Why Ferguson Matters: Desi Tweet Round-Up

Jaya Sundaresh

News

If you haven’t been paying attention: pay attention.

Things are going to hell in a handbasket in Ferguson, Missouri. Cops are throwing tear gas and firing rubber bullets at peaceful protesters. State senators are getting gassed, city aldermen are getting thrown in jail for no reason other than being out at night, covering the protest. Reporters, including Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post, are being arrested by cops for daring to cover the brutality.

Here’s the context: Michael Brown, a black 18 years old, was gunned down Saturday night by an unknown policeman on the Ferguson force. He was unarmed; his only crime was that he was jaywalking. Witnesses say that Mike was shot as he held his hands up, pleading with the cop for his life. Of course, the Ferguson police department claims that “there was a struggle” before the shooting. An ambulance wasn’t called, and his body lay on the ground for four and a half hours before being removed.

Mike was two days away from starting college.

The largely peaceful protests that have been taking place in Ferguson have been plagued with police repression, but yesterday, things took a turn for the worse.

South Asians had a lot to say on social media about the police crackdown last night.

Anil Dash was livid about how Ferguson police were handling themselves.

 

and finally…

Writer Amitav Ghosh noted the difference between social media and the mainstream media’s coverage of events:

 

The turmoil on his dash threw rapper Heems into a spiral of existential doubt.

Scholar Vijay Prashad took a break from tweeting about Gaza and the crisis in Iraq to link what was happening in Ferguson to the wider world.

 

We’ll end with the always socially conscious Hari Kondabolu, who dropped some serious knowledge on our dashes.

Finally, Hari lets us know that to compare the racial profiling that South Asians experience to the profiling that Black folks experience is wrong, and that desi folks shouldn’t do it.

Notably silent celebs: Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, Hannah Simone. Kal Penn, Vijay Iyer, and Utkarsh Ambudkar didn’t tweet about Ferguson themselves, but instead retweeted others who were talking about the situation.

Jaya Sundaresh lives in Chandigarh, India. She grew up in various parts of the Northeast in the U.S. before deciding to study political science at McGill University. Follow her on Twitter at @anedumacation.

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  1. Pingback: Tibetan Monks Travel from India to Ferguson, MO in Solidarity with Michael Brown | Engage!

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