Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸 @aparna_gopalan Twitter profile

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

7 months

@blkpaws Without a poetic bone in my body, I nevertheless tried to translate शहीद Refaat Alareer's words into Hindi. His words will not be forgotten

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

After months of reporting and dozens of interviews with Hindu nationalist groups and their critics, my @jewishcurrents piece on Hinduphobia is out today I found a worrying trend. The Hindu right is developing a very effective new strategy to shield Hindutva from criticism🧵1/

Jewish Currents

@JewishCurrents

1 year

NEW: In an explosive deep dive, @aparna_gopalan investigates how US Hindu nationalist groups are learning from Israel advocates’ antisemitism strategy, advancing a concept of “Hinduphobia” that shields an increasingly ethnonationalist India from criticism

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

3 years

Gentle reminder that while we were reading about India last week, Palestine was still colonized and while we're watching horrific clips from Gaza today, India is still asphyxiating. Tragedies don't follow news cycles. Solidarity shouldn't either #FreePalestine #IndiaNeedsOxygen

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Are you, or is a friend of yours, a current-or-future reporter interested in writing about labor, higher ed, union democracy, left internationalism, etc. for a leading progressive publication (say, @inthesetimesmag )? COME SAY HI: aparna @inthesetimes .com. Pitches welcome, but...

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

4 years

@ThankYouBob44 @SergioJSiano LOL asking for 2 examples of a presidential candidate’s policy is now a hate crime

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

3 years

Many feelings, good and bad, about this contract I helped bargain. But I want to raise up one "small" win in here that I am unambiguously proud of having pushed for: With this contract, Harvard has become the first (?) Ivy to recognize "caste" as a protected category!

Meimei Xu

@MeimeiXu7

3 years

BREAKING: Harvard’s grad student union ratified its second contract with Harvard Saturday, with 70.6 percent of voters in support. I report for @thecrimson :

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

4 years

well-meaning american friends: none of the south asian scholars/writers yall are loving on - chibber, spivak, shiva, roy, assorted chatterjees & banerjees- are the blazing radicals you think they are, all imbricated in strands of neo-colonialism. thank u for coming to my TED talk

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Happy August. Baristas at Watertown, MA told us today is the day wages and benefits improve but ONLY at non-union stores. Union busting truly is disgusting It's a beautiful day to support @BostonSBWU on their picket lines. 874 Comm Ave is on strike 24x7 - see you there Boston!

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Literally every higher ed union needs to bookmark this document for when we strike. It’s so easy to underestimate ourselves and worry we’re having no impact. The boss feeds that fear. Harvard told @hgsuuaw they couldn’t care less if we struck. This doc proves what BS that is.

Alex Ramsey

@Alexmram

1 year

It was so nice of @UMich to put in writing all of the ways in which our strike is successfully disrupting the normal functioning of this institution. Don’t worry, it’s not like this detailed account of our value is going to motivate every @geo3550 member even more in this fight.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

4 years

@abbygov @myeshachou @FordhamNYC And @Harvard

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

I had the absolute privilege of talking to our collective hero @JortsTheCat 😻we chatted about his life story, what brought him to labor and what keeps him here, what he thinks of his celebrity following, whether he truly is a cat, and his message to organizers. Give it a read!

Jorts (and Jean)

@JortsTheCat

1 year

Our movement and our country still needs to grapple with how to actually turn our wins into contracts — and how to defeat bosses’ attempts to drag things out until the workers are exhausted. We have to fight back.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Homi Bhabha. Jamaica Kincaid. Paul Farmer. Shiela Jasanoff. Sven Beckert. Henry Louis Gates. Jill Lepore. Tell me again about decolonization, anticapitalism, coproduction, racial justice & feminism????

kob

@kljungz

2 years

Lots of big name professors at Harvard signed a letter to defend the rights of professors to engage in sexual harassment under the guise of advising. It’s disgusting watching this play out in real time.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

At a 2022 New Jersey parade celebrating India’s independence, Hindu nationalist groups added a bulldozer to the lineup of floats. To South Asian minorities who were watching bulldozers demolishing Muslim homes in India, the symbolism was clear. Hindutva had come abroad 2/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Translation: our students have occupied our buildings in solidarity with workers and it's in the news. We can no longer use them as an excuse for strikebreaking. Parents are furious. Workers keep voting our bs deals down. So in our immense generosity, we will concede a lil bit

The New School

@TheNewSchool

2 years

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

3 years

People in India are still dying waiting for a notification on their phones. Death doesn’t stop because the news cycle loses interest. Don’t look away.

Hana Mohsin Khan | هناء

@girlpilot_

3 years

Last conversations 💔

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

3 years

You got what you wanted @PMOIndia @drharshvardhan . The global vaccine patents are going to be waived. Your turn. Will you invoke compulsory licenses, suspend domestic patents, fund production @ every capable facility, acquire *ALL* vaccines centrally and provide free of cost?

Sushant Singh

@SushantSin

3 years

Now that the US has done this, will India invoke provisions for Compulsory Licensing for the two vaccines in India so that all the other companies can make it.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Initially, NJ politicians condemned the bulldozer as an Islamophobic symbol. A local chapter of the NJ Democratic Party went further, calling on the FBI and CIA to act against US-based Hindutva groups—strip them of tax-exempt status and deny visas to their extremist speakers 3/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

5 months

@JortsTheCat Yup.

missfalasteenia

@missfalsteenia

5 months

Read that. Now read it again. 27 YEARS.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

It’s official. @SW_Columbia has changed everything we thought we knew about “what works” to win the goods for workers in higher ed. So much gratitude and love for all of you from the grad union community for whom you just raised the bar forever

Julia

@julia__bannon

2 years

Tonight, in our tenth week of striking, after 11pm, with over 260 people in the meeting, @SW_Columbia has a tentative agreement with the university. Finally.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Today, a campaign that I've poured my heart into goes live. I've only been part of this fight for 8 months, but these 3000 grad workers have spent years building an incredibly strong union - and now its public! Beware Boston University: the @gradworkersofBU are here

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

3 years

It's amazing to witness the microcosm of American indifference to brown lives abroad. During nighttime in India, tweets about the apocalypse in India get NO engagement, not even from the most internationalist comrades on here. We truly are on our own.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

“The Hindu right wants to distract from India’s catastrophic human rights record,” historian @AudreyTruschke told me. “So there’s a lot of value in portraying Hindus as victimized people.” (Incidentally, Audrey has been repeatedly called “Hinduphobic” in recent years) 7/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

But Hindu nationalists acted quickly to move the conversation away from Indian ethnonationalism and towards Hindu victimization. In a statement, 60 Hindu groups decried the “hate-filled” critics of the parade, who they said “[demonized] the entire Hindu American community” 4/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Like much Hindu nationalist activity in the US, the Hinduphobia strategy is modeled on the work of Jewish groups like American Jewish Committee (AJC) and AIPAC, especially their efforts to codify a definition of antisemitism that places much criticism of Israel out-of-bounds 8/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

The incident was one of many in which Hindu groups had managed to silence criticism of Hindu nationalism by decrying it as anti-Hindu or “Hinduphobic.” Such allegations have already prevented the passage of two house resolutions critical of Modi 6/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

4 years

@jaybeware This is exactly it. Shows how much community safety can’t coexist - even for an interim period awaiting abolition - w the police

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

...to highlight the new labor movement standard BUGWU is setting by putting @JortsTheCat 's face in each spot awaiting photographs of organizers. *chef's kiss* Jorts, it seems like you have 3000 newly unionized comrade-besties! Give 'em some love!

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Before long, this strategy yielded fruit: local politicians began to denounce critics of the parade as “anti-Hindu.” The state Democratic party soon followed. In the coming weeks, Sens. Booker and Menendez both released statements condemning “anti-Hinduism” 5/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

The goal of this definition is to “conflate Hindutva with Hinduism—to prove that a criticism of Hindutva is an attack on Hinduism,” Kashmiri American journalist @raqib_naik of @HindutvaWatchIn told me 11/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Reading this suit puts me in awe of my comrades @amulyamandava , @LiliaKilburn and @MCzerwienski yet again. It also makes me look back on my entire experience in @HarvardAnthro department in horror - at how deliberately we were endangered by our faculty 1/

amulya mandava

@amulyamandava

2 years

We’re filing a lawsuit.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

This grad admission season, some advice: go to a program with a union Grad school can change your life, and not just in the ways you imagine Check out this piece about how @hgsuuaw gave me and many others community, purpose, and a future in labor movement👇🏾

Braden Campbell

@TweetsByBraden

2 years

New from me: The fight to form and foster a union of grad student workers at Harvard has molded a cohort of young union lawyers, organizers and workplace activists. I profiled some of this bumper crop of labor advocates

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Since 2021, there has been a flurry of activity trying to codify “Hinduphobia.” The executive director of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) explicitly told me this effort mirrored “the Jewish community coalescing around the IHRA working definition of antisemitism” 9/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Under the resulting definition, the HAF says that slurs like “cow piss drinker” and “heathen” are Hinduphobia, but so are “portrayals of Narendra Modi and his political party as supremacist or fascist” 10/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

@JortsTheCat Aww Jortsy. I’m a reporter at times and would not meow at you if you ever wanted to ask something ♥️

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

grad workers, Starbucks, Amazon 🥰 this is what the labor movement looks like

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Musk claims he slept “on the floor” of his Tesla office bc he wanted to have it “worse than anyone else at the company.” But janitors he just fired from Twitter say his sleeping quarters resemble a luxuriously-furnished hotel room inside HQ From @TeddyOstrow ’s excellent report

In These Times

@inthesetimesmag

2 years

"We are a union. That's why we got fired." Twitter janitors on the Musk takeover, reported by @TeddyOstrow .

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

A year of dreams coming true.

In These Times

@inthesetimesmag

2 years

We're delighted to announce Aparna Gopalan as our new Story Editor! Aparna's reporting has appeared in The Intercept, The Nation, The New Republic, and Jewish Currents. Aparna also brings a wealth of experience in labor organizing and academia. Follow her: @aparna_gopalan

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

4 years

@caselchris1 Completely sympathising with this sentiment but also it’s important to point out your experience of American healthcare is the average (i.e., labouring class) person’s experience of Indian healthcare. India is no beacon of socialized healthcare. You are just rich there

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Despite the definition's alignment with Hindu nationalism, it has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the US. Universities are adopting it in their grievance processes; congresspeople are holding briefings on it; there’s even a “Campus Hinduphobia tracker” you can report incidents to 12/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

The codification of Hinduphobia fulfills a long-held goal. “What was missing was the institutionalization,” one Hindu right leader told me. “The idea is to first introduce the topic, then institutionalize the topic, and then popularize it in government bodies and education” 13/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Hindu right groups have also used Hinduphobia allegations against anti-caste activism, calling a recent Seattle law banning caste discrimination is “racist and discriminatory” and “classic Hinduphobia.” Activists suspect Hindu right groups might sue to oppose the law 16/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Armed with this new narrative of Hindu victimization, Hindu right groups have stepped up efforts to silence critics. In 2021, HAF launched a “grassroots campaign” that sent 1 million emails to universities to oppose an academic conference on “Dismantling Global Hindutva” 14/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

No less a figure that @RevJJackson followed Hindu right groups’ lead in condemning journalist @FriedrichPieter as racist for his criticism of Hindu nationalism 20/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Intimidation tactics like lawsuits are scary. But for me, the scariest part of the story is that it is not just rightwing groups that are falling for this Hinduphobia strategy 19/

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@aparna_gopalan

1 year

HAF claimed the conference was an “all-you-can-eat-buffet of Hinduphobia” and that it sought to “oppose and ‘dismantle’ the Bharatiya Janata Party, a democratically elected party in India”—collapsing of the distinction between Hinduism and the BJP 15/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

This year: @SW_Columbia won a ~9% raise & independent arbitration. @uaw2865 , @UAW5810 , @sruuaw are on strike for COLA in California. @MITGradUnion won their union & are bargaining; @gradworkersofBU launched & are on their way to winning in Dec. The academic labor movement is HERE

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

3 years

any editors interested in a pitch on how Harvard student workers made the world's richest university recognize caste discrimination on its campus - and what this means for the fight ahead? tag your editor friends + RT, this is a story worth telling...

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Religious studies scholar @shana_sippy told me that by emulating Jewish groups’ weaponization of antisemitism, the Hindu right hopes to “cultivate a narrative of Hindu victimization that is robust enough to justify contemporary atrocities” 24/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

As journalist @YasmeenSerhan has written in The Atlantic, under Modi “the Hinduization of India is almost complete.” The Hindu right has long been inspired by Mussolini’s Black Shirts and Nazi “race pride,” and that vision of India is close to being realized 26/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

5 months

I wrote about what the UAW really betrayed in endorsing Biden—not just its own ceasefire call (which is bad enough to betray amid a genocide), but also the broader promise of the union being an engine of working class political power

What the UAW Ceded in Endorsing Biden

Union leaders have not only betrayed their ceasefire call, but also backtracked on their fight to redefine the labor movement as a truly political force.

jewishcurrents.org

Jewish Currents

@JewishCurrents

5 months

In endorsing Biden, UAW leaders seem to have recommitted to labor’s Faustian bargain, under which US workers agree to narrow their world-making ambitions in exchange for a slightly larger chunk of the imperial pie. @aparna_gopalan writes:

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@aparna_gopalan

1 year

The US Hindu right is determined to facilitate this outcome, and “Hinduphobia” is the tool they are using to do so. They want to make sure that the US does not act on its findings on human rights so Hindutva can continue unchecked 27/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

In fact, a Seattle city council member who voted “no” on the anti-caste law mentioned the risk of lawsuits from Hindu right groups as a reason not to ban caste discrimination 17/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Why does all this matter? Well, “Hinduphobia” is reframing the conversation about India at a moment when the country’s image as the world’s largest democracy is in jeopardy; even the State Department is tracking the rise in human rights violations under Modi 25/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Progressive group @Hindus4HR told me that HAF’s early social justice work has granted them this credibility despite their rightwing leanings—so much so that HAF is in coalitions with @hrw and @amnesty , who are otherwise vocal critics of Hindu nationalism 21/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

4 years

Want better SA voices to inform your theory and practice? Many of them are in prison, not touring rich American universities:

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Anti-Hindutva groups are debating the best approach for combating what Sippy calls an “affective politics of fear.” In that effort, they are turning to antizionist groups like @jvplive , and in that collaboration might lie the only hope of defeating US Hindutva /end

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

“Speaking as a steward of our public resources, the last thing we need is yet another costly lawsuit,” she said, adding that “singling out Hindus as the perpetrators and victims of caste discrimination will only generate more anti-Hindu discrimination” 18/

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@aparna_gopalan

1 year

And Jewish groups are helping Hindu groups every step of the way. In 2022, StandWithUs hosted a webinar with HAF that was devoted to platforming the concept of Hinduphobia. Jewish and Hindu right leaders also told me of informal friendships and conversations 23/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

3 years

If @Harvard took JUST last year's budget surplus - not even touching the $50 bil endowment - they could give every student (not just student worker!) $12,000 right now as compensation for work, as tuition rebate, whatever. @hgsuuaw is on the right side of history, as always!✊🏾

Jacobin

@jacobin

3 years

Harvard is the world’s richest university — and Harvard’s student workers say they are being paid sub-living wages. A Harvard Graduate Student Union leader tells Jacobin about the union’s struggle with the university and why they’re prepared to strike.

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@aparna_gopalan

3 years

@ShrushtiUde Teenagers do work. The majority of Indian teenagers work. You just don’t count them as “teenagers” bc they are poor.

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@aparna_gopalan

1 year

One source said she would now feel uneasy driving into Seattle because of the ban on caste discrimination, and another argued that the new law made Dalit activists the “judge, jury, and executioner” of Hindu Americans 29/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

...you can also just literally say hi and let us know you're open for assignments or send tips on what you think needs to be covered.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

But despite its civil rights credentials, HAF’s politics are clear. Here’s HAF's executive director on the Indian equivalent of Fox News—in a show discussing how the Dismantling Global Hindutva conference was part of a global Islamist plot 22/

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

@JortsTheCat Literally choking laughing

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@aparna_gopalan

1 year

What is remarkable about the Hinduphobia strategy is its emotional power. My rightwing sources repeatedly called it an “existential” threat” and “a foreshadow of real-life violence to follow" 28/

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@aparna_gopalan

3 years

This win couldn't have happened without the support of @EqualityLabs (esp the inimitable Thenmozhi!), a coalition of anti-caste Harvard students and alumni, and the wider moment of reckoning around caste in the U.S.

Opinion | Why Is Caste Inequality Still Legal in America? (Published 2021)

This discrimination is real, and federal law should reflect that.

www.nytimes.com

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

👀 at my higher ed, and esp UC comrades rn, whether or not you think you're a "writer." As an academic union alum, I find many of the threads of your story—why COLA, what's the internal UAW fight, etc—well worth unraveling. DMs open for your thoughts

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

@kljungz @DeanAccardi @ShabanaMir1 @hgsuuaw Wouldn't put it past Harvard to just hire some of their cops to come w/o uniforms

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@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Just played @CODE_CWA & @MWWCNM 's Super Anti Union Campaign Simulator DX and this game is straight fire, re-energized me to organize after hours & taught my 9yo how to make the hard ask 😀

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

The president of a prominent Hindu right group told me that the Hindu American community was not responding with enough alarm to the writing on the wall. “It took a decade for the Nazis to do what they did,” he said. “It wasn’t an overnight thing; it developed slowly” 30/

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@aparna_gopalan

2 years

There is so much to say about this union. Most of it, the workers will say best. Follow them @gradworkersofBU (grad-run) / @BUGWU509 (official) to stay tuned to Boston's and higher ed's next big labor struggle & victory. The only contribution I will make is...

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@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Having been in the grad union world for a while, I’m fairly confident in saying we are welcoming one of our strongest private sector units into the fold today. @gradworkersofBU are going to *redefine* industry standards and I’m here for it 🔥 (separate note I love u guys) 🥲

BUGWU IS ON STRIKE

@gradworkersofBU

2 years

1,414 yes - 28 no (313 provisional ballots not counted)

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

Update: I want to acknowledge and correct for an omission in my piece. The @IAMCouncil has been central to the anti-Hindutva organizing—and a target of the Hindu right backlash—described in the piece. I hope to be able to cover their important work better in future reporting!

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

@julia__bannon @SW_Columbia you guys are superheroes in the grad union community 😭 congratulations this was so long in the making

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

This cat has literally offered you two pens @GavinNewsom . What’s the holdup? #AB2183

Jorts (and Jean)

@JortsTheCat

2 years

Jean says you can use her pen, 💇🏻‍♂️ #AB2183

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

tfw your outlet emails a union bargaining team but + hears back from…a PR firm + that says you’re harming the union by featuring critics of BT + promises you a “rank & file” response soon + hours later a "r&f" letter comes out calling critics anti-union

In These Times

@inthesetimesmag

2 years

Tying pay to local rents has been a core demand for UC workers. Despite their incredible leverage, the bargaining committee voted to drop the demand.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

3 years

I hope this win gives precedent and paves the way for caste protections across universities and workplaces in the U.S. and clarifies that caste is a labor and union issue, in India and beyond!

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

3 years

Two months ago, an early draft of my first @theintercept piece said that 3% of Indians were fully vaccinated In fact-checking yesterday I found the number had gone up to 3.5% Why the deadly delay? Some answers in the piece, out now👇🏾 #FreeTheVaccine

India's Vaccine Makers Are Pandemic Profiteers, Not Humanitarians

The Indian government’s free-market approach to Covid-19 vaccine distribution has privileged profit over lives.

theintercept.com

The Intercept

@theintercept

3 years

India’s vaccine makers are pandemic profiteers, not humanitarians by @aparna_gopalan

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

cc: @WritersofColor @studyhallxyz —rates range from $300-500 depending on where you fall on the opinion-feature spectrum

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

4 years

So once you finish god of small things or subaltern speaks, pause and reflect on how tiny a sliver of subcontinental perspectives you’ve just encountered and what multitudes must lie underneath whatever floats to the top of the marketplace of ideas

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

I wrote about how the US's breathless excitement re: Modi masks the Biden admin's own acknowledgement that India is violating human rights at genocidal levels. Thanks to @YashicaDutt @dviyer @SunitaSunitaV @rajan_menon_ @azadessa and others for your insights!

Jewish Currents

@JewishCurrents

1 year

In May, the State Dept said the situation in India is so dire the US Holocaust Museum is concerned about "the potential for mass killings there.” But today, the US rolled out the red carpet for the man responsible. . @aparna_gopalan reports on Modi's visit

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

3 years

Gentle reminder to my TL that yes, organizing against patents worked and deserves to be celebrated -- but a person is still dying every 4 min in India and there is *no plan* to stop that right now.

JayEnAar

@GorwayGlobal

3 years

The #SecondCovidWave in #India is getting worse and more desperate. On 5th May the new cases recorded went back above 4 lakhs to 4,12,373. Reported deaths reached a new high of 3,979. Most deaths in small towns and rural India go untested, unrecorded, unreported, unmourned.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Is there a already map of every higher ed union in the US—public and private schools & community colleges; undergrads, grads and faculty; office, dining, and custodial staff? If not, is there interest in creating one? @ILRLaborAction @MorePerfectUS @Labor_Research @labornotes

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

4 years

@rakeshyadav @dougsandlin @EbonySounds8l @Sajma @sufsters @IAmSuyiDavies @ShashiTharoor Pls read "The Pariah Problem" by Rupa Viswanath for a more nuanced and thorough education on exactly WHO in India was plundered (landless, low caste laborers) by which *coalitions* of people (British + upper caste landlords + Indian industrial elite).

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Bittersweet career update: I am so thrilled to spend the year as a @JewishCurrents Fellow working alongside some of the best editors in the business. But I’m going to miss organizing with Boston’s newest badass union @gradworkersofBU —I’ll see you guys at those lit rallies tho!

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

3 years

In our very first @hgsuuaw ~ @Harvard bargaining session last week - after two pandemic semesters - Harvard of the $40 Billion said they worried that if they started providing external monitors to workers who need them, pretty soon everyone's gonna want one... Meanwhile at HBS👇🏿

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

4 years

On the one hand, nice to see folks paying attention: on the other, quite fed up of the glorification of India’s labor mvmt which is in dire straits & fighting straight up slavery and indenture rather than organizing so successfully everyone should learn from them etc etc

Black Socialists in America

@BlackSocialists

4 years

Pay attention to the strikes in India.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

In case you’re wondering why I haven’t responded to your email in the past six months: I was wading in the muck of the Hindu Right. To read the results of that messy trek in a beautiful print issue, please subscribe to JC (and use “Spring23” for 50% off!)

Subscribe today!

Digital Subscription ▪️PDF copy and online access to each issue as soon as it comes out Print & Digital Subscription ▪️PDF copy and online access to each issue as soon as it comes out ▪️Three...

secure.jewishcurrents.org

Jewish Currents

@JewishCurrents

1 year

. @aparna_gopalan investigates how Hindu American groups—inspired by Israel advocates’ weaponization of antisemitism—are using the concept of “Hinduphobia” to shield an increasingly ethnonationalist India from criticism. Photo: Todd Spoth.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

4 years

@ChicanaAnthropo The number of people in these replies expressing shock that the racist was an anthropologist - lol. Why has everyone drank the Kool Aid. Anthropology is racist in its DNA, no matter the cosmetic changes of the past decades. What happened here is that the quiet part was spoken out

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Yale and BU union elections, UC grads' monumental strike, New School faculty & UC postdocs' decisive ratification votes, pivotal internal elections close to my heart (UAW, SEIU 509), not to mention 🚂. . . the labor movement's the real World Cup this week

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

If these incredible women - my friends and colleagues - had not spoken up against the powers that be, this would still be happening. The dept would be setting John on the 2022 cohort, if not for Amulya, Margaret and Lilia's incredible bravery & collective action ❤️✊🏾8/8

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

4 years

Thrilled to have a chance to say it in The Nation: poor countries need well funded public goods to end poverty, not development economists’ innovations in how to justify further budget cuts

The Nation

@thenation

4 years

The 2019 Nobel Prize winners in economics represent a new strain of neoliberal thought.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Absolutely thrilled for my first @JewishCurrents byline to be on inflation. This continues my life’s work of politicising economists’ quiet bs So grateful to learn from left econ mentors like @HadasThier @DougHenwood @JWMason1 & for the 🌟 editing of @DavidKlion @NCaplanBricker

Jewish Currents

@JewishCurrents

2 years

For anyone bewildered by the inflation debate and what it means for the left, read @aparna_gopalan 's essential explainer

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

4 years

Me phonebanking for @hgsuuaw like

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Every person waiting at this O’Hare gate is decked out in @labornotes gear 🥰

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

2 years

Oh and -- FUCK Harvard

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

3 years

Meanwhile, just a 4% tax on India’s richest 954 families can yield 1% of GDP - enough to vaccinate the entire country on a war footing

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

With the announcement of @HAWorkers and @harvarduwu , the last swath of Harvard’s workforce is now unionizing, bringing us to a total of ~20,000 union workers—faculty, grads and undergrads; dining, custodial and office staff. If I were admin, I’d be quaking in my boots 🥰

Harvard Academic Workers - UAW (HAW-UAW)

@HAWorkers

1 year

We’re proud to announce the campaign to unionize non-tenure-track faculty and researchers within Harvard University—we are Harvard Academic Workers - UAW! We unite ~6000 workers across all 12 Harvard schools. 🧵

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan

1 year

The grad union wave is finally hitting Chicago in a BIG way, with - 3k grads @NorthwesternGW 🌊 (who won this month) and - 3k grads @uchicagogsu 🌊 (who vote tomorrow!) working together to align demands, resources, and perhaps even...strikes 👀🔥 ft. @ueunion @MITGradUnion

In These Times

@inthesetimesmag

1 year

Chicago universities have record endowments. It’s time to pay up.

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Aparna Gopalan 🇵🇸

@aparna_gopalan