New York City For Barack Obama 1-10
Staff, Volunteers, Elected Officials
DL21C Annual Summer Bash: Barack Won The Straw Poll
The conversation made me think though. I was the only Nepali in America to have worked full time for Nepal's democracy movement of 2006, and later the Madhesi movement. But my style was one of digital activism. I did not join any organization.
I have a newfound interest in Nepal. That's there. But it is hard for me to ignore some of the very real issues the Nepali community in New York City, in America, and the world at large grapples with. Instead of being the best and the brightest who went global and are willing and able to lead Nepal to an era of rapid economic growth, we find little gatherings of locally relatively well to do homesick Nepalis begging the Nepali establishment in Kathmandu for very basic rights. Much of that comes from how we have attempted to organize ourselves. There has been no desire to go mass based. A lacking culture of basic democracy, transparency and egalitarianism has been holding us back.
Kiva Is In Nepal
There are no rich Nepalis in America. If there were, I'd have read about them in some magazine. I never have. So for people who might be in professional white collar jobs to dissociate from the masses who might be working below minimum wage salaries is not classist. It is self destructive behavior. Because the power rests in mass organizing. Power is in numbers. Unless Nepalis get organized in large numbers, we can not better our situation locally, and we can not earn our rights inside Nepal, and we can not help Nepal in major ways.
The well and alive anti Madhesi prejudice among the diaspora Nepalis is another self destructive behavior. Unless the Nepalis in New York City claim their larger South Asian identity, they are not going anywhere. Working for Indian bosses by the day, and talking hate speech against them by the night are not exactly the way to go.
I have no desire to become yet another token Madhesi in New York City. I was one of Barack Obama's top volunteers in the city. This is a city where Indians matter little, and Nepalis are not even on the map anywhere. There has to be an acknowledgment among the Pahadis that things were and are wrong in Nepal and that is why you see so few Madhesis in New York City. Talking hate speech is not how you express that acknowledgment. And there has to be a sense of mutual respect. And we have to forge a new Nepali identity. And that is how we can become better organized.
There are about 50,000 Nepalis in New York City. Most of them party in small groups about once a a week. Identify those party organizers. Every Nepali in the city has a mobile phone. Those parties and those phones are the key to going mass based in terms of organization. 50 white collar Nepalis meeting in some five star hotel is not my idea of a mass based organization. And for as long as we don't go mass based, we will stay largely irrelevant.
Nepali Slaves In The Middle East
Image via Wikipedia
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