By South Asia Solidarity Network – SASN (USA)
The South Asia Solidarity Network (SASN) organized a panel discussion on March 7, 2026, to examine how South Asian immigrants can organize politically at a time marked by escalating global conflicts and wars, an ongoing genocide, and intensifying anti-immigrant policies in the United States. Moderated by SASN organizer Farhad, the panel brought together organizers from across the U.S., who argued that meaningful political work must be rooted in solidarity with other oppressed communities and connected to anti-capitalist struggles in South Asia. Speakers emphasized long-term base-building, political education, and a materialist analysis of how global capitalism shapes migration and diaspora politics.
Minahil Khan of South Asian Left (SALAM) outlined SALAM’s efforts to build internationalist consciousness through campaigns such as targeting Tata Consultancy Services for its involvement in Israeli military infrastructure. She explained that these campaigns link issues such as Hindutva and Jammu Kashmir with Palestine, while grounding the organization’s work in structured political education and sustained organizing.
Jahan Chaudry of the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation argued that the Black proletariat remains central to any democratic transformation in the United States. Drawing on the work of W.E.B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr., he described how a privileged, post-1965 layer of the South Asian diaspora has been positioned as a “wedge group” that stabilizes U.S. imperial institutions. He framed the current crisis as both moral and political, calling for a renewed “battle of ideas” to realign South Asians with anti-imperialist and multiracial democratic struggles.
Lekha Kanchinadam of the Rutgers Anti-Caste Collective (RACC) argued that the public university is a key site of organizing shaped by caste, class, and visa precarity. RACC builds coalitions around sanctuary campus demands, coordinates solidarity work with pro-Palestine groups, supports international graduate students, and pushes unions to move beyond symbolic resolutions toward direct action. She described demands such as “Papers for All” as essential to challenging the logic of borders rather than merely reforming the existing immigration regime.
Isra, a law student organizer in Chicago, outlined efforts to build a political home within legal education environments that often channel South Asians into corporate or prosecutorial careers. Her coalition organizes for campus-based immigrant protections, advocates the use of law school clinics to support vulnerable students and community members, and advances Palestine solidarity through BDS resolutions targeting firms complicit in the occupation. She emphasized the importance of training future lawyers to work collaboratively with grassroots movements rather than elite institutions.
Sajjad, a founding member of SASN, grounded the discussion in the political economy of migration, arguing that South Asian immigration is a direct outcome of centuries of imperialist exploitation—from colonial famines to IMF policies that continue to destabilize economies across the Global South. While acknowledging the presence of a South Asian elite aligned with U.S. power, he stressed that most South Asian immigrants are working class and share common interests with the broader U.S. working class. SASN’s aim, he emphasized, is to build a transnational network linking diaspora organizers with progressive movements in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and beyond.
During the Q&A session, panelists addressed the contradictions of the “model minority” narrative and the need to engage working-class South Asians without moralizing or alienating them. In response to further questions, they emphasized the importance of political education and collective transformation. They also highlighted the need to make internationalism materially concrete, citing examples where local tenant struggles intersect with global patterns of displacement. The event concluded with a shared commitment to deepening collaboration across organizations and geographies.
Courtesy South Asia Solidarity Network
