NOTE:
Videos are here.
AAP ke Mitra NJ press release: Jan 26th, 2014.
Despite snow and cold weather, around 70 Volunteers/supporters of Aam Aadmi Party from New York/New Jersey/Connecticut gathered in TV Asia (76 National Road, Edison, NJ) to celebrate Republic day of India and attend a hangout with Yogendra Yadav (a ideologue/chief spokesperson of Aam Aadmi Party - India) on “Role of AAP as an alternative in 2014 Lok Sabha”.
AAP Volunteers showcased a fine oral and video presentation of AAP Volunteering activities in last 18 months.
Rakesh Bisaria conducted the event with giving brief description of AAP.
Himanshu Sharma spoke about his association with activities for IAC in New Jersey since 2011. He recollected the night of Nov 25, 2012 when he and his wife Kalpana were watching speech of Arvind Kejriwal where he declared the formation of Aam Aadmi Party in India. It was then that Himanshu and Kalpana formed the AAP ke Mitra NJ group on Facebook and google groups. He went through various activities AAP NJ volunteers did like “Hosting an Interactive session with Yogendra Yadav-Anand Kumar in Apr 2013 when they visited NJ”, “Meetings with Kumar Vishwas and Ashawant Gupta”, weekly meetings etc.
Other activities of AAP NJ and AAP Global volunteers were explained by other speakers as follows.
Jayesh Shrivastava illustrated his experience of Swaraj Yatra, a 200+ miles walk from Washington DC to New York. Jayesh, Akshay and Madhu, the three AAP volunteers walked to reach out to desi communities and visited county/city offices on the way to understand participatory democracy practised in the USA. Jayesh shared that the walk taught him the difference between being educated and literate, specifically about democracy. 10-15 miles of walk every day made the walkers realized about the pain people like farmers go through who do physical work. Many local AAP volunteers from NJ/NY/PH joined their walk when the walk travelled through various states.
Taking break from NRI AAP Volunteer activity, we joined a google hangout with Mr Yogendra Yadav, head of policy making teams and chief spokesperson for Aam Aadmi Party- India. Lot of AAP NRI volunteer groups from USA (Chicago, California, Atlanta, North Carolina, Houston, Boston, etc,), UK, Middle East had joined this hangout. Looking at outpouring support for AAP across India, Yogendra Yadav highlighted the need for Aam Aadmi Party to raise up to the occasion of high expectations from citizens of India and provide them an alternative politics in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He answered many questions on various topics including NRIs contribution, pre-post election strategy, outpouring support and new membership challenges to AAP, etc.
After the hangout, we continued with AAP volunteer activities.
Lots of representatives of Maliali community were present, including Jibby Thomas, president of KANJ (Kerala Association of New Jersey), Dr Gopinathan Nair, Aniyan George, Anil Puthenchira, Varghese, Alex Koshy, Bobby, Sunny, Joe etc. Alex emphasized the need to AAP as a platform for honesty to come up and unite to clean the system. Alex said that the dream of Gandhi ji to strengthen the villages is being fulfilled by AAP.
On Adopt A Constituency (AAC) program: Rakesh Bisaria, Jayesh Sanghani, Shailesh Patel shared their experience of working in Adopt a Constituency program where each NRI chapter adopted a constituency in Delhi and worked with AAP candidate, campaign team and volunteers on IT work, phone campaigns, donation drives etc. AAP NY/NJ chapters had adopted Narela constituency in Delhi and all three went to Delhi to help AAP in elections. They shared the energy and motivation of AAP volunteers/voters in various activities during election campaigning.
On Media team, Roopsi Narula shared the AAP Global Media team, its structure and tasks to help on global media issues. She shared her support for Arvind Kejriwal since the days of RTI (Right To Information) and then IAC (India Against Corruption). She explained the social media (Facebook/twitter, youtube, blogging, google hangouts, etc.) strategies adopted by media team in times when traditional media had completely blocked Aam Aadmi Party in news.
On social media team, Mukesh Kumar shared his experience of joining IAC (India Against Corruption) and AAP Cyber Volunteer team to counter biased social media campaigns to malign AAP. He proudly explained that now we have a very committed/capable AAP cyber strategy team which can set/drive trends on social media now.
On donation drives, Ajit Singh shared the need and challenges of motivating Indian citizens living abroad to donate to AAP. How AAP donation team ran drives line “August Kranti”, monthly donation drives which resulted into NRIs donating 25% of donations received by AAP before Dec 2013. He urged everyone to join the $20 monthly donation drive and motivate more and more people to join it.
Kalpana proclaimed the need to participating in democracy in India because it is good policies which make our society/family safer. Simple things like “no tickets to criminals, disclosing all donations received by the party” make AAP standout. Being a new party, AAP can make mistakes and mistakes can be corrected but intentions can’t. She said that we spend lots of money to buy a new TV to see a same movie (may be little cleaner) but a donation to AAP can improve the picture of India forever. She asked ladies to take the initiative to know about AAP for safety of our daughters/ladies. Creatives ways like AAP car bumper stickers, flyer distributions, community reachout, meeting in public place to show our support to AAP, calling our friends/relatives can be be instrumental in spreading the message of AAP.
Mitesh shared his motivation to be part of this revolution called as AAP and how he got convinced that sitting on sidelines isn’t going to get us anywhere.
Aman’s energetic words emphasized that whatever the detractors might do but they can’t stop the thirst in us to keep marching on this road to clean politics and better democracy in India.
Kirithika urged the gents and ladies to start dialogue within our family to discuss democracy/politics to ensure a brighter/informed future for our kids.
Special to mention the dedication of Bob who being a white american with no direct link to India, saw the Facebook promotion of this event and came holding a jhadoo (broom, the election symbol of AAP) and an Indian flag. While coming to the venue, Himanshu spotted Bob holding jhadoo and Indian flag, walking on the snow covered road, coming to the venue. He said that India is one of the biggest democracy in the world and he sees AAP as major force to strengthen Indian democracy. He thought of joining this meeting to learn more about it. He recited both the Indian and US national anthem with full vigor.
On behalf of all AAP volunteers, Rakesh Bisaria said a note of thanks to TV Asia, its chairman H.R. Shah, Gayatri ji and other staff for proving the facility for this event. He thanked Asianet and other media for coming and covering the event.
Himanshu Sharma sang a song “Lokpal bill aur swaraj, dil mein jagaya AAPne” and then we ended the event with Indian and American National anthem.
Jai Hind !!!
