Source: Counterpunch
Yesterday morning the orgies of the lone gunman took hold in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a town in the dragnet of Milwaukee. He targeted a Gurdwara, the religious home of the local Sikh community. The gunman entered the Gurdwara, and as if in mimicry of the school shootings, stalked the worshippers in the halls of the 17,000 square foot “Sikh Temple of Wisconsin.” Police engaged the gunman, who wounded at least one officer. The gunman killed at least seven Sikhs, wounding many more. He was then killed. A few hours after the shooting Ven Boba Ri, a committee member of the Gurdwara told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, “It’s pretty much a hate crime. It’s not an insider.”
The local police smartly said that this is an act of domestic terrorism. The FBI concurred.
This is the not the first act of violence against Sikhs in the United States.
That story begins in the 19th century, when Sikhs migrated to the US, fleeing British colonialism for far-flung pastures. Many landed along the western coast of the United States, working alongside Japanese, Mexican and Filipino workers to make California into a fruit-producer and Oregon and Washington into major lumber producers. But they were not welcomed. Riots in Bellingham, Washington (1907) and Live Oak, California (1908) targeted the “rag heads,” the turban-wearing Sikhs. The mob “stormed makeshift Indian residences, stoned Indian workers and successfully orchestrated the non-involvement of local police.” The Bellingham Morning Reveille ran a drawing of a “Sikh” man with the caption, “This is the type of man driven from this city as the result of last night’s demonstration by a mob of 500 men and boys.” It was a mark of pride to have cleansed the city of the Sikhs.
The Sikhs didn’t take this lying down. A decade later, one Sikh man bragged, “I used to go to Maryville every Saturday. One day a ghora [white man] came out of a bar and motioned to me, saying, ‘Come here, slave!’ I said I was no slave man. He told me that his race ruled India and I hit him and got away fast.”