👳🏼‍♂️ How Sikh-Americans Transformed Your Civil Rights

On this MLK Day, a story of relentless advocacy at scale

I have had the privilege of collaborating with and often being being on the receiving end of the relentless advocacy of many Sikh-American organizations. Perhaps no other community of people has impressed me with their ability to raise capital, organize at a grassroots level, and achieve success so rapidly that they almost drove parts of their own advocacy organizations “out of business.”

Credit: Vishavjit Singh

Here’s what Sikh-Americans have achieved in the last two decades:

September 11, 2001 shattered America’s sense of invincibility and New York City’s sense of safety. But it also ripped apart the cloak of anonymity that shrouded many of America’s small ethnic and religious immigrant communities.

In the wake of the attack, American-Muslims, South Asians, and Arab-Americans found themselves dealing with the burden of explaining who they were. Where before they had all been “Indians” or “Arabs” - now they found themselves going to great lengths to distinguish themselves:

“No, I am from…