My name is Parveen and I’m the Vice President of Dear Asian Youth. We bring together young people who want to translate care for global Asian communities into strategic action. We center holistic representation in our work. From publishing zines to meeting legislators, we also understand and reaffirm the importance of working on multiple fronts. Dear Asian Youth hopes to balance imagination and struggle for a world where we can all redistribute solidarity, resources, and mutual aid within our Asian community.
I do not believe in sharp lines between life and scholarship. Using that framework, I study political science with a focus on Dharmic traditions, nationalisms, and militancy affecting cultural minorities across Asia. This past school year, I also took on a long and tiring tenure as Student Body President at DePaul University in Chicago. There, I faced retaliation for staying firm to my values: calling for my university to divest from genocide. But I remain committed to the work because we must remember how political undercurrents have swept away the narrative of interconnected regions of Asia. Onwards!
I spent much of this year speaking, writing, petitioning for a divestment referendum, and sustaining my school’s solidarity encampment for 17 days. Dear Asian Youth members are also on the frontlines at many universities and mobilizing offline.
My position at DAY means that I have made a global commitment to a global membership. What I see on the news materializes in the lived reality of my peers. From Dhaka to D.C., youth power can be co-opted or weaponized by political parties to turn away from our own. We see in real time that the youth league of the Awami League and other political factions are enacting violence against minorities, destroying public infrastructure, all of which is an attempt to undermine their fellow students’ victory. Thankfully the students have taken control of public services and can be seen directing traffic, organizing blood banks, guarding houses of worship, and so on despite factions trying to take advantage of the political moment.
We at DAY know that youth often spend our formative years inundated with the political establishment. In our case, this is only reinforced by the nonprofit industrial complex and mainstream Asian community organizations that insist voting is the only way to “make the Asian voice heard.” We all have our part in making sure our advocacy is not simply upholding the dominant order of things. By marching on the DNC, our membership can reject these narratives and reinforce the position of our community as a legitimate actor in demanding that the genocide ends.
Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir by Ather Zia is one of my favorite books because of her approach as an anthropologist of religion.
The Country Without a Post Office by Agha Shahid Ali is another reminder that we are all responsible for speaking out against occupations in our homelands. This book was first recommended to me by a religious studies professor I adore and I still return to the book from time to time.
I really resonate with this poem by Aman Kaur Batra as it’s a reminder of how interconnected our struggles are:
A sibling is only a sibling
if you share blood, says the west.
Every oppressed neighbor
is my sibling, says my blood.
Endlessly thankful to everyone who tuned in for this month’s newsletter. I’ll leave the fundraising link for Dear Asian Youth here in case you might be in a position to help sustain our youth-led effort. Until liberation!
In solidarity,
- Parveen + Irma, Turner, Sharmin, Kari, Leyen, Allison, and Brenda – the 18MR Team
P.S. If you’ve enjoyed reading our monthly newsletter, would you chip in $5 so we can keep inviting rad guest editors?
