Hi everyone, As indicated in our last meeting minutes, SAPAC has been in the throes of helping to build a coalition "Building Bridges" and Saturday November 8th was the kick off event for this broader coalition. At the last SAPAC meeting (Nov 10th), we discussed where this Coalition matches our interest and where it does not. The coalition is focused on secularism in India and--for pragmatic political reasons is not interested in working with non-Indian (e.g. Pakistani) groups. It is also reluctant to discuss the issue of communalism directly--focusing rather on positive goals of peace and harmony.
The following decisions were made: - SAPAC will continue to be involved in the Building Bridges effort, with Shashi serving as the key point person - SAPAC will also work to establish a broader vision for its work around this set of issues that includes an agenda for combatting communal or religious based violence in the region as a whole. Our next SAPAC mtg will be largely focused on discussing possible directions for this work. Relatedly, SAPAC is still very committed to issues here in this country, including the issue of civil rights violations (our involvement with RJ 911; work with the Asian American Artists Collective; our Voices of Resistance show). That being said, I had the opportunity this past weekend to attend a very useful training given by SAALT (South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow) on advocacy and civil rights. This group has traditionally had a presence on the east coast, but its founder/chair (Nick Rathod) has just re-located to Chicago and is looking to have a SAALT presence in Chicago (www.saalt.org). This presents us with an interesting opportunity. At the end of the training, the attendants talked about coming together over an issue. In this case, "Special Registration" (the chicago tribune has just run a series of articles http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-031116immigration-storygallery.special). This might be an interesting connection - SAALT with its resources and SAPAC with its connections to other Chicago groups. Question: Is this a connection that anyone is opposed to? If so, please share with either the group or with me. >From what I see, this could be a mutually beneficial relationship for SAPAC and >SAALT. However, other perspectives or ideas are welcome, in fact, desperately needed! thanks, Aparna ------------------------------------------------ visit http://www.geocities.com/sapacchicago email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe sapac" in msg body to unsubscribe
