I am somewhat hesitant to share a more personal, at times painful, story on this solemn day, but this story ties into the founding story of the Sikh Coalition, and the Coalition’s deep connection, and my own, to the Proteus Fund, so I’ll share it.

Let me first say, my heart goes out to all those who lost or know someone who was lost 25 years ago. In Hoboken, where I live, we lost 57 people on this day. May all the 9/11 families and loved ones have peace.

On this morning 25 years ago, I was driving in Washington DC to an academic externship on international human rights law at an organization called the World Organization Against Torture (WOAT). As I entered the building where WOAT’s offices were located, a person looked at me, pointed frantically, and said to the building’s concierge, “Watch him! Watch what he is doing!” At that point, the concierge said that planes had hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and that the building (blocks from the White House) was being evacuated.

My car was parked north on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, DC. I got into my car, and with a good sense of what was to come, I literally drove straight to my parent’s home in New Jersey, with no hesitation.  I did not want to be alone in my apartment in DC.

On the way back home to New Jersey that morning, I had likely the worst conversation I have ever had with my mother. Cell phone reception was spotty in DC, but about an hour outside of the city, in Maryland, my mother was able to get me on the phone. She asked if I had my bandana in the car (I sometimes wear a bandana when I play sports).  I responded that I did. She asked me to put it on, and in doing so, remove my turban.

We both knew why. During the late 70s hostage crisis my father would be told to “go back to Iran.” During the first Persian Gulf War, when I was in college, I would receive constant phone calls telling me to “go back to Iraq.” After the first attack on the World Trade Center in the 1990s, the gurdwara (Sikh house of worship) my family attended in Glen Rock, NJ was vandalized with the word “terrorist”, and I remember the effort to clean it up.

So, I understood why, but I refused.  I told her my turban was staying on.  By the time I got home to Jersey late that afternoon, the first reports of violent attacks against Sikhs started coming in, fast and widespread. At the time, in my spare time, I headed a group of young Sikhs based in New York who took on interrelated Sikh social service and human rights projects. That night, after a conference call with dozens of Sikhs from across the US, we issued a press release entitled, “Coalition of Sikh Organizations of New York Decry Attack on America and Call for an End to Hate Crimes Against Sikh Americans” or something to that effect.

The Sikh Coalition was officially born. Within two days, the Sikh Coalition’s founding activists had a website up that was collecting stories of hate crimes, and I was tasked with responding to the reports, working with authorities to address them. We collected over 300 stories of job firings, turban removals at airports, and violent hate crimes, including the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi on September 15, 2001. Within a week, the Coalition’s articles of incorporation were filed (via fax!) in New Jersey.

By the Monday after 9/11, I was back in DC meeting directly with the Assistant US Attorney for Civil Rights and his senior attorneys to discuss federal intervention in the mass hate crimes, employment discrimination, and airport profiling matters that the emerging Sikh Coalition had documented in its very first week of existence. Within two months, I had met directly with the US Attorney General (a surly man named John Ashcroft), the Secretary of Transportation (an internment survivor named Norman Mineta), and the head of the Equal Employment Discrimination in my role as a founder and volunteer of the Sikh Coalition.

The early days of the Sikh Coalition were tough and energizing. I had a sleeping bag in our first office, and sometimes I used it. In the course of a week I could do everything from clearing office trash to fixing the Wi-Fi to meeting with the Attorney General.

While a set of local New York City foundations – the North Start Fund, New York Foundation, and the New York Community Trust – were our first philanthropic supporters, our first breakthrough national grant came from (you guessed it) Proteus Fund, and its brand new donor collaborative, the Security and Rights Collaborative, which is today is the RISE Together Fund.

The experience with Proteus was different. Our point of contact at Proteus, Dimple Abichandani, the founding Director of what’s now the RISE Together Fund, was a fellow South Asian with cultural fluency I had not yet experienced in philanthropy. I felt at home with Proteus, and more at ease and honest in the relationship with Dimple. Within a year of our grant from Proteus, she was already talking about introducing the Sikh Coalition to the Open Society Foundations, Atlantic Philanthropies, and whole set of national funders with whom we had no points of contact.

Perhaps more importantly, Proteus was “in the trenches” and in partnership with us in a way that was unlike any other philanthropic supporter. The Sikh Coalition had access to, and made very liberal use of, communications expertise through Proteus. We had consistent, organized and curated access to local and national organizations doing similar work through Proteus-organized convenings and conference calls moderated by Proteus field support consultants. We had access to technical assistance to help develop our board, our strategy, and our fundraising. Perhaps most important, Dimple was a ready and willing thought partner and advocate for our work and our movements.

The truth is that part of the story of the Sikh Coalition – which, 25 years later, is the largest Sikh nonprofit in the United States – is the story of funders who not only make grants to move a project, but who work to support the soft and hard infrastructure (field coordination and connectivity; technical assistance; leadership development; programmatic supports such as coordinated narrative and communications) needed to build organizations and movements.

The communities impacted by discrimination after 9/11 have come a long way. Today, a Muslim is New York City’s mayor – a reality no one could have imagined that 25 years ago – but we clearly have a long way to go. Through it all, I feel fortunate that the organizational and human infrastructure built out of that day, aided by funders with a long view, remains and is contributing to the idea that the United States can be, with time and effort, a representative, inclusive democracy.