MSNBC anchor and Citizen board member Ali Velshi’s new book, Small Acts of Courage: A Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy, is a memoir of his family’s migration from India to South Africa to Kenya to Canada, and his own evolution as an American citizen. But at heart, it is a book about the ideas that animate Velshi every week on TV — democracy, and the rights and privileges that go along with that.
“The world feels overwhelming,” Velshi told 200 people Tuesday night at a launch party for his book. “It feels like a world where there are problems we cannot solve. But there’s always something we can do. We have agency.”
Velshi started the conversation with Citizen Co-executive Editor Roxanne Patel Shepelavy by reading a passage about his father’s unsuccessful first run for elected office in Ontario, Canada. His dad ran only a few years after their family immigrated from Kenya via South Africa, where apartheid denied his parents the right to vote. As an 11-year-old, Velshi couldn’t understand why his father was so “at ease” with his loss. But Murad Velshi knew something his son didn’t: That the freedom to run for office as an immigrant of Indian origin was itself a victory.
“Cynicism about politics is actually a luxury of those who have never had to experience life without it, and if those people ever truly lost their ability to participate in the system they’d never take that for granted again,” Velshi read. Later, he noted what is on the horizon: Elections in India, Hungary, Turkey and the United States this year, in which citizens may very well vote to dismantle their democracies.
Velshi, as he does in the book, recounted to the audience his great-grandfather’s friendship with Mahatma Gandhi; Canada’s “pragmatically compassionate” policy toward immigrants — and why newcomers led to the country’s growth and strength; his dangerous encounter with Minneapolis police during the protests following George Floyd’s murder; and why it’s the little things — like his sister’s years of civil service — that can make a difference in the lives of individual citizens and democracy writ large.
“Small acts,” he said, “cost you something. They’re not easy.” But they are the building blocks of citizenship.
Watch the conversation below.
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Ali Velshi signs copies of his new book. Photo by Germal Pleasant.