Two EL Activists Honored

The Lansing Area Peace Education Center (PEC) recognized the actions of East Lansing residents Chris Root and Thasin Sardar at its annual meeting in June. Sardar was honored with a Peacemaker of the Year Award while Root earned the PEC’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Sardar, a member of the PEC Board, the East Lansing Human Rights Commission, and often public-face of the Islamic Center of East Lansing, has worked to inform the public about human rights conditions the people of Gaza have experienced since the conflict with the Israeli government escalated in October 2023.

Terry Link, retired Michigan State University administrator, presented Sardar with his award.

“He led PEC’s efforts to get the city of East Lansing to join the Mayors for Peace effort to prohibit nuclear weapons,” Link said. “He organized the peace vigil to honor recent MSU Humphrey Fellow Tariq Thabet and 15 members of his family who were killed in Gaza in October during the Israeli invasion. 

“He organized and led the bus trip to Washington DC to protest against the war in Gaza. He organized multiple dialogues on the Israel-Palestine war with our U.S. Senators and Rep. Slotkin. He was key to [the] development, purchase and placement of billboards around the state calling for ceasefire.

“When and if I ever grow up” Link said, “I’d like to be more like Thasin.”

ELi spoke with Sardar after he was recognized. Born and raised in Chennai in eastern India, he has lived in East Lansing since 1996, working as an IT infrastructure architect.

“I feel blessed in many ways,” he said when asked about his devotion to peace and justice efforts. “I feel like giving back. That’s the main reason.

“Right here in East Lansing Lansing, I’ve been fortunate to be surrounded by people who are truly inspiring to me. When I got the call [about the award], I told them that I don’t feel right to be receiving this when there are many other people who’ve been doing this kind of service for so long.”

Sardar told ELi he first felt drawn to activism during the post-September 11 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“When negotiations could have resolved the issues,” he said, “the U.S. and its allies chose to invade. We saw how many have died since then. 

“I think in this day and age, nobody should accept war. Violence begets violence. Everyone should adopt a nonviolent attitude.“ 

In our conversation, Sardar frequently returns to his belief that because he has had success and happiness in his life, he feels the need to pay it forward.

“I am pretty much living the American dream,” he said. “I have all the comforts I need. So when I see suffering around the world, it really moves me. It disturbs me when I go to bed and see the amount of loss of life in the world. And the injustice that is both at home and abroad. I just can’t bear to see it. So I feel like I have to keep going. I also feel guilty, and accepted the award in that sense.”

Sardar is reluctant to speak about his own efforts, even saying he felt like a failure when the East Lansing City Council rejected a resolution calling for a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. 

Nevertheless, he feels optimistic when he looks at the generation coming up after him. 

“I sincerely hope,” he said. “And I have faith in the younger generation. If you take the police brutality, the social justice moments that stood up to police brutality [after the police murder of George Floyd]. As well as the recent conflict in Gaza. It’s the younger generation that is speaking truth to power. They are the ones who are pretty much on the forefront, at risk to their own academic careers and their potential future jobs. They are risking it all, I respect all of them. I applaud them for their passion.”

Root is the daughter of a former U.S. State Department employee. She primarily grew up in the  suburbs of Maryland, but spent stretches of her childhood in Denmark and Germany.

When Root’s father was stationed in Vietnam at the height of the Vietnam War, she remembers her house serving as a home base for her older siblings and their friends who were participating in an anti-war protest in Washington D.C.

“There was a big U-Haul truck of students that came to our house,” Root told ELi in an interview. “You’re not supposed to use it for transporting people, but those folks did. We had about 20 people at the house, sleeping on various floors and beds, coming for that demonstration while my dad was in Vietnam. And you know, my mom opened the house for that. She didn’t want me going to the demonstration, so she said I could make dinner for them when they got back.

“That was my role there,” she said, laughing while remembering.

Root said she entered political work when she was a student at Oberlin College.

“There was a very small student YWCA [Young Women’s Christian Association],” she said. “I began on the issue of institutional racism. The Y adopted a policy statement and they had one imperative, ‘to thrust our collective power towards the end of racism, wherever it exists, by any means necessary.’

“The way it expressed,” she continued, “demonstrated that this is a serious struggle. This is not something you pick up and then, at the next meeting, decide to take on some other issue. It was absolutely clear that this is something that takes enormous effort and a long commitment and a strong commitment.”

It was that commitment that led Root to get involved in the fight against apartheid in South Africa. She was introduced to Paulo Frieri’s legendary work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. She eventually got a job at the Washington Office on Africa supporting the fight against white-only rule in South Africa.

This was at a time – the 1980s – when the idea of divestment from South Africa was widespread but not particularly popular with President Ronald Reagan’s administration. 

“[They] didn’t want to hear it,” Root said.

When asked what advice she would give others who voice liberating, yet unpopular opinions, she was quick to respond.

“None of us has the responsibility to achieve a solution,” Root said. “To accomplish the end goal. The responsibility we have is to keep moving forward the best we can. Or to keep on struggling even if it’s not a moment of moving forward. You stay in the struggle and you learn from people before you and you engage with new people over time. You help other people. 

“The South African movement was a good example of that. I was starting [with the movement] in the early ‘70s. There was no indication whatsoever how minority rule would end or when. It was so entrenched and the U.S. and the U.K. gave so much support to the white government.”

Root relocated to East Lansing in the 1980s, working for the Michigan Legislature for a time, but didn’t become involved in city government until the formation of the East Lansing Independent Police Oversight Commission in 2022, after working on the study committee that the commission was born out of.

ELi posed the same question to Root that it had asked of Sardar: do you feel optimistic about the generations coming to power next?

“Absolutely,” she said. “Absolutely. Look at the climate justice movement. A group of children and teenagers just won a major court case in Hawaii to require that the state live up to its constitutional guarantee of a healthy climate. That’s quite extraordinary. 

“A strong component of young people is the campus activity,” she adds. “It takes, in some ways, a lot more courage to be part of that movement than it did to be part of the South African movement before. Nobody’s going to come up to a group doing an anti-apartheid action and say, ‘I support the white rulers of South Africa.’ But they’re standing up anyway.”