These are
good times for our electoral life in this
country, and it is only correct that we
have a host of organizations at work to
bring us to the polls and to encourage
us run for office.
From Southern California comes a new
organization, the South Asian American
Voting Youth run by Tanzila Ahmed, and
from Boston comes another one, SouthAsianVotes
run by Reshma Saujani (currently the coordinator
of South Asians for Kerry).
These groups recognize that only about
a third of Indian Americans who are eligible
exercise their franchise, and among young
desis the percentage is lower.
We don’t have statistics for South
Asian youth specifically, but among Asian
Americans between the ages of 18-24, the
numbers of those who registered dropped
from 50% in 1990 to 35% in 2000. SAAVY
has been created to help register young
desis and get them to the polls —
to conduct political voter education in
a non-partisan manner, in the style of
groups like Project Democracy.
We do need to register to vote and get
to the polls. That is essential not just
for the presidential race, but for all
local and regional races. Participation
is essential for our place at the U.S.
table. If we don’t vote, we won’t
get taken seriously when public
policy is formulated and our issues will
be ignored.
It is true that money buys entry into
the halls of Washington, but for a community
to rely upon its wealthy to open doors,
is false: the wealthy among us will begin
to dictate our issues, which may end up
being their issues and well in opposition
to the bulk of us.
The only way for us, ordinary desis,
to get our views into the DC halls is
to organize as a bloc and vote in large
numbers.
Among Asian Americans, there is a movement
known as the 80-20 Initiative that believes
the following: Asian American votes are
evenly split between the two parties,
and that means that neither pays any attention
to the community and its issues. If we
can draw a larger number of our community
to one party or the other, then we can
have leverage on that party. African Americans
and Latinos overwhelmingly vote for the
Democratic Party — this has given
them power not only in the making of appointments,
but also in the foregrounding of some
issues that are important to African Americans
and Latinos. (By the way, many African
American and Latinos who live in the nether
region of the U.S. economy would say that
they have been fundamentally attacked
by the two parties who have relied upon
debt, prisons and workfare to constrain
their freedom; but that is another story.)
The 80-20 Initiative believes that politicians
are interested in their next
election, whereas political parties have
to have a longer memory, this is why the
Initiative is interested in an investment
in a party and not just in this or that
politician.
I don’t believe that either of the
two parties are capable of solving the
major problems that beset this country
and our world. Both are in favor of profits
over people and both are wedded to warfare
over social welfare. Nevertheless, the
Republican Party today is a party of evangelical
zealots and warfare extremists, of fat
cats and running dogs.
This is the reason why every time a desi
who runs for office on a Republican ticket
has to tell us that their politics should
not matter, only their ethnicity.
The most recent candidate to do this is
Nikki Randhawa Haley from South Carolina.
Running for the South Carolina Assembly
she expressed the opinion, “Does
it matter for the Indian community whether
a candidate is Republican or Democrat?
What we need is more people in political
office. The candidate’s party affiliation
is irrelevant for us as a community, at
this time.”
At this time it is most relevant to know
if a candidate is part of an extremist
political party (such as the Republicans)
or one that is willing to listen to the
world and its own population (although
much of the Democratic Party is deaf to
the crises of the impoverished).
We don’t hear Swati Dandekar, Upendra
Chivukula or Peter Mathews (all Democrats)
telling us to avoid their politics and
concentrate on their ethnicity: each of
these candidates leads with their issues
because they don’t have anything
to be embarrassed about. Dandekar stands
for economic rejuvenation of areas wracked
by job loss and against the death penalty,
and she worked as co-chair of the Kerry
campaign in Iowa.
Chivukula’s platform includes rethinking
how we fund our education (and to contest
the link between property tax and schools,
which enables rich districts get better
schools), defending open spaces in our
communities, and benefits for children
of immigrants especially so that they
can get in-state tuition for college.
Mathews, who is a relentless campaigner,
recently said of his run for Congress
this year, “The main reason I am
running is that America is at a crossroads.
The U.S. is involved in an expensive quagmire
in Iraq. Some $150 billion has already
been spent. I want us to have more multilateral,
new and responsible foreign policy. I
also want to bring funds back into my
district which is heavily minority.”
These candidates tell us what they stand
for, and they don’t have to hide
behind their ethnicity to get our attention.
We don’t have accurate surveys
of desi political attitudes. However,
the bulk of desis who run for political
office do so on the Democratic Party (or
Green Party) ticket and they run on liberal
platforms. My own research among desis
suggests that we are against immigration
controls, we are against the death penalty,
we are for
the right of a woman to control her own
body, we are for better wages for working
people, we are for better care of the
elderly, we are for health insurance coverage
for all, and we are generally interested
in peaceful solutions to conflict rather
than war.
Among the second generation, I tend to
believe the liberal trend is even deeper:
and there are many second generation desis
who would call themselves progressives
and radicals rather than liberals. At
the South Asian Awareness Network gathering
in Ann Arbor, Mich., earlier this year,
I was pleased to see that most of those
who participated held very progressive
views on diverse issues, from Israel to
Women’s Rights. On college campuses,
where I often travel, there are always
a group of second generation desis who
have formed a progressive caucus outside
the South Asian Students Association,
to work alongside, to push their peers
to more liberal or radical positions.
For all our diversity, we are a fairly
liberal community with regard to our lives
in the United States (our positions on
the homeland may be far less liberal,
but that’s certainly another story).
The Republican Indians, who claim to be
against affirmative action and ethnic
tokenism, speak loudly about their ethnicity
and softly about their links to the extremism
of the Bush government. The classic example
of this is the current Secretary of Labor
Elaine Chao. In October 1989, Elaine Chao
told the Washington Times, “I’m
an American first. I’ve never viewed
myself as an Asian American.”
This view is resonant with the general
antipathy held by the Republican administration
for ethnicity and ethnic assertion. However,
at the same time, Chao was national chair
for Asian Americans for Bush-Quayle. She
wanted the support of Asian Americans
when it came to her own position in public
life, but she savagely attacked Bill Lann
Lee’s confirmation to be U.S. assistant
attorney general for civil
rights because Lee supports affirmative
action. Why didn’t Chao support
Lee regardless of his politics? Because
Republicans don’t.
They are ideological and partisan. They
ask us to support them regardless of their
extremism, but they won’t support
people who disagree with their own framework.
This is hypocrisy and it bears remembrance
when we hear from people like Randhawa
Haley.
Chao and people like her disguise their
hatchet job for the extremists with their
ethnicity.
As journalist Sonia Shah put it, “Chao
has shrouded her right-wing stances and
hard-core corporate mindset in soft-core
identity politics.” In other words,
Chao likes to talk about being an “Asian
immigrant” and to give us her false
story of uplift (the real story is in
Laura Flanders’ excellent Bushwomen,
from Verso Books) as a way to not talk
about her support for the corporate pillage
of the global village.
When Chao was appointed Labor Secretary,
far too many Asian Americans fell over
backward to be jubilant. Dan-Thanh Nguyen
of the National Pacific American Women’s
Forum offered a more sober view: “Chao
opposed Bill Lann Lee, she opposed affirmative
action. She’s affiliated with the
(ultra-right wing) Independent Women’s
Forum, she’s anti-union, and Asian
Americans are supposed to be glad because
she’s Labor secretary? She is somebody’s
American Dream. But not ours. Not everybody’s.”
We are a bunch of savvy voters, and we
don’t get taken in by this façade.
The substantial desi voters of District
18 in New Jersey (Edison and New Brunswick)
sent Jesal Amin (Republican) home and
elected the Democrat. I hope that this
represents a national trend.
We need more desis in politics, but not
at any cost. They have to be desis who
are aware of our community’s complex
demands and needs, they have to be desis
who recognize racism and anti-immigrant
sentiment, who will stand up for us when
the time comes.
They have to stand up for us, all of
us, not just the fat cats who claim to
be our leaders and have set themselves
up as heads of this or that faltu organization.
So, Varun, I’m with you: 10 in 10.
But let us organize and send 10 progressive
desis to Washington, and not 10 who will
offer ethnic cover to the zealotry of
the Bush war machine.
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