SACRED ACTS Presents Unity Fest 🎉

On Wednesday, August 13th SACRED Acts hosted Unity Fest, an inclusive celebration of South Asian community and culture! Featuring a powerful lineup of South Asian American performers with heritage from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka and over 60 attendees, the night was an undeniable success.

Unity Fest celebrated democracy, equity, independence, and called for an end to empire at a time when bigotry (disguised as “nationalism”) too often goes unchecked – see the Federation of Indian Associations’ Chicago “Indian Independence Day Parade” hosted by its president who has flagrantly peddled Islamophobia (read more here).

The evening featured:

• Pushkar Sharma, SACRED Acts’ President, emceed the event, invited participants to join SACRED Acts’ Organizing Committee to press our leaders for progress and a true independence from hate, empire, and supremacist ideologies.
  
  
• Sufyan Sohel: SACRED’s Board Chair, opened with a powerful poem and called for our community to come together.
  
  
• The Saifa: A multi-medium artist, founder of the Most Beautiful collective, and Chair of the Cook County Green Party, performed spoken word poetry.
  
  
• Müsila: A guitarist and singer-songwriter from Sri Lanka inspired by traditional Sri Lankan music and haunted by the spirit of the Blues and Americana, enchanted the crowd with a Sri Lankan lullaby.
  
  
• Sayeda Qader: Author of the Substack publication ‘this rubble is ours’ and Director at the Kalaam Project, a nonprofit organization delivering humanitarian aid on the ground across Afghanistan, read two moving poems.
  
  
• Ankit Khadgi: Chicago-based queer Nepali writer whose work has been published in The Guardian and The Kathmandu Post read an original piece of prose exploring the intersections of caste, class, gender, sexuality, queerness, art, and decolonization. 
  
  
• Alaisha Boti Kabob: An icon and legend in the South Asian Drag scene in Chicago; the widely admired regular star at Jai Ho (a Bollywood & South Asian pop culture themed Drag Performance Show) rounded out the night with an iconic performance that lit up the stage! 

The event also featured Sunjay Kumar, candidate for Illinois State Representative (District 13), a proud queer second-generation Indian-American, a community organizer, a transit-rider and biker, an engineer, and an Uptown homeowner who spoke about the importance of signing on to SACRED Acts' Nonviolence Pledge and his campaign! 

Attendees stayed on for hours after the event ended, and Unity Fest showed the power of coming together to celebrate our cultures, share our stories, and connect with each other! Keep an eye out next summer for Unity Fest 2026!