I've started doing personal archiving, making sure that every link I've tweeted is saved in the @InternetArchive.

If it was worth tweeting, it's worth saving to the Internet's historical record.

Here's how I'm doing it… 1. Download your Twitter Archive. A lot of tech and media outlets have been explaining exactly how to do this. It might take days for the download to be available after your request, so start now.

help.twitter.com/en/managing-yo…

I research Bay Area South Asian American histories, and recently came across Syed Abul Hassain, maybe the first South Asian student at @UCSF, back in 1889.

Here's what I've found so far. It's pretty scanty…

1/? Syed Abul Hassain was a Bengali Muslim med student from Calcutta, India who

- studied at Toland College of Medicine in San Francisco (now @UCSF) in 1888-89

- graduated from Gross Medical College in Denver (now @CUMedicalSchool) in 1889

- worked as a physician in SF in 1891

2/

1/ The standard story of the Asian American movement begins in the 1960s

But I just found an old newspaper article about an "Oriental Students Association" in 1907 California, with members from India, China, Siam, and Japan.

Here's the story 👇🏽

secretdesihistory.com/oriental-stude… 2/ The Berkeley Gazette described the impetus:

“…a certain amount of class distinction which they have felt to exist between them and their fellow students has resulted in the banding together…into a brotherhood…the object of which is to be sociability and mutual protection”

I run the monthly Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour (berkeleysouthasian.org). But with tours cancelled, I've been focusing on research, attempting to identify every single South Asian in Berkeley, CA pre-1920. So far, I'm up to 113 names. Some favorites so far… Some names are (relatively) famous, like Dhan Gopal Mukerji, who came from a revolutionary family, studied at Berkeley and Stanford, hung out with anarchists and Ghadarites, and won the Newbery Medal. His autobiography is complicated and fascinating. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhan_Gopa…

Berkeley is 20% Asian American, but you wouldn't know it by looking at street names

The city's trying to find a name for a new street. This is our chance to honor a woman who survived local racism to become an immigrant leader

Live in Berk? Nominate her!
actionnetwork.org/letters/nomina… Kala Bagai immigrated from present-day Pakistan in 1915. The Bagais built a small business, then bought a home in Berkeley.

But on moving day, when they arrived with their kids and belonging, racist Berkeley neighbors blocked the front door to keep them from moving in.

As an Indian American, today's #HowdyModi/Trump rally feels absurd

Why celebrate someone trying to deport 500k Indians from the US, and kill #H4EAD, which allowed ~100k Indian women to work legally?

But here's the weirdest part…

(thread)

#AdiosModi /1
qz.com/india/1560797/… Indian American kids get bullied every single fucking day.

"T*rrorist"
"Cam*ljockey"
"Sand n*gger"
"Os*ma"
"T*welhead"
"Sh*t-skinned"
"R*ghead"
"Curry m*nkey"

The list goes on and on.

And it's been getting worse.

Because of Trumpism.

#AdiosModi /2

vox.com/identities/201…

It's #BlackHistoryMonth, and someone emailed me about the BlackDesiSecretHistory.org website, and why South Asian Americans owe a debt of gratitude to African American activism.

Here's the truth: without the Civil Rights movement, South Asian America as we know it might not exist. U.S. laws long restricted immigration from South Asia. While several thousand South Asians had made their way to the United States by the early 20th century, the Immigration Act of 1917 explicitly barred our immigration.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigrati…