It's hard being an activist and a person, harder if the community you identify with and want to organize for is small.
But Naomi Anurag Lahiri has learned to build. And the longer she is active in organizing in Chicago, the more she creates.
Lahiri is not among Chicago's best-known LGBTQ organizers. At age 24, she cannot boast decades of organizing. She has been in the city just two years, and her activism has been of the variety to fall out of mainstream eyesight—the kind passed around support groups and small organizing meetings.
But that is about to change. Lahiri is among a group of grassroots activists planning the March on Springfield, a massive rally on the state capitol calling on Illinois lawmakers to pass equal marriage legislation scheduled for Oct. 22.
The march, aimed at pressing for a vote on marriage equality during the General Assembly's fall veto session, has been organized in part by Windy City Times publisher Tracy Baim.
Marriage has not been at the top of Lahiri's priorities in queer South Asian organizing. Her work has tended to focus on communities not represented in mainstream LGBTQ movements.
"In the South Asian community, I think it's more split, but in some of the East Asian organizations, people that I've spoken to, they're a little more aligned with the Black and Latino queer communities where [marriage is] not helpful for certain segments of the population," Lahiri said. "Or if it is, it's not the first priority when someone's homeless or thinking about killing themselves."
Lahiri's work, both professionally and in organizing, has tended to deal with those other priorities—from honoring activists before her to interrupting the violence facing others in her community.
Her latest project is a digital archive that honors the work South Asian queer women. The site, yet unfinished, will be published as part of the South Asian American Digital Archive ( saadigitalarchive.org ).
Lahiri is also a case manager and shelter advocate at Apna Ghar, the Chicago-based domestic violence shelter that primarily serves South Asian and immigrant families.
But it was her work with Trikone Chicago, an organization for queer South Asians, that got her hooked into the marriage issue.
Lahiri had mixed feelings about organizing for marriage.
"When I first was asked to be a part of it I openly said I don't know if I should," she said.
Marriage had not been a top agenda item in Lahiri's organizing or queer community. But other activists she respected—Affinity's Kim Hunt and transgender organizer Alexis Martinez were involved, she said. And there other reasons Lahiri saw value in taking up the issue as a queer South Asian.
"When we're not present at mainstream events and organizations, they think we don't exist," she thought.
Now, Lahiri is tasked with mobilizing her peers to attend the march.
She has built that community intentionally since she moved to Chicago less than two years ago.
Lahiri, whose parents are Bengali, grew up in Wivenhoe, a college town in Essex County, England. When she was 13, she and her family moved to the U.S. She went to high school in Carbondale, Ill and attended University of Missouri.
It was during her time in undergrad that Lahiri started coming out. Her family was largely supportive.
Lahiri attended graduate school at the University of Illinois before moving to Chicago in January 2012 and starting work at Apna Ghar.
She found queer South Asian friends over time through Trikone and other queer events.
"They weren't necessarily activists," she noted. But they bonded in small ways—dancing to the same songs their parents played when they were little.
But becoming involved in Chicago's queer South Asian community also came with challenges. For one, Lahiri struggled to navigate the difference between her social life and her growing work as an activist.
"It used to be like, me seeing my friends was seeing them at a meeting," Lahiri said.
Still, she had met her goals—to live independently in the city and to get a social work job. And her activism expanded, in part, she says, because of the examples of older queer South Asians.
Everything came together for Lahiri recently when she attended DesiQ, Trikone's national conference in San Francisco. Lahiri admits that meeting other activists, many of whom she read about or knew through media, left her a little star struck.
"Meeting everyone in person and not feeling like everyone was a celebrity, like people who I think are famous were talking to me like I was just another peer," Lahiri said. "There was just something special about it being queer South Asians. We all felt connected, and there was no hierarchy."
The March on Springfield is scheduled for Oct. 22 outside the Capitol Building at noon.
