Phagwah Social Justice Collective
In 2019, the Caribbean Equality Project founded the "Phagwah Social Justice Collective," a coalition of progressive community-based social, gender, and LGBTQ+ rights organizations and faith-based institutions. The collective marched in the 31st Annual Phagwah Parade in Richmond Hill, Queens, to continue advocating for an equitable Caribbean enclave inclusive of LGBTQ+ and women's rights, immigrant justice, the ending of gender-based violence, trans justice, and to raise awareness of hate crimes and housing discrimination within the Indo-Caribbean and South Asian communities.
In 2020, the Phagwah Social Justice Collective comprised the Caribbean Equality Project, Sadhana: Coalition of Progressive Hindus, Jahajee Sisters: Empowering Indo-Caribbean Women, Chhaya Community Development Corporation, The Shakti Mission, and the Indo-Caribbean Alliance, all South Queens-based community organizations. Annually, the collective is supported by the NYC Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, the NYC Commission On Human Rights, and the Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit.
The mission of the Phagwah Social Justice Collective is to facilitate a progressive shift in the cultural landscape of South Queens' Indo-Caribbean and South Asian community around a number of issues affecting the most marginalized voices throughout New York City. Among the multiple-intersectional objectives of the collective are the resisting of systemic gender and sexual violence, the rejection of anti-immigrant narratives, the destigmatization of LGBTQIA+ community members, and the co-creation of a more equitable society at the neighborhood level. For the second consecutive year of the Phagwah Parade, the constituent organizations of this social justice coalition will focus on providing visibility to the community's resistance to sexual abuse, LGBTQIA-related phobias, patriarchy, housing discrimination, and other oppressive forces. The parade has been a pivotal opportunity to share our unifying solidarity message with the people most impacted by these forces and those responsible for perpetuating them.
Caribbean Equality Project's Early Involvement in the Phagwah Parade
In 2016, CEP made history as the first Caribbean-oriented LGBTQ organization to march and wave the rainbow flag in the 28th Annual Phagwah Parade to uplift the intersectional identities and voices of the diverse LGBTQ Hindu population in NYC. After years of petitioning by immigrant rights activist Mohamed Q. Amin and queer Hindu organizer Krishna Ramsarran, this was a significant win for the Caribbean Equality Project and the community it serves in NYC. For the first time in the parade's history, an LGBTQ+ organization was granted approval from the parade's organizers to participate in this religious and cultural community event.
With great enthusiasm and pride, CEP was joined by its supporters, community partners, and allies in celebration of this historic moment for the Caribbean LGBTQ Hindu community in NYC.
In 2019, CEP founded the "Phagwah Social Justice Collective," a coalition of community-based social, gender, and LGBTQ rights organizations and progressive faith-based institutions. The collective marched in the 31st Annual Phagwah Parade in Richmond Hill, Queens, to continue advocating for an equitable Caribbean enclave inclusive of LGBTQ+ and women's rights, immigrant justice, the ending of gender-based violence, trans justice, and to raise awareness of housing discrimination within the Indo-Caribbean and South Asian communities.
When the local social justice organizers of South Queens created the Phagwah Social Justice collective, we were responding to increasingly salient community issues that could only be solved through coalition building. Protecting the most vulnerable people in the neighborhood took on an urgency that attracted a broad coalition of supporters. The story of the triumph of light over dark, even in the most dubious of circumstances, resonates with how the collective organizations engage historical and emerging social challenges and inspires them to make this work sustained and incisive.
This festival is a celebration of unity, renewal, forgiveness, and new beginnings. Phagwah signifies the coming of spring, the joy of friendship, and equality for all. The colored powders used in the Phagwah "Holi" celebration represent love, happiness, and the freedom to live vibrantly, which are all principles shared and promoted by the Caribbean Equality Project, and fellow coalition members: Sadhana: Coalition of Progressive Hindus, Jahajee Sisters: Empowering Indo-Caribbean Women, Chhaya Community Development Corporation, the Shakti Mission, and the Indo-Caribbean Alliance. The abrac (Colored Powder) colors are reminiscent of the rainbow flag, which represents life, healing, sunlight, nature, harmony, and spirit. Essentially, it is our perception that this festival is the most appropriate opportunity to publicly stand up for the most marginalized members of our community and create a platform for the oppressed to heal and find unity.
The History and Meaning of Phagwah
Phagwah, or Holi, is the Hindu celebration of the new year observed every spring on the Sunday after the first full moon of the Hindu calendar. For thousands of years in India, Hindus have celebrated Holi as the victory of good over evil and the renewal of the agricultural seasons.
Indians who were taken to the Caribbean as indentured laborers in the 19th century and early 20th century brought the tradition of celebrating Holi to Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica, where it became more commonly referred to as Phagwah. In Guyana and Suriname, Phagwah ultimately became an important national holiday.
Since the 1970s, many Guyanese have emigrated to the United States, specifically to Richmond Hill, Queens, Castle Hill, Bronx, and East New York, Brooklyn, who brought the Phagwah tradition to the greater New York area. The Phagwah parade started in 1990, and Richmond Hill's annual celebration of the festival is now the largest of such celebrations in North America. With over 1,000+ marchers and attracting between 8,000 and 10,000 spectators, this prominent community parade continues to celebrate culture, history, and religion with floats that carry beauty pageant winners, local business owners vending along the route, and religious and political leaders leading contingents down Liberty Avenue before the procession concludes at Smokey Oval Park with cultural program.
Social Injustice in South Queens
Like many other cultural traditions worldwide, the Caribbean has a long and well-documented history of society-wide anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiments, chiefly influenced by the coercive, dominionist rule of Christian colonial powers. These sentiments have manifested in criminalization, religious stigmatization, and deadly interpersonal violence. As the Caribbean remains a very religious region, these biases persist to this day, evidenced by strong contemporary movements by the Christian church, leaders in the Islamic community, and by Hindu leadership against not just legal protections for LGBTQIA+ individuals but also against their very existence. Naturally, these attitudes have managed to become entrenched in the Greater New York City area as well, with the migration of tens of thousands of individuals of all faiths from the Caribbean that have settled here. Religious Hindu and Muslim individuals and non-religious individuals alike continue to demonstrate animus towards the increasingly visible presence of queer+ and gender non-conforming members of the neighborhood in the form of covert and overt hate speech and violence. In particular, religious hate speech and violence against gay men and binary trans individuals in the community have pushed many LGBTQIA+ South Queens residents to feel displaced from their home community.
Further, throughout 2015, 2017, and ahead of the 2019 Phagwah Parade, local mandirs were at the center of several scandals alleging systemic sexual abuse and related cover-ups by religious authorities. The impact of these stories making city-wide mainstream news on locals of the South Queens area was a call to action to reckon with the scope of sexual abuse of young women in the community by men who hold various levels of power in all religious institutions, community, and cultural groups and families. Attempts to silence advocates for the survivors who had come forward brought into sharp relief the need to dismantle the social mechanisms that left young women unprotected in the presence of these individuals in the community.
The Trump administration's changes to the enforcement of immigration policy and the role that local law enforcement agencies played in causing measurable harm to immigrant communities of color, such as Richmond Hill, also began to play a role in the social justice realities of the area around the same time.
To march with our social justice contingent or learn more about the Phagwah Parade, email us at info@CaribbeanEqualityProject.org or phone us at (347) 709-3179.
To learn more about the Caribbean Equality Project & for regular updates on our work, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram at @CaribbeanEqualityProject and Twitter @CaribEquality.