When Sonali Prasad first saw the anti-immigration flyer singling out Sikhs in Brampton, she was in disbelief before the annoyance and anger sunk in.

Born and raised in Canada, the 17-year-old girl is of Fijian heritage, but like other students at Brampton’s Louise Arbour Secondary School, she felt the flyer was an attack on all children of immigrants in their city and the rest of the country.

However, instead of using hate against hate, Prasad and her classmates have chosen to respond by creating and distributing their own flyers, telling the world who today’s Bramptonians are and what Brampton really stands for.

The school’s flyer resembles the one delivered by Immigration Watch in Brampton last month, which depicted angry protesting Sikhs (a photo actually taken in India) and asked the question: “Is This Really What You Want?” But Prasad said it was by no means an attempt to mock the Vancouver-based group.

“The reality is, the original flyer has misrepresented our experience in our day-to-day lives in Brampton,” Prasad said. “Anybody could respond to hate with hate, and ignorance to ignorance. We want to go with an open mind and just give people the truth. That’s the difference.”

In their redesigned flyer, the angry Sikh photo at the bottom is replaced by a photo of Prasad’s class in the course Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, behind the silhouette of five letters: “U-N-I-T-Y.” It also says: “YES, THIS IS WHAT WE REALLY WANT.”

The idea of the “counter-flyer” campaign came up during the class when teacher Lanny Cedrone used a Star story on the anti-immigration flyer for a discussion about race, identity, prejudice and propaganda.

“To be honest, there are a lot of Indians in Brampton. I’m not going to lie, but that’s what I thought when I came here,” said Saranjit Dhindsa, 16, whose family is Sikh and came to Brampton from Calgary in 2007.

“But we are not angry, violent people. We co-exist peacefully with people from all backgrounds. Our message is, immigration is a good thing no matter where you go in Canada.”

The class quickly decided to do something to counter the “false image” of Brampton and put together a “photo that represents us” in a flyer with a personal letter attached to its back.

While the 28 students in the photo come in different shades, there’s only one apparent white face, that of Jessica Hernandez, who is El Salvadorian.

“Brampton has grown from a little town to a big city,” said Cedrone, whose family moved to Brampton from Toronto three decades ago. “It is changing fast and (that) has created fears, suspicions and prejudice.”

On Friday, Cedrone’s class launched its campaign by posting the flyer on Twitter and Facebook, under #ConsiderThisBrampton. With funding from the school council, the students have ordered 1,000 copies of the flyers that they plan to hand out across Brampton next Saturday.

“We need to accept that things are changing and the face of Brampton is changing, but our values have not changed,” the students wrote in their letter attached to the flyer.

“The flower of our city has blossomed in new and different colours, but the roots have not changed.”

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When asked what “values” were being referred to, Prasad said: “It’s the value to be good people.”

Correction - May 30, 2014: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Saranjit Dhindsa came to Canada from India in 2008.



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