South Asian American celebrities have created a video urging their elders to vote for Hillary Clinton.
The video – which sees young South Asians pleading with their older generations to “Vote Against Hate” – features prominent actors, such as Arjun Gupta, Sheetal Sheth and Utkarsh Ambudkar.
“It doesn’t matter how you voted in the past. This is about our future,” they said in the video. “Please, please don’t be on the wrong side of history, even if you’re not with her, he’s not with you.”
The scripted two-minute video encourages parents and grandparents of the actors to remember why they came to the United States in the first place –freedom and a chance to chase the American Dream. The celebrities believe Trump’s anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric damages Sikh and South Asian communities.
“You came to the United States so that you could have a better life,” Sheth says in the video. “Right now, our country is at a crossroads.”
According to the Indian Express, Indian American voters can turn the tides of the election in the states of Florida, Ohio and Colorado, where Clinton and Donald Trump are in a dead heat in major polls.
“The Indian American vote has value. If you can lose an election by 400-500 votes, then in places like Florida, the 30-40 percent weight of the Indian American vote will be important and both Democrats and Republicans will notice our value,” said Bhupi Patel, former chief of medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital and community leader, at a press conference, adding that 70 percent of Indian Americans identify as Democrat.
Mike Patel, a prominent hotelier and former commissioner in President Clinton’s White House Initiative on Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, told the Indian Express that Al Gore may have lost the 2000 election by only a few hundred votes, so Indian Americans should not be complacent.
“The Indian American voters in Ohio, Florida have to come out and vote because these are the states that are needed to win the election,” Mike Patel said.
