{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/kh0dv1fb4x/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Drashti Brahmbhatt Oral History"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2021-12-12 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Audio"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary of Full Interview\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eDrashti Brahmbhatt speaks about her parents' experiences as immigrants starting a family in New York City, plus her own journey growing up in Queens and becoming a campaign manager for New York City Council candidate Jaslin Kaur.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eBrahmbhatt describes the struggles that her mother and father (who are both originally from Gujarat, India, but met after immigrating to New York City) experienced as working parents raising two daughters and as undocumented immigrants for approximately 30 years. Brahmbhatt speaks about her experience attending middle school in Maspeth, inequalities associated with the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) in New York City, pursuing undergraduate education in international relations (at Brown University) and graduate education in urban policy (at Columbia University), and her experiences studying abroad.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eBrahmbhatt discusses her decision to get involved in New York City politics and campaigning for Jaslin Kaur to represent New York City Council District 23 in eastern Queens. Brahmbhatt recalls the challenges and rewards of trying to get the South Asian community in District 23 more active in local politics and trying to bridge generational gaps, specifically getting older South Asian members of the community to support a young candidate known for socialist views.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["http://digitalarchives.queenslibrary.org/search/browse/42079"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Drashti Brahmbhatt (Interviewee)","Indranil Choudhury (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source"]},"value":{"en":["Interview recorded as part of the Queens Memory Podcast's 3rd Season: Our Major Minor Voices."]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["1960s-2021 (temporal)","Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Sunnyside, Maspeth, and Bellerose, Queens, NY; Gujarat, India (spatial)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary of Full Interview\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eDrashti Brahmbhatt speaks about her parents' experiences as immigrants starting a family in New York City, plus her own journey growing up in Queens and becoming a campaign manager for New York City Council candidate Jaslin Kaur.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eBrahmbhatt describes the struggles that her mother and father (who are both originally from Gujarat, India, but met after immigrating to New York City) experienced as working parents raising two daughters and as undocumented immigrants for approximately 30 years. Brahmbhatt speaks about her experience attending middle school in Maspeth, inequalities associated with the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) in New York City, pursuing undergraduate education in international relations (at Brown University) and graduate education in urban policy (at Columbia University), and her experiences studying abroad.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eBrahmbhatt discusses her decision to get involved in New York City politics and campaigning for Jaslin Kaur to represent New York City Council District 23 in eastern Queens. Brahmbhatt recalls the challenges and rewards of trying to get the South Asian community in District 23 more active in local politics and trying to bridge generational gaps, specifically getting older South Asian members of the community to support a young candidate known for socialist views.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/215/368/small/Drashti_Photo_aviary.jpg?1699458663","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Drashti_Brambhatt.mp3"]},"duration":3453.096,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/215/368/small/Drashti_Photo_aviary.jpg?1699458663","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-queenslibrary.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/215/368/original/Drashti_Brambhatt.mp3?1699458446","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":3453.096,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Full Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: Hi everyone. My name is Drashti Brahmbhatt, I am 24 years old and I was born and raised in Queens. My parents actually immigrated to Queens in 1990 and they both found themselves here in different ways. My dad is from Gujarat, originally a state in West India, and at the age of 18 he actually decided to move from India to go to Kenya. He was born and raised in a very impoverished household. His father died when he was two years old and his mom raised him and five other siblings altogether. So when he was 18, he and his older brother decided to move to Nairobi, Kenya, to get involved in agriculture business. There were a lot of Indians at the time, especially Gujaratis in Kenya, and I kind of learned all of this when I got older and started asking more questions about his time prior to New York City. A time that I didn't really know much about. But he describes those days as the happiest days of his life, well, before we were born. But he describes it as, you know, a lot of friends, a lot of fun doing something innovative, entrepreneurial. And, you know, eventually he also got sold, I would say, the American dream of this unique aspect of, oh, move to New York, move to USA. Like life is just completely different there. So he decided to try to come to New York City and he actually overstayed his visa.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=0.0,106.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And then my mom is also from Gujarat, from the city of Ahmedabad, and she was born, I would say, in a very middle class household. Her father was a doctor, and she had 3 to 4 other siblings. And she actually decided at the age of 35 to move to the US. She was actually a mountain climber. She studied accounting, she didn't finish her college and neither did my dad, never started his college, but she had started a year of college but then eventually dropped out. So she was working at the hospital that her dad was working at, and she, she decided to leave. She was, you know, being pressured by her family to get married. And she didn't really want to at the time. So she just, you know, urged all of her younger siblings to get married so that she would have more time. And then she kind of just left and moved to New York. Moved to New York all by herself. And they both met in New York City one day. I think, you know, at the time it sounds pretty harsh and scary just to all of a sudden, you know, move countries knowing very little English. But one has to remember that New York has a very vibrant South Asian community, and the Indian and specifically Gujarati the community is really large, so it doesn't feel that alienating to be in a different environment. You know, you have this really vibrant support system of people who speak the same language as you, people who have been there years before you, who know the ins and outs, the shortcuts, the ways to survive. So she knew a few people and, you know, one of them got her a babysitting job. So when she was, you know, when she first came, she started babysitting this, this child named Jonathan from Manhattan.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=106.0,236.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And my dad began working at a convenience store in, in downtown Manhattan owned by an older Indian gentleman. And he likes to tell me that he learned really quickly. My dad had been taking, you know, English classes since he was very young in India, and that was one of his favorite subjects. So he took it very seriously. He loved, you know, in school, being the person to read out the short stories in front of the teacher where many people didn't really like to, but he really enjoyed it and quickly picked up the language. My mom, on the other hand, struggled a lot with English, I would say, in adjusting. And the first time she met my dad was at the convenience store, and when she was working, she actually went to go buy a newspaper, an Indian newspaper, because the store owner was Indian and he sold various newspapers for it in Hindi, in Gujarati. So she went to go buy one and she saw him there. And, you know, they realized they were both Gujarati, so they started to talk more. And then one thing led to the other, and they were introduced and this and that, and they got married. And my mom had my sister at age 39 and she had me at age 40. And my dad is actually five years younger than my mom. And throughout all this, she always likes to tell me that she found some humor in her experience of adjusting. She once went into a McDonald's in Manhattan and asked the man, and this is like summertime. This is like peak summertime in August. And she goes and asks the cashier if she can have some snow. And the guy is like, \"Oh, ha ha ha, you're joking, right?\" And she's like, \"No, can I please have some snow?\" And he's like, \"Oh, I think, like, this is the wrong season, honey. Like, you know, you have to wait until winter for that.\" And she's like, \"No, no, I see it right there in the machine, right there, the snow.\" And he's like, \"Oh my God, you mean ice?\" And she's like, \"Yes, yes.\" So she likes to tell me that, you know, there were some funny moments in her adjustment and that, you know, some people laughed with her and some people laughed at her. But, you know, she made it through somehow.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=236.0,388.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And so I was born in Elmhurst Hospital. One would say that's very central Queens. It's a, it's one of our largest public hospitals and a hospital that was, you know, at the peak of COVID, the COVID-19 pandemic, was really, really struggling and overwhelmed and at capacity. And you can see the strain that was put on staff members and the resources that were not delivering. But I was born in that hospital, and I always, you know, sometimes it's easy to forget the struggle that your parents went through. But my mom and dad, my dad worked, you know, more than 12 hours a day. He would leave, you know, 5 a.m. from Queens to get to Manhattan to start his shift at 6:00. And he would come back 7, 8 p.m. and, you know, getting paid minimum wage or even less probably per hour. And so my mom, when she had my sister, she actually went to the hospital alone when it was time to give birth to my sister. And even when she was pregnant with me, she also went to the hospital alone with a one year old, my sister. And so, you know, it's hard to really digest how difficult that must have been for my mom to, you know, for someone who doesn't speak English fluently, to be going through such an excruciating like moment in their life alone. And for, it's not that my dad didn't want to be there. Of course he did. But, you know, you couldn't. He couldn't because, you know, there were bills to pay. There was his job to worry about. If you don't show up, it's very easy to replace you in an industry that is minimum wage. It's not like, you know, where I work now in city government that you can call in sick one day and you don't have to worry about, oh, no, I don't have my job the next day. So I, I grew up in my toddler years on the line between Elmhurst and Jackson Heights. But when I grew a little older around age seven, eight-ish, we moved to Sunnyside and there we lived in this really big apartment complex called Celtic Park [phonetic]. And I went to P.S. 199 to elementary school there. My sister and I both went, but we kept moving a lot when I was really young, you know, not only neighborhoods in Queens, but I also lived in Pennsylvania for two years, Georgia one year, and Florida for three years. So there was, there was a lot of movement. And that was all because of my dad's job, where he could kind of find employment, and find employment that was not just, you know, minimum wage at a convenience store in Manhattan.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=388.0,590.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: After elementary school, I remember, and during elementary school my, throughout all of this, my mom also was babysitting someone else. So during elementary school, my mom was babysitting this little boy named Ethan. So he kind of grew up as like the little brother to my sister and I as well. And after that, we moved further back east to Elmhurst because the rents were really, really high in Sunnyside. They were each year, you know, the, the owner of the apartment was increasing rent at a, at a rate that my parents couldn't afford. So we moved back into Elmhurst. And, and for those trying to visualize kind of like the neighborhoods and demographics, you know, we viewed everything along the 7 train line, you know, 40 Street, Sunnyside, 90 Street, Elmhurst, 74th Street, Jackson Heights. And as you move more to the right, the, the rents get cheaper, the people look more diverse. And so we moved back out to Elmhurst and I went to school, middle school in Maspeth and my sister went to middle school in Corona. And the only reason is, we could have gone through zoned public school, but there were two special programs in each of those middle schools. My sister was actually in a gifted and talented program, and that's why she went to I.S. 61, another public school in Corona. And I went to I.S. 73 that had a math program that, that students who really enjoyed math could sign up and enroll in. And so my dad signed me up for that. And, you know, throughout all of this process, my mom being our caretaker and being a homemaker while also babysitting, at the time, I didn't really realize, like I always envisioned, oh, my dad's doing the work, my dad makes the money, and my mom is the one at home with us. And, and I over the years, as I looked back, I realized how much work she put in. You know, and I know a lot of other families don't have that same, even though I, you know, grew up very working class, I still recognize that, you know, my mom put in a lot of time and energy into both of my sister and I, taking care of us, always making sure that when we got back from school there was, you know, a meal waiting for us. And she'd always pay attention, you know, making sure we did our homework on time, making sure we woke up on time. And I, and I don't think that everyone gets that. And that's really important because that's how they were able to kind of, even though we were working class, to show that, okay, you know, Drashti, like enroll in this program or do this or do that so, you know, you can get a step ahead.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=590.0,790.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And I think that is, is some, some sense of privilege that I feel like I've been brought up with having a parent at home to always take care of us, which is, you know, a lot of, a lot of work. So let's see, after that, in middle school I would take, and Maspeth is a very interesting place in Queens one would say. I think, it's very different. It's, it's a place that has zero trains. Like Maspeth is a transit desert in that sense. But everyone in Maspeth owns a car, essentially. And it's very, it feels a little more suburban and it feels like once you're in Maspeth it doesn't really feel like you're in New York City in some ways. And, you know, Maspeth has traditionally been a larger, that has a larger Polish community, that has a larger Italian-American community. And I would always take, I would, you know, every day from 90th Street in Elmhurst, I would walk about 15 minutes to get the Q58 to take to Maspeth and then walk another 5 minutes. And, you know, at the time it was really fun because, you know, you didn't have to pay for your public transportation as a, as a public school kid. You'd get your MetroCard and go to school every day. And I really enjoyed my middle school, I think. It, it was a place where I felt very normal in a lot of ways. You know, there was people who looked like me. It was extremely diverse, you know, very, very large Hispanic, black and South Asian and East Asian communities, students. But, you know, even in school, you notice things, these topics where, you know, there was always a time in eighth grade where everyone started studying for the SHSAT [Specialized High School Admissions Test], which is a specialized high school test in New York City that students can take to go to one of the specialized high schools that are located throughout the city. And your test score determines which one you get into. So if you get in the highest bracket, you get to go to Stuyvesant. The second bracket you get to go to Bronx Science, et cetera, et cetera. So I remember, you know, people signing up to get to take classes and, you know, classes are not, you know, they're very expensive. They come very expensive and you have to take a lot of time after school to go to them. But my parents really, really wanted my sister and I to take it. When I was actually in middle school my, we, you know, we were in Elmhurst and my dad actually moved by himself to, to Florida to, for another job because, you know, he really wanted for us to, to have a better life.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=790.0,975.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And he moved to Florida and started, you know, with one of his other friends, invested in, you know, purchasing his own gas station. And so when I was, all throughout middle school for the three years, we were just living with my mom and she was taking care of everything while my dad was in Florida working another job. And so they sent us to, you know, these prep classes in Astoria, like Kaplan classes or something like that, to take this, to take these lessons for this exam. And I noticed some of my other friends, like in, not in the math program that I was in, because in the math program I was in, we just had a separate class of students. But I noticed a lot of other students at the school not having that ability or luxury to be enrolled in, in these types of prep classes where, like you learn a lot in these classes that you do not learn in school. There's no like, you know, class in your ordinary middle school curriculum that teaches you how to answer the questions on the SHSAT. Like, sure there's foundational knowledge, but there's extra, you know, test taking skills, practice and all this other stuff that you don't see. So, you know, looking back, I certainly recognize that that's why we have such unequal schooling in New York City. That's why, you know, in specialized high schools, you get such a warped statistic of demographics and students that there's a huge percentage of white students and there's a huge percentage of South Asian and East Asian students. And there's an extremely, you know, eye opening low percentage of black and Hispanic students in these specialized high schools. And it's hard to explain to people, especially, you know, my parents and other people, that this is like a result of a systemic failure in New York City to equalize opportunities, to say that it's not fair that some people who can pay and afford it and can, can enroll in prep classes to take this test, while other people who are sometimes raised by single parents, who have other siblings, you know, other expenses in the household, that you can't take these types of classes and thus, you know, excel in these exams.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=975.0,1127.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: So, you know, I, after, after middle school, I actually, my parents, we decided to move to Florida for my high school. My sister, you know, did her one year of high school in New York City. Right when I finished middle school, we had moved to Florida for four years with my dad because my mom was getting, you know, really anxious about being separated for so long. And so we decided to move to Florida. And soon after I went to college, and after college, I moved back to New York City, and my parents eventually moved to Connecticut. And I came back to New York City to go to graduate school.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=1127.0,1168.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: But I think if I were to reflect on a little bit more about growing up, I would realize that there was a lot of things in my childhood that growing up I couldn't really put a finger on, or describe, or have the vocabulary to describe the societal, you know, issues and barriers, whether that was, you know, needing to move because of the rents, or when we were living in an apartment in Elmhurst, my, one of the apartments that I was living in had a severe case of bedbugs that the landlord didn't acknowledge when my parents were signing the lease. And I was just bitten, my legs were like covered in bite marks. And I would be so embarrassed to go to school, you know, in something shorter than pants because I didn't want my friends to know that, you know, I had gotten bitten by these bedbugs. And, you know, bedbugs are scary in New York City. Like, you don't want to stand too close to someone who, who has bedbugs in their apartment because they travel, you know, they travel and they, they really, really, you know, accumulate. So, you know, I remember my sister, who was an eighth grader or something, you know, very, very young, having to help translate, like, legal documents because my parents decided to sue the landlord and my sister, you know, having to translate all these documents as the older sibling and like teach them, you know, okay, this is how you file something. This is how you make a case online. And, you know, my parents making her write a letter to our landlord saying that if you don't like, you know, confess all these things, we're going to go to like some news reporter and, like, you know, show that you're a scam and whatnot. And so eventually, you know, they actually had won the lawsuit and they were able to get some, some claims back for, for the damage that was done. But another huge part of my story I feel like that, that feels normal in Queens, that feels like something that is not out of the ordinary, but I only started realizing how unique it was in some ways when I went to college. I went to college in Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, an Ivy League school in which, you know, there's, there's a lot of different people there. You know, the, most people are not on financial aid. Most people's parents have never struggled with paying their bills. You know, there's exuberant wealth in some families. That you start realizing all these contrasts. In Queens, you don't feel it most of the time. Queens is something that's ordinary, that's not special in that way. It's, you know, people living their day to day lives, you know, paying their bills, doing the thing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=1168.0,1357.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And my parents, you know, I mentioned this earlier, but they were undocumented. They didn't come with documents to the U.S. and they both overstayed their visas. My dad, his travel visa, and my mom, her mountain climbing visa, and they had been documented, undocumented for over 30 years that, ever since they came in 1990 until 2019 actually they had been undocumented. Which, and I'll explain what that really meant for me. Like as a kid, that meant my parents not being able to travel anywhere outside of the U.S., that they couldn't visit any countries. They couldn't even visit India when their own parents died, when my mom's sister died. They couldn't do these normal things of being able to go to your sister's funeral, right? Like, and I saw the impact of that growing up when, you know, my parents spent many nights, you know, crying about that, the inability to move and to, to have mobility just like any other normal person would. I remember, you know, us not taking vacations. We didn't, you know, in college, I would always hear like, oh, my parents and I are going to Italy and doing this and that. I'm like, \"That sounds great. Have fun.\" You know, like, I never had that because my parents literally couldn't travel.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=1357.0,1449.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And I also remember, you know, my parents being afraid to sign up for any, you know, government assistance or benefits in any way, whether that was health insurance or, you know, whatever that may be. They were, there was a dual kind of obstacle in their mind. One that, you know, they were worried about any potential impact on their, their pathway to citizenship. But at the same time, there were, there was also the stigma in the, in the South Asian community in, in Queens specifically. You know, a lot of people came a lot earlier in the 1950s and do have their green cards and managed to get it. And the folks who, you know, there's a hierarchy in Queens within even South Asian communities that not a lot of people know about. But, you know, it was the Indians who came first and the Pakistanis and then this huge wave of Bangladeshis and Nepalis came who were more likely to be undocumented and more likely to be working in minimum wage jobs. And as soon as they started coming, more Indians and Pakistanis would move further east outside of even Queens to Long Island, where they would buy up their houses and, and whatnot. And so there was, there's always been this, this hierarchy of the South, within the South Asian community in terms of the time they got here and their relationship to, to citizenship.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=1449.0,1548.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And so my parents, they never told their friends and the people they met, the other Gujaratis they knew that they were undocumented. They, you know, they had said, oh, no, we have a green card. You know, it was something embarrassing for them to not be, to not, you know, be able to vocalize that. And it was just because of bad luck, to be honest, that they just hadn't gotten it for 30 years. The judge that was on their case was just mean and didn't want to advance it. And with a stroke of luck, the judge changed in the late 2000s and, and then all of a sudden, like their, their case sped up and they got their green cards in 2019. And they have about two more years left to get their citizenship. But, I say that it feels, it didn't feel different because I knew that a lot of kids in Queens that, you know, folks from Latin America, folks from other parts of South Asia, like, I knew that, you know, two really good friends that lived on the same floor as us in our apartment, you know, their family immigrated from Mexico and their dad didn't have his documents. So it felt, felt like every Queens kid, you know, has someone they know that is undocumented. And it didn't feel abstract, it felt normal until I got to college and realized that, oh, this isn't actually normal and that there are different, like, repercussions that I feel like I had faced growing up and ultimately what my parents faced growing up that is all tied to the simple concept of citizenship, which is, seems absurd. But that's kind of what brought me into political organizing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=1548.0,1673.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: I studied urban, I studied international relations in college. And I spent a lot of time in other parts of the world. I spent a lot of time in Argentina and Chile and Turkey and India studying protest movements. I studied different types of sociopolitical problems, whether in Argentina, it was economic crisis and this tendency to replicate neoliberal approaches and solutions. I studied the feminist Ni Una Menos movement in Argentina and indigenous rights in Chile. My first exposure to all of this, when I was in high school, I stayed in Turkey for three months to learn Turkish language and I was exposed to the 2014 protests in Turkey around freedom of speech and around, this resentment around the current government of, of trying to make a public space into a mall and privatize it. All of that invigorated the sense of, wow, you know, government has some role in our society and the people have a role in our society of pushing the government toward this place that they want it to go. And I spent time in, in Amritsar, in Punjab, in India for three months, learning more about the partition and learning more about how museums can, can play a role in affecting social discourse. But also they have to be very careful to not replicate trauma because what I noticed, and I come at it from a place of admiration for museums, but what I noticed in the museum was that there is an overreliance on narratives of Hindus who, who fled from Pakistan to India and not the other way around, of Muslims who fled from India to Pakistan, which, which has the effect of replicating the sense that violence was only inflicted upon Hindus. And so I spent a lot of time writing my senior thesis on it and engaging in conversations with folks. And for grad school, I studied urban and social policy. I wanted to bring all these lessons back home of all this vibrant protest culture that I saw in Latin America, all these historical questions that I kind of seeped through in India and Turkey back to New York City, because I realized the world is here. You know, everyone is right here in New York City, especially right in the, you know, the corners of Queens that all these stories that I saw abroad have acute impact on everyday lives in Queens. People in Queens care more about the politics of their home countries than they do about local politics. That's just a fact that no one knows who their council member is.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=1673.0,1863.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: I just realized when I moved back to New York City that the councilmember for Jackson Heights was actually my sister and I's middle school, or elementary school social studies teacher. Like we had, and I was like, \"What?! Mr. Dromm, like, I remember you from elementary school, and now you're the councilmember of a place I grew up.\" And my parents wouldn't, would not know at all who the councilmember was or, you know, and maybe the mayor, maybe they know who the mayor is and what the mayor did. But honestly, I don't know about that either. So, but they knew everything that was going on in India. They knew all the politics that was happening there. So I felt that it was necessary to connect with people through this lens of how they, how they view government, because people are coming from a variety of countries in which there are tense relations with government, that there's distrust in government. And this, the word of politics it's, my parents always, you know, didn't like me studying politics. They say that politics is very dirty because that's how they saw it in India. And the folks that I was talking to, you know, folks from, from all over Latin America in Queens, trying to connect and saying that, you know, local government is something we should care about. But also being confronted with this issue of, I don't know, like government has been pretty scary from how I view it from various, you know, moments in history in Latin America of, of intense repression and dictatorships, especially in the southern cone of Latin America. So how do you convince people that local government is something that we should invest in and mold and change to how we think it should be? And that it should be providing services, it should be creating, crafting the world that we want to see together. That's not something that's left on the individual to create. That this American dream is not you making it and doing it. It's, it's this idea in which we change it and do it together because we have the freedom to do that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=1863.0,1990.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And that's how I got involved in organizing in the Democratic Socialists of America, the New York City chapter, and specifically the Queens chapter, an organization that has many goals, including, you know, ensuring health care for everyone, ensuring housing, and an adequate and dignified life for everyone. You know, creating solutions, immediate action steps for climate change, language justice, you know, all these issues that every immigrant cares about, right? But these are important things for absolutely everyone. And I was, I always wondered, like, how can we distill this so that it makes sense to everyone, so that it doesn't seem like this weird ideological concept that, you know, is associated with all these other countries in the world in which it has gone wrong, but something that is just basic human rights. And in one of our, I was really involved in the electoral working group and at one of our endorsement meetings this young woman came, her name is Jaslin Kaur, and she came to seek our endorsement. She was running for City Council District 23, which was all the way eastern Queens. Practically the border of Long Island. And I had to look at a map. I was like, oh, my gosh, where is this? Like, have I been there? And I asked my parents. I was like, Dad, do we, do we go here? Where is this in Queens?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=1990.0,2084.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And he's like, duh, Drashti, like, don't you remember? We used to go there all the time. Like, Hillside Avenue is where all the Patel Brothers is, where Usha Foods is. We used to go there all the time. We drive and, you know, get all these groceries, even though it was all in Jackson Heights, but, you know, that, the Patel Brothers in Glen Oaks and Floral Park is much more spacious and less crowded than Jackson Heights. So my parents preferred going there and, and a lot more Gujaratis also in that area as well. And, and it all started coming back together. And I felt like in the endorsement forum, I felt, you know, I feel like I don't remember a lot of my childhood because, you know, I guess I have a bad memory or something, but I felt like it coming back, you know, putting this other puzzle piece into the puzzle and having more memories being brought back from my childhood. And listening to Jaslin speak, you know, a young woman talking about the challenges she faced growing up, talking about her dad who rides his taxi from, you know, 4 to 5 a.m. all the way to midnight sometimes. And how her mom works the night shift at Stop \u0026 Shop, and her sometimes not being able to see either of her parents in a day after coming back from school. And the way she talked about it, you know, brought tears to my eyes. I just, I felt, you know, just so connected to that story of hers, even though it was slightly different from, from mine, I felt that there was this authenticity in her voice and, and the way she was describing her own, you know, journey into politics and political organizing. and ever since then, you know?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=2084.0,2193.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And ever since then, you know, I participated in organizing to get her the votes necessary in our organization to actually endorse her, because that's a whole other process. And we, we endorsed her in 2020, the end of 2020, for the June election, 2021. And I was still in grad school at the time. It was my last year and, you know, during my winter break I decided to step up and do a lot of the infrastructure of the campaign to get it, to get it up and started. And then one day in January Jaslin calls me and says, \"Drashti, I need you to be my campaign manager. Please, come on, we got to do this together.\" And I said, \"Absolutely not. I'm in my last semester of graduate school. This is not happening.\" I was just on break. And, you know, she, she convinced me. She talked about the once in a lifetime opportunity we have to finally elect a South Asian person, specifically a South Asian woman, to city council, to bring them representation to the council, to do all of the stuff that we wanted to do. It was never about just winning the election. It was about, how can we energize all these people that we grew up with, all these uncles and aunties to finally care and vote in this election? And how can a youth in the community bring us and advance us forward?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=2193.0,2291.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And we talked about all the faith organizing we would do. We talked about all the language organizing we would do. And typically in electoral campaigns, you really don't translate your material in any other languages. That's usually just not how it's done. There's a recent trend in the past few years, four years, of translating your material in the very least into Spanish, but also the languages that are most spoken in your community. And not only that, but also having people who are knocking on doors being able to speak another language as well. That's something that is very unique, I would say, and only a trend of the last few years. So I decided to be a full time campaign manager while also taking a few classes, and because of COVID, it made it easier in that sense because I didn't have to go in person to school, but I could take my classes online while I was at our office and then quickly come back into campaign manager mode. You know, I'm studying urban policy on one hand and then practicing it right when I shut off my computer.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=2291.0,2361.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And the campaign, I don't even know where to start. It was honestly some of the best days of my life, you know, organizing in east Queens. We just had so many opportunities to connect with people, to explain all these, you know, concepts in our head and trying to be the gap, bridging the gap between, you know, older South Asian communities and younger, younger folks like us who sometimes, you know—I speak Gujarati fluently, which is my, my parents' native language. But I struggle a little bit with Hindi, the national language. I understand it fluently because, you know, my sister and I used to watch a lot of Bollywood movies growing up. And in one of the apartments we lived in, it was actually owned by a Punjabi family. And so the lingua franca eventually, essentially became Hindi between us.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=2361.0,2421.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And so, but, you know, my Hindi is a little, I would say, not the best. Sometimes I get it confused with Gujarati when I'm trying to say a word, and similarly Jaslin understands Punjabi, but she sometimes struggle speaking it as well. So we were like, okay, how do we, you know, try to be the, bridging the gap between our younger generation and the older generation? And I felt like, you know, we had, it was, it was difficult at times, right? To, to get the South Asian community politically involved. I can tell, I can sit here and tell you all about all the, the ways in which all of a sudden we change people's minds and, you know, they voted for, for a socialist candidate. But that would be not the full truth, right? There were difficult moments as well, I would say. You know, I was once talking, I did all the door-knocking for Gujarati households in the district. There are 500 households in which they had a name that was a Gujarati last name. So as a Gujarati speaker, I decided to go to those doors and come at it from a perspective of, you know, I'm trying to get the Gujarati community more politically involved. Here is a candidate that I really like. Let me tell you a little bit more about her. I want to hear your thoughts on the community and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I went to this one dorm in Bellerose across from Martin Van Buren High School and it was an older man, I don't remember his name anymore, but it was a Gujarati name. But I could tell that it was a Parsi last name. And so I knock his door and it seems like he's the only person who lives in the house. And I knock it, no one comes. I ring it, I ring it again. And finally someone comes, he's, you know, looking a little disgruntled. He's like, \"What? What do you want?\" And so, you know, I started speaking Gujarati because I might as well, you know, I'm assuming this man speaks Gujarati, and he was taken aback a little bit and shocked. And he was like, okay. And he felt, you know, you could see him coming out from the door a little bit more and opening up.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=2421.0,2567.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And I think that's the main thing that language access can do. It can help create trust between people, especially during a pandemic, when you don't want people coming at your door randomly. And I talked to him a little bit about, you know, our vision, and he was really skeptical. You know, he talked about, he said that, I came to America the right way. You know, I have my documents and all of a sudden I'm seeing all these people. You know, I rent a room, a room in my apartment, and all these people are trying to come and I'm like, show me your passport. And they, and they can't. So I say, you know, why should I rent my room to them? And he was telling me about, you know, I'm concerned. There's all these kids in the streets. You know, one day I was walking and one of them just pushed me. And I was, I was like, I told them I would call the police on them. And so as I was talking to him, you know, I was trying to explain, like, how can you come up to a person and say, you know, we believe in, you know, shifting resources away from the police department to other departments such as education, housing, when someone is clearly saying that he was going to call the cops on a kid who pushed him in the street, right? So I think the way I did it was I really tried to explain a little bit about my story. I told him that I see where you're coming from. And I think that we can do a lot better as a younger generation to, to respect people, to respect older adults, to make sure that, you know—","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=2567.0,2670.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: Because I could tell that there were many ways in which he was lonely as a person living alone in America, in this house with no one else. And I kind of talked to him and build trust between that, but, you know, I encouraged him to vote and he said, you know, maybe I'll think about it. And I said, okay, that's a start, I think, right? And I don't know if he ended up voting or not, but I think that the, usually we're on a door for 2 minutes and I was on that door for 10 minutes in this, in the deep conversation with this guy in Gujarati. And I think that it takes that work, it takes a lot of work to get, especially the South Asian community involved in civic engagement. And that's work that I saw our campaign was invested in, that we weren't looking for shortcuts, that no one on the campaign said, oh, if it's taking too long, move on to the next door. If he seems reluctant, just say bye. And you had 70 more doors to hit in the next 2 hours, you need to keep moving. That was never the culture of the campaign. The culture of the campaign was conversations, that you want to have these conversations with people and try to move the needle forward and forward, whether it's for this campaign or the next that comes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=2670.0,2755.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: But there are also many beautiful moments that I cherish. And that, when, you know, ultimately when we came, in a slew of seven candidates when Jaslin performed second and, you know, with winning ultimately almost 46% of the vote, which means thousands of people voted for her and coming just shy of the first place. And I, and I told everyone at the post election kind of party we had, a banquet, team banquet type we had, that the, the results are impressive, you know, that no one, absolutely no one would have thought that a 24 year old socialist would have won 46% of the vote in East Queens, a community that has been relatively not as engaged in politics, but also has definitely more of a conservative bent when it comes to politics. And we, you know, we knocked that down. We knocked that concept down for sure. But what I said was that, think of the stories that made this campaign. Think of the people you met. Think of the conversations you've had. Because that's what's going to ground you in how amazing and beautiful this campaign was. And that's what's going to push you into doing this again, whether it's for Jaslin or whether it's for another campaign out there. And I told them the stories that I remembered that, you know, was, was really worth it to me. I remember in grad school, I went to school with this guy named Ehtizaz, and he was actually in my last semester capstone class, which is just a six person class. So you really get to know your other classmates. And he and his parents, they had immigrated from Pakistan to Queens and he was living in Queens somewhere, you know, in the 180s streets, but I didn't know exactly where. And then it clicked in the last two weeks of the campaign that, oh, my gosh, Ehtizaz might be a voter in this district. So I messaged him on WhatsApp and I said, Ehtizaz, where do you live exactly? Tell me your address. Let me look it up on New York City Votes. Let me find out who your council member is. And he was like, okay, sure. So I looked it up and he was in Jaslin's district. And so I told him, like, you know, we're at the early voting poll site, please come, you know. He's like, absolutely Drashti. Like, I, you know, I trust you and your, you know, instincts. And I'm really excited to vote for Jaslin.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=2755.0,2923.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: So at some times it was about trust. Like it was about building a relationship with someone and asking them, you know, to vote for a candidate, not for necessarily their policy vision at all. You know, Ehtizaz decided to vote for Jaslin because he knew me. He said that I trust your instinct and what you think is good. And he was like, can I bring my parents? You know, it's actually their first time voting. And that was like, yes, bring your parents. Like, he's like, explain to them how to vote, you know, before they go in. Like, we'll ask for interpreters, but I don't want them to mess anything up like, you know. So they came. He brought his older parents. He brought his wife and his wife just had a baby. So they brought the baby as well in during early voting. And, you know, I had printed out a ballot and I was showing them how to vote. And it was just very beautiful because, you know, this one person from a completely different part of my life, being able to bring them into this other space in my life and being there for his parents' first time voting and his wife and him. So it was, it was really exciting. And I think that there were many other times in the campaign where I felt that energy. There was one time where we held a langar at one of the gurdwaras in the district on 222nd Street and, which is a community kitchen in, in Sikhism, in a Sikh temple where you sponsor community kitchen and, and volunteer for it. So we decided to do it as part of the campaign. And I was, we were given like 10 minutes to have like the podium and kind of address the members in the room. And so Jaslin gave a speech and her dad gave a speech and I gave a speech. And I was, you know, the few days before I was like, what am I going to say? Like, my Hindi is a mess. Like how, what am I going to say to people? And my dad, my parents actually were visiting that weekend and so on my drive there, you know, my dad and I were like, okay, let's practice. And he had helped me like write down some, some suggestions and I was like, Dad, what do I say? And, you know, my parents don't like that I'm super involved in politics, not because they view it as like, you know, a bad career or anything like that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=2923.0,3073.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: It's just because they're, we have these misconceptions of how dirty politics can be and how, you know, it's not something that you will see any growth in. And my dad was helping me with what I was going to say, and he was like, Drashti, talk something about how when, you know, for example, when I came to America, the only thing on my mind was like survival and like, I need to get food on the table. I need to do this, so I'm going to go into whatever is in front of me. Like whatever is the easiest in the sense, not easiest meaning the work is easy, but easiest meaning, okay, it's not necessarily my passion, but it is something that pays. And he was like, that's how I got involved in, you know, working at convenience stores. But that your generation has this liberty, has this, you know, worry lifted off, doesn't have this pressure, this like, you know, clock on your head that's like, oh, you need to do this, you need to do that, you need to make it, blah, blah, blah. And you can think of these other things that you care about. You can think of, you know, politics. You can think of these abstract concepts of what government should look like, what services should government be providing, what does it mean for community to be actively engaged in something? And he was, and I was like, \"Dad, how am I going to say all that in Hindi?\" But you know, we decided, we made something together in which I kind of explained that, to the room that, listen, I know what it's like. Like my parent, my dad is right here in this very room. And he tells me all the time that this stuff is for the movies, that this stuff doesn't actually change anyone's lives. But I'm telling you here that the youth are, we want to do this, that we do see an important role of South Asians being involved in politics, not only for some notion of descriptive representation, but so that we can actually get the city to do things such as provide debt relief for taxi drivers, such as provide better interpretation at poll sites, to, you know, do all these things that the Indian communities care about. And South Asian communities at large, you know, providing halal options in public schools, cafeterias.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=3073.0,3228.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: These are things that only we will think about. And, you know, sometimes other people won't think about it. So we need to put pressure on the government. We need people, legislators from our backgrounds to be able to advance these causes. And it was really heartwarming because a few days later, you know, in the last stretch of the campaign, my parents actually came again and I went door knocking with my dad. So we door-knocked households together and there was this extra touch because, you know, people at the door didn't just see this random girl, like trying to convince them to vote for someone. They saw, you know, a daughter and her dad, you know, talking about why they care about something and why, you know, an older guy in his fifties cares about, you know, this socialist candidate winning, right? That he was like, my dad said that even if he didn't fully agree with Jaslin's vision, he knew that there was authenticity behind it and that he knew that we should give our youth the chance to, to envision their big, bold ideas, right? And to hold their hands throughout it. So there was, you know, there were many, many stories like this that made up the campaign. And I think that, that the last story that I'll share is at the campaign party. You know, we were having speeches from a variety of volunteers, Jaslin, myself. And it was, it was a pretty regimented schedule, you know, like everyone got 3 minutes, we had five speakers. And then all of a sudden before us passing it off to Jaslin one uncle in the back, one Punjabi uncle says, \"I would actually like to say a few words.\" And I was like, oh my gosh, no, this uncle did not get the memo.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=3228.0,3341.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368/transcript/65719/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Drashti Brahmbhatt: And I was like, okay, you know, let's, let's just give him the mic, worst comes to worst if it gets out of hand, I'll be, you know, I'll try to take the mic away and back. So I give him the mic and it was the best decision we ever did because he went up there and just spoke from his heart. He, he talked in Punjabi, in English, and he talked about, you know, I know that a lot of people my age are afraid when they see this word on your literature that says socialism, or that says housing for everyone, or this for everyone or that for everyone. But I want to remind everyone that these are values that have been with us forever. And he talks about the history of, you know, socialist organizing in Queens. And then he talks about, you know, socialist organizing in Punjab and India at large. And he really, for the first time I felt, not even the first time, but at that time it really clicked in my mind that, yes, we had lost the election by a few votes, but there was something else that we created, right? There was this, this direct link that we created between different generations in, in East Queens and bringing this idea that these progressive values that were always there, it wasn't like all of a sudden we brought it and we were talking about it, that they were always there. We just kind of activated this type of organizing the community. And, yeah, I guess that was, that was a little bit about what brought me to the campaign and my experiences throughout it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1826/collection_resources/112757/file/215368#t=3341.0,3453.096"}]}]}]}