I spent my entire fall semester organizing, mobilizing, surveying, educating and empowering young South Asian Americans for the 2004 election. As a Fellow with South Asian American Voting Youth ( www.SAAVY.org ), I was part of a national campaign that registered over 1500 people, and mobilized twice that number to the polling booths on November 2nd. I did this organizing work for many reasons--personal, political, social reasons why I believe this sort of work is crucial in the SA community. The basic premise, of course, is that full democratic participation is good. Given my new found classic conservatism, I cannot wholly accept this premise. Moreover, I do not think people can vote for revolutions through the ballot. Candidates that are extreme in any way, or markedly different, are rarely successful in American political history. In times of war, people have relinquished freedoms for the illusive notion of security. We are socialized to fear the Other, the scary Arab or Muslim man w...
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