CHICAGO
A panel discussion “How do we stand together to stop hate” followed the screening of Patrice O’Neill’s documentary “Waking in Oak Creek” (early 2014) and “A Prosecutor’s Stand” (just released) at downtown Chicago’s Gene Siskel Center Feb. 25. The former electrified the audience by starting with live 911 calls and video footage of the coldblooded shooting at Sikh Temple of Wisconsin (STOW), Oak Creek, Wisconsin, Aug. 5, 2012, before depicting the tragic aftermath, and all-round solidarity with the Sikh community in the face of unprovoked hate. The leitmotif of both movie and panel was the brotherly love, even compassion, displayed by the persecuted.
“Waking in Oak Creek was so compelling. The town showed great courage, love and determination to grow stronger after experiencing a terrible, violent hate crime. It left me speechless,” said Jewish audience member Tanya Pietrkowski, who has experienced firsthand the devastating effects of hate.
The panel comprised: Pardeep Kaleka, Kanwar Kaleka and Kamal Singh, community leaders who lost family members in that hate crime attack; Steve Scaffidi, Mayor of Oak Creek, Wisconsin; Brian Murphy, the police lieutenant who was shot 15 times defending the gurudwara; joined by Chicago area hate crime specialists. Being presented across the nation by O’Neill’s “Not in Our Town”(NIOT) anti-hate collective to communities, schools, religious institutions, etc., this Chicago screening was co-hosted by Reva and David Logan Foundation represented by Richard Logan, who pledged two more dollars for every dollar donated that day.
O’Neill introduced the 2 films by focusing on recent hate crimes in Chicago and elsewhere and invoked the thousand people who showed up in solidarity with the three Muslim students mowed down recently in Chapel Hill. She described how her collective also works, through sister programs, with schools (Not in our School) and law enforcement (COPS). The documentary has been requested for 879 screenings in 47 states to date.
The “hero of the day” then and now was Lt. Murphy, who was cheered both within the cinema hall and afterward in the lobby, where police commander Dan Godsel concluded his briefing by expressing his admiration. Suffering grievous injury from being shot 15 times by white supremacist killer Wade Michael Page, Murphy, who does not regret one bit his foolhardiness in the line of duty, made hoarse statements quotable both for their nobility of sentiment and poetic words. Noting how “hate festers like a sore,” this Catholic, who was first injured in the larynx, reflected how the voice of six Sikhs had been “silenced” and his own “diminished” but that the community has now restored the voice of those who have been lost.
Kamal, who no longer wears a turban, recalled how as a conspicuous immigrant child, barely speaking English, he was immediately the butt of ridicule at school. The massacre has only reinforced his desire to become a police officer. Kanwar immediately posed the dilemma of whether to bear distinguishing marks of Sikh identity. Having dithered for long about whether to wear the turban, Kanwar took the plunge in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, for “it was now or never.”
Earlier subsumed under “others” in the hate crime tracking form, Sikhs are now listed as a separate category since Oak Creek. Instead of harboring vengeful sentiments, the community as a whole has used the limelight to familiarize the public with the tenets of their faith. The Sikh’s relation to God is not so much as an individual but mediated by community. However, instead of turning inwards, they have reached out to their American neighbors and realized the need to extend service (seva) to the wider community. When Pradeep’s mother was shown clips of sympathizers in India burning U.S. flags in solidarity, she sent out a much publicized and heeded message through social media insisting they stop. Scaffidi, who had been mayor only for few months of an otherwise peaceable town, promised more gatherings to foster integration.
“We have much to learn from Oak Creek community members and police about how to address and prevent hate, especially because we are again seeing a rise in hate crimes against South-Asian Americans and Arab Americans – from Muslim Americans in Chapel Hill to Hindu temples in Washington state. Now more than ever, we must come together across religious lines to tackle this urgent problem,” said Ami Gandhi, executive director of South Asian American Policy & Research Institute (SAAPRI).
“A Prosecutor’s Stand” follows San Francisco Assistant District Attorney Victor Hwang as he brings hate crime charges against perpetrators who brutally attack a Mayan dishwasher, an African-American homeless man, and a transgender woman. While indicted and sentenced on related violence and injury charges, specific intent must be proved for hate crimes, the vast amount of which are perpetrated by ordinary people, as O’Neill observed.
Present to share their insights were also a representative of Cook County District Attorney and two representatives from the FBI.