Thinkings/Collectives

Boredom/break from work compelled me to google myself, and my Demos blog posting in Dispatches came up. This means my ascendancy and strategy for total domination has begun. TOTAL domination, only; no exceptions. And all it took was a tiny little internship.

Are nuts fatty? I wonder; my stepmother told me that almonds make you breakout, but I should take into consideration that she's a deceitful person in general, so I'm torn here. I really want to eat that bag of badaam, though.

I've been thinking a lot, maybe too much taking into consideration this is the final stretch of work as an undergrad at SLC. In the midst of this craziness, I've been fortunate to experience a few things in the past year most don't even consider in their education. And I can't believe the amazing friends I've found in the process (meeting people like this peels away at my layers of cynicism). The first awesome experience was my study abroad in Karnataka. I learned more about myself, my desi self, my American self, U.S. foreign policy and the state of the world than I probably did combined in my 3 years at Sarah Lawrence. But I will say I wouldn't have experienced India the same unless I had the knowledge base I did at the time. So it wasn't all for nothin'.

Second has been the exposure I most recently had at the 2007 Organizing Youth conference the weekend before last. It was hosted and organized by folks from YSS (Youth Solidarity Summer, what was a NYC based week-long conference), with contributions from OY! and RadDesi (Bay Area & Austin, respectively). There were some amazing panel discussions (Deepa Fernandes, DJ Rekha, Vijay Prashad, and Biju Mathew among some of the speakers); mostly though, we were there to figure out how to build a collective structure, since YSS is looking to create a larger base and do more educational outreach work (well, at least in the beginning).

The three-day conference culminated on Sunday the 15th, with the 50 or so people split up into various working committees, handling different issues. My committee deals with what is likely the core of how this yet-to-be-named organization will operate on either a regional or national level (or both). Aside from all the technical stuff, we have to determine who our audience is, what the general vision is, what the issues are, as well as our time-sensitive goals which require real commitment from the people in these groups.

(We also got a presentation from The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, which talked about the brand of "Yankee Hindutva" promulgated by groups like the HSC and funded by fanatic peeps abroad. I was happy to see Murli, the Anthropology professor from my study abroad there and launching this program.)

So what I have (in addition to be totally green and new to all of this) is essentially the opportunity to be apart of the very building of an organization. I really want things to pan out. I met some great people, people from different parts of the States and some in Canada; there is interest, we're just trying to figure out how to engage that interest in a progressive desi youth org.

Anyway, that's where my brain is at. Trying to learn from the different movements in American history, especially African, Asian & Chicano struggles in the 60s and 70s. Where do we come from? We're not sure, but until the group's mission is more solid, we're committed to finding out. The trick is framing the motives of this group in light of a specific South Asian-American history.