Drawing on her past experiences as an attorney and director at the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the Asian American Justice Center, Deepa Iyer outlines a bunch of ways to turn your passion into action—while also offering guidance on tending to your mental health and avoiding burnout.

These days, we seem to be on a perpetual roller-coaster ride. The political events and social crises happening around the world feel as though we are barely able to get our bearings before the ground underneath us shifts again. Activist and author Deepa Iyer shares a roadmap for maintaining your own effectiveness and well-being on your social-change journey.

The rise of political figures like Kamala Harris and Usha Vance is leading Indian Americans to have robust conversations about the role of accountable representation in political leadership. (Prism, August 2024)

“How can libraries be safe, brave spaces of inclusion at a time of rampant Islamophobia and xenophobia?” That was the main question posed by Deepa Iyer, senior fellow at the Center for Social Inclusion, a national policy strategy organization dedicated to addressing structural racism. (School Libraries Journal, July 2017)

Young people of color are disproportionately disciplined and singled out in America’s classrooms, and the American judicial system is turning a blind eye. Just consider the story of the Muslim boy who brought a homemade clock to school and was arrested over it. (CNN, March 2018)

President Trump’s speech to Congress on Tuesday began with references to the threats against Jewish community centers and last week’s violence targeting two Indian-American engineers in Olathe, Kansas, which is being investigated as a hate crime. (CNN, March 2017)

The images out of Ferguson, Missouri, these past two weeks have been shocking: tear gas blanketing suburban streets, law enforcement creating a war zone and defiant protesters braving it all. But it is important to remember that what started Ferguson’s fight is far too common: the police killing of an unarmed black teen. (The Nation, August 2014)

This past Friday, the Kansas US Attorney’s Office filed federal charges against three men who had been actively conspiring to bomb an apartment complex and mosque in Garden City, Kansas, where 120 Somali Muslim refugees live and worship. The men, who are members of an anti-government, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim group called The Crusaders, had planned to carry out their attacks on the day after the November election. (The Nation, October 2016)

In the decade following the September 11th attacks, I ran a national nonprofit organization that advocated for the rights of South Asians in the United States. Many of those early years are a blur. Looking back, I can see how our staff, board members, and volunteers were attempting to meet two nearly impossible objectives at once: responding to the backlash facing South Asian communities after 9/11 while simultaneously building the infrastructure and foundations of a new organization in the wake of a generational crisis. (Nonprofit Quarterly, October 2021)

As the 2012 presidential election approaches, it has been difficult for me to listen to the political scapegoating of Muslims and those perceived to be Muslims. A decade ago, as an attorney at the Department of Justice, I worked with colleagues in the civil rights division to address the unprecedented backlash in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. We investigated complaints of brutal hate crimes in neighborhoods, vandalism at places of worship, bullying at schools, and discrimination in the workplace aimed primarily at those who traced their origins to South Asia and the Middle East, or those who practiced Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism. (The New York Times, December 2011)