This happened in my hometown this month. I was heartbroken when I heard the news. Piara Singh could have been my grandfather.

While local police are calling the assault of Piara Singh a hate crime, the FBI does not currently keep track of hate crimes specifically against Sikh Americans, as it does for many other religious and racial groups. How will Piara Singh be counted? How can we respond effectively to a problem we aren’t measuring?

Now is our chance to change this for good. The FBI has a meeting scheduled June 5th to decide whether or not to count hate crimes against Sikh Americans. Please sign our petition to make sure they do the right thing.

Click here to tell the FBI: Track hate crimes against Sikh Americans.

When you sign this petition, you’re standing with all Sikh Americans who have been targets of hate, including Harpreet Saini, an 18-year-old boy who lost his mother in the mass shooting in Oak Creek, WI last year.

After the murders in Oak Creek, I accompanied Harpreet to Washington, DC, where he became the first Sikh to testify before the Senate in a historic congressional hearing on combating hate in America. Harpreet asked for an end to violence — against all people. He also asked the government to give his mother at least the dignity of being counted.

Because of Harpreet and the many of you who stood in solidarity after Oak Creek, the FBI is meeting June 5-6 to consider whether to add Sikh to the list of categories on Form 1-699, the Hate Crime Incident Report. We are proud to follow the leadership of the Sikh Coalition on this monumental effort. We are also grateful for our partners at the Sikh American Legal Defense Fund (SALDEF) and South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT).

Now we need to make sure the FBI does the right thing. Altogether, we have already sent the FBI more than 4,000 signatures. Will you help us in a final push this week? 

Click here to tell the FBI: Track hate crimes against Sikh Americans.

Published on Washington Post.

With the news that two suspects of the Boston Marathon bombing are accounted for, one dead and the other in custody, I breathed a sigh of relief. A terror-stricken week that began with bombings and ended with shootouts was finally over.

But the moment the suspects were identified as Muslim marked a new period of anxiety and vulnerability for millions of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian Americans, including me. As a Sikh American who has chronicled hate crimes and profiling against our communities since Sept. 11, 2001, I wondered: Will we go down the same road again, or have we learned from history?

In the days ahead, every American will face choices about how to respond to the Boston Marathon bombing, the largest on U.S. soil since 9/11. Already we have seen echoes of the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001 — profiling of innocent bystanders, retaliatory hate crimes, and calls for counter-terrorism measures that single out specific communities. If we want to follow President Obama’s appeal of “staying true to the unity and diversity that makes us strong,” we must use this moment to take stock of the times we faltered.

It began minutes after the bombs went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. A 20-year-old Saudi national studying in Boston was watching the race and had his body thrown by the force of the explosion. When he got to his feet, terrified and badly hurt, he ran from the smoke with hundreds of others. A bystander saw this young man with brown skin as “suspicious” and rushed to tackle him. He became the first innocent person to be targeted after the bombing.

The same scene unfolded in the streets of Manhattan minutes on Sept. 11, 2001. A 25-year-old New Yorker was running from the collapsing Twin Towers when he stopped to catch his breath. A group of men pointed, called him a terrorist, and shouted at him to “take that turban off!” Amrik Singh Chawla, a turbaned and bearded Sikh American, ran for his life again that same morning and barely escaped.

Unlike Chawla, the 20 year-old Saudi national in Boston was “tackled” to the ground and subject to an investigation that involved interrogation, dogs, and bomb squads. “Why?” asks Amy Davidson of the New Yorker. Because “people thought he looked suspicious.” On Monday afternoon, the New York Post and Fox News reported him as the first suspect, later refuted by the Boston Police Department.

The first person arrested as a terrorist suspect after 9/11 was also an innocent man singled out for the way he looked. On Sept. 12, 2001, passengers on a Boston-bound train called authorities, reporting a turban-wearing passenger. In Providence, SWAT teams rushed the train, pointed rifles at Sher Singh, and escorted him off the train. A crowd gathered on the platform and people yelled, “Kill him.” Even though he was released the same day, photos and videos of his arrest – a Sikh American with a turban and beard, handcuffed, flanked by federal agents – was broadcast for days.

Last week, several innocent men like Sher Singh also had their photos released as suspects. Last Thursday, the front page of the New York Post showed a high school student watching the race with a friend. The headline read: “Bag men: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon.” The teenager quickly went to authorities to clear his name. He told ABC News,“It’s the worst feeling that I can possibly feel… I’m only 17.” Still, media hounded his family, who were afraid to leave their home.

As suspicion and profiling flooded news and social media, we heard reports of fear and hate in public spaces, including at least two violent hate crimes. Last Monday in the Bronx,Abdullah Faruque was beaten by a group of men who cursed at him and called him an Arab. On Tuesday, passengers on a plane headed to Chicago from Logan Airport were de-boarded because some expressed concern after overhearing them speak Arabic. On Wednesday, Palestinian woman Heba Abolaban was punched by a man she say screamed, ”‘F— you Muslims! You are terrorists! I hate you! You are involved in the Boston explosions!”

Muslim and Sikh Americans remember all too clearly this aftermath of 9/11, when these and thousands of hate incidents against “Muslim-looking others” erupted across America, including Balbir Singh Sohdi, a family friend who murdered in Arizona on Sept. 15, 2001 by a man who called himself a patriot. We’ve even seen rising hate crimes in recent years, including attacks on mosques and a horrific mass shooting at Sikh house of worship in Wisconsin last August.

That said, we can still find hope in the events of last week. In Boston, thousands from many faiths and backgrounds came together in courageous relief efforts. Leading voices in the government and media followed the president’s call “not to rush to judgment… about entire groups of people.” Muslim and other community organizations immediately used infrastructure built over the last decade to condemn the bombing and prevent hate crimes. As a result, our response as a nation has been largely calm and restrained.

Perhaps our greatest test lies in the days ahead. Already public officials are using the bombing to advance counter-terrorism measures that single out Muslim Americans and immigrants. Will the Boston bombing lead to heightened surveillance of Muslims, as Rep. Peter King has demanded? Will it cast suspicion on all immigrants just as our nation considers immigration reform, as Sen. Chuck Grassley has suggested? Will it justify curtailing civil liberties, as Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain implied when they called for Tsarnaev, a U.S. citizen, to be denied a defense attorney, labeled an “enemy combatant” and sent to Guantanamo?

As we consider these possibilities, we must remember the consequences of our counter-terrorism response to 9/11. Right now, New York City is debating whether their police department requires independent oversight after discovering the department’s secret surveillance program which profiled innocent Muslims for more than a decade. This month, an independent non-partisan commission concluded, “It is undisputable that the United States engaged in a practice of torture” of detainees after 9/11. Even now, at least 63 detainees in Guantanamo are on hunger strike in the largest protest of indefinite detention to date.

We have enough lessons from history to learn from the past, but we also have more power to change the course of the future. More so than in the days after 9/11, everyday Americans have the access and social media tools to hold our public officials accountable and combat hatred and suspicion. “This community will recover and heal if we turn to each other rather than on each other,” said Mass. Governor Deval Patrick to the city of Boston. Now it’s up to us to heed that call as one nation.

Here’s my follow-up article on MSNBC: “‘Lean In’? For Millennials, the question is what are we leaning toward?” And another on CNN: “Our Struggle to Have it All.”

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As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on two marriage equality cases last week, my partner and I watched the television set with bated breath. When the camera zoomed in on the steps of the Supreme Court, and LGBTQ Americans took the podium to tell their stories, we took one another’s hand and choked back tears.

We are a straight couple.

The Supreme Court’s decisions on Proposition 8 and DOMA will decide the fate not only of about 9 million LGBTQ Americans and 14 million children with same-sex parents–but also millions of millennials, young people in their 20s and 30s. The millennial generation, including straight people like my husband and me, overwhelmingly supports marriage equality: 81% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 support marriage for same-sex couples, including more than 60% of evangelicals under 30.

In the coming months, as the Court deliberates legal questions of standing and scope of rights, millennials are asking a broader question: will the Court support our most basic understanding of equality under the law, or saddle us with the task of securing a right that nearly all of us, gay and straight, already understand as fundamental?

Like many straight millennials, my support for marriage equality formed over time. I grew up in a household that viewed homosexuality as an aberration and disease. When my best friend’s older brother came out as gay, I was confused. I knew he wasn’t a bad person, but I also was too afraid of the stigma to talk to him about it. Still, it was difficult to feel disgust for someone I knew and admired.

When I went to college, my world opened up, old beliefs fell away, and I found myself with friends of different faiths, colors, and orientations. These friendships began to change the minds of people in my family too. But I did not become an advocate for equality until after September 11th. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, I witnessed my Sikh community, many of whom wear turbans as a religious observance, targeted in hate crimes. For the next decade, I worked on films and campaigns against discrimination alongside my college friend J. Her race and sexual orientation were different from mine, but I wouldn’t understand what role this played in our work until a few years later.

After screening our film about hate crimes against Sikh Americans at a community gathering in Queens, a young man stood up in the audience and said, “Just as I fight for the right of gay people like me to come out of the closet, I understand now that I must fight for the right of Sikhs to wear their turbans.”

His words echoed inside me.

He was tying the LGBTQ and Sikh struggle together in one greater movement for human dignity. I realized that our fight for equality is incomplete and vain if we are only standing up for ourselves. J. knew this all along. She showed me that our communities, in particular, confront similar forms of discrimination.  Eight out of 10 students have been harassed in school for their sexual orientation, and up to three quarters of all Sikh students have been bullied. Both are disproportionately targeted in hate crimes. Twenty percent of all hate crimes in 2011 were directed at LGBTQ people, and violence against Sikhs, such as the mass shooting at a Sikh house of worship in Wisconsin last August, suggests similar circumstances for the Sikh community, though these crimes are not tracked by the federal government. Both communities have endured discrimination from the government, military, and employers. As legal scholar Kenji Yoshino explains, the law tends to permit discrimination against “mutable characteristics,” as if our religious identities or sexual orientations were things we could change in order to assimilate.

I’m not alone in making these connections. Millennials who understand that our struggles are tied up with one another are changing the face of movement building. The old way of fighting for separate communities and causes no longer makes sense, especially in a world where multiple identities often intersect in our own bodies–black and lesbian, Sikh and queer, gay and evangelical. In the Senate’s most recent hearing on hate crimes last fall, the room was filled not just with Sikh Americans but with people of every faith and color, including LGBTQ Americans. In the immigrant youth movement in recent years, DREAMers often came out twice—as gay and undocumented. And just last week, thousands made a pledge for marriage equality as a matter of moral conviction. Thousands more switched their profile photos on Facebook and Twitter to the red equality sign, including scores of my Sikh friends. Establishing marriage equality in all 50 states would bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice–not just for LGBTQ people but for all of us.

To be sure, the Court may wish to avoid a sweeping decision altogether, punting the responsibility to other political avenues. As evidenced by hours of oral argument about whether these cases have standing in the first place, the Court may be poised to throw out at least one of these two historic cases, in an effort to avoid a backlash. Justice Samuel Alito even asked whether the Court should issue a decision on a practice that is “newer than cell phones and the Internet.” But most millennials have known LGBTQ people and committed couples long before we ever held a cell phone. We understand that centuries of persecution are long enough for a community to wait for equal protection under the law. In fact, the evidence shows that a sweeping decision would not result in a national backlash but rather vindicate the values of the public. Today, a clear majority of Americans support marriage equality, up from 27%t one decade ago. The Court would not be stepping out in front of the people; it would be catching up to the people, especially young people.

Anti-gay advocates are right about one thing: the upcoming decisions on marriage equality will change the institution of marriage for millions of straight people. Just not in the way they imagine. For my husband and me, the decisions would strengthen marriage as a democratic institution, an institution that does not discriminate or denigrate people for the ones they love.

Most importantly, it would allow our generation to move on to much more challenging problems—the poverty, homelessness, chronic disease, and violence disproportionately experienced by transgendered people and people of color, communities often marginalized within the LGBTQ movement.

So go ahead, Justices. We know that striking down DOMA and Proposition 8 would require a sweeping decision on marriage equality. But you need not be afraid. An entire generation will have your back.

In the public debate raging over Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new book Lean In, we should pay special attention to the voices of young people–women and men of different backgrounds.

This week alone, I have heard from dozens of Millennials in their 20s and 30s, all from working class and middle class families. We know that “leaning in” to careers comes at a cost: it requires us to “lean on” other people for duties like cleaning and childcare. The people we lean on are often from the same underprivileged communities that some of us come from. In a relentless work culture for all of us, from domestic workers to young professionals, we are starting to ask ourselves a critical question missing from the debate: what are we all “leaning” towards?

It took until my thirties for me to answer that question. I was born into a South Asian family where women have played the role of wives, mothers, and caregivers for generations. My mother fought hard against cultural norms and economic obstacles so that I could be the first to pursue a path outside the home and in Sandberg’s words, “lean in” to my career.

I went on to top tier universities, where I became connected to a whole new set of women pursuing powerful professions. As a Stanford undergrad, I found that the hardest-working women were the ones who regularly gathered in my dorm room. We hatched dreams to become lawyers, scholars, and doctors, naming ourselves “the Pocket.”

If you asked us why we were working so hard, we did not say we were working to “have it all”–a high-powered career and children. Rather, we wanted to make meaningful change in the world. We wanted a balanced life where we could take good care of our children, family, friends, and our own health. We were determined to stay true to these commitments as we entered traditionally male-dominated jobs in law offices, universities, government and politics.

Now, ten years after graduation, we are in our early thirties and navigating our way. Most of us are starting demanding new jobs, some are finishing graduate studies; one had an unexpected pregnancy while in medical school. All of us struggled to survive a near-recession. Each of us has accrued a staggering amount of student debt. In fact, total student debt has tripled over the past eight years, now standing at an unthinkable $966 billion in the fourth quarter of last year.

To meet that debt, we are entering professions that expect us to work at all hours in what Anne-Marie Slaughter calls “time macho.” Our work cultures demands not 40-hour but 70-80-hour work weeks, even in jobs that do not offer Wall Street salaries. Several of us were lucky to find partners who share our egalitarian values, but as Evergreen State College professor Stephanie Coontz noted in The New York Times, none of us is in a labor market that allows us to practice those values.

As for starting a family, the latest research in fertility tells us that time is running out fast: we should start a family before 35 if we want to have biological children without health risks. But if we do have children, we jeopardize our prospects for long-term career advancement in workplaces that do not provide flexible hours, adequate parental leave, on-site or subsidized daycare, or a formal way to slow down, work from home or work part-time, and still pursue a long-term track for advancement. In sum, we have discovered that success has earned us careers that can threaten our health and compromise our core commitments.

“It might be tough for us,” said Jessica Jenkins, an immigration lawyer and college classmate. “But things are way harder for my clients. Most are mothers working inflexible hours without sick pay, if they’re able to work at all. A staggering number endure domestic violence. Too many are marginalized because of race, sexual orientation, immigration status, education, or class. I guess this is why I’m frustrated that the media thinks that the most urgent item on the feminist agenda is a book by a corporate executive.”

We can “lean in” all we want, but no amount of personal ambition can change what systemic economic and social policies could do for women and men in our generation. The system is stacked against not just corporate women, but people of all classes and professions. We need leaders who will revolutionize work-life policies, innovate new work cultures, and deepen the discourse on what constitutes success.

Questioning what we’re “leaning” towards is even more essential in a cultural moment when many of our most prominent female role models are corporate executives.

“I don’t want to ‘lean in’ if it means it’s only for my own gain,” Jenkins said. “I don’t want power and prestige if it means I am perpetuating the inequality around me. As far as I’m concerned, my struggle is inextricably linked with others.”

To be sure, I know many young women who still want to make partner at a law firm or climb the corporate ladder. These women ought to have the freedom to pursue those paths. But we should not pretend that ambition alone will guarantee their success, especially if success includes more than a corner office. Nor should we assume that climbing the highest rungs of our professions automatically breaks down barriers for all women.

In this critical moment, when public discussion could influence employers and policymakers, it’s time for Millennials to join the debate and redefine what success means to us.

As for “the Pocket,” we are still working hard to live healthy, balanced, financially secure, and meaningful lives. We are not unhappy. We never wanted to “have it all” for ourselves. We wanted to have enough for everyone. And that is what we’re leaning toward.