Arthur Schwartz, Jeff Kurzon, Reshma 2010

Image by cliff1066™ via FlickrI am so looking forward to the Reshma 2010 event tomorrow. (Gandhi, Reshma And Tornadoes) I did 400 push ups already in preparation. I will likely do more. It is good to see Arthur Schwartz as one of the listed names. Slowly but surely the Obama crowd is rallying behind Reshma 2010. A presidential campaign lasts months, but for a congressional race these final weeks are when the coalescing happens. It is now a sprint to the finish line.

An Empire State Of Mind: The Final Countdown
Baruch Plus Radio Plus NY1 Could Work
My Progressive Political Religion
Reshma Saujani Loves America

Arthur is the first person featured in my first Obama video. He was the key speaker at the Manhattan For Obama organizational kick off meeting.

NYC Video: 10 Hours

Another person featured in that video is Jeff Kurzon. The first time I met Jeff was near the Gandhi statue in Union Square. I was not even aware there was a Gandhi statue there until that day. That was the summer of 2007 right before the walks for Obama. Well, Jeff asked for a Gujarati and he got one now: Reshma. (Reshma Is Gujarati Like Gandhi, I Am Bihari Like Laloo)

Crain's New York: An Insurgent's Long Shot: Last year, Reshma Saujani was no more than a foreign-sounding name on a long list of candidates who wanted to run for the seat on the verge of being vacated by Rep. Carolyn Maloney. When Ms. Maloney decided last August not to run for the U.S. Senate, the other would-be candidates dropped out in deference to the incumbent. Ms. Saujani, a 34-year-old hedge fund lawyer, stayed in. .... eliciting scorn from the city's Democratic political establishment, which sees Ms. Maloney as the unassailable matriarch of a district that she helped transform into a Democratic stronghold.... Ms. Saujani has eschewed the more traditional route of first running for a minor office and cultivating endorsements among labor and elected officials to build a base of support. ..... her fundraising prowess ..... “I think we need to have new people, fresh faces running for Congress,” Ms. Saujani says—”people who are passionate and energetic.” ..... Ms. Saujani's campaign has captured the attention of many, including Bishop Mitchell Taylor, the influential senior pastor of the Center of Hope International and the chief executive of the East River Development Alliance. He invited Ms. Saujani, just as he had Ms. Maloney, to speak to his small but fervent congregation in Long Island City. ...... On Jan. 14, 1973, her parents landed in Chicago wearing T-shirts and shorts, with $50 in their pockets. ...... a compelling political biography that has impressed wealthy Upper East Side donors, financial services executives and Internet entrepreneurs. She first demonstrated her fundraising skills at age 28, when she raised $1 million from South Asians on behalf of John Kerry's run for the presidency—an accomplishment that gave her access to Hillary Clinton, whom she supported in 2008. Ms. Clinton later offered her a job in the State Department as a senior adviser on South Asia, which Ms. Saujani turned down in order to run for office. ....... Maloney's $2.1 million in cash. ..... Of about 228,000 registered Demo-crats in District 14—68% of whom are white—37,529 voted four years ago. ..... her opponent has portrayed her as a creature of a greedy industry ..... One of her biggest supporters is Diana Taylor: a lifelong Republican, former New York state superintendent of banks, and the girlfriend of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Ms. Taylor is part of a coterie of high-powered women who are advising Ms. Saujani and encouraged her to run on her corporate experience. ..... “She sees Congress as an entry-level job,” says one exasperated Democratic consultant. .... She was twice denied by Yale Law School before getting accepted as a transfer student. Becoming a member of Congress has also been a lifelong dream. If she loses, she says, she will begin her campaign for 2012. “We run the next day in the same race,” she says. “We start the next day.”

New York Post: The Underdog: 35-year-old Reshma Saujani, is generating an unusual amount of interest for an untested candidate ....Saujani, who has never served in public office, has become a darling among the city’s power brokers, including Maureen White, former national finance chair for the Democratic Party; Judith Dimon, wife of JPMorgan CEO Jamie; hedge fund billionaire Marc Lasry; and Mayor Bloomberg’s daughter, Emma — all of whom have helped her amass a $1.2 million war chest..... Hillary Clinton, for whom Saujani once worked, gave her campaign an unofficial nod of approval..... Mayor Bloomberg’s girlfriend, Diana Taylor, is even advising Saujani’s campaign after meeting her and being impressed with her go-getter attitude..... Saujani also has developed a cult following among the city’s burgeoning tech community, with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Facebook honcho Randi Zuckerberg and Gilt Groupe founder Alexis Maybank all tweeting her praises. High profile bloggers like Rachelle Hruska have helped generate buzz among the 20- and 30-something crowd that usually doesn’t follow local politics...... A practicing Hindu, she lives in an East Village rental, and is still paying off some $200,000 in student loan debts after putting herself through school. She works out at Equinox so that she can afford to cave to her favorite temptation: the black and white shake from Shake Shack..... “At age 28 I was one of John Kerry’s top fundraisers in the country,” Saujani said in an interview from her makeshift campaign office on 33rd Street and Madison Avenue. “It’s unusual for a young woman to be sitting with trustees who had been donors for generations. I had never asked anyone for a check before besides my parents.” ...... She’d be the youngest woman elected to Congress if she wins, as well as the first Hindu. She claims she was the first New York politician to come out strongly in favor of the Ground Zero mosque...... it’s when she talks about tech that she becomes most engaged....... “When I set out to run, one out of three of my friends was unemployed, laid off from law firms or media firms, and it wasn’t going to get better until 2013,” she said. “I believe people need to start their own companies. I’ve gone to tech meet-up after tech meet-up and asked people, ‘What is it that you need to start your next company?’ It’s that first $50,000 or $100,000 they need.” ...... Until now Maloney had no particular reason to acknowledge Saujani’s campaign, but after three months of nipping at her heels, Maloney agreed to a radio debate scheduled to air Sept. 7 on WWRL at 11 a.m....... “You don’t expend that political capital for name recognition. You do it to win.”

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How My Grandfather Became Mayor The First Time

There was no electricity in the village back then. It was a big house, the biggest house of its kind in the village.

My great-grandfather had not been a landlord, he had been a self made man who had started from scratch and had gone on to end up with more land than anyone else in the village. There's a difference. When it was time to build this house, he had organized trips to the thick forests tens of miles to the north. A whole bunch of men would "drive" bullock carts to the forests, fell trees, and bring them back to the village. "Pillars" in the house were these thick tree trunks that you could barely get your hands around.

Five women lived in the house, my mother and my aunt, my two grandmothers, my great grandmother. There was this big courtyard, and there were rooms all around that courtyard. There was land to the three sides of the house to grow vegetables. There were fruit trees, guava, papaya, pomegranate, shareefa/sitafal/sugar apple. Legend had it there was even a coconut tree there once. But the women of the house would quarrel so much among themselves when there were coconuts to the tree - each wanted to send them to their own "nahira" (father's house) - that one day lightning struck and the tree was no more.

One grandmother was a widow. My grandfather's younger brother fell victim to an epidemic ("haija") that swept the country when he was very young. When my new bride mother had showed up and had me, the first child, she found herself amidst a cold war among the women of the house, and this grandmother stood by her, she would never tire of telling me. "I washed your dirty linen!" Apparently I was relieving myself in bed and I did not even remember. My mother had been from a richer family from across the border in India (same culture, same language, just a political border in between). One of her cousins was Education Minister of Bihar later in the 1990s when Laloo Yadav was Chief Minister of Bihar. Laloo Yadav more recently was Railway Minister for all of India.

The women of the family cooked the food. Usually my mother and aunt took turns. You can imagine, big pots of food. Sometimes there were misunderstandings around the schedule and the women would get into full blast shouting matches. They would cook a little something special for their own children. Sometimes that would also lead to misunderstandings.

If there was one thing we had plenty of, it was the food. The first to show up would be the men. My great grandfather, my grandfather. The kids would run around and the women would run after them trying to feed them. At night time it got trickier. I have many memories of having fallen asleep, my mother having picked me up, put me in her lap, and fed me with her own hand while I was still asleep. Multi-tasking, sleeping and eating at the same time.

Finally it was the turn of the servants and the workers on the farms. Untouchability was in vogue, perhaps still is. The servants were usually from Dalit families. The family ate in steel plates. They had aluminum plates. They would put their plate on the ground, and the women would serve the food from a safe distance.

After the sister after me was born, my father who had had a few years of education in the capital city decided he wanted to do the family planning thing. My great grandfather was offended.

"Don't I feed your children? Is that what you are telling me?" he demanded to know. And so my second sister, my brother, and my youngest sister Babita were born. Babita lives in Boston today.

So it was night time, early evening. It was time for dinner. The call had gone out to the big, brick house. There were two houses. There was this courtyard one, mud walls, thick tree pillars, baked tile roof. And there was this brick house across, on the same side of the street. The biggest feature of the brick house was this huge verandah that was open. Men of the village would lie down there for their afternoon siestas, and sleeps at night. There were so many men who never slept in their own homes. Then slept on this open verandah. During summer, they would also line up on the roof of the brick house. My grandfather had this one room on the first floor of that brick house. My grandmother slept in the mud house.

And there was another big house - as big as the courtyard house - just for the animals. The dude with more land than anyone else in the village had lots and lots of animals. These oxen ploughed the fields. How I knew my mother's side of the family was richer was because my maternal grandfather had even more oxen, way more. The animal house was this one big box. We kids only ventured into that house when the animals were not inside. Otherwise you never knew which animal might get into the mood and give you a swift kick, and then where were you?

So the call went out for dinner. My grandfather walked over down from his room of the brick house, across the yard, to our tubewell to wash his hands, get some fresh water for dinner. It was the only tubewell in the neighborhood, and every morning and evening there would be long lines of women. Every now and then someone would cut line, and shouting matches would ensue. The language would get graphic. I never heard such body part talk ever after.

Of course my grandfather did not have to stand in line.

He came to sit on the wooden plank on the floor. He was having dinner.

A little while later some men from the neighboring village barged in, lifted him up and carried him away. They did not even let him wash his hand. They did not tell him what was going on. He had no idea.

What had happened was a committee of men in the neighboring village had decided my grandfather was the most suitable to be the new mayor of the village. It was a unit of four villages. This was some time before they actually started having elections. And he won each time with huge margins until the political system in the country changed.

So they carried him away. When they carried him back, there were a whole bunch of garlands around his neck, there was colored powder all over his forehead. There was the village "band" playing their exotic instruments. Festivities began. For those special occasions they would take out the petromax lanterns. And they did.

And now you know how my grandfather became Mayor the first time. Over the years people started calling us the Gandhi family of our village. The Kennedys in America are not like the Gandhis in India. Does not even compare as to what the Gandhis are in India.

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