Amardeep Singh, Executive Director of the Sikh Coalition, speaking out against the MTA's turban branding policy, has founded a website to collect post 9/11 stories from targeted minorities.
Tuesday, September 6th 2011: A Brooklyn teen looks into the camera and describes a group of classmates pulling off her headscarf in school and swearing at her.
A No. 4 train operator says his supervisors told him people were afraid to ride his train because he wore a turban.
Both tell their tales in first-person videos posted on a new Sikh Coalition website, which is collecting post-9/11 stories from Muslim, Sikh, South Asian, and Arab Americans.
In posted accounts from around the U.S., they describe suffering from bullying, discrimination and hate crimes.
"You don't realize how much people have to say until you give them a platform to say it," said Amardeep Singh, the Manhattan-based coalition's co-founder. The website, launched this month, is unheardvoicesof911.org.
"It's a pretty depressing exercise," said Singh about collecting the stories. "Even though we've come so far as a country we have a long way to go."
The backlash felt by Muslims has also impacted Sikhs, who wear turbans in accordance with their religion. In the most recent high-profile attack, a man yelled, "You are the brother of Osama!" and beat up a Sikh MTA employee in May.
Singh founded the Sikh Coalition after 9/11 in order to teach Americans about his religion and combat anti-Sikh violence or discrimination.
Ten years later, he says he still gets frequent reports of Sikh kids being called "terrorist" at school and is worried about his own toddler starting preschool this fall.
"These issues have not gone away," said Singh.