bc magazine

Life is Full of Contradictions, Especially in a Revolution

“A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery.” Mao Zedong
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I really don’t like what the meat industry does to animals: But I do enjoy eating steak.

I like the results of slaughtering animals, but I hate the method that gives me the results I desire.

Life is full of contradictions, especially in a revolution.

The police justify their brutal enforcement actions in order to maintain their version of peace, likewise, protestors, justify their actions in order to force change from what they see as a malign and unjust government.

The protests in the districts aren’t pretty, it is raw and gritty human against human conflict. At this moment in time it may grind on your sensibilities of what is right and what is wrong, but it can’t be denied that these types of protest are producing results that you might just welcome.

The common retort from most democracy protesters still wondering what to do after the failure of 79 days of Occupy is, “I’m all for dealing with the smuggler problem, or managing hawkers, but I don’t support the methods of the direct action groups.”

But the fact is, if the direct action groups hadn’t created these operations, smugglers or hawkers wouldn’t even be news stories. It’s an undeniable fact that because of these protests the whole of Hong Kong, even the World is talking about how to deal with these problems and that has a far reaching effect on how Hong Kong is governed as a whole.

The direct action groups don’t claim to have all the answers, their goal was to explode these issues in the media and get everyone talking. These are proxy wars on how the HK Government and police think Hong Kong should be ruled under the CCP.

Now everyone wants to offer their opinion on how these problems should be fixed and pretty much every respectable person in Hong Kong believes that something should be done to fix them to make HK better.

So, there’s your fresh, tasty steak, cooked rare! But how it got on the table was pretty shitty!
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Just like it would be wrong to enjoy eating meat yet criticise the butcher for having no morals, likewise, you should think twice before criticising these type of protests. In an atmosphere where the government can ignore huge crowds of people on the streets for months, how else can you grab its attention.

photo: 白影

Umbrella Movement – 1 March, 2015 – Yuen Long Sexual Assault

Intent on causing trouble and strife with the protestors this man was eventually lead away by the police. As he was being lead away, he reached out and grabbed the breast of a young female demonstrator right infront of the eyes of the policeman force walking him away.

The policeman did nothing as the girl screamed, Having seen the sexual assault I shouted and harangued PTU Inspector Ng until she eventually deigned to investigate before releasing him. They did not arrest the man even with witnesses to the attack.

To avoid having to arrest the man, the police put heavy pressure on me not to make a statement, saying it would take 7 or 8 hours minimum at the station to make a witness statement. That there were no CID available to investigate the case, so they couldn’t arrest the man…

I was and still am, fully willing to make a statement about the assault – yet the police appear to have pressured the young lady into not filing a complaint, so they let the man go.

CY Leung – would you accept this man grabbing your daughter’s breast… didn’t think so. So why should another father have to? End selective policing now!

Video of the man, just before the assault

http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2015/Umbrella-Movement-1-March-2015/47769167_vjZGZd#!i=3905047531&k=dsXpZxd

Trust

In revolutionary times like these, the biggest danger to your own personal freedom is surrounding yourself with people who may not be safe or have duplicitous, veiled intentions.

Trust is a very precious thing. The currency of the Communist Party of China (CCP) is distrust. They break bonds and relationships in order to create an atmosphere of distrust. In this warped World of their making, the CCP thrives within the fractures of society and human relationships. When no-one trusts each other it is very hard to get anything organised. This is how the CCP destroys any notion of civil society in China and ensures that no one defies it.

To get to the very top of the CCP you need to be a master in exploiting mistrust. The success of the CCP relies on no-one trusting anyone, ever. This also goes for CCP members, who have the least trust in anyone or their organisation. The only real antidote to CCP tactics is to create trust. The CCP doesn’t know how to build real trust, it only knows how to break it.

Even as far back as the Yan’an days, starry-eyed, young wannabe communists would turn up at the border of the new Soviet, and the first thing the CCP establishment would do is get to work on destroying whatever trust the friends had in each other. Just like a Mahout breaking the will of a baby elephant, the CCP uses the threat or actual violence to break the natural tendencies that humans have to trust in one another.

Although the CCP, via United Front activities, has permeated all levels of Hong Kong society they have yet to have any major impact upon our civil society. HongKongers both know how to trust and be trusted. This sounds like a simple life skill, but many people on the Mainland are devoid of trust due to nearly 70years of CCP rule.

The Umbrella Revolution has shown that HongKongers are happy to put an enormous amount of trust in their fellow citizen-protestors. When the police were running rampage swinging batons and showing no discipline despite having so-called training, protestors stood their ground and calmly held their lines, showing maximum discipline and great trust in complete strangers who shared similar ideals and values.

The Umbrella Revolution was a fantastic display of a trusting civil society pulling together to express itself unconventionally. This scares the CCP. However going forward, the simple honest trust that HongKongers share with their fellow citizens will not be enough and will come under persistent attack by shady groups designed to break trust at every turn.

In order to take on the CCP and its lackey local government, HongKongers will need to create trust networks that will be very difficult for the CCP to infiltrate and disrupt using simple, well-used methods.

How to strengthen trust for the fight ahead?
The best way to protect and build trust is to create small, human-to-human trust networks. Or cells of 8-10 people you absolutely trust and know share the same values as you.

Why only 8-10 people?
Here’s a quick exercise.
Quickly list all the people you absolutely trust in your head.
It’s not that many right? Probably less than 10.
This is not because you live in an un-trusting world. It’s because trust begins to fray at the edges once the numbers get too big. Groups that are over ten people start to unravel on real trust.

Military Special Forces now favour small teams of 6 people over large battalions of men commanded by a few key generals. A small group becomes self-regulatory, everyone can manage each other and make sure they remain within the trust-circle and values parameters. If someone breaks trust the person can be removed quite simply and the group regenerates itself quickly without major disruption. In larger social groups, this simple task is harder because factions can form and identifying those who are not trustworthy becomes both time consuming and difficult.

Once you are part of a small trust network, you will see that this protects your own personal freedoms and liberty and it can then begin to interact with other people’s networks much easier. Large crowds of trust networks sharing similar ideas are much safer than large numbers of individuals who you ‘think’ have the same common goals.

When on a protest, you will know and trust the people standing next to you. You will know that the communications you’re receiving are authentic and that you will be surrounded by many others that share your values. You may not know everyone in all the groups, but you know you can trust them because they are built on the similar values as your network. In this environment agent provocateurs are stifled in their activities as they rarely operate as groups. They are quickly shown up to be lone wolfs with no immediate network to back up their direction which is trying to agitate the crowd and cause chaos. Agent provocateurs operate by acting as individuals, coming together to incite a larger crowd. If they can be identified quickly as being at a protest with no close networks then their intentions can quickly be seen as suspicious. Singular individuals with good intentions generally don’t try and rally people to do provocative things out of the blue.

The only weakness in creating tight, trust networks is choosing people to be in your network who are not trustworthy. I will discuss this in another post.

Will creating trust networks help reduced the factionalism that is present in the Umbrella Revolution?
Well, it wont eliminate it, that’s certain, but it will reduce it. You see, like attracts like. Trust networks will be created along the lines of the political spectrum you adhere to. In this way, the various democratic groups can interface with each other, knowing that they may not see eye-to-eye on method, but can identify and work with each other on greater causes. The classic example would be the breaking of the window at Legco. It wasn’t the actual breaking of the window that pissed most people of, it was more to do with, well, who the hell is this guy and that guy? In a revolution that is permeated with trust networks, people can quickly be validated as the real deal, even though you might totally reject the methods they are using.

Conversely the CCP wants to riddle the revolution with no trust. In this climate, groups fight one another and are at the mercy of manipulative agent provocateurs at every turn. Giving in to distrust will assuredly bring about a CCP victory within HK. Or as Ben Franklin once stated, “If we don’t all hang together we shall surely hang separately!” Or in order to guarantee our independence and freedom from the most tyrannical entity that has ever existed, the CCP, we will have to fight for it together and defend each others’ rights when attacked, even if we don’t fully agree with the actions or methods of all those involved. Trust networks go a long way in mitigating against the CCP carving up the Umbrella Revolution into bite sized chunks. It doesn’t matter where you are on the democratic spectrum, anything is better than the CCP spreading the disease of distrust throughout Hong Kong’s society.

Trust is the glue that bonds the revolution together. Distrust is the cancer that will eat away at the weak joint in between groups.

Fantastic things were achieved during the opening phase of the Umbrella Revolution. But during those times, the crowds that came together were just clusters of strangers sharing the same dreams and aspirations. In the next phase of the Revolution, we need to return with more trust and more organisation. The CCP will be working tirelessly to make sure that doesn’t happen. It is their number one enemy, they hate trust above all things. Yet, for HongKongers it’s our greatest weapon, so don’t squander it!

Goldentime Property Agency CEO Offers Thugs $5000 to Beat Up Yellow Ribbons in Yuen Long

In recent months the police have been arresting and charging yellow ribbons for allegedly using the internet for ‘organising an illegal assembly. In screen shots of a facebook chat Wong Sau Yin CEO of Goldmine Properties in Yuen Long is seen offering $5000 cash for beating up ‘yellow ribbons’ heads until they bleed. Where is the police announcement that he has been arrested and charged?

The LoveTuenMun facebook page shared the screen shots of Wong Sau Yin, CEO of Goldentime Property Agency Ltd, private chat. The leaked chat is full of threatening content. Wong also admits to cooperating with some organizations in Guangzhou and to have hired thugs ready to beat the protesters’ brains out in any upcoming Yuen Long protest (probably on 1 March, 2015).

In a conversation with the admin from LoveTuenMun page, Wong requested to have these prints screens of his conversations deleted. The page admin demanded a public apology be made, but Mr Wong said he is ‘protected’ and rejected the idea. He confessed to be working with communists, being sent to do the brainwashing in Hong Kong.

The CCP must be loving this… using money (greed) to turn Hongkonger against Hongkonger while they suck the life and profits from our home.

So, What’s the Big Deal About Hawkers Anyway?

http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2015/Street-Eats-Mong-Kok-20/47615540_5N7f9J#!i=3889376520&k=Xn2PSdn

The only thing bigger than street hawkers this Lunar New Year has been Regina Ip being knocked for a six by a Kirin. Given this, we all have high hopes for the year of the goat and its new, feisty attitude of butting things it doesn’t like out of the way.

In regards to the hawkers, it doesn’t matter whether you agree with HK Indigenous’ actions to help relieve the impact of hawkers or not. That is not why they spent four nights cleaning the streets, Their goal was to get you talking about local issues. Or, how do local people solve local problems? Or Hong Kong people making decisions about Hong Kong’s future, just like the Basic Law once promised us, so long ago. This is their ultimate purpose. Media and online forums have been alight with the pros and cons of hawkers in the districts. Hundreds of people have come out to defend them and the Government has wasted vast quantities of money mobilising the FEHD and police to generally do nothing other than look like wannabe Mainland Chengguan and Gong An. (An ominous sign for the future.)

Regardless, of what the solution to hawkers is, the HK Indigenous operation, just like its smuggler campaign, was a huge media success. A handful of motivated young people entirely dictated what the media should be talking about this Lunar New Year, no easy feat. They don’t presuppose for a minute that they have the solutions, their goal is to empower local people to take their communities back. In order to do this they need to tackle problems that are both contentious and difficult to solve. In their choice of operations, they’re not looking for consensus and praise, rather debate and ultimately local empowerment.

They are the beginning of a grassroots revolution within Hong Kong, concentrating on local identity and local empowerment of civil society. It’s a direct push back from the top-down style government so favoured on the Mainland and now being rammed down our throats by CY’s oppressive and clumsy administration. It’s a backlash against the idea that, Hong Kong is part of the Mainland, therefore we need to start acting like Mainlanders. Instead, HK Indigenous and groups like them are directly tackling difficult issues to highlight that geographically, it may be correct, that we are part of Mainland China, but culturally we are very different and the qualities that distinguish this are worth retaining, defending and even fighting for.

The hawker issue will rumble on. The smugglers issue hasn’t gone away, and will be back very soon. No doubt these groups will propel other issues to the forefront very soon. The cumulative effect is that daily Hong Kong’s identity becomes more pronounced as its people get more courage to stand up for what they believe to be right.

Still Struggling to Understand What Was Happening at the Kweilin Street Lunar Markets Last Night?

Still struggling to understand what was happening at the Kweilin Street Lunar Markets last night?

Firstly, HK Indigenous issued a formal proposal to the FEHD on how they would help improve the hygiene and safety of the traditional market. (See full proposal at bottom of this post)

Despite this, the FEHD started clamping down on the hawkers in the afternoon. Many hawkers relocated to Mongkok to avoid fines and trouble.

HK Indigenous turned up with rubbish bins, brooms, fire extinguishers and volunteers to help maintain the night market for the local community.

In response the Government mobilised many police officers and FEHD, which all but killed the Lunar New Year Market for the night, as per the Governments design.

Proving that this Government will mobilise huge volumes of expensive manpower and allocate huge amounts of taxpayer’s money in order to suppress local people, but wont entertain sensible proposals to preserve or maintain local culture.

This action by HK Indigenous will happen for the next three nights. Please show your support.

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FEHD Proposal
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就桂林夜市一事，我們向食環署寫了一份建議書，內容包括有關改善衛生，人流及交通之方法，希望他們能參考建議書之內容，通融保留富有本地特色的桂林夜市。

We have submitted a proposal to the FEHD about measures to improve hygiene, pedestrian and traffic management. We sincerely hope the department could take reference of the proposal and accommodate for this local night market of indigenous blend of food and culture.
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食物環境衛生署：
『桂林夜市』建議書

To the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department:
Proposal on the temporary Kweilin Night Market

背景
桂林街（Kweilin Street）是香港深水埗區一條街道，其道路與北河街大致平行。近年起於農曆新年(從年三十晚至年初三期間)，桂林街聚集不少本地居民擺設地攤及熟食檔，繁華鼎盛，因而被稱為「桂林夜市」。可是，2014年民建聯向貴署提交一份建議書要求貴署嚴打夜市，導致極具本土特色的『桂林夜市』成為絕響。有見及此，本組織(本土民主前線) 就衛生、道路安全及保存集體回憶三方面提交此建議書，致力追求讓本土特色得以保存時，對其他市民日常生活的影響減至最低。

Background
Kweilin Street in Shum Shui Po is well known for the night market held during lunar new year eve and the first three days of it. People from the Neighbourhood gather there to set up bazaars and food stalls. The prosperous night market is thus born. However, the intervention from the Pro-Establishment Camp is threatening this indigenous tradition. In the light of preserving the night market, Hong Kong Indigenous are proposing means to minimize the side effect of the night market.

衛生
鑒於往年桂林夜市的衛生問題都令各界引起關注，垃圾堆積問題嚴重。為改善衛生問題，本組織將於年三十晚至年初三期間放置十個臨時垃圾箱，並安排義工充當衛生大使，清理囤積的垃圾，垃圾會由義工運送至元州街垃圾收集站(元州街59-63號)；另將有多名義工負責道路清潔(如掃地)，盡可能做到垃圾分類，以便減少堆填區日積月累之負擔。義工們會勸籲市民不要隨地亂拋垃圾，籍此提升港人之公德心。

Hygiene
To cope with the environmental issues produced by the stacking of refuse, we would arrange to set up ten temporary trash bin. Together with our volunteers, we would like to send the trash directly to the refuse collection point nearby. We also assign helpers to keep the road clean and sort the waste for recycling. On top of that, we would remind the crowd not to leave refuse on the street.

道路安全
據往年所見，很多地攤和熟食檔都放置於行車通道，規劃散亂，容易造成交通阻塞及易生意外，汽車駛進來的時候亦花很長時間開通道路，故此道路安全值得高度關注。本組織建議行車通道和行人通道都需預留足夠空間，以免人多擠逼產生碰撞。可於地面劃出地攤及熟食區，清晰地指引桂林夜市之檔主如何擺放，互相作出協調。本組織亦安排多名義工專門負責道路協調，疏導人流及車輛。當有汽車通過桂林街的時候，義工會安排檔主及市民在安全情況下有秩序地讓出車路，務求令人流及交通暢順。本組織亦備有滅火筒，如遇火種，可即時使用滅火筒進行撲救，減少意外發生。

Road Safety
We are aware of the need of a clear passage for emergency and traffic. We would improve by drawing clear guidelines for stalls and food trolleys and enforce them with the help of volunteers. Our road safety helpers are in charge of coordinating traffic, pedestrian and stalls. Fire extinguishers are prepared for emergency use.

保存集體回憶
香港發展急促，日新月異。社會進步帶來了不少方便及新穎感，但與此同時港人之集體回憶正逐漸被蠶蝕。就如已被商業化的各個小社區，裡裡外外都成為名店、金鋪、藥房等供應遊客購物的店鋪，真正屬於香港人的消費和娛樂的地方已所剩無幾。為保存港人之集體回憶，本組織強烈建議保留桂林夜市。

As a preservation of memories
The development of Hong Kong has washed away most of our local memories. The old local stores were tore down and replaced by chain stores. We feel the need to save some indigenous value for the Hong Kong local. The Kweilin Night Market is highly recommended to be preserved.

總結
桂林夜市只是農曆新年期間，持續數個晚上的平民活動，其存在價值在於擁有極濃厚香港本地特色，包括文化和美食，可惜慘遭無情打壓，俗語有云：法律不外乎人情，本組織還望貴署參考此建議書就衛生，交通和保留集體回憶三方面之具體建議，通融保留桂林夜市。

Summary
Kweilin Night Market is a neighbourhood activity held during a few nights of Lunar New Year. Yet it bears a strong indigenous value, with a mix of local culture and culinary. Even it is under repression now, we have to urge the FEHD to make an exception and preserve the Kwelin Night Market.

本土民主前線
2015年2月17日

Hong Kong Indigenous
17/2/2015

Images courtesy of their respective owners

Who are HK Indigenous?

HK Indigenous is one of several new political groups that has evolved from the experiences learned during the initial months of the Umbrella Movement. They “want to break away from the pseudo democratic roadmap and put direct pressure on the government with the right means of protest. We have to alert the government that the indigenous value of Hong Kong cannot be washed away or sold.”

This is the HK Indigenous Charter in English if you didn’t know what they are about:

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Hong Kong Indigenous: Upholding Indigenous Virtue Against Suppression

18 years have passed since the handover of Hong Kong. “One Country, Two System” is just a scam under the Communist Party rule. Day after day we local Hong Kong people lose our rights and indigenous values to the Chinese Communist Party, while the pan-democratic legislators indulge in their own ‘China Dream.’

Hong Kong people are fed up with this. We rallied against the National Education Reform and the North East New Territories Development. We took part in the Umbrella Revolution. We are doing more and more to get this message across to the government – we are not going to back away or accept our fate lying down. The pseudo democrats time after time created fake protests which achieved nothing but keeping the peace for the authorities. Hong Kong people are being betrayed and kept away from true democracy, as well as being hindered in developing our own indigenous virtue.

We are a group of nameless Hong Kong people who are on the frontline of protests. Since the old resistance methods have failed against the authorities, we have no choice but to stand out and break the stalemate.

Hong Kong Indigenous was founded after we learned from the lessons from the Umbrella Revolution. We want to break away from the pseudo democratic roadmap and put direct pressure on the government with the right means of protest. We have to alert the government that the indigenous value of Hong Kong cannot be washed away or sold. Thus we are upholding indigenous virtues, as we the people own this city.

We are Hong Kong people. We have the spirit to overcome whatever challenges are thrown at us. We have overcome 1967, 1989, 1997, SARS and avian flu. What is there to fear?

Hong Kong Indigenous leads the way in the new era of protest, where we would not be fooled by pan-democrats or ignored by the government.

If you are proud of the values that Hong Kong People have created during our rich history, then please join us or support us in this fight.

Together we are strong and can’t be defeated.

www.facebook.com/hkindigenous

Has the Democracy Movement Been Hijacked by Racism?

As a westerner living in Hong Kong one of the first things you notice about the Hong Kong Cantonese is that they spend a lot of time shouting at each other. Often, what you think is a conflict is actually just two friends engaging in friendly banter about horses or Korean soap operas. That said, you don’t have to have lived here too long before you will encounter a real confrontation. Whatever the reason for the conflict, these situations quickly escalate into loud slanging matches, punctuated with elaborate verbal abuse and theatrical posturing. These conflicts almost never end in violence. Almost every westerner who witnesses these events for the first time thinks, “There’s no way I would let anyone shout at me like that, I would punch them in the face.”

And on the whole it’s true, westerners are much quicker to fight than Cantonese. Maybe it’s something to do with the Cantonese language being very colloquial and street-wise, who knows? But Cantonese really do enjoy verbally abusing each other where other nationalities would already be rolling in the dirt and fighting.

The Occupy protests amplified this penchant for verbal abuse into a mass movement. Battles over Lung Wo Road regularly saw more than 2000 people chanting abuse to the police but staying incredibly peaceful physically. I personally took a major role in convincing a few people not to load house bricks onto the road, so as to prevent the crowd from bloodbathing the police, who were at this point so cocky that they were running around beating people with no shields or helmets. Good sense won over, in that the Cantonese are really good at verbally abusing each other and don’t need actual violence to articulate and vent their views. Unfortunately this good sense hasn’t seeped down into the police who believe they have the right to Route One to violence because they are being shouted at by the protesters. In this, the police are stepping outside of the Cantonese social norm, in that tens of thousands of times a day, Cantonese hurl verbal rocks at each other, but 99% have the self restraint to not lash out into actual physical violence.

These days in heated confrontations with protesters the HKPF always bemoan, “We’re not doing anything international police wouldn’t do in a similar situation,” but the critical point they miss, is the Cantonese aren’t acting like international rioters. They’re acting like Cantonese. They know the rules of the game, which the police have forgotten, or choose to ignore. Instead They somehow feel they are apart from local culture and are justified in using violence because they’re police and should automatically deserve respect without earning it. This attitude is destroying Cantonese culture by introducing quick, physical violence as a way of resolving conflict. The Blue Ribbons have taken to this new way of conflict resolution like ducks to water. This represents a significant slide in the cultural values of the Hong Kong society and the police created it on October 3rd when they turned a blind eye to the triads causing chaos in Mongkok.

So, the reality is the Occupy Movement has been high on verbal violence and infinitesimally low on actual violence because the Cantonese culture regularly substitutes verbal violence for real violence to resolve conflict and express frustration.

With this in mind, we can see that the current redirection of the democracy movement from protests on the streets outside Legco to Direct Action in the districts has also manifested this engrained habit. Instead, the targets of verbal abuse has changed from the Government and the Police to smugglers and parallel traders.

I stood outside the 3BX Bus line in Tuen Mun for many hours on Sunday and the level of verbal violence that was being hurled was fairly substantial. Certainly, it is not something I would do, but I’m not Cantonese. Those hurling the abuse are not stupid and they are also not racists. I grew up in 1970/80s Birmingham, England, I know what racism is, and what was on display in Tuen Mun last Sunday was certainly not racism.

Instead it is a form of verbal violence against actions that people see as objectionable. If we’d have been in Europe, the protesters would have burnt the bus stop, the bus and probably routed the police out of town. But like I said, this is not the Cantonese style, Cantonese love shouting shit at each other and especially at things they don’t like.
Certainly, from a superficial level, watching the verbal barrage is not pretty and could be misconstrued as hateful racism, but if you are there you can quickly see that it is very specifically directed at a certain type of person carrying out a certain type of action. It is not based on anything the person can’t rectify very quickly. If a Mainlander was in the crowd, they would not be targeted carte blanche for their race or heritage. This is not to say, if they tried to defend the actions they wouldn’t receive a volley of abuse, but they could take part or silently observe without any fear of attack from the rabid crowd. This shows it’s much more sophisticated than racism. Try sticking a silent, black person in a group of European Neo Nazi racists and see if you get the same result.

This is the critical difference between the anti-Mainland sentiment in Hong Kong and say classic white, black racism in Europe or America. They are coming from completely different foundations. One is a temporary form of protest, or a new form of expression at the dissatisfaction towards our malign government. The other is coming from hatred based on ignorance, is long lasting and often incurable.

Given this, at this point, I have no fear that the democracy movement has been hijacked by racism, certainly a tiny minority may misunderstand what is going on. Definitely our malign government will try and exploit it for its own advantage, but the protestors are smart and savvy. They will use this current tactic while it is useful and discard it once it becomes a burden.

It may not be pretty, but revolutions never are. Some might argue that flirting with racism is playing with fire, but the protesters would argue back,

“We’re already fighting the Volcano.”