you know some interesting dialogues happen and there's a really great group called muslim arc that has been doing some dialogues online in particular to bridge the gaps and the divide between african american muslims and immigrant muslims who are south asian or arab so i think that those are some some dialogues that i think are really promising that are happening on college campuses  to hi my name is so hillary clinton a little while ago a couple of months ago met with some black clouds matters organizers and i remember specifically she said i don't think you change hearts you change policies and that was in direct contrast to something i read in michelle alexander's book the new jim crow which has said no she didn't agree i mean that happened before but her point was that you do have to change hearts it has to start from the ground up so i'm just wondering what your thoughts on that is it both is it which one do you start with you're like my publicist but all three of you i'm so flattered thanks for your questions i think you know i think yeah i think it is all of the above i think it's hard change i think it's cultural narrative change and disruption and of course it's policy and structural change and i think that you know we have seen that especially in i'll talk from my own experience in terms of working in south asian arab muslim and sikh immigrant communities that you know people have asked me quite a bit recently is there a shift from what you saw in the days and years after nine eleven and yeah there is a shift there are some bright spots of progress and where those are happening is actually around cultural narrative disruption so there are more people especially in the media who are not going to let folks get away with that you know muslim terrorist conflation their heart changes you know i think about that little white boy in texas you might have seen who would like brought his piggy bank to a mosque that had been threatened so there are her changes right word more people are standing up and talk and saying no we're not going to tolerate this sort of treatment but i think from a systemic standpoint we have a long ways to go and i do think that that's really where all of us need to push our pull our energy so if so i think that you know america's lost its appetite for islamophobia and its most overt ways however whether or not we're going to stand up to you know people running for office who say things like we want to register muslims or you know build walls and you know how are we going to actually call our policymakers to task and how are we actually going to work to make sure that policies such as and see yours or the alien absconder initiative or surveillance  our community stops that's where i think we have to kind of pull our energy and resources but yes all three and i think there is some progress at least on two of those pieces