Desi Rainbow Parents & Allies

About the Organization:

Desi Rainbow Parents & Allies seeks to build a community where diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity are valued, affirmed and celebrated by all.

The Issue:

A recent survey of AAPI youth (The Mental Health and Well-Being of AAPI LGBTQ Youth at The Trevor Project) found that 45% of AAPI LGBTQ youth said they seriously considered suicide in the last year (including 53% of those who are transgender or nonbinary) and 14% reported they had carried out a suicide attempt. It also found that LGBTQ youth who felt strong affirmation from their families reported attempting suicide at less than half the rate of those who lacked social support. The data points to distinct protective factors to support wellbeing and preventing suicide. One is a strong connection to cultural and ethnic background, and the other is accepting parents and family. AAPI LGBTQ youth who have supportive family and friends and access to LGBTQ-affirming spaces reported lower rates of attempting suicide.

The diasporic Desi (South Asian) community is mired in misinformation, fear and bias about LGBTQ+ identity due to a variety of cultural issues (colonization and subsequent institutionalization of homophobia and transphobia in countries of origin is a big one!) and lack of information. Queer/trans children and adults are suffering, and their parents and families are misinformed, angry and fearful, as well as targets of shaming and silencing by extended family and community.

The Solution:

Our work is based on the premise that culturally sensitive interventions at the family and community level have a huge impact on parent/family acceptance of LGBTQ+ children and adults, creating healing and affirming spaces for inter generational communication, reducing mental health disorders and the risk of suicide.

We recruit and train a multigenerational group of parents, allies and LGBTQ people to offer support, education and advocacy, almost all of it virtually. Offering a safe space for parents to meet and learn creates peer-to-peer support and changes hearts and minds. Desi Rainbow harnesses the strength of family allies by training them to support LGBTQ Desis who are struggling with rejection by family and community. Our affirming community is multigenerational and based on values of familial connection and shared culture. Cisgender, straight parents benefit from connecting with others like them who have learned how to accept their own children. LGBTQ people benefit from building a chosen family of affirming elders who validate their identity and worth.

Our Programs include:

Monthly Peer-to-Peer Support Groups for LGBTQ+ Folks and families, facilitated by community members/peers, with a focus on mental health and wellness.
Saathi: Individual, multilingual, peer support for community members – LGBTQ+ people and parents trained to offer emotional support and referrals through phone and video calls.
A text based support group for parents
Proud Possibilities: A spring/fall series of interviews with LGBTQ+ and allied “Possibility Models” with the purpose of demonstrating to the larger Desi community the wide range of lived possibilities that their LGBTQ+ children can aspire to.
Storytime: A spring/fall series of book readings featuring affirming childrens books read by LGBTQ+ folks and allies, with the goal of making the diversity and beauty of sexual orientation and gender identity visible to children and their families.
Our Stories: Short films featuring parents telling their stories
Faith & Family: Affirming, LGBTQ+ centering celebrations of festivals such as Buddha Jayanti, Eid, Gurpurab, Dussehra and Christmas.
Breaking the Silence: Allyship workshops for organizations and businesses

Manisha G. Bewtra, AICP

Planning, Mobility, and Development Advisor to Tucson Mayor Regina Romero

Manisha Bewtra, AICP (she/her) is Mayor Romero’s Planning, Mobility, and Development Advisor. In this role, she leverages her passion for planning for thriving, healthy, and inclusive communities with her love for policy-making and politics as the Mayor’s liaison on transportation and land use issues. Manisha is an experienced public process facilitator and project manager and works collaboratively with the Mayor’s team and city departments to apply an equity lens to all city initiatives.
Manisha has built her career on bringing divergent perspectives together, facilitating conversations around change, and generating data-informed solutions that move communities forward. She is driven by public service and champions equitable policies and inclusive community engagement.
Prior to her current role, she worked at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council in Boston as a senior regional planner and the manager of the analytics team, at the Massachusetts Housing Partnership where she was a statewide technical assistance provider, as an adjunct city planning instructor for Master’s degree program courses at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and at Arizona State University, and in municipal government and nonprofit community development organizations in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Chandler, Arizona.
Manisha has served on various equity-focused organizations and committees and is a graduate of Emerge Massachusetts, the Initiative for Diversity in Civic Leadership, and the Massachusetts Commonwealth Seminar, three organizations dedicated to training underrepresented groups to influence public policy and to run for office. She has a Master of City Planning degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a BA in Economics and Art from The University of Iowa, and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. She currently serves as a member at large for the American Planning Association Arizona Southern Section and is a member of the executive team for the Asian American and Political Islander Caucus for the Arizona Democratic Party.
Before moving to Tucson in the summer of 2020, she lived in the Boston area for twelve years. During her years in Melrose, Massachusetts, she served as a Human Rights Commissioner and subsequently as a City Councilor. When elected to the Melrose City Council, she became the first person of color ever to serve in elected office in Melrose. She grew up in Iowa and identifies as Desi/Indian-American. She, her husband, and her son felt welcomed and right at home in Tucson when they moved here – even in spite of a pandemic and searing summer heat.

Arnie Saiki

research, writer, program director

Broadly focusing on regional economic and geopolitical themes in the Asia and Pacific regions, Arnie Saiki is currently leading a working group on data, statistics and valuation in the Pacific. His book “Economic and Ecological Accounting: Towards Intemerate Values,” was published last year by the Pacific Conference of Churches, the Pacific Theological College and the University of the South Pacific.

Since the publication, this campaign has been introduced to the Ecological and Economic Justice program at the World Council of Churches and he is participating in a G8 Interfaith forum for the inclusion of Wellbeing indicators into our economic accounts.

While national statistics and ecological accounting normally fall under the purview of government, academic or international institutions, Arnie has been campaigning in democratizing our ecological data, seeking support for a proof-of-concept accounting program that would enable poor, impacted, and indigenous peoples to actively participate in how we account for our socio and economic biodiversity. Intemerate Accounting is an equation that helps to correct accounting disparities that have, to a large extent, excluded the Global South. Revising our accounting system can provide access and opportunities that cross wide campaign sectors, bringing hope, action and efficacy to reverse climate change, restore our ecological biodiversity, and redistribute global wealth more equitably.

Arnie has been actively promoting and working on global justice campaigns since 2007 when he received a “We the People” grant from the Hawai’i Council of the Humanities for his work on Hawai’i Statehood. He has organized conferences with Hawaiian national independence groups, managed the Save Rapanui campaign after the Chilean military forced a lockdown of Easter Islanders. Arnie spoke at the World Bank representing the Pacific Island Forum, and participated in discussions around regionalism in the Pacific. He was recently appointed the US-Pacific Diplomacy and Solidarity Mission for the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), and is on the management team of the Deep Seabed Mining Campaign.

In 2011, Arnie received the blessing from Dr. Kekuni Blaisdell to organize a counter-conference in Honolulu while APEC was there and coordinated the Moana Nui conferences, an international partnership between the International Forum on Globalization and Pua Mohala I Ka Po. For the last ten years he has been campaigning on issues around trade, development, ecological resources, indigenous issues and militarization in the Pacific.

His essays, “TPP at the End of the Line: a briefing on economic cooperation and capacity building” was published in American Quarterly by John Hopkins University Press, and “Manifesting the Liquid Continent,” was published by Yunnan National University, as part of the 1st International conference on Asia and Pacific Ethnology and Anthropology.