Small Acts of Courage: A Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy
By Ali Velshi
Family History
St. Martin's Press
May 2024
In India, a man does well enough to take care of his family and also his community. He helps build a mosque and a well for everyone. His son immigrates to South Africa, builds a life from nothing, and contributes to his community, as does his son.
That man's grandson leaves South Africa during the terror of apartheid and builds a life in Kenya, working with people of other cultures, faiths and ethnicities until that country fails its promise of democracy. He and his family move to Canada, where they are welcomed and where they again contribute to their community in service that eventually includes political office.
His son grows up in Canada, ends up in America, becomes a citizen and learns how much contributing to society and upholding democracy means to him.
That man is Ali Velshi, whose lesson came home to him when he was shot with a rubber bullet on live television during the George Floyd protests.
In his new book, Small Acts of Courage: A Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy, Velshi outlines how hard work and working for the whole community have been integral to his family.
The individual generations of his family searched for a place to belong for years. Velshi combines the history of what was happening in each country in which generations of his family settled and tried to settle in. Along the way, they had connections with some of the greatest activists of the 20th century. His grandfather was sent, as a 7-year-old boy, by his father to his friend Gandhi's Tolstoy Farm. It was an ashram Gandhi founded in 1910 as a way to stand against discrimination during his years in South Africa, before he returned to India and changed the world.
Velshi's uncle was part of the resistance against discrimination and later apartheid. This was even as his grandfather and father operated a successful bakery that helped feed thousands. He knew Mandela and, although not part of his circle, also was eventually imprisoned.
These brushes with the famous are not included in Small Acts of Courage as boasting. They are part of the story of how Velshi's family walked the walk of their Ismaili Muslim faith. A basic tenet of their faith as set forth by their leader, the Aga Khan. Applying what you believe to the world in which you live is what they do. And that boils down to caring for your community the way you care about your family, to be part of the world in the most positive way possible with practical acts.
Don't close yourself off from the cultures and the people that surround you. Work with them. Be compassionate to them, Educate your children to understand them and integrate with them.
When his parents had to leave Kenya, after sadly relocating there because, as bad as things were in South Africa, that was home, they were fortunate enough to be welcomed to Canada. As Kenyan citizens, their path to the fellow Commonwealth country was easier than it might have been otherwise. And when they arrived, they once again set up a new business and got involved helping others. Their little Toronto home became a way station for new immigrants, friends and relatives. Their interest in the world around them helped spark the same in their son.
Velshi writes about the effect of his family's legacy. He is a pluralist who can embrace all the parts of his heritage -- the India he never lived in, the South Africa his parents escaped shortly before he was born, the Kenya in which he was born just before the family moved to Canada, the Canada in which he grew up, and the America which this citizen of the world calls home.
He also pays honor to the women of his family, the grandmother who held things together, the mother who worked alongside her husband in every aspect of their lives, the sister who has carved out a career of public service to help others, and the wife who has encouraged him to live his fullest life.
The final pages of Small Acts of Courage show how a family's determination to be decent, helpful and determined to do the best they can with what they've got to make the world a better place have become the calling of Ali Velshi as well. The decency of his family members, the curiosity to find out how things tick for all kinds of people, and the knowledge that a strong, functioning democracy is the best way to serve people are behind the stories he covers and the way he brings the world to his television viewers.
In this current age, when democracy is in danger around the world, the lessons of his family are even more important.
This is what my father and mother and sister knew. It's what my grandparents and great-grandparents knew, despite their total lack of a formal education. Justice isn't justice until it's universal. Equality isn't equality until it's universal. Democracy isn't democracy until it's universal.
The responsibilities of living in a democracy are as important as the rights:
Only we will protect us.
Only you will protect us.
We all have a role to play, and all of our roles are of equal importance.
Small Acts of Courage is an engaging, important book for anyone who cares about where we all have come from and where we want to be.
wow. i never knew all that about him. what a story.