SAALT Webinar on South Asians and Election 2008

This notice came in from SAALT.org. As we've recently written elsewhere, the non-profit, non-partisan South Asian Americans Leading Together has emerged as one of the most vibrant, active and impressive national Asian-Pacific American organizations around, of any focus, with a ton of great programming going on this year.

SAALT has issued a release announcing a Pre-Elections Webinar on October 30th, with a call-in teleconference and online component that anyone can join. SAALT is doing a grat job, and the editors can't recommend them highly enough. Anyone interested in a serious, nonpartisan discussion of policy issues facing the diverse South Asian American commuity should consider participating. Here are the details:

When: Thursday, October 30th at 2pm EST/1pm CST/11am PST
(The Webinar should last an hour and 15 minutes)

Why: South Asian political involvement has been on the rise over the past decade, and the run-up to the November 2008 elections shows that South Asians have been increasingly engaged in the presidential campaigns, voter mobilization efforts, and bids for state and national office. What could South Asian voter turnout look like? What does South Asian involvement in the 2008 elections signify in terms of the community's political maturity?

• Who: South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), with special guests who will provide observations on South Asian political involvement, including:
• Vijay Prashad, Professor of International Studies at Trinity College; author of The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
• Karthick Ramakrishnan, Associate Professor of Political Science at UC Riverside; principal investigator on the first large-scale national survey of Asian American politics (2008)
• Ali Najmi, Desis Vote (New York)
• South Asian Progressive Action Collective (Chicago)
• Seema Agnani, Chhaya CDC (New York)

To attend, you must register by Thursday, October 30th at 10am EST:

1. Please click the following link or copy into your browser:https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/684743079

2. You will then be asked to register for the webinar. After you have registered, you will receive a confirmation email from the webinar service which has a link; a call-in number; and a conference call-in code.

3. At the appointed time for the webinar (Thursday, October 30th at 2PM EST/1PM CST/12PM PST), please click the link provided in the confirmation email and call the dial-in number listed. When prompted on the call, enter the call-in code from the email. The computer-based portion may take a few moments to load so we ask you to go through this step at least ten minutes before the start of the webinar.

4. To ask questions during the webinar, simply type them into the "Questions and Answers" box on the right-hand side of the webinar interface on your computer screen. If you cannot attend the online visual portion of the webinar, you can still listen in to the audio portion by calling in to 616.883.8055 and entering 426-588-202 as the code.

Questions? Please contact SAALT at saalt@saalt.org.