valerie's personal story helps explain her drive to remedy wrongs born and raised in clovis california where her family settled as sikh farmers in nineteen thirteen she has someone with literally deep roots in the american earth. but when a close friend of hers was the first person killed in a hate crime after september eleventh two thousand and one she began to document hate crimes against sikh and muslim americans. which resulted in her first film the award winning divided we fall and helped launch her life of civic engagement. the second thing that dazzles me about valerie is that after spending much of her life combating horrific injustice and intolerance having been inside supermax prisons. at guantanamo and at sites of hate crimes and mass shootings she emerged not as an embittered cynic. but as an apostle of love as the ultimate source of social action. she founded the revolutionary love project a national initiative which uses a wide range of communication and mobilization to. to equip and inspire people to practice the ethic of love. i encourage you if you were is moved by val