Haley's senior class photo (c. 1989)

Marie Claire Magazine titles its interview with South Carolina’s governor “Will Nikki Haley Be Our First Female President?” and looks at her tips for personal success and her inspirations. That’s how we get to know she’s totally into Joan Jett. I wonder if she watched The Runaways when it came out in theaters a couple years ago or if she has a vintage collection of Jett LPs.

Here’s some of what she had to say:

FIND WHAT MOTIVATES YOU–ON A DAILY BASIS AND IN LARGER WAYS. Music motivates me. When we have bill signings, we’ve got music playing. I have a great love for Joan Jett. When I am going through the toughest times, I’ll blast her music. She was one of the first female rockers when female rockers weren’t accepted. When no one would sign her, she created her own label. And when she accomplished everything … she walked away! I mean, how cool is that?   FIND DIVERSE ROLE MODELS. Mine are my mother, Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, Martina Navratilova, Gabby Giffords. And Joan Jett. I tell you, Joan Jett is my idol. I would just love to meet her! (Marie Claire)

Minhaz Kahn — the UC-Riverside alumnus who last week had to show immigration officers that he bought a one-way ticket back to his native Bangladesh — learned Tuesday that he doesn’t have to return home just yet. He will be able to stay in the country for another three months…[T]op federal counsel told a group of American Immigration Lawyers Association attorneys in a meeting last week that they will not automatically grant a stay for all other DREAM Act eligible immigrants who are awaiting deportation, says AILA attorney Leah Price. [SFWeekly]

I had the chance for a virtual sit-down with Minhaz right after the ankle bracelet was placed on him a couple of weeks ago. Here’s what he had to say.

When and why did your family come to the United States?

My family came in 1992 to flee danger. My dad left entrepreneurial success and political influence to work at gas stations and my mom left a teaching career and lost all significance her Master’s held, so to anyone who says immigrants come here to take anything from anyone is missing what many people have to leave behind for safety and the possibility of a better future.

Why wasn’t your father able to seek political asylum? What happened after he was deported?

I’m not completely sure why he wasn’t granted asylum. I never got to see the judge’s decision, but I think he missed an interview or something due to a lawyer not notifying him. After he was deported in 1997, he died (or in my whole-hearted belief, murdered) a couple of years later.

You’ve lived in the United States your whole life – why are you being deported now?

After my father left, my mother continued to try to legalize our status but further complications with shady people left us in limbo. By this time, I was headed off to college and legal status fell by the wayside of more immediate problems. Eventually this caught up with us, ICE raided out home at 4am in a September 2009. Since then, we were released under Order of Supervision and we were able to attempt to pursue steps to adjust our status but would report every 3 months. We still have things pending when I decided to move to SF to pursue better educational opportunities and asked to have my case transferred to the SF ICE office. It went smoothly, I even checked in with SF ICE and was let go. Then, they called me to come back in and told me I had to buy a plane ticket and that they were going to enforce my deportation and put an ankle bracelet on me until the 18th, when my flight would take place.

You’ve been a Dream Activist and are technically eligible for the California Dream Act. Why do you think this is important?

This country benefits when educational access is based on academic merit. That means, no matter your legal status, if you are a good student, you deserve the opportunity to continue that. I’ve been lucky to get through school but other undocumented students have even tougher circumstances. the CA DREAM Act gives access to already established funds to students who need it. It does not take away from citizens because those funds are already set aside based on high school graduation rates.5. For my mom, I’m sure it was financially tough. For me, I am not sure, I don’t have anything to compare it to. My childhood was interesting, we lived paycheck to paycheck, it wasn’t easy for my mom to get jobs. But I definitely feel I appreciate things more but you can say that about anyone who grew up relatively poor and especially undocumented families.

How has your mom dealt with all of this and how has she been able to keep it together?

 I really don’t know. She is a strong, if stubborn, woman.

You are studying neuroscience. what do you want to do with that?

I really wanted to get involved with research and I got a small taste of that at UCLA, but with my current situation needs me to consider work opportunities over that. So, I was trying to get a few classes I need to get into a PA program and have a stable career and then maybe pursue teaching science and math part-time later on down the line.

I thought only Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan wore ankle bracelets – how’s it feel to have that thing on your ankle? What are the rules around it?

It’s annoying. I literally had to scurry to drive home tonight to charge it before I began responding to you. It is my responsibility to take care of it and keep it charged (2 hours each day) otherwise I get in trouble. It is considered leniency, an “alternative to detention.” I cannot go outside of 65 mile radius of my address and I have to stay home one day a week for them to come check up on me, and also spend one day a week going to their office to check in. It also hurts like hell on my ankle bones without socks on. Sometimes it doesn’t work right, and beeps all night even though it’s been charged over and over. It’s run by a third party private company.

What have you learned from the process?

A lot. I follow the legal process a lot and I learn something new each time, but I only know one path right now: my own. Experienced lawyers have seen them all. Getting a good lawyer is hard. My current lawyer is awesome and truly fights for me, but I have had lawyers who are just salespeople with a diploma.

What can people do to help?

An ICE Chief Counsel is considering a package my attorney has sent them to jointly request my case be dropped. In the future, I might need support to get attention from Congressional offices. But what people can really do is keep in mind what is happening, and that my case is just a sample of what’s going on to others. Private companies are influencing the laws being passed in this country and then profiting off of people’s fears, ignorance and suffering.

Congrats to Minhaz and his lawyers for being able to gain the temporary stay. It doesn’t end here – Minhaz’s story is just one of many cases out there highlighting issues with Dream Act eligible students that are being forced into deportation proceedings after living in the U.S. their whole lives. One thing is clear – the immigration system is clearly backlogged and broken, no matter what side of the aisle you believe in. Reform is needed. Please follow Dream Activist to follow the latest stories from this movement.

The MetroPCS Tech & Talk ads are a long-running series (two years in December) featuring desi characters named Ranjit and Chad expounding upon the evils of contracts and benefits of MetroPCS’s phone plans and features. The characters are not a little zany, dressing up in colonial-style wigs to declare wireless independence, playing an intense guitar-riff set off by fireworks and using “Holy shishkabob!” as a catch-phrase, to give a few examples.

As I noticed in retweets about the ads posted by the characters @ranjitmetropcs and @chadmetropcs, some people found the ads hilarious, declared themselves fans of the duo, and wanted to dress up like them for Halloween. Others writing for business and tech sites found the ads cringe-worthy, racist and/or in poor taste.

Personally, I found a recent ad in which the desi duo persuade the T-Mobile lady to leave T-Mobile and join up with them funny for it’s mascot-stealing premise, and I like the wacky style of the two actors who play Ranjit and Chad. But what do you think of the ads? And what do comments like these ones retweeted by @RanjitMetroPCS –e.g., “The Indian guys in the metropcs commercials make me laugh but itd be funnier if they were in a quicky mart” and “#lmao when the Indian maid with her accent asks me to fix her phone and she has metro pcs”–suggest in terms of what other viewers find funny?

I reached out to the actors who portray Ranjit and Chad—Anjul Nigam and Sid Veda—to find out more about the ads and what they think. Some of their responses are posted below. In addition to the questions seen below, I asked them about the audition process and whether the ads have helped them get work. Read their complete responses to learn about those topics.

What kind of work do you do outside of the MetroPCS ads?

Anjul Nigam: I’m fortunate and blessed to have been making a living as an actor based out of Los Angeles for over seventeen years now. Much of my work is in television, including a recurring on “Grey’s Anatomy” (as Psych “Dr. Raj”) and on JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE! (as the lead in the quartet of “Indian Call Center Guys”).

Beyond my work as an actor, I am a founding partner at Brittany House Pictures, where we have several projects in various stages of development.

Sid Veda: Outside of the MetroPCS ads, as well as the rest of Hollywood, I work in support for a Financial Software company in NYC. I help I-Bankers structure municipal bond deals with a program called DBC Finance. In 2010, every vacation day I took was a break from tech support to pretend to be a tech/phone supporter for MetroPCS and “Outsourced.” My life has a theme, apparently.

What’s your favorite one so far?

Anjul Nigam: So far, my favorite spot for the “Tech & Talk” ads is “Solo.” I loved shooting this one because we got a chance to really let loose in it, and it’s not too often I get to be an air-guitar rock star!

Sid Veda: That’s tough… some of the more popular ones (“Solo,” “Spicy News,” and a couple others) were rather painful to shoot for me. It’s not like I have memory-pains or recurring bruises or anything, but I think I prefer the one with the Mongoose. I got a good rolling “rrrrrr” whilst petting that thing.

In a Buzzine Bollywood interview one of the ad’s writers, Kiran Koshy, says Ranjit and Chad are based on real people. What direction did you get for portraying Ranjit/Chad and how did you develop the character’s accent and zany qualities? Is Chad a nickname or short for anything?

Anjul Nigam: By real people, I believe Kiran means the characters are based on the saturation of H-1 visa holders from India in Silicon Valley. They are super intelligent, technology enthusiasts and often have heavy accents based on having been raised in India. Sometimes their sense of style is a little dated or even middle-aged, which they in fact are. I was born in India myself, and although I was raised in the US, my household was quite traditionally Indian. In fact, I grew up speaking in Hindi with my parents at home, so the Indian accent has always been easily accessible for me. Probably the most important direction we receive regarding the characters is to really enjoy ourselves… these guys love what they do (host a talk show where they get to talk about technology!) and they’re at the top of their game.

Sid Veda: Interestingly, Chad’s accent, if not his entire person, is based on a South Indian and Kiran has worked hard with me to nail the hint of dialect/accent he had in mind. He and Jason, the other writer, are extremely helpful in communicating goals and message. As for the zaniness, much of that comes from the deep recesses of the director, Jim Hosking’s mind.  For some of the more challenging spots to shoot, I would be trying to follow direction or suggestions as they’re being shouted out thinking “why the why do we have to shoot a bunch of noise that will never make air?!?” When I see the finished product for the first time, I am always like “OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH… that’s why he wanted me to lick the amplifier!”  I am happy to take so much of the credit that Jim actually deserves for Chad’s dancing skills.

And yes, just like Sid is short for Sridhar, Chad is short for something. That’s all you need to know at this time.

I’ve noticed different reactions to the ads, including people variously finding them 1) light-hearted and hilarious, 2) unfunny racist stereotypes, and/or 3) politically-charged ironic sendups of ethnic caricatures. What’s your take on the ads? Given these responses, do you have any regrets about working in them?

Anjul Nigam: I have absolutely no regrets about working on the campaign. On the one hand, humor is subjective, so if someone finds the ads unfunny, then I know it’s not the kind of humor that person responds to. For example, I’m not a fan of toilet humor, and am usually turned off by content that contains it; but I’m not judgmental of it.

Meanwhile, I find the negative response is often misplaced. Perhaps, sometimes people have a knee-jerk reaction to things they believe are caricatures, but it’s important to remember that every stereotype is based on a certain reality. Personally, I have known many Indians who are very much like Ranjit and Chad, their accents, style, energy, etc. And yet still, beyond that, for me an accent is merely an extension of a character’s wardrobe. I don’t ever hear anyone finding Hugh Jackson’s Australian accent denigrating. It’s all a matter of perception.

With regard to racism, it’s worth taking a look the cultural immersion of other ethnicities, each which have their own set of challenges and advantages. For example, twenty years after the Civil Rights era, African American filmmaker Robert Townsend made a movie called HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE, which satirized the racial stereotypes of African Americans in film and television. A significant portion of the black population in America had achieved a certain position in American society, and it was being depicted in content like “The Cosby Show.” Townsend’s film was a no holds barred depiction that Townsend was able to make through humor.

In the same light, Indians are now one of the most successful minorities in the US, a group that continues to have an increasingly greater presence in the forefront of technology, business and media. If we are not in a place to have fun with ourselves, I don’t know who is.

Sid Veda: No regrets whatsoever! We made two silly characters to pitch a terrific telecomm deal; we are not making a statement about 1 billion Indians. The fact that Ranjit and Chad were born to pitch the most cost-effective deal in celluworld (by far) is a blessing.

And seriously… having worked in tech support since 2000 (as well as in telemarketing for Stanley Steemer in college), how offended should I be by the stereotype?

Read the complete interview to learn more about their experiences with the auditions and how the ads affected their ability to get work.

Speaking of desis at Occupy Wall Street, last week I chatted with Arun Gupta, one of the founders of the Occupied Wall Street Journal. Gupta, who talked with me on the phone from a road trip to visit different sites of protest, has been working with newspapers off and on for the past two decades, and writes for publications like AlterNet and Al Jazeera. He’s also been with the Indypendent for the past 11 years. He told me about making the first issue of the Occupied Wall Street Journal happen in under 24 hours.

(Time-sensitive note for New Yorkers: If you want to hear more from Gupta, The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick, is moderating a discussion about OWS tonight at Florence Gould Hall in NYC. 7 p.m. In addition to Gupta, the event features NYer staff writers John Cassidy and Jill Lepore, as well as former NY governor Eliot Spitzer. Online tickets are gone, but a limited number of free tickets will be available at the door.) And a BONUS read via Sonny Singh: Manissa McCleave Maharawal in conversation with Eliot Spitzer about OWS in NYMag, here. I blogged about Manissa earlier in this series.)

Gupta is no longer involved with the publication—he said he needs to refocus on the Indypendent, as well as his road trip to see all the different Occupy protests. But he told me a little bit about the founding of the newspaper, which he called the only polished media outlet in terms of getting out the perspectives of the people in Zuccotti Park.

At first, OWSJ’s founders wanted to pursue publishing the newspaper via the processes afforded by the protest’s General Assembly, or its media working group. However, he said, they quickly realized this wouldn’t work: agreeing on messaging would be too difficult and slow for a publication to react to events quickly. “There’s a value to having this media where you can react in real time,” he said. So instead, they set it up as an affinity group that operated autonomously and by consensus; technically, the OWSJ is not an official publication of OWS.

The first issue, Gupta said, wasn’t too hard to do, because it was put together with the aid of preexisting content and some strong photographers. It was funded via a Kickstarter campaign that aimed for $12,000 in 10 days and instead raked in $75,000. “It was just a wild success,” he said. (Each issue costs $4,000 to $5,000.) An artist contacted them to work on a spread of people holding signs. The resulting publication was a four-page tabloid. (See links to the past three issues of the Occupied Wall Street Journal here.)

At that size, Gupta would prefer to see it come out more frequently, perhaps with two issues a week, but publication has slowed. (Issues came out Oct. 1, Oct. 8, and Oct. 22. I spoke to Gupta after the second issue had come out, but before the third.) “Things can change dramatically within a couple of days down there,” he said. “I think you have to engage with the public in a regular fashion.”

Experience with the Indypendent led them to believe that a free print publication was the best way to connect with a large audience. “As print disappears the more important individual publications become, especially if you’re doing real journalism…. The public is hungry for real journalism,” he said. Subscriber-based publications and the Web are both self-selecting, he added, but of course, a free publication reaches a wider audience. The first issue’s first printing was 50,000 copies; a second printing added another 20,000. The second issue was another 50,000; they also printed 20,000 copies of a Spanish-language translation of the first issue.

Experience with the Indypendent led them to believe that a free print publication was the best way to connect with a large audience.

Now that he has stepped back from helping with the OWSJ, he is traveling around with the aim of interviewing Occupy protestors. I asked him what he was hearing and seeing in different spots. He noted the wide range of opinions. People he has interviewed at various sites agreement that something wasn’t working, he said, but opinions on solutions varied wildly. “I think this movement has a lot of potential to affect social, cultural, and ideological change, but it’s going to take a logn time for it to do that,” he said. He added that in recent years, some leftists movements have appeared and disappeared quickly; he posited that the left often struggles to get the resources that would sustain such change. Leftist groups “certainly punch above their weight, but still the resources are just so small and everyone is scraping for every penny they can get,” he added. For OWS to be different will take time.

*

When—in light of my previous posts about the people of color working group and some of its members—I asked him about race and the protests, he referenced his recent appearance on Democracy Now, where he faced off against Kai Wright. (As Unions, Students Join Occupy Wall Street, Are We Witnessing Growth of a New Movement? (Democracy Now video, featuring Arun Gupta and Kai Wright, plus transcript).) An excerpt from a piece Wright penned for Colorlines prior to the Democracy Now appearance (and which he annotated later):

There are literally millions of people who have been kicked out of their homes, laid off or forced to work multiple part-time jobs, caught in predatory debt traps and, yes, so harassed by cops that they have petty criminal records that make them unemployable. These millions are neither lobbying Congress nor marching across the Brooklyn Bridge; they’re trying to make it through the week without another crisis. They are also overwhelmingly and not in the least bit coincidentally black people. And I suspect that until we build our politics around their participation, we will continue to miss the point. Everyone will continue to suffer as a result. Well, everyone except the Wall Street fat cats who have gone right on with their theft throughout their occupation. [full piece, Here's to Occupying Wall Street! (If Only That Were Actually Happening)]

Gupta argued that Wright’s take missed the point of the protests, which have no leadership to do the sort of outreach Wright suggests; instead, Gupta said, OWS has created a space. Early on, the protestors counted few New Yorkers and few people of color among their number; now, he said, New Yorkers and people of color are organizing and using the huge platform that OWS affords. “Yes, if you go down there you are going to be dealing with people’s white-skin privilege, but so what?” he asked. “We have to struggle with this and deal with it”—engage in a principled fashion, he added, not sit on the sidelines or dismiss it. When he went to the protests in its earliest days, he said, it did not include many members of the New York left. “The movement was a rejoinder to everyone’s failed politics,” he said. “I include the left in this.”

Related links:

Occupying, and Now Publishing, Too (NYT.com)

India Abroad cover, featuring desis at Occupy Wall Street (including Sonny Singh!) and more Arun Gupta in the associated story

Personal sidenote: I recently signed on to OccupyWriters. Check out the full list of signatories and original works by Francine Prose, Lemony Snicket, D.A. Powell, Duncan Murrell, Anne Waldman, Danica Novgorodoff and Michael Voll, Maureen Miller, Daphne Carr, Alice Walker, Paula Z. Segal, John McManus, David Hollander, Blair Braverman, Scott Sparling, and Joshua Cohen at Occupy Writers.

C-SPAN Video of the event shows her daughters Sujata and Nirmala at the White House accepting the award on her behalf. An announcer explains that the United States honors Emani for her many contributions to the people of Cleveland and the nation–for lending her voice to help protect desi women from domestic violence, for her support of single parents and Indian heritage.

Emani’s life ended in an accident on the Ohio turnpike, but her legacy of contribution and involvement lives on. Earlier this year the Cleveland International Hall of Fame recognized her for her considerable community involvement.

Through her presidency with the Federation of India Community Associations she has opened avenue for people who struggled like her, initiating single parent support groups and opened a discussion about immigrant domestic violence. (clevelandpeople.com)  

India West writes that a victim of domestic violence helped by Emani nominated her for the award, and it mentions Emani’s role in getting a statue of Mahatma Gandhi described as the largest one in North America into the Cleveland Cultural Gardens‘ Indian Garden.

In 2008, she spoke to the Plain Dealer about domestic violence, including the experience of being shunned by many in her community after reporting her former husband to the police.

When I first talked to Sonny Singh, Thanu Yakupitage, Manissa McCleave Maharawal and Hena Ashraf about two weeks ago, Occupy Wall Street was just gaining steam, and I was newly intrigued by what I’d heard of the quartet’s intervention to eliminate post-racial language from the OWS declaration.

Talking about one of her earliest visits to the protests, Manissa McCleave Maharawal told me, “It felt like a space where people were talking about things.”  But, she added, “it needs to be thinking about the role of people of color.” When the post-racial language came up, she said, “I think there was an urgency to it.

“I didn’t want that line to be published because I knew that it would prevent me from being as fully on board with this movement as I had been, and it would prevent other people like me from getting fully on board,” she said. “I want to be able to bring my people down here.”

And eventually, they did. A recent POC working group meeting saw more than 100 attendees. Maharawal, a longtime activist who is also a CUNY anthropology graduate student, says part of the protest’s appeal for her has been the pull of the space. “It feels like it’s changing all the time,” she added. “It feels organized and disorganized at once.”

And, she added, it also felt open to growth. While the change didn’t go through without debate, by fighting for it, they were able to get it done. For Maharawal, who had never spoken in front of such a large group before, it was intense—especially because these were people she wanted on her side. “I don’t think any one of us would have been able to do that if there hadn’t been five or us there, four of us there—it was so important that we were all together,” she said.

Thanu Yakupitiyage had gone to the General Assembly the evening before the intervention and heard one person talk about the need to be in solidarity with people of color, with queer people. “But I didn’t see that reflected in who was speaking,” she said. The post-racial language caught the attention of the four of them, as well as a few others.

“It was trying to talk about unity but it was completely negating and neglecting the experiences of oppressed people,” she said. “Why in order to be completely united do we need to erase difference? …What bothered me about that paragraph was that I didn’t think that this was a movement that could grow if it was starting from such a naïve place…. If you want to use the slogan ‘another world is possible’ you have to acknowledge the realities of today.”

To get their change passed, the four of them had to declare it as an “ethical objection.” Hundreds of people turned to look at them. “We were so visible,” Yakupitiyage recalled.

UPDATE, FRIDAY MORNING: Brookfield, the private owner of the park, has postponed the cleaning. See a story on The New York Times website. However, my own Facebook feed still has information about confrontations between police and protestors… Waiting for more. Reuters has a blog of Occupy events in different locations: see this. 

Are you at Occupy Wall Street or another protest? Send us your images and tell us what’s in them: v_v@sepiamutiny.com

Story to be continued…

In the beginning of his stand-up career, Nanjiani said the biggest challenge of being a Pakistani American comedian was telling the jokes he wanted to tell about movies, video games and TV shows, and not the jokes he was expected to tell about 7-11 or 9/11. After Nanjiani and his interviewer made reference to what was a new crop of post-9/11 comedians who were South Asian American and Middle Eastern American, the interviewer noted that unlike many of them he has an accent and “does not speak as someone born and raised here.”

Nanjiani, who grew up in Pakistan until age 18 when he moved to Iowa for college, said that he was sad about his Pakistani accent getting weaker over time, and that he doesn’t read comments on YouTube anymore because he came across ones saying he was putting on a fake accent. That kind of comment seems puzzling to me because it’s not an exaggerated-sounding accent or used by him in a gimmicky way. Elsewhere I noticed that he has made some professional choices regarding his accent. He says, “at some point I made the decision that I wouldn’t do a part where I had to put on a thicker accent. It just gets hard for me to distinguish whether something is funny because it’s funny or because it’s a stereotype.” (The Grinnell Magazine)

Asked about who he is on Twitter, Nanjiani suggests that he’s a hybrid promoter-joker on it, earning the right to “show you two minutes of commercials” after sharing tweets like this one about Nancy Grace’s appearance on Dancing With The Stars, one he admitted was a mean joke. Listen to the rest of his interview.

Related: Does Pindar Singh Just Look Illegal?

Photo: Flickr image from aTROSSity 22

a video about people at the protests one week ago, courtesy of Thanu Yakupitiyage

“We must not miss the chance to put the needs of people of color—upon whose backs this country was built—at the forefront of this struggle.”

—from CALL OUT TO PEOPLE OF COLOR from the #OWS POC Working Group

How Hena Got There

Two Thursdays ago, after Troy Davis had been executed, Hena Ashraf protested his killing at a rally in New York City. The group that she was with didn’t have a particular plan, she says, but “we ended up on Wall Street.”

It was her first time at Occupy Wall Street, a movement that’s rapidly gaining steam and numbers. And a week ago, by her fourth time there, Ashraf had become a game-changer: one of a group of desis who stood up and insisted that the movement’s primary declaration edit language that referred to racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination as though they were things of the past.

“We definitely stood out,” Ashraf told me. At that point, she explained, the protests were still overwhelmingly white. (We spoke on the phone Sunday night; she was two blocks from Wall Street, heading back to the protests.) But, she added, over the course of her visits to the site, she’s seen them become more diverse.

Ashraf, an independent filmmaker based in Brooklyn, has been involved in activism before, but says Occupy Wall Street is “not like anything I’ve ever seen before.”

“The atmosphere is very electric. Anything can happen. There’s so much potential for it,” she says. One of its key strengths, she adds, is that there’s no central leadership, no one trying to dictate what should be said. That meant that when Ashraf, Sonny Singh, Thanu Yakupitiyage and Manissa McCleave Maharawal met up at the protests a week ago, they could jump right in and make a change.

“What happened on Thursday was crazy and intense and amazing,” Ashraf says. “I’m going to keep coming back. We have to keep coming back now, after what happened on Thursday, because what we did had such a huge effect.”

Solidarity and critique aren’t opposites, she notes. “I think solidarity and critique can go together,” she says. “Constructive criticism can also be a good thing.”

Part 1 here: Desis Take Action At Occupy Wall Street

Related links:

• Reflections on Occupy Wall Street from Rebel Diaz Arts Collective, a hip-hop community center in the South Bronx (h/t Thanu)
• Wall Street Protests Spread, Channeling Anger at Corporate, Political Forces | PBS NewsHour (Arun Venugopal on Occupy Wall Street)
• We Are All Human Microphones Now, from The Nation, h/t Naeem Mohaiemen
• Occupy Wall Street POC affinity group, h/t Naeem Mohaiemen
• De-Colonize Wall Street, by Vijay Prashad, in Counterpunch
• Here’s to Occupying Wall Street! (If Only That Were Actually Happening) from Colorlines

Twitter

• Thanu Yakupitiyage on Twitter
• Anjali Mullany, social media editor of the New York Daily News, on Twitter
• Arun Venugopal of WNYC on Twitter

Behind that stream of steaming hot coffee pouring into your cup is a waste stream of coffee grounds. Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez of Back to the Roots (BTTR) view the huge amounts of coffee grounds waste coming out of coffee shops as a huge potential for urban mushroom farming. The UC Berkeley students were in their final semester with corporate job offers in hand when they heard about growing gourmet mushrooms from coffee grounds and independently reached out to their professor for more information. (Read a Q&A with Arora after the jump.)

The professor put them in touch and they got to growing their business idea. They asked Peet’s Coffee for used coffee grounds and set up ten test buckets in Velez’s fraternity kitchen to try out mushroom farming. Only one bucket grew a crop of mushrooms.

They took the single success to a famous Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, to get those mushrooms checked out–they were sautéed and deemed good. (If you’re wondering, mushrooms grown in coffee grounds do not pick up a coffee kick to their flavor.) The two budding entrepreneurs took the same bucket to Whole Foods and caught the interest of store employees. Their idea also caught the interest of their university, which awarded them a $5K social innovation grant.

What’s happened since those early days is remarkable. In six months, the mushroom growing venture went from having product distributed in one Whole Foods to national distribution. Last year Planet Green reported that BTTR became “the sole oyster mushroom supplier to the entire North California region of Whole Foods while transforming over 10,000 pounds of coffee ground waste per week from Peet’s Coffee.”

Peet’s, which sold BTTR’s mushroom growing kits in its shops, proudly proclaims that it is the primary source of BTTR’s coffee grounds, and plans to give them 1 million pounds of grounds to reuse this year. Whole Foods also sells the grow kits and provided the venture with a low-interest loan for local producers.

But that’s not all. When these two urban mushroom farmers put up an ad on Craigslist to get rid of their spent coffee grounds with broken mushroom roots, they discovered a market for their own waste stream. The mushrooms enrich the grounds as they grow leaving behind a desirable alternative to chemical fertilizer. It sells as a premium soil amendment.

The White House recently highlighted BTTR as a “Champion of Change” for its sustainable business model. Keep reading to find out more about what Nikhil Arora has to say about growing and eating mushrooms.

As a recent college grad, why did you give up the security of a post-college job offer to become an urban mushroom farmer? Did you ever have any doubts about your choice?

After Alex and I first came across this idea in a class, it was a very step-by-step process our last semester. We brainstormed, ended up growing one test bucket of mushrooms on coffee grounds, had a local restaurant try them and like them, got some initial interest from WF [Whole Foods], a $5k grant from our [university's] Chancellor–and by that time, with all that support building up from our community we looked at each other sand said “we have got to do this!”

We started seeing the potential for turning waste into food and local jobs and wanted to run with it. The first months were some of the toughest, and there were many days where we would look at each other, knee-deep in coffee grounds, and ask “what are we doing??”–but the friendship that Alex and I developed early on was crucial to carrying us through those early tough days.

The grow kits look way more fun than the Chia Pet I got as a kid, with the major benefit of producing edible mushrooms. Are the kits primarily for educational/entertainment value? Or can the home kits also compete against other mushrooms sold in stores when it comes to taste and price?

The kits are definitely a ton of fun (grow up to 1.5 in as little as 10 days) …by far the most fast growing food out there! However, the nice thing is they also compare on price–and that’s something we really work for because we know for this grow-your-own movement to really take off, it can’t just be a one-off fad/one-time purchase. These mushrooms go for around $12 lbs in many stores, so there’s that price parity right away, but the neat thing is that we actually sell replacement bags & offer a monthly mushroom club online–so those who really want to grow their own food can continue to do so (keep the box/mister) and save money!

What’s your favorite dish featuring mushrooms? Do you eat more of them today than before you started urban mushroom farming?

My favorite dish has to be the mushroom tacos our warehouse manager Osvaldo cooks up–they are absolutely delicious! Definitely eating a lot more mushrooms now than before–have a much greater appreciation for them!  

What are three things that people can do to build an innovative and sustainable business idea into a successful reality?

1) Focus–especially early on, pick one thing (a product, a service, etc) and work endlessly to become the very best at that one thing, however niche. We learned that lesson the hard-way early on when we were pursuing a handful of different products/services related to this concept, and not focusing on entirety on one..it almost put us out of business.

2) Build partnerships–it takes a village to build a company. Do not underestimate the power of partnerships–find unique partners who can take your brand to the next level, find creative ways to offer them value-add as well from supporting you so they become fully invested in your future, and leverage their networks and communities. Always look to make every partnership a two-way street so you grow together!

3) It’s all about the team! No matter how great an idea is, you cannot build a successful company without an all-star team. It’s not the product or idea that has helped grow Back to the Roots–but an unbelievable team (family, more so!) that all believes in our mission & vision and is willing to work hard & innovate to achieve our goals.

Sriram was born in Chennai and moved to northern California as an infant. His musical training started in Carnatic music at a young age. He became interested in R&B vocals in junior high and currently attends Berklee College of Music, where he majors in music production engineering and vocal performance. The EP “Be Easy; The Acoustic Sessions” contains five acoustic arrangements of his original material.

This talented young vocalist replied to a few questions, and his answers are posted below. He continues to perform classical vocals as he pursues singing and songwriting in the contemporary urban/indie genre. An announcement for a vocal concert, a past performance in San Francisco, highlights his background from the classical tradition: > Siddharth Sriram is a disciple of Padmabhushan P. S. Narayanaswamy, and has garnered attention as a young artist in Carnatic music. One of Chennai’s most storied concert halls, Krishna Gana Sabha, awarded Siddharth its Chembai Award in 2005, named after an early 20th century vocalist renowned for his bold vocal technique and his

jovial stage presence. Siddharth also received first prize at the Cleveland Tyagaraja Aradhana, which has become the preeminent clearinghouse for South Indian classical music talent in the United States. (link)

Continue reading to find out more about Sriram’s musical influences, how going to Berklee has changed him, and his future plans for performing in the Carnatic and contemporary American genres.

I read that you became interested in music and singing as early as age three when you started vocal training with your mother. How has your interest in music evolved over the years? Who are your current influences?

When I first started learning Indian Classical music with my mom, I was only 3 so my attention span wasn’t the best, but I guess I always had a huge passion for music. Starting this early helped me delve into music as a whole as I grew up. I grew up learning and performing Indian Classical music and got into R&B/Pop around 8th grade. Currently some of my influences with the urban/indie/pop music are Stevie Wonder, Kanye West and Coldplay.

What’s it like attending Berklee? How has it affected your music?

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p>Attending Berklee is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Soon after coming here in the Fall of 2008, I realized what a great environment it is for students of music/music industry. The faculty and facilities are amazing, but I think my favorite part about this school a student body that is so fully into so many different forms of music. The interactions and relationships I’ve made here have increased my knowledge, curiosity and inspiration musically. Also, before I came to Berklee, I had never written a song, but coming here really pushed me to challenge myself. Now, songwriting is one of the most integral aspects of my artistry.

You’ve received praise and recognition for your classical Indian vocal performances and also for your contemporary American vocals in original tracks and YouTube cover songs. What do these different styles mean to you, and will you continue to perform both styles of singing?

I am always going to perform both Carnatic and my contemporary American music, giving just as much importance to both. I got into singing through the Carnatic genre and it makes up the foundation of my musicality. From a fairly young age, I grew up singing both and now both make up my profession. Both allow me to express myself emotionally and intellectually, but in different ways. I guess both forms of music just satisfy me in different ways, and I have the ability to keep both going with the same amount of intensity, so why give either up?

The lyrics of Limitless suggest a sky-high feeling of dreams, hopes and anything else being possible. Does that reflect how you feel now? What do you hope for in terms of your music?

I do feel that way right now! That song was actually written in a low point in my life, and the process of writing it brought me back up. Writing that song helped me realize that I have control over where I go and the decisions I make. I want to be a multi-faceted musician, and I’m getting my degree in Music Production and Engineering at Berklee. I’m very excited for the future and to see where I’ll be a couple years down the line. I want to use all the skills and interests I have to become a household name, performing around the world and spreading some honest and exciting music.