Name: The radical act of choosing common ground | Nisha Anand
Uploaded: 2020-11-06T18:15:11.000Z
Duration: 15 min 59 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Transcriber: Leslie Gauthier Reviewer: Ivana Korom

In 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act passed.

Adverbs of manner

It ushered in an era of mass incarceration

signed into law by Democratic President, Bill Clinton.

I was a senior in high school when this bill got passed,

on the streets protesting any number of causes ...

So that's what makes this picture all the more surprising.

Newt was not on the top of my "Favorite Person in this Country" list.

that would pass a bill called the First Step Act.

The "New York Times" called it the most significant reform

This is what I'm here to talk to you about today.

And I'm not talking about the kind of common ground where --

you know, we can talk about how much we love springtime

And it's not, you know, compromised common ground.

It's the type of common ground where you will be ridiculed and judged.

But it's the type of common ground that can secure human freedom.

And it's the type of common ground I was born to find.

My dad was born during the partition in India.

After the Indian independence movement, the country was really divided

between people who wanted to keep the country together

and those who wanted different independent nations.

they just decided to draw a line, the partition and make a new country.

This started the largest forced mass migration in human history.

Fifteen million people trapped on the wrong side of these new borders.

Two million people dead during the partition.

And my dad was the youngest baby in a Hindu family

and like families all around the border on both sides,

And I was told when I was little about the story of my family in hiding,

and one day when armed men came into the house that they were hiding in,

searching for families, my dad started crying.

he made the choice that he'd sacrifice his son in order to save the family.

But luckily, in that moment he stopped crying.

My grandma, she shook him and he stopped crying

and I'm here today because he stopped crying.

because of that Muslim family that took us in.

and an armed man asked if they were hiding anyone,

and they swore on the Quran that nobody was in that house.

They chose in that moment when the entire country --

you could hate people who had different politics than you,

And I start with this story because often people tell me

that my mission for common ground is the weak position.

But I ask how was that Muslims family's actions weak?

Because of that, my dad did grow up healthy in India

and like most first-generation kids I was born to build bridges.

I was a bridge between the old country and the new.

I was a brown girl in the Black and white South in Atlanta, Georgia.

punk-rock activist sneaking out of the house for concerts

and, you know, getting arrested like, all the time for causes.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

The radical act of choosing common ground | Nisha Anand

approach

bunch

concept

scale