Seven South Asian Chicagoans joined hands with the globally trending #DontRush TikTok challenge to raise awareness of how South Asian communities can combat against COVID-19.
#DontRush Challenge is a fun viral trend on TikTok, where users dance to the song Don’t Rush by Young T & Bugsey featuring Headie One. The main objective is to show off major transformations in style and appearance
Through this fun virtual challenge, seven friends from Chicago Desi Youth Rising (CDYR) decided to help support Chicago’s South Asian community tackle coronavirus. CDYR is a leadership group that empowers Chicago’s South Asian youth to combat racial, economic and social inequity.
Tanvi Kapatral told ABC7 that she and her six friends joined the challenge because “everyone’s on social media right now and the people that can donate, their worlds have shifted into technology.” That is why the seven friends thought the virtual challenge could “be a way to bridge those communities.”
Nash Alam, who also played a part in this TikTok challenge told ABC7 that she had “really wanted to build content that we haven’t seen online around educating and mobilizing our communities to take action in this moment of crisis.”
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That is why the seven CDYR members, originally from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh added their own sprinkle of creativity to the DontRush challenge. The seven each changed into different traditional South Asian clothes to suggest what the South Asian community can do to help others during the COVID-19 outbreak
As can be seen from ABC 7 Chicago’s YouTube Channel, messages ranged from “stand in solidarity with Kashmiris, Palestinians and Iranians” to “call your elected officials and tell them to release all incarcerated folks to “donate your stimulus check to working class South Asians in Chicago at bit.ly/desimutualaid”.
Tanvi Kapatral hoped her friends’ virtual messages could motivate South Asian communities to help neighborhoods severely stricken by the virus to quickly recover.
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