Community Conversation
with Farooq Mitha
NEHA DEWAN
Neha has long been active in both local and national politics. Most recently, she founded and served as the National Director for South Asians for Biden, an organization dedicated to engaging, educating, and mobilizing the South Asian community to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. In 2016, Neha served as the National Co-Chair for South Asians for Hillary and was appointed by Hillary Clinton to the National AAPI Leadership Council.
Previously, in 2015, Neha was appointed as a guest of honor by the Consulate General of India in New York City where she was selected to speak about gender equality for International Women's Day. During the 2012 presidential campaign, Neha chaired the New York Chapter of South Asians for Obama and also served on the steering committee for Lawyers for Obama in New York. For several years, Neha served as an Officer of the New York Democratic Lawyers Council, an organization affiliated with the National Lawyers Council of the Democratic National Committee and comprised of Democratic lawyers and voting rights activists. Similarly, for many years, Neha served as an advisory board member of New Leaders Council, a national organization focused on training and supporting progressive political entrepreneurs. She has also been active in her local community board and political clubs. Neha served as the President of the South Asian Bar Association of New York in 2012, and now sits on the organization’s Board of Directors.
Mobilizing the South Asian Community & Building Political Power
VALARIE KAUR
Valarie Kaur was born in Clovis, California, a small town near Fresno where her family settled as Indian Punjabi farmers a century ago. She was raised as a Sikh whose faith
inspires a commitment to social justice. She became an activist when family friend Balbir Singh Sodhi was murdered in a hate crime in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. As a college student, she crossed America to chronicle hate crimes against Sikh and Muslim Americans. The journey led to the award-winning film Divided We Fall (2008) and initiated her work as an artist, scholar and activist.
Kaur earned undergraduate degrees in religion and international relations at Stanford University, a master’s degree in theological studies at Harvard Divinity School where she was a Harvard Presidential Scholar, and a JD at Yale Law School, where she was a Knight Law and Media Fellow and Visiting Fellow at the Information Society Project. Kaur filed a landmark immigrant rights' lawsuit with her clinic team in law school and co-led a high-profile campaign against racial profiling with a coalition that resulted in a monumental consent decree of the East
Haven Police Department. She also reported on the military commissions at Guantanamo and clerked on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Kaur has fought for civil rights in the United States for 20 years. Her activism focuses on hate crimes, racism and profiling, gun violence, immigration, solitary confinement,
LGBTQI equality, and Internet freedom. She is the founder of Groundswell Movement, America’s largest multifaith online organizing community of 300,000+ known for
“dynamically strengthening faith-based organizing in the 21st century.” She also founded the Yale Visual Law Project where she trained students at Yale Law School to make films that change policy. Kaur served as the Media and Justice Fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, where she co-founded Faithful Internet to equip faith leaders in the fight for Internet freedom.
As a Senior Fellow at Auburn Theological Seminary, Valarie is a nationally recognized faith leader. She now leads the Revolutionary Love Project to inspire and equip people to build beloved community to transform the world.
Kaur has been a regular television commentator on MSNBC and opinion contributor to CNN, NPR, PBS, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Hill and The New York Times. She has addressed audiences at the White House, Pentagon, the United Nations, the Parliament of the World’s Religions, and on more than 300 U.S. college campuses. She has also traveled with the U.S. State Department as a speaker throughout Myanmar to work to end religious and ethnic violence.
In 2021, she created the People’s Inauguration, inspiring millions to commit to heal, rebuild, and reimagine America.
Kaur and her husband Sharat Raju make documentary films together on social justice issues: Divided We Fall (2008), Alienation (2011), a short film, follows families swept up
in immigration raids; Stigma (2011), a short film, chronicles youth encounters with stop-and-frisks; The Worst of the Worst: Portrait of a Supermax (2012), a documentary on
the practice of solitary confinement, helped win policy change in Connecticut and is now used by activists around the country; and Oak Creek: In Memorium (2012), a short film on the 2012 mass shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, helped the Sikh community win historic federal policy change on hate crimes. In 2016, Kaur and Raju created Seva Productions to support entertainment and social justice projects.
The Center for American Progress names Kaur “a standout figure in the world of interfaith organizing and activism” and among 13 progressive faith leaders to watch. The State of California has recognized her work, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice awarded her the American Courage Award. In 2013, Kaur was named “Person of the Year” by India Abroad and one of eight Asian American “Women of Influence” by Audrey Magazine. In 2015, Kaur was named among the “Women Who Won Net Neutrality” in Slate and was honored by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader. In 2016, she became the youngest person to receive an alumni award from Harvard Divinity School. Kaur believes: “The way we make change is just as important as
the change we make.”