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So, the Inevitable Finally Happened on Sunday

So, the inevitable finally happened on Sunday:

The protests quickly and effectively switched locations and completely wronged stepped the police and any blue ribbon surprises that were set for them in Sheung Shui.

Protesting in Hong Kong will never be the same again.

Tens of thousands of marchers carrying out meaningless walkathons along Hong Kong Island have yielded no results since the Article 23 March. The government is immune to the people’s voice, it only cares what directives it receives from Beijing. But in the space of two months about 500 people have managed to shake up HK politics right up to the very top. Not only have they yanked our aloof ruler’s balls, they are well on their way to achieving real results. For sure the protests can get a little ugly around the edges, but protests are supposed to shake society out of its stupor. Protests are not about showing your face and hoping some other faceless person might then be motivated to sort out the problem some other day. If leaders don’t pay attention to your protests, then they’re not to blame, it means your way of protesting is not effective and needs to be reassessed.

I have watched these protests for hours and have pointed out many times, when the police aren’t there in force, the protests carry on relatively peacefully. Of course, there are minor skirmishes on the peripheries, but this is symptom of the fractured nature of society, it’s certainly not indicative of the violent nature of the groups.

With this in mind, the protesters have flaunted with trying to lose the police, because without doubt, large amounts of police quickly lead to batons out and indiscriminate pepper spraying.

In the first Tuen Mun protest the crowd experimented with being highly mobile and ‘like water.’ On this occasion, protesters visited many smuggler shops where the police presence was minimal and nothing happened. It was only when the police finally caught up with the protesters that they caused a shit-show.

Again, in both Shatin and Yuen Long, the police had ample time to prepare and set their boundaries, which the protesters would inevitably cross, causing more needless violence.
By the time of the Sheung Shui protest, it was already on the cards that a switch could happen from the very get-go. The problem was,
a) There was no leader of the protest. Both Civic Passion and HK Indigenous were not attending the protests in any official capacity
b) It had never been tried before, so would people change?

There was no official command to switch to Tuen Mun, it was all via word of mouth and through small social media networks. As we jumped into a taxi to head to Tuen Mun, we had no clue whether we would find any protesters at all. When we arrived at the Tuen Mun MTR exit there were about 25 protesters milling about. This slowly grew to about 50. After being in Tuen Mun for about 30minutes a lone police car drove up to the station, obviously to check out if the rumours were true. They didn’t get out. By the time we left the MTR the protest was about 150 strong and growing quickly. As we made our way into the first of three shopping centres, the protest was well over 200 people and trailed by about seven highly stressed police. Other than a few shouting matches and the odd box knocked over the protests paraded all the way through Tuen Mun town unfettered by the police.

Tuen Mun belonged to the protesters, there were no police in any number to control them. What did they choose to do with this freedom? They roamed around and shouted a bit, getting lots of attention but there was no out right violence.

Of, course, then the police arrived. We can only guess that they had been transported from Sheung Shui. This seems a reasonable guess, because when they piled out of the vans they all ran pell-mell into Trend Plaza, the scene of the confrontation during the first Tuen Mun protests. The problem was, there were no protesters in Trend Plaza, they were all in VCity. The police then realising that there was no one to contain filed out of the mall and congregated on the street. They had no clue where the protesters were. I can guess this, because neither did we. There were now about 100 police officers outside Trend Plaza. They looked pissed off and I tweeted that they would want to take out their frustration on the protesters if given the chance. They’d been effectively humiliated. So much for police intelligence!

We went off to find the protesters and left the police on the street. By the time we found them they were making their away along the footbridge to Trend Plaza from VCity. This would mark the first time the bulk of the protesters would come up against the bulk of the police. By this time, the protesters had already adopted a fairly new tactic, where wherever the police showed force, they moved away and kept moving. This meant that the police were always playing catch-up and were never able to formulate some kind of containment plan which invariably leads to a hyping up of tensions.

This went on for an hour or so, and I truly believe that the protesters were getting bored and were actually considering finishing as they were just 100m from the MTR station when they were abused multiple times by several blue ribbons. This gave the police enough reason to attack the crowd and you can see from the video I posted on my timeline, the police literally had to run after the protesters to make their presence felt and make some random arrests. This gave the media enough footage to make the protests look dangerous and out of control.

At this stage in the day, I think, if those needless arrests hadn’t happened, people may have been willing to call it a night and go home. But suddenly everyone was motivated again not to be intimidated and the call out to relocate to TST suddenly seemed like a good idea. So, the long journey from Tuen Mun to TST began.
Just like in Tuen Mun, when we arrived, we had no clue if people there were tourists or protesters. The police by this point had picked up on the switch to TST. Not because their intelligence is particularly good, but because it was plastered all over Facebook. The police had had time to make a plan of sorts, which failed at almost every turn and their ultimate goal of not letting the protesters leave the Star Ferry area collapsed quickly.

As the people found a gap in the police net and streamed through, there were about 200 protesters free roaming around TST with the 60 or so officers left at Star Ferry quickly having to come up with something better. We walked all around TST before the officers caught us up and true to form, they created a kettle that congested up the one side of Nathan Road. About 30 random people were caught in the kettle including passersby. Once again the police had succeeded in creating tension where none was needed. A key factor that was happening though was the crowd that surrounded the kettle was now made up by about 20% people from Chung King Mansions. I commented to those around me, if the police increase the tension in this crowd they’ll get more than they bargained for. Unlike regular HK protesters, those in the crowd now would stand their ground and fight and would not be pushed around by highly strung, ill-trained coppers. I think the senior police realised this too, as they began to let everyone in the kettle go, they didn’t even ID them. So what was the point of the kettle?

As people got released from the kettle, the protesters fell back to right outside Chung King Mansions’ door. We were now a mix of protesters and international refugees, and all the police who had created the kettle just five minutes earlier just disappeared. Only a couple of black coats remained on the outer periphery of the group. What was the reason for their disappearance? I can’t say for sure, but I bet it’s because they knew if a jumpy officer sparked an incident it would spiral well out of their control very quickly. Certainly, the HKPF know a good thing when they see one and hog-tying young kids is easy sport compared to dealing with the growing crowd of people the who hang outside Chung King Mansions.

So, that was the day.

The take out is, the days of big police plans are out the window, the police are going to have to think up other ways to stifle protests outside of big containment plans utilising lots of angry officers.

For the protesters, they know first hand the benefits of mobility and as the protest numbers grow their Wild Cat nature will increase too. All of Hong Kong is now a protest site and why have one protest when you can have three or four!

The Future of HK Protests and Weapons

It’s a curious sight to see the police parade the confiscated homemade ‘weapons’ from Sunday’s Yuen Long protests. One could certainly start to worry that Hong Kong society is heading down a dark, violent path, but like everything concerning these protests they have to be taken into context.

It’s no secret that making home made weapons has been discussed on portals like HKGolden, but today the police gave everyone a How To Lesson on what they would look like. Or, if you hadn’t thought of it before, then here’s how to do it and what you could use. I find this rather odd. I don’t pretend to understand what goes on in the mind’s of the police, they are alien to me, but for me, if your principle motivation was to keep society’s peace, why are you demonstrating to all of Hong Kong how to make weapons from your cupboards? I don’t have an answer to this? I’m merely raising the question which seems very odd.

So, given that HKGolden has discussed making weapons, and the police have now confiscated what looks like home made weapons and broadcast it to the City. What kind of reaction can we expect from public?

I can only imagine that it’s the police’s motivation for showing these weapons is to turn off the general public to these protest groups. But like all the recent police attempts at PR it will fail. Why? Because Hong Kong people aren’t stupid. They understand that in the democracy spectrum there are moderates all the way down to radicals, and even within the radical group, there is a wide spectrum of views. With only a tiny fraction of a fraction being either brave enough or stupid enough to want to carry weapons to a hot protest. The police probably want to paint thousands of people as being of the same ilk as these individuals now but this kind of thinking is also out of whack as guilt is not transferable across individuals and especially not across groups. If someone is caught stealing the office stationary, it doesn’t mean the whole office are thieves. Likewise, if some protesters start carrying weapons, it doesn’t mean all will. Again I can hear the police retort, but this type of protest is heading in that way, well if you truly believe that’s the case, why the fuck are the police facilitating in the learning process in a way that far surpasses what the protesters could ever do?

Having said this, it has to be said, there is talk of using more violence at protests, but I don’t think the chatter will materialise into actual real combat with weapons anytime soon and here’s why. The HK Police are now a para military wing of the HK government. The HK government doesn’t negotiate with the people, so confronting the police is now one of the only ways the people can provoke a response from an aloof and remote government. The police have embraced this new political, para military role and resolutely defend the government under the guise of maintaining social stability. From day one the police have shown that they are prepared to use maximum violence to quell protests if ordered to do so. At the start of the Occupy Movement I wrongly believed that if the PLA came into HK, the HKPF would defend their own kin from being massacred in the streets. That’s when I still believed in Asia’s Finest, which we all now know collapsed many years ago. The reality is that the PLA will NEVER come on the streets of HK, the HK Police are more than willing to shoot and kill HK people if the time comes. They don’t need Mainlanders to do their dirty work, they will take up the job with relish and gusto.

It’s because of this fact that the chatter of violence wont degenerate quickly into actual street combat, because the police are already waiting and fully prepared for this escalation. If people bring batons, then they’ll bring rubber bullets, if the people bring petrol bombs then they’ll bring their AR-15s. The public can’t beat them in an escalation of violence. Each new weapon introduced by the protesters will be justification for the police to up-grade to their next weapon. It doesn’t matter what you’ve got in your cupboards, it will never match the police’s billion dollar budget and CY’s cheque book.

So, am I saying the police can’t or shouldn’t be confronted via direct protest methods? No, not at all. Becasue the public can beat the system in an escalation of CONFRONTATION. Standing your ground and letting the police expend their violence and unprofessionalism is a winning strategy because the public has something that is much more powerful than weapons, they have numbers. We can all see from the protests that despite the police having nearly 30,000 personnel, not that many are frontline operators. Even with just the relatively small anti-smuggler protests the police are stretched. So invariably, they over-stress and quickly degenerate into a uniformed mob, who are quick to beat unarmed protesters at the slightest provocation.

This is the nuclear weapon of the protesters that the police can never match. As the police escalate in violence and bad practice, the protests escalate in confrontation and power. There are now so many videos of police behaving badly from Yuen Long that the next protest will double in numbers. The two factors are not inseparable.

Just like on September 28th, the people took to the streets because they saw the extreme violence of the police and wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with fellow HongKongers. However, many pro-democracy activists have temporarily lost sight of this cause and effect and balk at the confrontational attitudes of the direct action groups.

During the 79day Occupy, it was almost like the Occupy itself took on a life of its own that out grew the original aims and was something that needed to be protected. But no matter how much fuzzy feelings or cool vibes the Occupy created, it was always after nights of police violence that the crowds would grow again. This was the lesson the direct action groups took from Occupy. Of the power of confrontation. This shouldn’t be confused with the power of violence. They’re two separate things, with different results. The people will always win a confrontation, the police will always win on violence, but confrontation backed by people power always trumps escalating violence in the end.

The direct action groups are now on a role with their use of direct confrontation, whether it be with Blue Ribbons, Smugglers, Triads, corrupt village societies or the police. They have no fear of these dark pillars and have called their bluff every time. For they know, the only strategy these groups have is escalating violence and more violence makes the protesters stronger. The strength of the direct action groups is growing and I predict a future merging, with those who hold more moderate views starting to attend the protests too, because these people are results orientated and they see the real results the protests are having and they understand the difference between violence and confrontation.

We’re now not far away from having regular, singular events where tens and eventually even a hundred thousand people turn up to protest, then go home to reconvene the following week. Some analysts during Occupy advised that the Occupation should retreat and a Leipzig style campaign be enacted instead. Or, for those not familiar with what happened. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, a regular Monday night candle light vigil eventually snowballed into epic protests of over 70,000 people every Monday night. It was a demonstration of the power of the people and after weeks of persistent protests the East German State had only one card left to play, more violence. On the last night before the Wall fell, the security apparatus geared up for a full, violent assault on the protesters, but those in power knew that would only bring even more people onto the streets the following week.

Back in the days of Occupy, people were NOT ready for this type of protest. Despite Beijing trying to portray Occupy as well planned foreign intervention, we all know Occupy was a chaotic affair that never had any coherent plan, ever!

But now the direct action groups have given Hong Kong people a blue print for change that everyone can see works. Or, pick a hot topic, pick a location, make a protest then leave. Come back later in another place with more numbers and more strength, erstwhile enjoying the media frenzy it creates, especially around the violence of the State. These groups are not stopping at smugglers, other entrenched, rotten parts of society are now in their sites and will feel the wrath of the people’s anger soon. The topics will be meaningful and engaging to all people of Hong Kong. Just like hawkers and smugglers the protests will set off huge ripples that shake society.

I foresee a time when 50,000+ people turn up for shopping in designated shopping centres once a week to protest say, tycoon monopolies. We are truly on the path now to temporary Occupies like those that happened in Leipzig. Certainly, a tiny minority, like those creating home made pepper sprays may misunderstand the difference between confrontation and violence, but this wont stop the momentum. These people are just a consequence of statistics rather than any moral collapse of the protesters.

What is coming will be more powerful than Occupy ever was and will shake Hong Kong to its core.

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
————-
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!
—-
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

Draw, Create, Express Yourselves Freely @ Tim Mei Art Village!

Chalk Flower Girl and Mizo Zho @ Tin Mei Art Village — Chalk Flower Girl and Mizo Zo @ Tim Mei Art Village

Draw, Create, Express yourselves freely!

Tim Mei Art Village is located in Admiralty on Tim Mei Avenue, next to ‘Democracy University Library’

Regular art meet-ups are scheduled every Sunday at 3pm, where everyone can express themselves through different types of art.

There are no charges for this, so please bring along any art supplies you may have, they will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your support!

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.