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The city of San Ramon kicked off a year-round celebration of diversity with its Saturday festivities for Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.
For the second year in a row, the San Ramon Cultural Fests Committee hosted a community celebration for Diwali, featuring cultural performances, Indian food, a live DJ, raffles, best dressed prizes, a kids play area and more.
“Diwali, the festival of lights, is one of the biggest celebrations in the Indian culture that marks the victory of Good over Evil,” said Venkat Narayan, one of the event coordinators. “This is a great opportunity for the community to come together as a family and celebrate this event.”
This year, the official date of Diwali, which is determined by the lunar cycle, fell on Oct. 19. Oftentimes, though, the festivities will take place over the course of five days.
The San Ramon event was hosted in partnership with Brooks Landry Real Estate Group at Windemere Ranch Middle School, and was attended by various dignitaries, including San Ramon Mayor Bill Clarkson, Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, local councilmembers, and fire, police and school district officials.
According to Vijay Zaver, another organizer, this year’s event was larger than the inaugural celebration of 2016.
“We do it for the kids, so they won’t lose their culture,” he said. “It’s important.”
Lights in honor of the Diwali holiday were put on display on Oct. 19 at both City Hall and the walkway between the San Ramon Community Center and City Hall. Similar displays will appear for other cultural holidays throughout the year, continuing next for Hannukkah and Christmas in December and Lunar New Year in February.
“The light show will showcase our city’s diversity, inclusiveness and rich cultures,” Mayor Clarkson said on behalf of the city council. “This is just another step in meeting the City Council’s goal to celebrate the diversity of our community.”
This is what you get when large groups of people come to the U.S. for the primary purpose of better employment(especially as allowed in by H1B visas), and those same people have no interest in assimilating into the American culture. Sorry if you think this accurate assessment is politically incorrect.
Sorry, “American” from San Ramon, but American from Danville disagrees. “These people” came here legally, with the dream to work hard and better their lives and their children lives. That is the American dream, that my great grandparents had when they immigrated legally from Ireland. They still enjoyed going to Irish pubs on the southside of Chicago, still enjoyed the Saint Patrick’s Day parade in Chicago and the annual dying of the river green, and attending Catholic schools and mass every Sunday. They did not give up their identity or culture to become Americans. I guess my views reflect the Republican party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, and yours the views of Donald Trump. I hope all these legal immigrants have a blessed event.
If you look into the H1B visa “epidemic”, you will see many instances of American citizen workers being forced to train their non citizen replacements (that work at a lower salary), and the American workers are forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement as a precondition for receiving severance pay. This is an undisputable fact. American tech companies do this simply to save money on labor costs.
There was even a segment on this H1B visa practice on the “60 Minutes” TV show where at UCSF, American computer workers were forced to train their replacements who were non-citizens recruited in India with the promise of employment here, but at wages less than that of an American worker.
H1B visas are being exploited by many of the Silicon Valley Tech companies for the sole purpose of maximizing their profits with no regard to the damage being done to American workers. The H1B workers come to the U.S. motivated by getting a better paying job than available in India, they are not motivated by wanting to assimilate. American workers are being damaged by the excessive use of H1B visas.
Interesting to read all these comments on this town square. As a South Bay native, I’m surprised how hard it seems for everyone to get along. I’ve been looking to move up in your neck of the woods, but as someone with a “tan” you people scare me.
For you old timers, here’s the deal. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t expect a high quality of living, the smartest people in the world, the best universities and companies in the new economy, and expect a bunch of bland Anglo-Quaker-Pilgrim decedents to compete with the rest of the world SO we either go the way of the rust belt states and die off, or we embrace people that can make us competitive.
Now, I hate all that smelly foreign stuff as much as the next guy, but when you actually try to understand it (maybe try some new food), you might learn something new and it might be something you actually like. If you do, then you get to introduce new things to those ‘evil’ H1Bs you refer to that are property up your property values.
Mountain View is a great example of this, people are respectful and ‘integrating’, it possible if you stop being a PO’d jerk all the time.
The above comments regarding the exploitation of H1B visas by tech companies to hire lower paid foreign workers to the detriment of American workers is not racist and has no racist component.
It is very likely that if “Questionable”, above, was required by his employer to train a foreign H1B worker to take over “Questionable’s” job (for lower pay) and be forced to sign a non disclosure agreement in order to get his severance pay, that “Questionable” would find that situation not only questionable but quite unethical. To oppose such H1B exploitation has no racial component.
“Questionable” above, however, does seem quite racist as he states: “You can’t—–expect a bunch of bland Anglo-Quaker-Pilgrim decedents to compete with the rest of the world.” Your comment, my friend shows you up for what you unwittingly are, a self righteous bigot (sorry if that is “harsh”, but if the shoe fits, wear it!).