MEET THE ORGANIZING COLLECTIVE

Bindu Poroori (she/they) has called Chicago home since 2011, but is originally from sweet sweltering Chennai. These days, she’s working with the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the City of Chicago’s 47th Ward, City Bureau, the Chicago Parks District, the Fly Honey Show, and Chicago Desi Youth Rising – as a curator, artist, researcher, facilitator, organizer, and administrator. Bindu‘s personal artistic and social practice is at the intersection of poetry, civic dialogue, and racial justice. She is always looking for home

Alima Sajwani was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan and moved to Chicago to attend DePaul University in 2016. They first got involved with CDYR as a youth participant in the 2017 summer leadership retreat where they were deeply moved and inspired by CDYR’s mission and work towards encouraging South Asian youth to dismantle white supremacy and become social changemakers. The way CDYR challenged dominant narratives really helped Alima feel validated in their own identity and find community who wholeheartedly supported them. The following year Alima decided to join the CDYR collective which has quickly become their political home. Since then they have organized around racial and immigrant justice in their community. Alima graduated DePaul in 2020 with a BS in Biological Sciences and a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies. Alima is currently working as a Research Technologist within the Infectious Disease department at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago.

Stuti Sharma is an immigrant artist. She primarily is a poet and a standup comic. She is Chicago-raised and South Suburbs-based and claims them both proudly. She studied English and Chemistry for a bit, worked a variety of jobs that informed life and art including but not limited to shelving books at a library, selling corn at a farm, running an after-school program for immigrant and refugee youth at the Indo American Center, and herding school buses from field trips at a museum. Curiosity and questions propel her writing, teaching, and work. Achieving justice and liberation in solidarity motivate her. She had a spot in Belt Publishing’s Chicago Neighbor Guidebook that talks about growing up in the West Ridge of Chicago. You can find her around the city doing standup shows, exclusively eating in restaurants where the cooks simultaneously make food while Face Timing family, or exploring the prairies, wetlands, and forests of Illinois.

Prabhneek Heer (Niki) is the Grant Writer at Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago. She was born and raised in Central Valley, California and moved to Chicago in 2017. Niki also works with Asian Americans Advancing Justice—Los Angeles’s Untold Civil Rights Stories project, contributing to and developing ethnic studies curricula for K-12 public school students, is a member of A Just Chi’s Police Accountability working group and volunteers with the Chicago Community Bond Fund. Niki graduated from UCLA in 2017 with a B.A. in Political Science with a concentration in Race, Ethnicity and Politics. Her participation and experiences in South Asian organizing spaces and student government while at UCLA have helped shape her commitment to racial justice and issues of state violence in particular.

Gemini Bhalsod is a British Indian American daughter of immigrants who is committed to practicing her politics daily. Gemini has worked with youth formally and informally and is excited to continue working with youth through CDYR. She grew up in Michigan, where she studied plant biology and crop and soil science. Gemini has lived and organized in Lansing and Detroit, where she learned with an amazing community of activists and mentors, organizing for environmental, racial, economic, and transportation justice. In Detroit, Gemini was an adult collective member with Detroit Asian Youth (DAY) Project where she supported youth community building and political education efforts. Currently she works as a horticulture educator and can usually be found gardening or reading science fiction.

Nirali Shah (he/him) attended the 2019 CDYR retreat as a youth participant, and was motivated by the power of storytelling to create social change and question dominant structures. Nirali is inspired by reciprocity within natural ecosystems for community building.

Misha is a senior in high school. She has lived in the suburbs all her life and first got involved in CDYR in 2020. She attended the annual summer cohort in 2020 and felt deeply connected to the safe space she was provided as well as the support she was given by the other youth and collective members. With the action grant she was given after the cohort, she started a small Instagram business to hand make envelopes to fundraise for different non-profits. She continues to pursue passion projects as she painted the Love Fridge at Indo-American Center, received training for gender based violence by Kan-Win, helped pass TEAACH Act with a focus group by Hana Center, fundraises for her high school's Dance Marathon initiative and is the president of her school's South Asian Student Association. She is currently interning at Sparkle Insights; a market research company dedicated to Asian American representation.

Born and raised in Chicago, Rani first got involved with CDYR as a retreat participant in the summer of 2018, and loved it so much that she returned in 2019. She feels very grateful for finding a home within the CDYR community that helped ground her in her values and allowed her to learn, grow, and explore her identity as a mixed person of Punjabi and Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Rani has remained connected to CDYR and excitedly joined the collective in 2021.