Queens community rallies after subway attack
Residents of Queens, NY, are asking the police department and the city’s transportation leaders to both step up enforcement of hate crimes and soften their tone against Muslims.
The call for tolerance from New York City leaders comes after Sunando Sen, a Hindu-Indian immigrant who was mistaken for a Muslim, was pushed to his death from a subway platform in front of an oncoming train last week.
About 50 people demonstrated in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens this week. Police representatives and local councilmen joined the group in solidarity.
Protesters held signs displaying messages like “Stop normalizing racism and violence,” and “NYPD and MTA, racial profiling and hateful ads have consequences.”
“I saw and talked with Sunando just moments before the incident,” Ranjit De Roy, a friend of Sunando, said to the group. “He was a quiet and gentle man who never harmed anyone. How many more lives must we lose to this racism?”
protests
Ole Miss Students Hold Vigil After Election Night Protests
Last week, University of Mississippi students stood up to another divisive protest. On Election Night, after the re-election of President Barack Obama, more than 400 students gathered to protest, yell racial epithets and burn an Obama campaign sign.
Chancellor Dan Jones quickly denounced the protests, saying students and faculty of the university were “ashamed” of the actions of a few of their peers. The following day, student group One Mississippi gathered about 700 students at a candlelight vigil, where they read the university’s creed to “respect the dignity of each person.” It was the same counter tactic they used when the Ku Klux Klan protested in support of the controversial chant—“the South will rise again”—sung at university football games in 2009.
Check out video of the vigil on Vimeo.