New Jersey (1)

Dominating my thoughts:
Sanctuary: Into the Mirror Black
Fiona Apple: Extraordinary Machine [major props to Saurav for this]

Crossed over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge from the planet (Bucktown, the BK, and all the other great names given by the residents to the county of Kings) into Staten Island through to NJ twice this weekend. We attended a dialogue with many NJ South Asians on Saturday, and to a family function on Sunday. While almost on either side of the spectrum of activities in which I usually partake, both events made me think more about NJ, about the posts that I'd put up so far about family, and about why it's not easy to summarily pass judgment on whether it's better to wear the analytical goggles every day, or to find some happy medium between critical of everything and allowing yourself to just celebrate life more often.

Saturday, I attended a day-long dialogue with different community-based groups and interested individuals in NJ. The goal was first to bring people together and hear voices on critical issues that were most relevant to the local communities, and second, to see if there was some synergy in the room to get folks to work together on these and relevant national policy issues that were directly related. It seemed that the nationally-based organizers wanted the event to help integrate the concerns of local stakeholders into their planning for future work.

The concept, which will hit the road and 9 other locations around the country, is a good one, and a proposition that seems like a useful exercise, even if the result isn't a clear roadmap. Even though I believe in action, I think that process is very important, and I would think that South Asian communities around the nation are in very different stages in their "development", capacity, and ability (or desire) to work together on a common agenda. I know that NYC has gone through different iterations of collaborative work, and even an attempt to bring together all the groups (Desis Organizing, in May 2001), and I was curious to hear more about the dynamics and landscape in NJ.

My crude understanding of the NJ desi scene came from my personal connection, as a native son of the Garden State, as well as the majority of my extended family starting and settling in various parts of Hudson and Middlesex counties. I have been very familiar with the Jersey City streets, with relatives living above the shops and restaurants since the mid-80s, and the growing Edison community that has now become something of a new Ahmedabad. On the organizing and activist scene, aside from knowing that Manavi, the first group in the country to focus on the growing domestic and family violence issue in South Asian communities was based in NJ, and that Bhairavi Desai of NYTWA was proudly an NJ girl, I didn't know much about NJ. The Dotbusters incidents in the late 80s was the only real community action story that I connected to NJ until the more recent electoral victories of Upendra Chivukula and Parag Patel.

However, I have known for a long time that NJ lived in the shadow of NYC in both the mainstream and even the desi consciousness. With communities growing at phenomenal levels in NJ, the question of who these folks were, and whether they were actually creating something new and different from the urban centers of NYC, the Bay Area, Chicago, LA was, I believe, the theme of Mitra Kalita's book Suburban Sahibs (which I haven't read yet). And it's true - even Edison (really Iselin) is a much more suburban setting than any of the desi commercial districts that I've visited. So who are these desis in NJ - and was there more room for growth and political power than in the interest group and racialized power hierarchy-laden streets of New York?

The dialogue brought together about 20 people, and I believe that there were more people unattached to formal South Asian groups discussing these issues than I've seen for a long time. It was refreshing to be in a space with different generations and different levels of exposure to the burgeoning South Asian American scene. Many came in without pre-conceived notions of what the dialogue would be, and few had been through similar exercises in the past. One of the early exercises, meant to liven up the rote introductions that we, the workshop-weary, have grown to despise, asked participants to recount their personal "point of entry" into South Asian America. It became far more personal and descriptive than anything I've ever been to, save performance workshops with groups of people who I knew very well. I learned about the various personal pathways into the US, NJ, political consciousness, and even the very room in which we'd been meeting. So many divergent, convergent journeys, all leading to one place and flashpoint in time. At 1:30 hours, it was the longest, and most effective, introduction session I've ever been a part of.

There was a data presentation that shed light on some of the particular desi dynamics in New Jersey. Census 2000 counted approximately 190,000 South Asians in NJ, as compared to the 250,000+ in New York City alone. I had thought that the NJ number was actually much higher than 190K, so that was an initial surprise. And then the data showed that it was far more overwhelmingly Indian than even in NYC, where the Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indo-Caribbean communities have established neighborhoods and a rightful chair at the desi kitchen table. So that was also interesting, because I'd walked in with the clear belief that NJ was like NYC, just larger and more spread out.

The strategy session conversations, in which the 2 groups were asked to come up with discreet goals and strategies to meet those goals regarding advancing the South Asian community in NJ, led me down another path of thinking. One group insisted in its discussion that there were many groups in NJ that no one knew about, and wouldn't it be great to bring these groups together in a directory, which could be handed out to everyone in the community. First of all, everytime 3 desis get together, they want to create a directory. Seems like it is the easiest thing to consider, it won't take that much time, and voila! suddenly the problem is solved and we can all go out for chaat and a Kingfisher.

Secondly, as an outsider to NJ, I still had a feeling that there were few staffed South Asian organizations around. NJ has a tremendous population, and is one of the top 5 states in regards desi population, but they haven't organized in formal organizations beyond the many faith-based, cultural, regional, and business associations that are omnipresent in these communities. I simply couldn't think of more than 3 or 4 agencies, even though one woman, who I think had worked in a politician's office for a couple of years, continued to stress that there were "tons of them" in NJ. My spot analysis at the moment led me to believe that there was a perception gap between what folks thought existed in the community, and what was actually there.

Community infrastructure, as I've stated before in passing, is quite limited in NYC. But in NJ, it's even moreso. Because we're talking about a state now, not just a city, or a metropolitan area. How do you organize a state when there are extremely limited local resources? And how do you bring people to the existing resources, or even meet regularly, when you have to rely on driving from one part of the state to the next just to get to a meeting? Is public transportation a critical equalizer in the quest to organize disparate stakeholders from different parts of the community?

So then my thinking goes even further. NJ is highly unorganized in regards formal non-profit or even active anti-racist or other progressive coalitions. However, the cultural communities are extremely organized, have shut down the streets for Navratri in Jersey City, have created large temples and retreats like the Siddhachalam, and have begun to draw the attention of the mainstream in many ways. Not to mention that the political and monied side of the community have been more successful at putting South Asian (really Indian) events and communities on their tour schedules, even if it's really taking the money and running without accountability most of the time. So even as I think that NJ is where a progressive desi candidate for the national scene can come from, the connection between that person and the issues that I actually care about is faint, if at all existent. And the groups hardly exist to make that link between seeking public office and remembering that it should be a life in public service.

So through it all, NJ remains an enigma to me. And I'm too tired to write about the other half of the weekend, in which I realized that I'd been a bit too hard on family, especially my cousins.