Our Heroes

SIKH COALITION
To Serve & Protect

by NEHA SINGH GOHIL

The Sikh Coalition has been named, jointly with SALDEF (The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund) and United Sikhs, as The Chic Sikhs of the Year 2008!  

Two days before I started my job, I got a call from my new boss. Could I start early and come in today? How bad could this emergency be, I thought.

I was soon to find out. When I got to the office, it was all hands on deck.

A Sikh teenager in Queens, New York had been lured into a school bathroom by two classmates, threatened with a beating, had his patka removed and his kesh cut off. He was left crying, with his shorn hair lying around him and in the toilet bowl.

The incident kicked off a year-long advocacy campaign in New York City, led by staff and volunteers of the Sikh Coalition. The campaign included releasing two reports that documented bias against Sikh school children; launching a petition against the Department of Education (DoE); writing and placing an op-editorial in the New York Times; nearly bi-monthly meetings with DoE staff; creating, launching and publicizing an education website for Sikh youth; gathering and managing a coalition of non-profit organizations; and eventually drafting a new regulation to protect our children.

But beyond just the Sikh community, the new policy is designed to protect more than 1.1 million schoolchildren in New York City schools.

This is just one example of the type of challenges we take on here at the Sikh Coalition.

The Sikh Coalition, a national civil rights organization, was formed in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The day after the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., a group of volunteers launched an online database which serves as the repository of bias-based incidents. Within minutes, Sikhs from across the country began to lodge their stories - stories of backlash, hatred and prejudice against our community here in the United States.

On October 18, 2001, the Sikh Coalition formally incorporated and began operating as a volunteer-led organization of concerned Sikhs. 

Within its first week, the newly formed organization had its first major victory. Coalition representatives had walked the halls of Congress to persuade the United States Senate to pass a resolution recognizing Sikh-Americans and condemning hate crimes against Sikhs and other minorities.

Though the Coalition anticipated a drop in requests for its services in the years after 9/11, we have instead seen the need for our services increase. As time has moved on, the Coalition is convinced that Sikhs need a strong, permanent presence at the table when it comes to policy-making and government representation. As a result, the organization has grown enormously since its inception.

The Sikh Coalition now has two offices in New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, seven full-time staff members, and three distinct program areas - Advocacy, Education and Legal.

The Coalition uses all means available to tackle a range of civil rights issues affecting the Sikh community - from anti-Sikh bias in schools to employment discrimination by government agencies and disproportionate searches by the Transportation Security Administration. The Coalition often combines education, government advocacy, community organizing and legal action where necessary to protect our community's civil rights.

While the Coalition strives to serve as an organizational force for the community, the organization's ultimate goal is to empower all Sikhs to stand up for their rights and demand justice in the same way that our Gurus did before us. In doing so, the Coalition continues a long tradition of social justice on which both Sikhism and America were built.  

[For more info, please visit www.sikhcoalition.org] 

January 1, 2009

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