THE DESI AMERICAN AGENDA - A BLUE PRINT

By the year 2013, Our mission is to become contributing and productive members of the main stream American community, and earn our place in the Society with a clear goal of fading out "they" v "us" feelings between Immigrant Americans and Born Americans. On our part, deep down we need to feel that, America is our home and America is our community.

Our contributions will be clearly geared for the general good of our society based on; integrity, fairness, equity and respect for every American.   We are at a point in remaking our history, all of us need to earn genuine appreciation from each and every American that “the Desi Americans are kind, good and descent human beings” who care and show regard to all people without any discrimination.  

Here is a small list of things each one of us can undertake.

 1).  Volunteer in Nonprofit organizations that benefit the community at large. 

2).   Participate in Community Leadership Programs thru Chambers of Commerce, Cities, United Way and other     Civic organizations.

3).  Take Part in multi-faith activities, and always remember that famous (revised) 2^nd world war poem….. "And when they came for us, every one was there for us, as we were there for every one.

4).  Friendship Dinners - a goodwill initiative. Budget permitting hold monthly/ quarterly or biannual dinners at your home. Invite your neighbor whom you have never met before, a colleague with whom you did not spend time with, and two families from different faiths.

       Invite new people and build relationships in the community. Be with them as human beings and please do not sell your culture, your religion and your country as the best in the world. The other family feels that theirs is the best. You can certainly tread into this territory after you know them well.

       People need to know people as people. Think about this, our "average" prayer time per day consumes less time than the average time for the facilities, so why bring the topic of faith? The amount of time we spend at comfort room/facilities is never a conflict with other beings, why should religion be?  If we can learn to accept and respect other people’s God given uniqueness, then conflicts fade and solutions emerge. 

       Let the friendship develop if it needs to be. Let’s spend time talking about things that are common to all of us: our children, sports, food, clothes, movies, crime... there is more to share and disagree with.  Let's share those values. At the end they all know; you and you know them as normal folks.

5).   Participate in civic, political and mainstream organizations. Volunteer for every city, congressmen, senators, mayors ... they are all looking for volunteers.

 Please do not expect anything back, if you do, it will not bear the fruit of goodwill. Ten Years from now we would have earned our place in the society by being a part of it and contributing towards it’s over all development. We owe it ourselves an environment of goodwill, goodness, safety and security, then the process will take care of all other issues including our next generation, our kids don't need our money, they need a solid grounding in America.

I will be happy to send the expanded version of the same to you if you "need" it. Each on of you can do it on your own. Just do it.

Please feel free to send in your comments; we can further develop this agenda into a more comprehensive, but simplistic, practical and doable kind. 

Thank you.

Mike Ghouse