The Junior Sikh Coalition was created as a congregation of enthusiastic high school and college students eager to become young leaders in their faith. But just five days before its inaugural meeting, a gunman entered a Sikh house of worship in Oak Creek, Wisc., and fatally shot six people.
So instead of getting to know each other and hashing out an agenda at the first meeting, the teens essentially also found themselves holding a therapy session, trying to process the violent act.
While New York City abounds with youth leaders and budding community organizers, the Junior Sikh Coalition’s mission is as much about making Sikh teens feel comfortable and safe as it is about advocacy.
A survey by the Sikh Coalition in New York City found that many Sikh teens face abuse because of their faith. Of the 172 Asian American and Pacific Islander students surveyed earlier this year, including Sikhs, 48% said they had endured some form of bias-based harassment. A 2010 survey by the Coalition found that 69% of Sikh students have been harassed.
And several high-profile incidents back up those statistics. In 2007, 15-year-old Harpal Vacher’s hair was forcibly cut by another student at Newtown High School in Elmhurst. Then in 2008, Jagmohan Singh Premi, then a student at Richmond Hill High School, was punched and had his turban removed.
At weekly Sunday afternoon meetings at the Sikh Coalition’s cheery downtown Broad street offices, students share such stories of abuse while working on projects like anti-bullying workshops, a YouTube show and a nationwide Sikh art contest.
“When we were alone it was really hard,” said Rajan Kaur, a 17-year-old from Morristown, N.J. “But, when we are together we feel like we can accomplish anything.”
The Sikh Coalition was formed in New York after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. to provide aid and advocacy to those discriminated against because of their Sikh faith. The Sikh religion is not related to Islam, but the two are often conflated because Sikhs wear a turban to cover their long hair.
In middle school, kids teased Gurwinder Singh, now a 20-year-old college junior, by saying he was related to Osama bin Laden, with some students even chasing him once. “I yelled continuously for help. There were so many adults and students around me, but no one stepped forward to help. It was all over when my head was smashed into a metallic edge of a door,” Singh recalled.
“I got made fun of for my long hair,” said Kaur. “I look different from the other girls in my town and they say things to said like , ‘Oh you’re hairy.’”
Each weekly meeting of the Junior Sikh Coalition begins with a meditation, then the teenagers and young adults split into groups to work on various projects. In one corner Kaur and Pawanpreet Singh created a makeshift television studio work on a YouTube show.
“It will be a funny show, like ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,’ but with topics important to us,” Singh, 15 years old, snappily dressed in a blue sweater and light blue Vans sneakers, with the patka, a thin flexible fabric that male Sikhs often wear underneath their turbans, covering a top knot of hair on the crown of his head.
Other projects include traveling anti-bullying workshops ) as well as an upcoming trip to Washington, D.C. for a day of advocacy. The coalition also wants to create a nationwide art contest for kids, with a long-haired, Sikh woman mascot named SuperGirl.
“I wish the Junior Sikh Coalition was around when I was in school. Things may have been different for me then,” Premi said.