Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of …
… Questo from the Roots?
When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned his poem about Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride to warn the freedom fighting militias, “The British are coming,” I’m thinking he would have been pretty surprised to know that his words would be equated with the actions of a beloved African American drummer, hip-hop pioneer and television personality who would one day use something called “Twitter” via a communication medium called “the Internet” to warn a different kind of freedom fighter about the approach of a domestic “enemy.”
If you are one of the 1,762,085 following @Questlove on Twitter you might have caught his Nov. 14 tweet on your time line in which he expressed concern for the safety of the Wall Street protesters in Zucotti Park:
It seems his warning was taken lightly by those who responded, as Questo immediately tweeted again:
He received several tweets explaining the police presence as “a shift change” and “practice maneuvers” so he tweeted again:
Of course, it turns out Questo was spot-on with his assessment of the situation. The NYPD did sweep the camps in a pre-dawn raid. The surprise crackdown was coincidentally carried out just ahead of solidarity demonstrations unions and community groups had planned for Nov. 17 — the two-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Gotta love this dude. I vote his tweets for the “2011 best use of Twitter” award. –kathleen cross
