Bobbie Singh-Allen

Bobbie Singh-Allen is an American politician, currently serving as mayor of Elk Grove, California, Sacramento County, California. Before serving as mayor, she served on the school board of the Elk Grove Unified School District as the Trustee of Area 4 from 2012 to 2020. She is the third directly elected mayor of Elk Grove and the fourth Sikhs mayor in the United States.
Singh-Allen immigrated in 1976 from Jalandhar, India to the United States when she was four years old and has lived in Elk Grove, California for nearly 30 years. 
Singh-Allen earned her B.A. in Government from California State University, Sacramento and her J.D. from Lincoln Law School of Sacramento. 
Singh-Allen is an elected State Commissioner for Visit California. She is a member of the Sacramento Regional Coalition for Tolerance, California Chamber of Commerce, and Cal-Travel. She was also an active member of the Rotary Club of Laguna Sunrise and previously served on the Elk Grove Teen Center Board of Directors and Elk Grove Food Bank Board of Directors.
Singh-Allen was appointed as Trustee of Area 4 for Elk Grove Unified School District on August 16, 2012. Singh-Allen won the 2018 election by default due to lack of opposition. She served as Board President for two years.
Singh-Allen was elected Mayor of Elk Grove in November 2020. As Mayor of Elk Grove, California, Singh-Allen plans to prioritize economic recovery.
Singh-Allen is a resident of Elk Grove, California where she lives with her husband, Jake Allen. They have two children, Amir and Shan.
Her parents are retired, and her brother, Shera, owns Steve’s Pizza in Elk Grove.
==== Racism Against the Hmong ====
During the campaign season of 2020, the mayor of Elk Grove at the time, Steve Ly, was ensnared in controversy involving allegations of harassment by several women. One of those women included Bobbie Singh-Allen.
But instead of exclusively attacking the mayor, Singh-Allen also attacked his cultural background with a racially blanketed statement calling the Hmong people|Hmong cultural system a “controlling and intimidating” system. She also asserted that the Hmong people culture was used to attack and silence two women in the Elk Grove community.
In response to her misrepresentation of their culture, the local Hmong people organized protests against Singh-Allen fearing that her hate would place a target on their backs, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic where hate crimes against Asian Americans had already skyrocketed. 
In retaliation, Singh-Allen politicized their motives and racially profiled any Hmong person who spoke out against her as a supporter of the Hmong people. Along with her husband, Singh-Allen engaged in and encouraged online content stereotyping the Hmong people as mafias and gangs.
With the local media on her side and the reluctance of the Elk Grove Unified School District (of which Singh-Allen was serving as a board member at the time) to appropriately address the unethical behavior of one of their own, Singh-Allen persevered in her continual racial profiling of the Hmong. She was allowed to set the narrative and dismiss the concerns of the Hmong community. In essence, she suppressed their voices while decrying the former mayor of suppressing hers.
In addition, Singh-Allen also had one of her most vocal supporters, who was also a good friend and a local news editor, harass thousands of Hmong individuals online with threats of lawsuits to silence them. The local news editor also put out multiple articles slandering private citizens in the Hmong community. She was later forced to retract these articles.
On September 29, 2020, during the Elk Grove mayoral debate, another close friend of Singh-Allen’s, who she describes as being like a ‘brother’ to her, was witnessed driving his vehicle into a crowd of peaceful protesters after he was witnessed yelling anti-Asian sentiments at them. While no one was physically harmed in that hate incident, one of the victims, an 8-year-old boy, later told detectives that he had been scared for his life.
==== Suppression of First Amendment ====
Singh-Allen has been documented using her position to shame and harass members in the community for exercising their freedom of speech and utilizing their civic rights to engage in public meetings. Despite declaring that everyone would have a seat at her table regardless of whether they supported her or not, one of Singh-Allen's first moves as mayor was to enforce a city policy prohibiting the public from using city video equipment at public meetings as part of their public comments--a policy which the former mayor had always waived in the interest of promoting free speech.
Singh-Allen also continues to silence the voice of the people by blocking dissenting opinions online.
==== Response to Petition ====
On July 27, 2020, a private citizen issued a petition demanding for Singh-Allen’s resignation from the Elk Grove Unified School District school board in response to her racially charged statements targeting the Hmong people.
In response, Singh-Allen used her platform to publish a post on social media attacking the private citizen and accusing her of being a surrogate mouthpiece for the mayor. She then shared a meme directed at Hmong parents who were speaking out against her that stated: "A lion doesn't lose sleep over the opinion of sheep." She also exchanged online comments with friends where she referred to these parents as "attack dogs" of the mayor's.
Despite the grassroots generated petition by community members who had little to no connections in the political sphere, it garnered over 2,300 signatures. Singh-Allen was not happy. Assuming that the mayor was involved, she solicited a friend to issue a petition demanding for the mayor's resignation. 
In another attempt to strip private citizens of their rights to criticize their elected officials and stifle their voice, Singh-Allen later petitioned Change.org to remove all mentions of her name and photo from the petition. The website obliged.
==== Slandering Private Citizens ====
On September 15th, Singh-Allen publicly slandered a private citizen during a press conference by misattributing an audio clip from an Elk Grove City Council meeting to her. Singh-Allen ignored the request of the private citizen to issue an apology and a retraction. As a result of Singh-Allen's actions, the private citizen was targeted for online harassment.
==== Hmong Language Appropriation ====
In an attempt to further declare that the former mayor was a liar, Singh-Allen solicited the former mayor’s interviews on Hmong media to a translation firm in Southern California to translate his interviews from Hmong people to English.
The translations were disastrous. While Singh-Allen insisted that the translations were completed by a California court-certified interpreter, the translation firm confirmed that there is no such thing as a court-certified interpreter for the Hmong language in the state of California. They had to subcontract the translation out to Vietnam who then sent the translation out to China.
Although many in the Hmong people community objected to the accuracy of the translations, Singh-Allen pushed forward with them. The culmination of these translations was aired live during a press conference on September 15, 2020, where Singh-Allen declared the accuracy of her "court-certified" translations.
Email correspondences between Singh-Allen’s Campaign Manager and the translation firm later proved that Singh-Allen knew that the translations were not court-certified but pursued to lie to the public anyways.
Category:American politicians
Category:Mayors of Sacramento, California
Category:California State University alumni