20 Years Since 9/11

September 11, 2001 marked an immense uptick in hate violence against Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian American (AMEMSA) communities and a deep entrenchment of our nation’s historic policies of racial profiling, surveillance, detention, and deportation. Today, we continue to experience the acute pain of this racist violence whether it is murder, physical assaults, verbal threats, or damage to our homes, businesses, and places of worship alongside the lingering impact of violent policies.

The unique ways in which these mutually reinforcing forms of interpersonal and state violence have been unleashed on our communities changed SAALT’s mission from one of leadership development to policy change.

9/11 was a watershed moment that shaped us. There was no national South Asian organization then to uplift our community’s needs to government agencies and policymakers. We tried to fill this vacuum in the months and years after 9/11.

Deepa Iyer
Former Executive Director of SAALT (2004-2014)

“In the immediate days following 9/11, calls from survivors of gender-based violence dropped severely because of ‘special registration’ and the constant fear of being targeted by government systems. There were no organizations working on these issues in the South so we were looking to national organizations to help get us resources like ‘know your rights materials’ after seeing our communities being attacked, especially our Ismaili Muslim community members in Atlanta.”

Aparna Bhattacharya,
Executive Director of Raksha, an NCSO member

In the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11, ASATA embraced an explicitly anti-imperialist political framework as we joined the anti-war movement in the San Francisco Bay Area. This internationalist lens allows us to understand the relationship between prisons and policing in the United States and the impact of war and militarism abroad. We are grateful to be part of coalitions and networks that help our members connect the dots between local, national, and international campaigns. Now, 20 years later, is a moment to celebrate the existence of the NCSO as a political expression of being connected.

Sabiha Basrai,
Organizer with Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, an NCSO member

Over the last twenty years, we have grown and evolved to become an advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion com­mit­ted to racial jus­tice through struc­tur­al change. Every day, we are learning how to balance addressing the current conditions our vast South Asian American communities face with working to understand and dismantle the root causes of those injustices. 

A critical area of SAALT’s advocacy work has focused on documenting the lived experiences of community members, providing recommendations for structural and policy change, and building partnerships with Arab, Muslim and Sikh organizations and allies in the racial justice movement. Twenty years later, we invite you to revisit the eight comprehensive reports and numerous briefs, as well as testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

SAALT has always been committed to our connections with community. In 2004, we engaged in deep and intentional conversations with local and regional South Asian serving groups all around the country. And in 2007, SAALT and other South Asian groups launched the National Coalition of South Asian Organizations (NCSO). Today, the NCSO has intentionally grown to be a values aligned coalition, and continues to guide and shape our policy stances through co-learning, which builds greater capacity to address our communities’ growing needs.

This learning has helped SAALT adopt a recent lens of transnational solidarity, particularly important this year as we witness the consequences of an unjust war in Afghanistan rooted in U.S. imperialism. And we understand that this violence unleashed on our communities abroad is the counterpart to the hate violence our communities experience here in the U.S. 

This year, as we reflect on our last twenty years, we also want to look ahead into the future.  We cannot think of a better way of doing this than through the voices of ten young South Asian Americans who have lived entirely in a post-9/11 world. 

This Friday, September 10, SAALT, in collaboration with artists Shravya Kag, Noor Khan, and Lameesa Mallic, and organizer Sharmin Hossain, will open Process: 20 Years Since”, an interactive pop-up installation in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Our storytellers talk us through their changing relationships with U.S. imperialism, diasporic solidarity, and belonging as it relates to 9/11 and all that followed. 

On September 21, SAALT will host a virtual a community gathering to hear directly from the young storytellers and view their films in shared space. And on September 16, we will co-host a Congressional Briefing with Justice for Muslims Collective to honor the decades of organizing, resilience, and power built by our communities despite facing unprecedented violence, and to underscore the need for transformative, visionary policy change conceived by grassroots leadership. Stay tuned to hear how you can register and support our communities.

In keeping with our focus on solidarity, on August 25 our Executive Director, Lakshmi Sridaran, spoke alongside other AMEMSA leaders in the Asian American Leaders Table on the connections between current anti-Asian hate violence and the anti-Muslim hate violence after 9/11. On September 14, Lakshmi and SAALT’s Board Chair, Simran Noor, will participate in a Solidarity Teach-in organized by the Building Movement Project. The teach-in aims to help participants understand the immediate and long-term impact of 9/11 on AMEMSA communities as well as the tensions and possibilities across communities of color. 

We have a clear vision for the next 20 years: we want to help build a South Asian American community with shared values that uplift all people of color, not limited by race, caste, gender, sexuality, religion, or class. And we want to do this secure in the belief that none of us is free until all of us are free. As we mark this 20th anniversary with a commitment to continuous and rigorous political education to remain accountable to our communities, we invite you to join us on this journey. 

South Asian Americans Leading Together, Inc.
8403 Colesville Road Suite 1100 | Silver Spring, Maryland 20910
(301) 270-1855 x 0 | info@saalt.org

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South Asian Americans Leading Together, Inc.
8403 Colesville Road Suite 1100 | Silver Spring, Maryland 20910
(301) 270-1855 x 0 | info@saalt.org

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