Overpass Light Brigade
A memorial following the 2012 shooting by a white supremacist at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin—then the largest act of violence on faith community in U.S. history. Pardeep Kaleka's father died in the attack, spurring him to do educational outreach on combatting hate and dealing with trauma in communities around the country.
Pardeep Kaleka lost his his father, Satwant Singh Kaleka, in an August 2012 mass shooting by a white supremacist at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. At the time, it was the largest attack on a faith community in the United States since the 1963 church bombings in Birmingham, Alabama.
Kaleka, seeking answers to what compelled the killer, reached out to Arno Michaelis, a reformed white supremacist-turned-anti-hate-advocate. Eventually, Michaelis and Kaleka established Serve2Unite, an organization that holds town hall-style meetings, documentary screenings, and other educational events in towns across the country on how to recognize and deal with hate.
Kaleka, a former police officer and now trauma therapist, has seen enough shootings since the Oak Creek massacre that they’re no longer a surprise, even saying “there’s kind of a protocol for saying our condolences.” But that makes each one no less painful. Of the shooting in New Zealand last week that took the lives of fifty people at two mosques in Christchurch, Kaleka says he knows what the families there are going through: “Sleepless nights and feeling like it’s a bad dream.”
The Progressive spoke with Kaleka about the New Zealand tragedy, and how to understand and heal from hate.
Q: There are echoes between what happened in New Zealand and in the case of Oak Creek. How did this news out of Christchurch strike you?
Pardeep Kaleka: I woke up that morning and people were already expressing their condolences, as much for what happened in New Zealand as towards me personally in the Sikh community. [The shooter in Oak Creek] was a Nazi-affiliated white supremacist, but I sorta think it doesn’t matter—there are so many variations of nationalism that have anti-immigrant xenophobia.
I thought as soon as I woke up that there’s so much to be done in the world.
Q: Did it surprise you that the person behind this attack had a history as a white nationalist?
Pardeep Kaleka
Kaleka: Oh no. We’ve been doing this work for seven years, and as of the last two years have been working with government groups and even law enforcement and at both state and national levels. Pretty much everybody knows there’s growing angst, especially among white males. I actually would’ve been more surprised if it was not a white supremacist.
Q: Since you began collaborating with Arno Michaelis, what have you learned about white supremacists that surprised you?
Kaleka: A lot of white supremacists operate from a very absolute mindset of “us or them.” Often there’s a lot of pain behind those dialectical mindsets. I think about the shooter in our case and the shooter in New Zealand—the shooters present themselves as courageous, but deep down they’re very fearful.
An act of terror doesn’t affect just the fifty people that were killed in New Zealand. Or doesn’t affect only the six people in Oak Creek. It affects entire communities.
People have gotten used to the power structure as it exists, so when new incoming immigrants threaten, even just a little bit, the power structure that exists, there’s an angst about those who are due the American Dream. When Wade Page attacked the temple [in Oak Creek, Wisconsin], it really made us think about how we as immigrants actually do this American Dream that’s advertised to so many. Is it only for a select few?
Q: What does your work with Arno through Serve2Unite look like these days?
Kaleka: We started with working with students in schools. But since the elections we’ve been working with communities and neighborhoods all over the United States.
Hate crimes have escalated over the last three years. As we think about mental health, we’re looking at trauma not just from an individual perspective but from a communal perspective. An act of terror doesn’t affect just the fifty people that were killed in New Zealand. Or doesn’t affect only the six people in Oak Creek. It affects entire communities. So when Trump hugs a flag, some see just a President showing patriotism. Others see a call for violence against people who look like them.
Q: How does the book you and Arno published last year, The Gift of Our Wounds, build on your work together?
Kaleka: We wanted to make sure this book was personal. It’s a memoir of two boys trying to find their way in the world. And a lot of commonality comes up in those journeys, but a lot of differences too. It paints a picture of somebody from the East coming to the West, and somebody from the West, and of how we bridge worlds and move forward together in 2018, 2019, and beyond.