Jaspreet Kaur Kaleka -the daugh­ter in law of the hum­ble and sauve com­mu­nity leader Sat­want Singh Kaleka, who was killed in 2012, chron­i­cles April as Sikh Aware­ness month in Wis­con­sin.

Wis­con­sin Gov­er­nor Tony Evers vis­ited the his­toric Oak Creek Gur­d­wara which wit­nessed the killing of six Sikhs by a neo-Nazi sup­porter in Au­gust 2012 to an­nounce the first-ever state-wide procla­ma­tion for the Wis­con­sin Sikh com­mu­nity.

An­nounc­ing the first such procla­ma­tion, Gov­er­nor Tony Evers em­pha­sized that “di­ver­sity re­mains our na­tion’s great­est strength, but to hear that in the same place where tragedy struck was a pow­er­ful mo­ment that I will al­ways re­mem­ber.”

My fa­ther in law was one of the six peo­ple killed in the at­tack and it was a par­tic­u­larly hum­bling and soul-sat­is­fy­ing event for me.

Procla­ma­tions and res­o­lu­tions are im­por­tant and easy ways for Sikh com­mu­ni­ties to en­gage lo­cal po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and raise Sikh aware­ness across both po­lit­i­cal aisles. In fact, in 2019, more states passed Sikh Aware­ness & Ap­pre­ci­a­tion Month res­o­lu­tions than ever be­fore.

The con­tri­bu­tion and fa­cil­i­ta­tion of the event by the Sikh Coali­tion was com­pre­hen­sive and re­mark­able and we can­not thank them more.

This year, Wis­con­sin joined Col­orado, Utah, Wash­ing­ton and Con­necti­cut in pass­ing first-time res­o­lu­tions. These states joined oth­ers that have pre­vi­ously is­sued procla­ma­tions like Cal­i­for­nia, Delaware, Geor­gia, Illi­nois, In­di­ana, New Jer­sey, New York and Penn­syl­va­nia. Ad­di­tion­ally, 33 lo­cal procla­ma­tions and res­o­lu­tions were passed, in­clud­ing first-time recog­ni­tions in Salt Lake City, UT; Lex­ing­ton, KY; Olathe, KS; and more.

Many of these suc­cess­ful ini­tia­tives were all  sup­ported by the Sikh Coali­tion, putting Sikh com­mu­nity lead­ers in di­rect touch with their elected of­fi­cials on both sides of the po­lit­i­cal aisle.

Tweets by Vaisakhi2019

The Sikhs of Wis­con­sin deeply ap­pre­ci­ate the role of the State of Wis­con­sin which rec­og­nized the Sikh com­mu­nity in April and for their on­go­ing sup­port of com­mu­nity-based or­ga­ni­za­tions like the Sikh Coali­tion.

Bet­ter yet? It is es­ti­mated that nearly four mil­lion Amer­i­cans wished Sikhs ‘A Happy Vaisakhi” through so­cial me­dia posts. Life’s a’chang­ing!