← This Is Actually Happening
Loading summary
Transcript60 lines
- [00:00]
Whit Misseldine
This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services.
- [00:17]
Narrator/Producer
Hi listeners. Today's episode features Pardeep Singh Kalika, who lost his father during a mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012. Today's episode was produced in collaboration with Pauline Bartalone and was funded in part by UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science center as part of its Spreading Love through the Media initiative supported by the John Templeton Foundation. And now for today's episode. What if you forgave the neo Nazi who killed your father?
- [00:50]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
What people want are explanations, but what I got was so much deeper than an explanation. I got the experience of empathy.
- [01:07]
Whit Misseldine
From Wondery. I'm Whit Misseldine. You are listening to this Is actually Happening.
- [01:17]
Narrator/Producer
Episode 391. What if you forgave the neo Nazi.
- [01:23]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
Who killed your father? When my parents met, 1970s, arranged marriages were very much the typical way that Desies would marry. And so the first time that they actually met was when they were married. It was very typical to not really think about individualism and what your happiness may look like, but what would the family's happiness look like shortly after they were married. Both my mother and father were farmers. My grandparents, great grandparents. Almost all of the lineage that comes from Punjabi families is either formed from military agriculture or the mix thereof. So it was very typical for a Punjabi household in the 70s to be in Punjab and to have a what's known as a city house and have a farmhouse. And so I kind of was born on a farm in rural Punjab. My dad, he loved the farm. He loved farming. It was in his blood. He was a deeply religious, devout Sikh. There's sort of a history that goes back to devout Sikhs really being in love with their land and farming itself. And so he spent more time on the farm and my mom spent a little bit more time in our city house. That was my life, just going back and forth. Sikhism was formed in Punjab, sort of the northeastern portion of India, about 500 years ago, really around this call for equality, this call for social justice, this call for oneness, this call for the dignity of all people universally. We believe that God is not just outside of us, but also it's the light that we all have, it's the divinity that we all have. The best person that you agree with has that divinity, and the worst person you disagree with also has the divinity. About five years old, we started to hear about America and this, the promise that America had. We had some family members who had migrated from Punjab to America already. They were working professionals and they spoke about this place, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Yah. You could move there and you could really sustain a life and that life would be more profitable, it would be a little easier on you. It's really difficult to farm. And so I think the promise of that really piqued the interest of my mom. So in 1982 we migrated and we came to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Both of them didn't have the credentials that other people had. Very limited English, very limited cultural knowledge of what the expectations to be Americans were. You know, I go back and I just think about all of the courage that they must have had just to get here. When we came over to America, it was me, my mom, my dad and my younger brother, who was four years old at the time. When we arrived, there's maybe only about 5, 6 Punjab families. So there was not much of a community at all for us to come to. When we came over to America, assimilation was the main focus, the driver, you know, assimilate to the culture, the dress, the food, everything. This was 1980s Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a thriving hub of manufacturing at that time. My mom had a little bit of easier time to find some manufacturing work. My father, as he tried to gain employment, a turban wearing, sick who didn't speak English well. He was a little bit older than my mother, so he was able to secure employment at a gas station. My brother and I spent a lot of time together, just kind of raising each other. Other folks, aunties, neighbors, just kind of looking out for us. And I felt like by the time I was 7, 8 years old and had to really watch out for my younger brother, I felt like I was kind of acting as a grownup. So my nickname growing up was Mama. So even all of my friends used to call me Mama. You know, it's a nod into the fact that I was definitely a mama's boy. But in a way, you know, you just had to try to be a parent early on as well. When we first arrived, we saw the manufacturing industry start to move overseas. And when those jobs left Milwaukee, that left space for more of an illegal economy, more of a desperation economy. Where we saw the neighborhood starting to deteriorate. Especially impacted was a black and Latino community. And so some of my friends that I was growing up with were suffering through separation of families, incarceration of their fathers. But at some point, this employment exodus just continued to grow to the point that the city of Milwaukee just really, really suffered holistically we first moved into an apartment on the north side of Milwaukee. Then we moved around. We were doing this sort of what I call the immigrant shuffle, Trying to find the best neighborhood to be able to raise our family in. At some point, they made the decision to move out to the suburbs to try to escape the city. By the time that I was a teenager, we found a house on the south side of Milwaukee, and that was the first house that we owned. It was nice to know that we were anchored to a place. Right across the street was this baseball park. And really my childhood was spent playing baseball, playing basketball, playing, playing football. If it had a ball, I was out there doing it. But why that meant a lot to me was here was this kid named Pardeep Kalika. In a time when people know they don't know anything about six and I'm on the south side of Milwaukee, traditionally a German and Polish environment, this gave me a way to say, hey, you know what? My life is valuable too. My life matters. I matter. I can play this game that cuts across all of these differences. You know, if you could throw a baseball, people learned your name really, really quick. But with that said, while I found some acceptance because of sports, there was still this disconnect. There was this. I lived this life at home, then I lived this life at school. I never, ever felt enough of anything. I grew up in a neighborhood that was largely German Polish. So I wasn't white enough to be white. I had friends who were brown and black, but I knew that I wasn't brown and black enough to call myself Latino, nor black. I knew I wasn't American enough to call myself American. And in a strange kind of way, I wasn't even Indian enough or Sikh enough or Punjabi enough to call myself those things. There's so many people that I've run into, and they say the same thing, like, I don't feel enough. But not being enough of those things allowed me to be Pardeep and what who Pardeep was going to be. And so I say to those folks who don't feel like they're enough of something, it almost feels like you had this imposter syndrome with life or with a country or with a nationality or with a religion, any marker of identity. But the truth is that you're not those identities in first. In the first place, you're actually more than that. I still think there's a part of me that still doesn't feel enough of something, but now I understand it to be more of a gift than I did When I was younger, as a Sikh community in Wisconsin started to grow, we had a small place of worship. And my father started to see that Oak Creek, because of the reasonability of living, was going to be able to attract more bases, more Sikhs, but Punjabis.
- [09:49]
Arnold Michaelis
Where the Sikh temple stands today in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, that site was established in 1997. My father was the temple president, and he was instrumental in moving the temple.
- [10:00]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
To the south side, to Oak Creek. The typical role of a president is basically a peacemaker, a mediator, someone who tries to find a way forward for the congregation, the community. What was typical for him was, yeah, somebody's not getting along with somebody else, somebody's marriage is collapsing, somebody's business is not doing well. Part of what he wanted to do was to create a safe place that other Sikhs could come to. And so his founding of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin was to give people that reprieve. When you do that, you often sacrifice some of your family time because you're trying so hard to be there for everybody else. And so both my mom and dad, they're amazing community members. They're well respected by the entire Sikh Punjabi community.
- [10:54]
Arnold Michaelis
I would say that a lot of.
- [10:56]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
My childhood was them working, them being at the Gurdwara. I don't mean to say that they were neglectful nor not around, but, you know, I played baseball, I played football in high school, I played basketball in high school. They were able to make one game. They had a lot of pressure, a lot of responsibility. My father, from the time that I can remember him, his nickname was Gyani. So Gyani is sort of teacher. If somebody was going through some difficulties, let's say, at their business, he would show up there and help them lay a floor tile, drywall, whatever needed to get done. He was very, very blue collar, drove a pickup truck. Then they nicknamed him Sam. You know, his name was Satan Singh, but Sam was easier to pronounce. And I think that's. That's how people knew him. Again, here. Here is this person who's wearing a turban. You see that he's not scared to get his hands dirty. And he leads by example. When I go back and I, and I talk about just growing up as a boy who didn't feel like he was enough of anything to call himself anything, I felt like the world was just a big place, overwhelming. And with that said, you feel like you have a lack of power. And that lack of power really drove me. And I think it drives a lot of young men where they don't feel empowered or they want to have power. And sometimes we go about it in healthy ways of gaining that power. And some boys, young men, go about it in very unhealthy ways. And I think that was my lure into policing.
- [12:40]
Arnold Michaelis
I became a cop when I was about 24 years old, really right in the aftermath of 9 11. So the sentiment around policing at that time, law enforcement, first responders, was one of valor.
- [12:56]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
I saw the good, I saw the bad, I saw the unfairness, I saw the cruelty, I saw the injustice. And I think I wanted to become a weapon for the good. And maybe I thought of it as just that simple. The world is full of good people. The world is full of bad people. And if you can become a good person, then maybe somehow, some way you can protect those other good people from the bad people by locking them up. As I went into policing, you discover that the world is just not that simple. And it's not that black and white. It's not just a simple dichotomy. And there's a lot of complications with the gray. As I navigated my career, lots of folks asked me why I got out of policing. The simple answer is that there was too much gray for me personally to navigate. And I thought that I could be a better use as a teacher, as an educator. And so after I was done policing, I started to teach in the same neighborhood that I was once policing in, and that was the inner city of Milwaukee. I went back and got my degree and started teaching at a place called Nova. I was working with at risk high school youth. I think there was a part of me that was like, okay, I can be of service and give back to the world. I would like to think of it as a healthy savior complex.
- [14:20]
Arnold Michaelis
So my wife and I, we were married in 2001.
- [14:23]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
I was already a police officer.
- [14:26]
Arnold Michaelis
We had a very, very humble duplex. And then shortly after that, my daughter.
- [14:31]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
Would come into our life about two years later.
- [14:34]
Arnold Michaelis
And then our family kind of expanded.
- [14:36]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
I have four beautiful children. Our life on August 5, 2012 was your typical middle class lifestyle. I was enjoying summer vacation before I went back to teaching. That September, for all intents and purposes, everything was working out. We had a four year old and a six year old. We had two kids. They were doing well, they were healthy. We lived in a suburb called Greenfield. At that time in 2012, it felt that we had achieved the middle class dream. And I was kind of basking in that. That morning of August 5th, we got up early. I was going to take my kids to Sunday school. My wife, she was off to work, she had a business trip. And as soon as the got up, there were some difficulties getting my daughter ready. I noticed I was growing in frustration with her. She has got a little bit of ocd, so she couldn't get her socks on the right way. And my son is very militant, so he can get ready in like two minutes flat and be out the door. So I was really happy with him because he doesn't care what his clothes look like. And my daughter's kind of stalling. We get out of the house eventually and, and we get down the street, we get on the freeway, and as we start to get on the freeway, she looks up at me and mind you, I'm already frustrated because she's taken so long to get dressed. And she tells me that she forgot a notebook at the house. And so I'm looking at her and trying to weigh this decision of do we just keep going forward or do I turn around and go get this notebook? My wife is not with me, so I didn't want to look like the bad father who forgot the notebook for Sunday school. So I think even in my own selfishness, we turn back around, we get to the house, this six year old runs in and she grabs his notebook. And one of the, sort of, the. One of the vivid memories that I have of that day was her running outside and her being super happy and the look on her face once she runs out and she's showing me this notebook as she's running out of the door of the house. We get back on the freeway, we get closer to the temple, the Gurdwara, and I started to notice squad cars from all different jurisdictions passing us by. And I thought this was strange. Here it is on a Sunday morning, everything seems very, very peaceful. And all these squad cars are just flying by us at 100 miles per hour and they're just kind of going the same direction we're going, but I didn't think anything of it. And they're taking the turn towards the temple, towards the Gurdwara. As they're taking this turn, we were the first car to approach the intersection. And then I see a police officer start to tape the entire intersection off. I get out of the car and I just go up to the police officer. I asked him, I said, you know, what's, what's going on? And he kind of just looks at me and he says, there's been a shooting down the street of the temple and the scene is not secure. And I had this sort of, like, just reactionary. What? And I. I know. I heard what he just said. You know, he says it again. There's been a shooting at the temple. Scene is not secure. You can't go through. I knew my mother, my father were both inside. I asked him, I said, how long ago did this. Did this happen? And he said, this was like, 10 minutes ago. And I thought back to all of my daughter's lollygagging, what I thought was lollygagging, what I thought was stalling, what I thought was ocd, the feelings that I had about anger and the joy that she felt immediately after the first officer lets us know that there's been a shooting inside and the scene was insecure. I start to receive phone calls over my cell phone. And one of those phone calls was my mother, who was calling me from a hiding spot that her and 14 other women were in. They were able to find shelter inside of a closet inside of the kitchen where the shooter shot a few times but missed one of the women who was running into that shelter. And once they barricaded themselves in that closet, they had no idea what was happening outside. So all they heard after they barricaded themselves in the closet was gunshots. Once I got that phone call from my mom, I was asking her, like, are you. Are you okay? What's going on? She's whispering, and she's telling me to try to get some help as fast as we could. She is concerned about my father. When the shooting started, he was in the kitchen area with them, and he tried to have them going to that closet. And other people were able to find security in the basement. And then he started to navigate the halls. He's calling law enforcement and calling authorities. But she did not know all of this was happening outside of her. She just, again, was hearing those gunshot sounds at that time. I'm getting other phone calls. I even got a phone call from my father's phone. I picked it up, and it was the head priest. And he, you know, he spoke some English, but broken English. And it's just kind of again, like, your father's been shot. Your father's been shot. Hurry up. Hurry up. We need. We need ambulance. We need help. We need help. My reaction was just to find out, is he breathing?
- [20:24]
Arnold Michaelis
Is he.
- [20:24]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
What's the state of being shot? And strangely, I don't react. I can keep calm and keep composure, meaning that I try to get more information. I just thought maybe he had been shot and he had been wounded. As an officer, you're more used to people being shot and wounded rather than being shot and killed. So I didn't assume that he was dead. I just assumed that, you know, he had been shot somewhere. About an hour, hour and a half later, I was able to find my way to the command post, asking them, you know, hey, do you know where my mom is? Do you know where my dad is? I can help you translate. The command post was located right across the street from the Sikh temple. It started off in the parking lot, and then the command post moved into the bowling alley. And so the bowling alley was just generous in giving of space and location. And a lot of the survivors from the Sikh temple and their families were able to locate there.
- [21:30]
Arnold Michaelis
The shooting itself started kind of around 10 o' clock that morning. The shooter, Wade Michael Page, parked his vehicle in sort of a tactical position to leave. The morning service was kind of letting out. So the first two victims were both.
- [21:46]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
Brothers who were shot outside of the.
- [21:48]
Arnold Michaelis
Sikh Temple of Wisconsin. As that's happening, there was a few kids who were kind of by the entry. They saw this and they ran inside and started to warn people, there's a shooter outside, There's a shooter outside. And so luckily, that warning gave people kind of a little bit of time to find cover. When the shooter got inside, there were two women who were coming out of the main hall, which is this main big hall. So as those two women were coming outside, Paige opens fire on both of them. One of the ladies runs sort of towards the kitchen area. Another lady, she runs back inside the main hall where people pray and meditate and where the main book is kept. Paige followed the woman inside to the main hall and he shot her inside there. Everybody that was in there was able to run outside of a different door. Luckily, this was super early in the morning. So, I mean, at the height of our service, there would be anywhere from four to 500 people. By this time, there was only about 40 people. This is so early. So Wade Page comes out of there and he follows the lady who ran into the kitchen area. That was where my mother, other women were preparing the day's meal. And it has. He's running after her. My father was able to go from the kitchen area and make it to the other bedrooms on the opposite side. So that's when you hear him on the 911 dispatch calls. So he goes in there and he starts to shoot at people behind the kitchen area. As he's shooting at them, they were able to find some cover inside of a closet. Most of the other people made it downstairs into the Basement. He comes back out of that area, walks down that main hallway, and there was an older congregant who was about 85 years old, who was also trying to find a hiding spot. Page executed the 85 year old man. Then he goes and he makes his way further down the hall and that's where most people lost their lives. And he executes another man there. That was when my father attempted to wrestle the gun away from him. And as he's trying to wrestle this gun away from him, Wade Page is able to reload. And my father suffered five gunshots, all from close range. Then he comes out of there after that shooting and he shoots another man. And that man actually ended up dying years later. That would be seventh person that was shot and killed inside the Sikh temple at that time. Lieutenant Brian Murphy was the first responding officer on scene. You could see in the video camera cage is running towards that truck that's tactically parked to try to get away. But Lieutenant Murphy makes contact with him and they both point at each other and they end up shooting at the same time. Lieutenant Murphy's bullet missed, but Wade Page's bullet hit Lieutenant Murphy right in the hand. So he lost his gun.
- [25:11]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
He lost his firearm.
- [25:13]
Arnold Michaelis
When he lost his firearm, Wade Page in his rage walked over to Lieutenant Murphy and kept shooting, kept shooting and he ended up shooting him. I believe this is about 13, 13 times. Lieutenant Murphy tactically was able to just kind of keep his wits about him as he's being shot from very close range and try to make himself small. And a lot of the bullets that he would take on and endure went.
- [25:39]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
To the bulletproof vest.
- [25:41]
Arnold Michaelis
But he was still shot in critical condition. And at that same time, when he's laying over Lieutenant Murphy, Officer Sam Linda is the second responding officer. Officer Linda pulls his car up, sees what's happening. And then he took a tactical position and he backed his car up, he took out his rifle, then the both of them shot at each other. Officer Linda was able to hit Wade Page and you know, you heard a gunshot kind of right after that gunshot. Wade Page taking his own life. I think the entirety of that was six minutes long. Six minutes that changed a lot of lives.
- [26:25]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
There was also, at the same time of all of this sheer chaos and panic. There was this beautiful element of community and that's. That stuck with me as well was on this Sunday, there was a lot of people who got out of their own places of worship and made their way into the command post. That first started off with kind of like 50 people. Then there was a hundred, a few hundred people. And you saw this hodgepodge, this mix of people in Oak Creek who didn't speak the same language, they didn't worship the same. They were coming from different places, different skin tones and everything like that. And they're just gathered there for a common purpose, which is to bear witness to suffering, which is to be supportive. It was, again, chaotic, full of just uncertainty and fear and panic, but also, at the same time, beautiful, because people made the choice to show up. And that hasn't stopped. Eventually, I would see my mother. She was brought in through, almost looked like a tank. And then she was sitting on the ground and I ran over to her. Then I asked her, I said, what's going on? And she's like, I don't know. I just. I heard the gunshots and find out if your dad's okay. And so I went over to a person that I knew was inside, and she was just a little girl. You know, you could just tell from her face that she had that stare that no little girl should have. You know, selfishly, I was asking about my father, and she was telling me that she saw her father dead in the same room that my father was in. We found out later that her. Her father was shot point blank by the shooter. And courageously, she. She kept trying to explain to me what was going on with my. With my dad. She said, I saw your dad. He told me to go inside the bathroom in the bedroom and to keep hiding. And I asked her, I said, you know, was he shot? Was he alive? She said, he was shot. He was shot multiple times, and it didn't seem like he could move. She said that she basically heard him pray until his voice went out. So my dad took his last breaths praying. You know, that gave me a little bit of comfort, honestly, to know that he had the wherewithal, the ability to pray before he transitioned. The last time that I actually physically spoke to him was on my birthday, which was August 3rd of 2012. We were at this gathering at a family member's house. My two kids were about the same age we were when we first came over to this country, 4 and 6. And dad and I by this time had a few drinks as well. We were both in this really good space. And I remember consciously thinking to myself, where was this father when I was growing up? Where was this person who is giving piggyback rides to my kids in the living room? And I knew at that time, I said, you know what it is? We made it. We had the things that people need to have to appreciate life. And I thought to myself that's why he's not as stressed out, that's why we're not as stressed out. We made it to this middle class American dream. So to see him on August 3rd of 2012 for the last time just enjoying himself, that's the memory that I carry with me now. The six show really helped me understand what was going on inside. And then we got the confirmation that night around 10 o' clock from the police department. As we got the confirmation I was angry and I remember the police officer giving me this notification and I was thinking to myself now you're going to leave it up to me to go have to deliver this bad news to my mom. And I was like, you should have delivered this news to my mom. After that I got in my car and I started driving home. My brother was with me at the time of the notification but I didn't want to drive with him. I had held it together all day trying to do my best just like anybody else. Sometimes when we're dealt with difficulties in our life we just try to work and work and work and work and work, just try to be of service. But by this time I was kind of fed up, I was angry and I was ready to explode. So I got in my vehicle and I started driving towards my mother's house to go give her notification. And I'm screaming at the top of my lungs but I also have the wherewithal to keep the windows up. There was a part of me that knew that we couldn't let the world see how much we were hurting. We couldn't lose it in front of the world. I got home kind of thinking about how do I say this? And you know, just the beautiful thing about my mother is that she wasn't going to put me in the place to say it. She just knew it. And so as soon as I walked in and looked at her, she looked at me, she collapsed and knew that it was real. And so I gave her the news and family was surrounding her. You know, in the aftermath there was an outpouring of support. People were there every single day at our house making food, providing cha. We had open ceremonies of grieving. It was a very difficult next few days. How I felt was a feeling of why us? So the why us was like didn't we do everything right? Didn't we try to give back why us? Why this place? Why here? We all were at my parents house and I don't think I actually made it home. To my house for about a week. That first night, that first few nights of going through it, you just try to figure out a way to go to sleep, you know. America, Wisconsin, Oak Creek. The Sikh community, both nationally and locally was supported during those times. During those days, we felt it, we felt all of the support that we received. We found out the following day a the shooter was. And the probable motivation. The shooter was draped head to toe with white supremacist tattoos, with neo Nazi tattoos. This is a hate motivated domestic terrorist act. But there was a reluctancy in 2012 to call it that for me and for our community. We didn't want this shooter to define for us our existence in the world. If this person was hateful and he was. If this person was a racist and he was. If this person was going to say that these people were not only not worth being Americans, but not even worth being on the face of this earth and take it to a place where he was going to pick up a gun and show them. We didn't want this person and his ideology to define our worth. So the days and the weeks after was really us trying to recapture the narrative of who we are as six and not be defined by the hate, but by the love that we would show the world even after that hate impacted us. That wasn't an easy task in the aftermath of the shooting. Again, those feelings of resentment, of anger, hypervigilance, those were all very much real. PTSD is a very real feeling and thing. And I was going through my PTSD symptomology. I was going to conversations and meetings trying to figure out, okay, if a shooter comes into the Starbucks or comes into the coffee shop, here's where we can go, here's where we can. And to the point that I wasn't really even present. And, and I would have people who I was in meetings with say, hey, you know, did you hear what I just said? And I would have to be honest with them because they kind of knew and I would let them know. And like, I'm sorry, can I, can you say that again? And I started to see that was impacting my day to day life with my family. My wife was seven months pregnant when the shooting happened, so we were expecting another child. I just remember going home and just again, not being quite present. And at some point just trying to make the decision of, I have to find my life again, I have to find who I am, I need to be present with my children. We were angry, we were sad, but I did not want this person to define us, nor define our response of anger. And as more and more people from national organizations, Sikh leading organizations, showed up, we. We really harness this call which is important to us in our faith, which is chardi kala. Chardi kala means relentless optimism. And the full saying is, nanak nam chardi kala teribani sarpattabala. And we say it before we leave the gurdwara, but basically the meaning is, we shall be relentlessly optimistic and work not just pray, but work for the peace and prosperity of all mankind. Now, to say something like this for years and years and years as you go into a gurdwara, but not really know or have it instilled into you what it means, and on August 5th of 2012, be impacted by hate and then be able to not only have that message resonate with our own community, but hopefully have that message resonate with other communities. To say, hey, despite the difficulties that you're going through, the challenges or the suffering, remember this phrase. Nan ik nam czardi kala tehibani sarba ta pullah as your call. Work for the peace and prosperity of all mankind and remain not naively optimistic, but relentlessly optimistic. And that's an action. That's not just a thought. Sometimes that's an action. And it goes against sometimes your deep down feelings of, I just want to be angry, let me be angry, let me be pissed off. It's like, okay, that's fine. That's a natural emotion. You should be angry, you should be pissed off, but please don't let it sabotage you from what you need to do for the world.
- [37:17]
Arnold Michaelis
So in this spirit of what we call chardi ka la, which is relentless optimism, there was a friend who kind of asked about, isn't that kind of naive? And I told him, I said, sikhi was never about dichotomies. Sikhi has always been about embracing duality, which is you can't have the optimism without having the struggle.
- [37:38]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
You just can't.
- [37:39]
Arnold Michaelis
It's impossible. And so the days, the weeks, the months, the following the Sikh temple shooting, there was a lot of, like, just things come in waves. One day would be good, the next day would be kind of terrible. I think there was a little bit of fake it till you make it and until it becomes real, until it becomes something that you're not just saying anymore, but it's become a part of your communal heartbeat. And at some point, they did.
- [38:11]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
Early on, some of the speculation was that the shooter confused us for Muslims. And so there was a lot of conversations early on about Pardeep can you help clear the confusion that we are not Muslims? And I asked them, I said, are we informing that we're not Muslims out of fear, or are we informing that we are not Muslims out of information and love? And the answer became clear that we were informing that we were not Muslims out of fear. And I told them at that time, then I'm not going to make that clarification to anybody that this person confused us for Muslims and that Sikhs are different from Muslims. And I said, if any community is being attacked, we're that community. If Muslims at this time in 2012 were rationalized to be attacked for whatever reason, then Sikhs are Muslims. If the Jewish community is being attacked because of anti Semitism, then we're Jewish. If the Christian community, if whatever community, and that goes into who we fundamentally are as Sikhs, is that we stood on the front lines of the oppressed for our history, we're not going to become cowards now. So after the shooting, we are doing our best to put a brave face on for the world. We're getting involved in all kinds of efforts to kind of show people who Sikhs are. We're taking on conversations around gun advocacy, hate, what hate looks like, who the Sikh community is. And as that's happening, I hear about this, this former white supremacist, Arnold Michaelis, who is also doing his best to inform the narrative of healing.
- [40:07]
Arnold Michaelis
Arnold Michaelis is a former white supremacist who started the Hammerskin chapter in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Hammerskins in Wisconsin kind of came from Chicago. You know, Arnold is one of the pioneering members of that chapter moving from Chicago to Wisconsin. What I understand is that they are one of the most violent neo Nazi groups in the United States. At that time, Arnold was practicing as a peacemaker. He wasn't a current the hammerskape. He was speaking out against it. And when I found out what Arnold was doing, it was important for me to reach out to him.
- [40:51]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
We spoke on the phone, and I remember our first discussion on the phone was just really, I don't know if relieving is the word, but that's kind of what came to mind at that time.
- [41:04]
Arnold Michaelis
You know, you put a brave face.
- [41:05]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
On for the world, and at that point, your grieving takes a backseat because you're trying to do your best for your community. You're trying to plan funerals, vigils. You're doing your best to raise money for people who lost their main breadwinner. It's very, very exhausting. And for some reason, I just, I felt like this Conversation was going to lead into something where somebody's going to raise their hand and say, hey, I'm going to help you out with this. I'm going to be an ally. As we spoke, I was still trying to figure out whether he was still racist or not, because most of our minds, you kind of think about a white supremacist and you say, hey, once a white supremacist, always a white supremacist. And I think I had a lot of those reservations just trying to feel him out. And so I asked him, I said, you know, let's. Let's go out and let's meet somewhere. Where would you like to meet? And he told me that, you know, he likes this Thai restaurant. And that caught me off guard right away because, you know, I have stereotypes as well as anybody else. And I thought to myself, you know, he must not be a white supremacist, but because he likes spicy food. So, you know, we decided to meet at this Thai restaurant. And as the days are kind of coming up, I'm telling people in my family what I'm about to do. And they've all thought that I lost my mind. Mind you, this is about three months after the shoot. For me, it's always been very, very important to get answers. I'm naturally kind of built that way. I want kind of, why did this person do what they did? And because the shooter shot himself after he got into that firefight with police, that answer wasn't there. This was a murder suicide. So I went to the person that I thought they could answer these questions, Arnold Michaelis, who was the founder of the Hammer Skin chapter in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which was the same organization that Wade Page, the shooter at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, also belonged to. And so when I reached out to Arno, a lot of the inspiration was really I wanted to know what. What happened? Why did it happen here? Why us? And I remember arriving at the Thai restaurant. He's walking by me, and it's by this time, it's a little bit colder of a night and evening. He's got his hood on. He's got his hood up. It's got like a black hoodie on. And he's walking in and is. No, he's a big dude. He's like six foot. And I'm having these discussions with myself, should I go through with this? Should I not? And as I'm kind of putting the car into drive and about to take off, there's just this, like, hand that says, you've come this far. Just Take one more step. So I take this step out, and I walk inside. He's inside, and he's flanked by two Asian waitresses. And I just remember thinking to myself, well, he must be okay. He didn't eat the two Asian waitresses. That was my deep down bias of thinking, like, I'm going to meet this monster. And, you know, he looks up at me and he's just kind of like, warm smile, says, hi, how you doing? And then all of a sudden, he's like, dude, what happened to your eye? And I'm like, what one? It wasn't a question that I was expecting. So I had this terrible accident giving my kids a bath. The loofah hook that, like, holds the loofah went through my eye as I was giving them a bath and went through my eyelid and lacerated the top of my eyelid. So at that time, my eyelid was being held up by tape, by athletic tape. When I went to go meet him, the first question he asks is about the eye. And I tell him this gruesome story. And I could see this person who people called a monster, who people were just like, once a white supremacist, always a white supremacist. And he's feeling this physical pain as I'm telling him the story about myself and my kids, to the point that I can see that he's genuinely feeling this pain. And I thought, wow. After that happened, I mean, that broke the ice. We sat down for three hours. We talked about.
- [45:41]
Arnold Michaelis
The questions that I had were the same question that anybody would ask, right? Did you know this person? Did you help recruit this person? What do you think? Why did he do this to us the first time that we met? The most profound thing that he could say to me at that time was that hurt people, hurt people. That there's a lot of explanations that we can give it, but generally comes down to unresolved pain. It's something that people just somehow, some way they project from. They maladaptively cope with. However that looks like, I think for.
- [46:17]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
The most part, we talked about our families, we talked about our daughters, we talked about our fathers. And organically, this brotherhood of, wow. Like, if I didn't know any better, your life is just like my life. Oh, I felt that way. Oh, I've gone through that difficulty not the same way, but somewhat the same way. And I get what you're feeling. What people want are explanations. But what I got was so much deeper than an explanation. I got the experience of empathy. On their first day, I was Able to ask them, like, why people like this do what they do. The general overall answer was hurt people. And I think that also was a key conversation and foundation of our relationship was to know that there's a lot of pain in the world, there's a lot of people who suffer, and how do we anchor ourselves to healing?
- [47:18]
Arnold Michaelis
As we started to discuss how hurt people hurt people, I think the small inkling of what we can do about it started to become real. And I think at that moment, we were like, man, there's something else in this relationship. There's something unfinished. And, yeah, that would start our speaking career together.
- [47:39]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
One of the first schools that we shared our story was Cudahy High School. Cutahe High School is very, very close to Oak Creek. They heard about what happened and wanted to invite me to talk. There was a lot of bullying that was happening at their school. I spoke with the principal, and the principal told him. I said, hey, here's Arnold. Here's who he is. Would you mind if we talk together with the kids? Spoke together. And as we're getting ready to speak, we don't know how the conversation is going to come off. You know, Arnold spoke about his past, his background, who he was, and how he got to a better place of healing. And I spoke about my background and how I got to a better place of healing personally as well. And right after the conversation, Arnold went to one side and I went to the other side, and we were just bombarded with students, like 40 students on Arnold's side and 40 students on my side who are just waiting to talk to these two speakers. And as they're talking, they're revealing all of this difficulties that they're going through. You know, they're. I. I've felt suicidal. I feel suicidal right now. I'm struggling. You know, all of these things that they want to share. We debriefed a little bit afterwards, and Arun's like, man, this is horrible what these students are going through. And I think just. We didn't know that this was going to start sort of a talking or speaking circle where we would speak to kids and speak to youth and speak to high schoolers especially, and then community groups.
- [49:12]
Arnold Michaelis
You know, we worked in all kinds of capacities. There was a program that we had called Serve to Unite, where we worked with anywhere between 300 to 500 students.
- [49:22]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
Serve tonight. You know, initially was, yeah, like an outreach group from the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin. And then it sort of morphed into, how do we all come together? How do we have these Conversations across divides. How do we have service oriented activities across divisions? So I was doing the serve to unite work first. And Arno at that time had his own organization called Life After Hate. And as we started to work together, our speaking engagements became a way for us to highlight that work. But also we took on educational conversations at churches, interfaith conversations.
- [50:03]
Arnold Michaelis
Here you saw two older men who are from different parts of the world who you would think would be the least likely to come together and have a friendship. And so it was important for us to model that vulnerability. Initially on, there were a lot of community members who were stuck in a sense of trauma. And when I say that there were.
- [50:31]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
People who were terrorized to the point that they were.
- [50:34]
Arnold Michaelis
Were scared of any white person that walked into the Sikh temple. They did not want to see people like Arno who had tattoos, who had.
- [50:42]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
The history that they had.
- [50:43]
Arnold Michaelis
There were people who even in my own congregation would often have a side conversation with me and say, hey, our children don't want to see white people.
- [50:53]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
Because they believe that all white people are a threat.
- [50:56]
Arnold Michaelis
And now that was contrary to the country that I grew up in, that I love, that gave me home. And I had to understand that. So for me, it was really important for me to model what healing could look like and really, really mean it. That's probably why I fought through so much of those feelings of fear, was to say, hey, if. If I can do it, I want to hope that you can somehow do it. So I think this just meeting Arnold was a crucial step for our community, although it was a very inconvenient step because I was really wrestling with internal community members who did not want to be out in the community, who didn't want to invite people in. And I think that at some point that narrative started to shift, that started to shift with them, and they started to see kind of what I was moving towards and to say, oh, I get what you're trying to do. We could each get stuck into our own silos of what we think is the truth, what we think is our reality, or we can listen to one another.
- [52:02]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
Hopefully within those talks, we've been able to change somebody's trajectory, somebody's life. When I reached out to Arnold, yeah, I mean, I think part of it was like, try to find explanations to things, try to make sense of things, try to move forward with things. And I didn't know it at the time, but I was trying to find my way back to being a good father and husband. And as the days and months continued and went forward and I was able to develop a deeper friendship with Arno and we were able to do some of the work. It gave me the sense of purpose and control and kind of livelihood in my life again. And as that started to happen, I became a little bit more present with my kids. But it was different now. I just cherished time. I didn't take it for granted. I cherished it. I would fall asleep with my daughter. I would tuck her in, I would sit by her bedside. I would sit by my son's bedside. I would just try to be more present. You can't take anything for granted again. We were 10 minutes away from the temple. So I think about that every single day. I think about what would have happened, what could have happened if she had not forgotten her notebook. And I think about my children. Saved our lives. That's never lost. Abi. I try to teach young people now, especially young men, that it's okay to be sensitive. In fact, that's what manhood should look like. It's for us to not be so armored up that we need to hide our heart and put armor around all of us and lash people with our sword because we think that they're going to get too close. Being a man means opening up your heart, keeping it soft, taking off the armor, not wielding the sword. My daughter was 6 when the shooting happened. And at the 10 year anniversary in 2022, she came up to me and she's 16 by this time. And she says, you know, hey, Dad, I want to do a spoken word at the 10 year vigil. And I know there's thousands of people coming to Oak Creek at this time. And she tells me not only is she going to do a spoken word, but she wants to talk about the shooter. Wade Page. As a father, you hope that you're raising your children the right way, but you never know. You just kind of. You do your best like any other parent. And so when she tells me this, I'm a bit worried. Is she going to be able to deliver this? Is she going to break down? What is she going to say? And as she says it on stage, I mean, she's brilliant and beautiful and powerful all at the same time. And she says to the weight pages of the world, you didn't hate me, you hated yourself. And I took a sigh as a father, I took a sigh and said, we've succeeded for this battle, for whatever this was. And that is what gives me a sense of I can genuinely forgive. Because that vengeance, that reclamation of power was so strong and is so strong right now. Forgiveness is such a powerful word. It's such a powerful thing. And for me, it's like, it's very, very personal. So when I'm talking about forgiveness, I'm not talking about fawning. I'm not talking about saying it was okay. And somehow, some way, I have to say it was okay for the perpetrator, because I feel so helpless in this situation, because that sometimes happens in difficult situations where people are suffering. Somebody will rationalize and say it was okay. Considered fawning or forgiveness in our situation, why I call it vengeance is because it was a reclamation, an intentional reclamation of who we are. And because of what happened, the world got to find out about who six are. If not. And if. If we don't go through this process of surf to unite what this means, who we are, telling our story the way that we want to tell our story, then enough healing doesn't happen for me to go back and say, now I forgive Wade Page. And I can say that if Wade Page was in front of me wholeheartedly, I forgive Waypage. There's a Wade Page in nearly every neighborhood. I'm just trying to say that these people are not monsters. They were once a kid, just like anybody else's child. They were a young white male who grew up in America. Wade Page went off into the military. He came back home after he was dishonorably discharged, had addiction issues. Saw what happened in Columbine because he was growing up in Littleton, Colorado, joined the white supremacy movement. And then when you don't feel power, you can exact vengeance with a gun. I get a lot of questions around what forgiveness feels like, and I can't prescribe it. I can't say, this is what forgiveness looks like for you. This is what forgiveness looks like for that person. But for me and for our community, forgiveness in this situation looked like vengeance. Not against the actor, but against the action of racism, against the action of white supremacy.
- [57:25]
Arnold Michaelis
When I speak about vengeance, I'm speaking about the sense of we need to help reclaim a society that centers compassion, that doesn't run from empathy, that isn't so stuck to Darwinian, the strongest will survive in a toxic sense and sees mutuality and cooperation as a survival mechanism.
- [57:50]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
I want to send the message that the next Wave Page, who wants to exact revenge or vengeance against any people, that we're going to be so much bigger and better because of it. Our congregation has only grown today.
- [58:06]
Arnold Michaelis
We have, I would say, three times the amount of people that we had in 2012. And this community continues to grow and we are very, very, very proud of that intentional reclamation.
- [58:21]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
We look at it and say, wow, that sacrifice was horrible. But while that sacrifice was horrible, look at all the goodness that has come out of it. Our community was able to really come out and say that they forgive. Wade Page and again, it's not a fawning sort of forgiveness to say it was okay or we forget or somehow, some way we accept and understand why you hurt us. It was to say that we release you from our future. You don't hold us hostage. You don't hold any place in our existence that we feel like you have any power. Over. And again, I would be lying to say that we didn't feel pain, that we didn't suffer. But we've grieved, we've moved forward. We're free.
- [59:11]
Arnold Michaelis
We are free people.
- [59:13]
Pardeep Singh Kalika
We're a bigger, better, stronger community. Foreign.
- [59:36]
Narrator/Producer
Featured Pardeep Singh Kaliga if you'd like to reach out to Pardeep, his email and socials are in the show Notes. Pardeep is the Clinical Director at Mental Health America Wisconsin, a senior anti hate advocate and co author of the the Gift of Our Wounds. After losing his father in the 2012 Oak Creek Sikh Temple attack, he became a leading voice for community healing, resilience and faith. With over 25 years of experience in law enforcement, education, mental health and supporting hate crime survivors, Pardeep has served with the US Department of Justice CRS and led the Interfaith Conference. He specializes in communal trauma and helps public health professionals, educators and law enforcement develop community oriented strategies to address conflict, hate and rising targeted violence. Today's Episode was produced in collaboration with Pauline Bartolone and was funded in part by UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science center as part of its Spreading Love through the Media initiative supported by the John Templeton Foundation. Pauline is a journalist, storyteller and editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area and has spent two decades reporting and producing for public radio and print media. A special thanks to Pauline for bringing us this important story. Her contact information can be found in the show Notes.
- [60:56]
Whit Misseldine
From Wondery. You're listening to this is actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or on the Wondery app to listen ad free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the Episode Notes you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host Wit Misseldine. Today's episode was co produced by me and Andrew Waitz, with special thanks to the this Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg.
- [61:26]
Narrator/Producer
The opening music features the song Sleep.
- [61:29]
Whit Misseldine
Paralysis by Scott Velasquez. You can join the community on the this Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook, or follow us on Instagramctually happening on the the show's website, thisisactually happening.com you can find out more about the podcast. Contact us with any questions, submit your own story, or visit the store where you can find this Is Actually Happening designs on stickers, T shirts, wall art, hoodies, and more. That's thisisactually happening.com and finally, if you'd like to become an ongoing supporter of what we do, go to patreon.com happening even 2 to $5 a month month goes a long way to support our vision. Thank you for listening.