It’s Sunday morning at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek, and hundreds of worshippers are showing up for prayers.
They walk into the main hall where people are praying, passing by a bullet hole in the door frame. It’s a reminder of what happened here on another Sunday morning 12 years ago, when a gunman who was affiliated with white supremacist groups came and opened fire on the people who were praying.
“We were on our way to go to the gurdwara when one of our family members called and said, ‘Don’t go there, there had been a shooting,’” recalls Kulwant Dhaliwal, the chairman of the board here at the gurdwara, or Sikh temple.
Dhaliwal immigrated to the United States from India in 1968 and worked as a doctor in Wisconsin for decades until he retired.
“I couldn’t believe it. Hard to believe somebody will come and shoot people at the place of worship,” he said. “We don’t bother anybody. We haven’t done anything wrong.”
Six people were killed that day and four others were wounded, one of whom died of his injuries years later.
All Things Considered recently spent a week reporting from Wisconsin as part of an NPR series focusing on swing states ahead of the election. And this gurdwara sits at the intersection of several election-season topics.
Immigration is one. Most of the people at this temple are immigrants.
Identity is another. Sikhism originated in India, and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is half Indian.
This community also experienced the deadly white supremacist attack, years before mass shootings at a Black church in Charleston, a synagogue in Pittsburgh and many other places. Gun violence and extremism have also come up for both Harris and former President Donald Trump this year.
On the morning the shooter arrived at the gurdwara in 2012, women were in the kitchen stirring big pots of curry and lentils.
Sundays are when the temple opens its doors to feed anyone who’s hungry, to give back to the community at a free meal called langar. It’s the same scene now, more than a decade later.
Prabhjot Singh is our escort and host and says that anywhere from 700 to 800 people come on a Sunday for the meal, which is prepared from scratch each week at the gurdwara.
By day, Singh is a banker raising two young kids with his wife. He’s also secretary here at the gurdwara.
This temple is a sacred place, where they discourage public talk of politics. So while worshippers sit on the floor praying in the main hall, Singh leads us into the basement, where kids in Sunday school are learning Punjabi.
Singh came to the U.S. to get his MBA when he was 23. One big reason he stayed in Wisconsin was this temple. So when a shooter arrived, it felt unbelievable to him.
“We knew shootings were normal in the U.S. but … but we never thought someone could target a religious place,” he said. “That was one thing which took a long time to forget about and feel safe again to come back.”
The U.S. is now in the final weeks of an intense election season, and it’s not lost on Singh that immigration has become a focus of much of the conversation. Yet while he estimates that about 80% of the members of his congregation are immigrants, he doesn’t believe it’s the most important issue to many of them.
“They’re already here, you know. They are part of this country now,” he said. “Now they are trying to achieve the American dream, which is getting the best education for their children, getting food on the table every day, making sure everyone is healthy and safe.”
Singh adds that while some people in his community showed excitement at having a candidate of South Asian descent at the top of the Democratic ticket, for many others, Harris’ ethnicity doesn’t matter more than any other candidate’s ethnicity. And he can recall speaking to business owners at the temple after Trump won in 2016 and discovering they voted for him.
Still, for Singh, the rhetoric matters. And he said it’s the reason he won’t be voting for Trump.
“The words he uses are very aggressive, harassing words for others,” Singh said. “Whether it’s for immigrants — I think lately he gave a speech about eating cats and dogs by migrants … maybe if that happened one incident, it doesn’t mean all of the 25 million immigrants are eating cats and dogs.”
The rumor has been debunked, but Singh believes the narrative was still damaging for immigrants everywhere.
And this is a community that knows how easily fear of immigrants can turn into violence against immigrants. But they refuse to barricade themselves and hide.
The day before we met Singh, he joined other Sikhs at a city-wide cultural event with the mayor of Oak Creek. They taught people how to tie the turbans that so many Sikh people wear as a sign of their faith.
Singh said one of the most important principles of his religion is sharing what you have with others.
So on this Sunday, just past the security cameras and the hired guard at the door, anyone is invited to sit and eat for free as volunteers circle with seemingly endless ladles of curry, rice, lentils and more.
All are still welcome here.
Ashley Brown contributed to this report.
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