Occupy

Image via WikipediaCongregate. Do not disrupt. This is about getting together, peacefully, amicably, almost in a celebratory way.

This is not about disrupting traffic. This is not about preventing people from going to work. This is not about seeking confrontations with the police.

It has to stay completely nonviolent. It has to become super, duper organized. It has to be sophisticated.

Occupy one public space in each city, each town where people camp out around the clock. If the space's capacity is 1,000 people, stay at 1,000 people. Get people to participate in rotation. So one person might clock in for one 24 hour period to be replaced by another person who signed up to be there.

The occupation can not end until the fundamental fabric of the democracy has been impacted. The goal is one person, one vote democracy. The insane people running the banks on Wall Street threw the bus into the ditch and gave the world the Great Recession. Now they want to go back to their same old ways. That is not an option.

We want a new architecture for global finance. And so the occupation has to continue. It has to grow. It has to grow on all continents. It has to grow from one city to many cities. It has to go to every town, every city. Maybe you are a small town, and your public space will only hold 50 people, and that is okay.

The thing is, we are all connected. The occupation in one town is connected to the occupation in every other town. Each city is connected to every other. This is a global movement, a national movement.

It has to stay nonviolent. It has to stay intelligent. It has to be about the conversation. The mass, public action is about the conversation. For every person camped out at a park, there are 1,000 people and more participating online. That online "occupation" is as real as it gets. These are real people with real opinions, with real challenges, real political weight.

This movement is about roping in more and more people into the conversation.

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Imran Khan

I got to see Imran Khan in person Friday evening. He showed up at the Columbia Journalism School. This dude is to Pakistan what Amitabh Bachchan is to India. You don't find personalities like Amitabh and Imran in countries like England and America. You don't find this one person that dominates the imagination of an entire country, and big ones too.
Image via Wikipedia
Happy Birthday Amitabh

This guy Imran is the next Prime Minister of Pakistan and I think he is going to be a good one, and I speak as a fairly political person. I was Barack Obama's first full time volunteer in New York City.

I asked him. App to cricket ke samrat rah chucke log hai. You have been the emperor of cricket. Ab aap rajniti mein hain. Now you are in politics. Rajniti mein samrat hone ka arth hota hai Prime Minister banna. To be emperor in politics means to be Prime Minister. To aap Prime Minister kab ban rahe hain? So when are you going to become Prime Minister?

"Agle election ke baad, Insa-allah!" he said. After the next election, God willing.

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Brandy Jones

Super Amit, Super Swabbed

Mike Bloomberg, Amit Gupta

I showed up at the New Work City space in Chinatown on time - 9:30 PM. And I left past midnight. The people who were doing the swab thing were busy the entire time I was there.

Events: Week Of October 10

The first person I met was Nick Gray. Nick Gray! This was my first time meeting Nick Gray in person. This is quite an amazing person. At times it can feel like this dude is a mutual friend to everybody who is somebody in the New York tech ecosystem. If Nick Gray did not exist, the New York tech ecosystem might have to create one. He is one of those people.

"Oh my God, Oh my God, it's Nick Gray!" I said. He was out on the sidewalk eagerly waiting for people to show. The venue was one floor up. This dude was so feeling it.

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I was born Indian. Nick Gray chose to be Indian. We are both Indian through and through.

He was in a somber mood. I tried to cheer him up.

"It is good to see you too, Paramendra," he said simply.

The Huffington Post: Help Amit Gupta: $30,000 Reward Offered For Bone Marrow Match

This whole thing has been an amazing social media success story. But it has also shown social media can be an echo chamber.

There are enough brown folks in New York City and in New Jersey to find a match for Amit Gupta. And there are enough mass based Desi/South Asian organizations in New York City and New Jersey to push the number into thousands, tens of thousands.

The tech crowd is only managing hundreds, and that is not good enough. But it is managing to raise thousands of dollars, and that is great.

The swab thing is so, so super easy.

How much time do we got? It is a race against time, right? It is time to go past social media. Keep using it, but now use it primarily to raise money. I guess there are costs involved to do the swab thing.

Now we have to treat it like a political campaign. We have to start making phone calls. We have to start knocking on doors in the right neighborhoods. We have to reach out to mass based South Asian organizations in the region. They might not know Amit, but they don't have to. Every person who swabs and is not a match is a potential match to some other member of the South Asian community down the line. That not Amit angle is the one we have to push now.

Raise money among the tech, social media, smartphone crowd. Reach out to the non digital, non social media, non smartphone crowd for a potential match. We should be able to organize some events by next weekend.

I want to reach out to people like Nick Gray and Tony Bacigalupo to see if I can get a little more involved.

It can not be all that hard. Google up "South Asian organizations in New York City, New Jersey" and start building a list of people to call up, office holders of the top organizations.

If there was a match somewhere in the tech/digital crowd, we would have found it already. It is time to reach out to the true grassroots. We are not it.

Dildaara

Letter To Joanne Wilson

Events: Week Of October 10

Hello Joanne Wilson.

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I showed up for your event for the evening that simply had Central Park West for venue and I read the phrase open space somewhere. I got off at Columbus Circle and walked 25 blocks north before going underground. I guess you and your crew were hogging the sidewalk somewhere along the 25 blocks I did not walk.

Oh, well.

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Mike Bloomberg, Amit Gupta

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Via Ryan Brown

Alexa Von Tobel Of LearnVest

Source

Mike Bloomberg, Amit Gupta

Image via WikipediaI think I first heard about it from Anu Shukla on Facebook.

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I am like, I know Anu Shukla, but I don't know the guy. I know of him, but I don't know him. There are many people in the NY tech ecosystem that I know of, but don't know. On the various social media platforms when you follow the people you know you end up coming across people that you don't know but you "see" so often that you end up kinda sorta knowing them. Plus, it is only a few clicks to getting to know the outlines of someone's life online, especially of those in the tech space. I learned about the guy in one paragraph. Small world.

But I am like, the guy looks fine, he is healthy. And there are a bunch of Indians out there. He will find his match. If we Indians have one thing, it is us. There are only like a billion of us.

And then the guy started popping up a few places. People were reblogging his blog post on Tumblr. The first time I saw it it had been reblogged over 6,000 times. And I am thinking, he must have already found his match.

I saw him a few different places, at a few different updates. Then I saw him in Charlie O'Donnell's events newsletter that I like to skim through on Monday mornings.

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Charlie Bit My Finger

Then Tikva Morawati announced the name at Ignite NYC.

I felt shadowed.

How do all these people know I am Indian? I felt targeted. Wherever I went offline and online, the name Amit Gupta followed me.

The guy even shares last names with my childhood best friend: Gupta.

And then it happened all over again at the New York Tech MeetUp. Because Mike Bloomberg showed up - big, big surprise - and although I am pretty sure it was someone else who made the Amit Gupta - I don't even know the guy - announcement, I keep thinking that guy was a stand in, Mike Bloomberg himself made the announcement. I mean, this guy rules the city, right?

That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I am like, okay Mayor, I am showing up for the party Friday. I will do the cotton swab thing.

But what if I win the lottery? Don't you have to go under the knife or something? I was a biology major at high school. I know bone marrow is not a skin level thing. Do they use antiseptics and anesthetics these days? Because back in the days they didn't. I mean, for a guy who has never donated blood.



I'd rather Nihal Mehta went under the knife. One of the places I learned about this was also from his tweet.

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Truth be told, from minute one I have been thinking, this thing needs to be outsourced to India. If it is a one in 20,000 thing, divide a billion by 20,000 and this Gupta dude - who I do not know - ends up with more lives than a cat.

New Work City
412 Broadway, Floor 2
New York, 10013

Friday, October 14, 2011 at 9:30 PM (ET)

Brown bones? This event was put together by some white guy. You can tell.

I guess I am going. Thank Mike Bloomberg.

Amit Gupta: Scared Shitless.