On Cleveland, catching voters, the countdown, and cool reads

Welcome to Export Quality, your home for news by and about South Asian Americans and Canadians

For those of you who are new here, check out my intro issue! And a big thank you to all my subscribers! We’re almost at 200 and while that is a drop in the bucket compared to a lot of the Substack elite, I’m thrilled we’re here together. Also, I just learned how to put gifs in here and I won’t apologize in advance for how much fun we’re going to have with them.

Hello friends, it’s been a while since my last issue since the rush of elections reporting and related work took up much of the last month. Going forward, you can expect to hear from me a lot more often but I’ll compensate for that with snacks recommendations (this week: anything from Khushbu Shah’s Amrikan. Such a fun cookbook!), maybe some original reporting, and my extensive thoughts on an incredibly niche pop culture topic you never knew you needed to hear so much about.

As far as what’s been keeping me away from this newsletter, I’ve done a bunch of elections-related panels, reported some stories, and been on somewhat of a dreaded job hunt since I don’t want to keep freelancing full-time anymore.

Up first was an explainer for Refinery29’s elections information project for people who haven’t been driven to binge junk food and nerd out on Steve Kornacki segments on MSNBC (and/or SNL alum Leslie Jones’ videos talking about her love for Steve Kornacki), aka normal people who also care about their futures. While it isn’t the detailed kind of story I normally write or edit, that was refreshing - and that’s what a lot of Get Out the Vote efforts and campaigning actually is in America: informing new voters and hearing from people who care about specific issues but aren’t steeped in the drama of Beltway politics.

To be honest, I always liked being a reporter who covered politics from outside of Washington because I didn’t have to be so wedded to the process or insider baseball of it all. But like Sister Michael enjoys a good statue, I enjoy a good West Wing-level scene.

At the Asian American Journalist Association conference in Texas a few months ago not only was the idea of this newsletter given some much-needed encouragement, but I moderated a panel on South Asian voters in Texas with former two-time Congressional candidate from Houston Sri Kulkarni, Texas Tribune reporter Sneha Dey, and former Dallas Morning News/current The Oregonian reporter Zaeem Shaikh. Thanks to groups like APIA Vote, we have a great picture of the AAPI vote in Texas and other states and we know the majority of AAPI voters in the state are South Asian. Sri spoke about his in-language outreach efforts during his campaigns and the challenges he faced with how people perceived politics and elected officials in their home countries; Zaeem discussed how Gaza is an incredibly important issue to Muslim South Asian voters in particular; and Sneha talked about how, at the end of the day, South Asian voters in Texas are not single issue voters - they care about education, healthcare, and the economy like so many others but that our culture still plays a part in what we care about.

Speaking of AAPI voters, did you know that of all the demographics Asian Americans are the group with the largest number of new registered voters? One of the reasons why the Harris campaign has been all over Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Georgia - Asian voters in those states actually have a chance to make a big difference those states.

Next up for me was a panel on the elections for the South Asian Journalist Association conference, which marked the organization’s 30th anniversary! Congrats to co-founder and current president Sree Sreenivasan for returning to the club to put on a great event and to the rest of the Board for their efforts. It’s not easy operating a small, volunteer membership organization in a field like ours but SAJA has become more diverse, inclusive, and grown in size and influence over the years as our communities have done the same in the U.S. and Canada. (Note: I’ve been on the Board for five years and was president last year)

Prachi Gupta spoke about reaching a new, younger audience with our politics coverage this cycle and how engaged millennial and Gen Z women have always been; Deepa Shivaram of NPR discussed the latest on the campaign trail as she follows VP Harris all over; and Shanelle Kaul of CBS talked about her experience doing a piece on South Asian voters in North Carolina. Overall our impressions as South Asian women covering a South Asian woman running for president were that we still keep the VP accountable, we push for stories about South Asian voters because we care about them, and we truly have no idea how this election is going to shake out.

Live shot of all of us trying to make it to when the election is called:

And finally, I reported on what I think is a really interesting story for The Nation. If you didn’t know, I spent a good part of my childhood in Cleveland, a place I still consider ‘home’ though my parents don’t live there at the moment. I have been wanting to report something about northeast Ohio all election season and I finally got the chance to about a massive, uniquely American problem: medical debt.

The topic caught my attention when Harris announced her economic plan, which included a pledge to forgive medical debt totaling $220 billion across the U.S. This is also only counting debt in collections with third parties, and also doesn’t include debt patients have paid off using credit cards or through informal loans from family and friends. Ohio, which ranks 44 out of 50 in “health value,” bears a good portion of that debt.

Hearing stories from insured people who are still drowning in compounded interest and health issues was infuriating, to say the least. As someone who has spent an inordinate amount of my life in hospitals for family and friends, I have an intimate understanding of that’s like from the non-patient side. Why do people with terminal illnesses or chronic conditions have to become more unhealthy with the stress of financial strain? Aren’t we - as a country, as a society - better than that?

On a lighter note, and as long as we’re talking about The Cleve:

I will always be a New York or Nowhere kind of girl. While Northeast Ohio is a special place, I was a New Yorker first; a Queens girl in part of my core with frequent trips back after we moved. BUT I will never, ever, ever root for the Yankees. Ever. When it comes to sports teams its #ALLIn216 #ForTheLand, win or (repeatedly) lose. It’s a calling and there’s nothing you can do about it. Our beloved Guardians lost to the striped ones recently and dashed our hopes at a World Series - but at least our team doesn’t have to take the advice of George Costanza and wear dusty turtlenecks.

That’s all from me, now on to our South Asian journo crew and the great work they’ve been doing plus some other must-read about us:

I’m a huge fangirl of local coverage of local ballot initiatives and this one from friend Bhaamati Borkhetaria is a really interesting one about the psychedelics debate, a psychiatrist, a Navy vet with personal experience, and a Massachusetts ballot initiative for Commonwealth Beacon.

Nushrat Rahman (who is my lovely mentee through the National Press Foundation’s Widening the Pipeline Fellowship!) has been doing some great coverage on the economic mobility beat in Detroit. One of her latest stories for Detroit Free Press: Mayor Duggan, council members pitch new plan to finance affordable housing

Hanaa’ Tameez wrote about a visual investigation to show the devastation in Gaza for Nieman Lab.

Divya Karthikeyan (a fellow SAJA Board member!) reported on the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, which boasts Harris as a member, urging west Louisville voters to show up at the ballot box for Louisville Public Media.

Head over to The 19th to check out Jasmine Mithani’s data and visuals-driven reporting on how Harris leads among Asian American voters and how Black women and Latinas are driving the edge Harris has over Trump on addressing inflation

Analyst News has been doing some great journalism, rejecting the frenzied pace of newsrooms driven by pageviews, covering international news. Definitely give them a read and follow!

Deepa Shivaram got the assignment we all wanted - covering the confluence of two great powers: KHive and BeyHive for NPR. She also reported on the Trump and Harris campaigns paying attention to Texas, where things may be shifting as Senate candidate Colin Allred makes strides against Senator Ted Cruz and AAPI voters are a growing force.

Manu Raju reported for CNN about one-time GOP critic found alliance with Trump in pivotal Michigan Senate race.

For The New York Times, Mihir Zaveri (also a fellow SAJA Board member!) reported about a beloved NYC place, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and its battle against real estate developers.

For History.com, Lakshmi Gandhi wrote a great piece on who really invented Monopoly (spoiler: not a man) and why it wasn’t meant to be a celebration of capitalism.

Rya Jetha reported a fascinating story about Salesforce Tower and secret club of “geniuses” who want to solve humanity’s most intractable problems, for The San Francisco Standard.

Listen to WNYC’s Arun Venugopal about our city’s migrant ‘crisis’ and the criticism of how the city government handled it.

Anuj Chopra is on the disinformation beat for Agence France-Presse and has been reporting on a number of important stories, his latest is about how election misinformation is being masked as ‘breaking news’

Rishi Iyengar reports for Foreign Policy about National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s closing argument on Biden’s global economic agenda.

Canada and India have been at odds of late, kicking each others diplomats out. Take a look at Jennifer Chowdhury’s take on it for her Port of Entry newsletter.

Amna Nawaz for PBS News Hour spoke to Yulia Navalnaya on why she and her husband, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, returned to Russia even after he nearly died in a poison attack by Russian agents, and why she’s certain Vladimir Putin had Alexei killed in prison. It’s really worth the watch!

Listen to Asma Khalid for NPR on grassroots organizers in Georgia say voting for Harris is 'harm mitigation'

Punjabi Residents in Fresno Find a Lifeline in a Community-Led Health Program - California Health Report

There are lots more stories to share so stay tuned for the next issue!