Sikhs save California city’s Fourth of July celebrations

Community raised $10,000 donation to help fund fireworks show

A local Sikh community stepped up to help a city in California afford this year’s Fourth of July fireworks.

Members of “We are Sikhs” campaign in Fresno are being credited with saving the fireworks show of the nearby city of Visalia on Tuesday after offering a $10,000 donation to help fund the celebration.

The executive director of the National Sikh Campaign, Gurwin Ahuja, described the holiday as the perfect opportunity for Americans of all faiths to come together as one. “To be honest with you, there’s no federal holiday or single holiday that includes the entire community like July 4 does,” he told Huffington Post on Thursday. In addition to helping carry out the beloved American tradition, Ahuja said it was an opportunity for Sikhs to educate the public about their religion, which focuses on equality and religious tolerance as its core values.

Speaking to NBC News, the mayor of the city, Warren Gubler, expressed gratitude to the campaign’s members. “Visalia [the city] considers this to be very generous and helpful. We appreciate their show of patriotic support, as one of our newer groups of American citizens,” he said.

The decision to help fund the fireworks, which also benefited a children’s charity, follows the Fresno [California] campaign’s launch last month. The campaign’s efforts include educational advertisements and community outreach in the area. “Sikh Americans have been a part of the fabric of the community of Fresno and every corner of the nation for over 115 years. We know that the United States is the greatest country on the earth and we are proud to call ourselves Americans,” Amritpal Singh of the We Are Sikhs Campaign said in a statement.

Ahuja also spoke openly about experience of discrimination and hate crimes, often because they wear traditional Sikh turbans. The religious headwear has led people to mistake them for Muslims who have faced severe discrimination in the US following the September 11 attack 16 years ago. He also stressed on the importance of the campaign’s outreach efforts to show Sikh support. “The turban is often perceived as anti-American or that someone who wears one is a terrorist,” Ahuja said. In Sikhism, wearing a turban is a symbol of the follower’s commitment to equality and religious tolerance. Someone wearing a turban means they are willing to put their life on the line “to commit to those values,” he said.

“We have positive energy here and I think that actually helping people to get excited about our booth and they want to see who are all these people wearing cultural clothes and turbans and having long flowing beards,” a local Sikh who helped put the booth together for Tuesday’s event told Your Central Valley.