#china protest on covid

[quotesfrommyreading]

Slogans, jokes, objects and colors can stand in for complex sentiments. In Hong Kong, protesters carried yellow umbrellas—also useful to defend against pepper spray—as symbols of their demand for democracy. In Thailand, protesters borrowed a gesture from The Hunger Games series, saluting with three fingers aloft in the aftermath of a military coup. Elsewhere, rainbow flags and the name “Solidarity” have signified the successful fights waged by proponents of LGBTQ and Polish labor rights, respectively.

In some authoritarian nations, dissidents craft jokes and images to build a following and weaken support for the regime. In the Cold War-era Soviet Union, access to typewriters and photocopiers was tightly controlled. But protesters could share news and rile officials with underground samizdat literature (Russian for “self-publishing”), which was hand-typed and passed around from person to person. These publications also used anekdoty, or quips of wry lament, to joke about post-Stalinist Soviet society. In one example, a man hands out blank leaflets on a pedestrian street. When someone returns to question their meaning, the man says, “What’s there to write? It’s all perfectly clear anyway.”

In the early 20th century, generations of Chinese writers and philosophers led quiet philosophical and cultural revolutions within their country. Zhou Shuren, better known by the pen name Lu Xun, pushed citizens to cast off repressive traditions and join the modern world, writing, “I have always felt hemmed in on all sides by the Great Wall; that wall of ancient bricks which is constantly being reinforced. The old and the new conspire to confine us all. When will we stop adding new bricks to the wall?”

In time, Chinese citizens mastered the art of distributed displeasure against mass censorship and government control. That was certainly the case during the movements that bloomed after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976. At the 1989 protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, participants used strips of red cloth as blindfolds. Before the tanks turned the weekslong gathering into a tragedy on June 4, musician Cui Jian played the anthem “A Piece of Red Cloth,” claiming a patriotic symbol of communist rule as a banner of hope for a frustrated generation.

After hundreds, if not thousands, were gunned down by the military, China banned any reference to the events at Tiananmen Square. But Chinese people became adept at filling that void, using proxies and surrogates to refer to the tragedy. Though Chinese censors scrub terms related to the date, such as “six four,” emoji can sometimes circumvent these measures. According to Meng Wu, a specialist in modern Chinese literature at the University of British Columbia, a simple candle emoji posted on the anniversary tells readers that the author is observing the tragedy, even if they can’t do so explicitly. In recent years, the government has removed access to the candle emoji before the anniversary.

As a survivor of the Tiananmen Square massacre spoke to the crowd gathered at Washington Square Park, the undergraduate who called himself Rick expressed concern for a friend who had been taken into custody by police in his home province of Guangdong. Given the government crackdown, Rick suggested that public protests were largely finished for now. Still, he predicted, the movement will “become something else”—something yet to be written.

  —  The History Behind China's White Paper Protests

[liberalsarecool]

I owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology. I’ve been critical of the Trump presidency and am still exhausted from the experience.

But to be fair, President Trump wasn’t that bad, other than:

• when he incited an insurrection against the government,

• mismanaged a pandemic that killed over a million Americans

• separated children from their families

• lost those children in the bureaucracy

• tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church

• tried to block all Muslims from entering the country

• got impeached

• got impeached again

• had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history

• pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden

• fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia

• bragged about firing the FBI director on TV

• took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community

• diverted military funding to build his wall

• caused the longest government shutdown in US history

• called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate”

• lied nearly 40,000 times

• banned transgender people from serving in the military

• ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions

• vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers

• refused to release his tax returns

• increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion

• had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history

• called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers

• coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist

• refused to concede the 2020 election

• hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House

• walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl

• called neo-Nazis “very fine people”

• suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID

• abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey

• pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans

• incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic

• withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords

• withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal

• withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances

• insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter

• pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op

• failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies

• called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries

• called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation”

• claimed that he single-handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere

• forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader

• believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

• berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe

• suggested the US should buy Greenland

• colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges

• repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people”

• claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases

• violated the emoluments clause

• thought that Nambia was a country

• told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public

• called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution

• nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet

• nominated a corrupt head of the EPA

• nominated a corrupt head of HHS

• nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department

• nominated a corrupt head of the USDA

• praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies

• refused to allow the presidential transition to begin

• insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death

• spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president

• falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote

• called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser”

• falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year

• considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions

• mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID

• locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones

• used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus”

• hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser

• pardoned several of his shady associates

• gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressman who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories

• got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!)

• had a Secretary of State who called him a moron

• forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history

• botched the COVID vaccine rollout

• tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him

• charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties

• constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate

• claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear

• called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas”

• used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise

• opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling

• got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers

• claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US

• ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings

• blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining

• redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle

• got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters”

• threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution

• botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico

• threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them

• pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes

• thought that the Virgin islands had a President

• drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane

• allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing

• rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos

• pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID

• rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers

• held blatant campaign rallies at the White House

• tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man

• refused to attend his successors’ inauguration

• nominated the worst Education Secretary in history

• threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted

• attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci

• promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t)

• allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues

• struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble

• called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ”

• threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders

• went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic

• claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,”

• seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution

• demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director

• praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles

• completely gutted the Voice of America

• placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service

• claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower

• suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country

• suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public

• overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported

• reduced the number of refugees the US accepts

• insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames

• gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address

• named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties

• eliminated the White House office of pandemic response

• used soldiers as campaign props

• fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him

• demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade

• hired a shit ton of white nationalists

• politicized the civil service

• did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government

• falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts

• claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won

• insulted reporters of color

• insulted women reporters

• insulted women reporters of color

• suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs

• attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him

• summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election

• spent countless hours every day watching Fox News

• refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas

• hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer

• tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him

• acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney

• attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a women who accused him of sexual assault

• held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present

• didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media

• stopped holding press briefings for months at a time

• “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power

• led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform

• claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers

• tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course

• suggested that the government nuke hurricanes

• suggested that wind turbines cause cancer

• said that he had a special aptitude for science

• fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure

• blurted out classified information to Russian officials

• tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida

• fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban

• hired Stephen Miller

• openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them

• interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel

• abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war

• tried to get Russia back into the G7

• held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden

• seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive

• lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated

• falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t

• shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies

• still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan

• still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks"

• forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID

• told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”

• fucked up the Census

• withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic

• did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,” allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act

• seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican

• stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win

• constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump

• claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened

• said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake

• claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him

• claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President

• created a commission to whitewash American history

• retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain

• claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there

• hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims

• had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others

• bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties

• apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House

• stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians

• falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police

• said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about

• tried to rescind protection from DREAMers

• gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic

• tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax

• said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states

• deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented

• claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln

• touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all

• retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile

• forced through security clearances for his family

• suggested that police officers should rough up suspects

• suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs

• tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender

• suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher

• nominated a climate change skeptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy

• retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event

• hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags

• accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address

• claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia

• mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault

• obsessed over low-flow toilets

• ordered the re-release of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release

• called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek)

• hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech

• took advice from the MyPillow guy

• claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists

• said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure

• never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign

• falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent

• announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest

• insulted the leader of Canada

• insulted the leader of France

• insulted the leader of Britain

• insulted the leader of Germany

• insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!)

• falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues

• blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually

• continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,

• said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked

• left a NATO summit early in a huff

• stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of five knows not to do that

• called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary

• refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise

And a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember .

[simply-ivanka]

PLEASE REPOST

This is who Tim Walz is.

“Let’s see how weird the Democrats’ new leadership is:

It’s weird that Walz mandated tampons in boys’ bathrooms in Minnesota schools.

It’s weird for the party that promotes itself as the guardian of democracy to install its leaders without an election.

It’s weird that Walz dawdled for three days while Minneapolis burned before calling in the National Guard during 2020’s BLM-antifa riots.

He abandoned the city’s Third Precinct police headquarters when it was overrun and set ablaze.

Walz explained his weird lack of action as a desire not to be “oppressive” to the rioters who had suffered “generations of pain” and “fundamental, institutional racism.”

It’s weird that Walz’s wife kept the windows open “as long as I could” during the riots so she could “smell the burning tires” and savor the historic moment.

It’s weird that Walz let his then-19-year-old daughter leak the National Guard’s deployment plans on Twitter so rioters knew they could keep destroying Minneapolis.

It’s weird that Harris and Walz base their campaign on “freedom” yet he was the most authoritarian governor in the country during the pandemic, ruling by decree for 15 months, enforcing draconian shutdown orders, mask mandates and curfews.

It’s weird that Walz tells Republicans to “mind your own damn business” when he created a COVID telephone “snitch line” so that people could inform on their neighbors who breached his draconian COVID restrictions.

It’s weird that Walz defended censorship of COVID dissenters by telling MSNBC: “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech especially around our democracy.”

It’s weird that Walz signed laws allowing teenagers to be sterilized and genitally mutilated without parental consent and called it “gender-affirming care.”

It’s weird that Walz signed into law a new definition of “sexual orientation” that deleted an exemption against pedophilia.

It’s weird that Walz has turned Minnesota into a “trans refuge” with a law that removes children from parents who don’t agree to their kids’ sex-change surgery and hormone treatment.

Even transgender Minnesota state Rep. Leigh Finke called the bill “beautifully weird.”

It’s weird that Walz has turned Minnesota into an “abortion mecca” with no time limit up to the moment of birth and sometimes beyond, and no requirement that minors inform their parents.

It’s weird that Walz is presented as the epitome of decency and “Minnesota nice” and yet the first time he spoke to the nation, he peddled a smutty sex joke about Vance and a couch cushion made up by the bottom feeders of internet trolling.

It’s weird that Walz has visited China about 30 times, including spending his honeymoon there.

“No matter how long I live, I’ll never be treated that well again,” he said after his first visit in 1990.

“They gave me more gifts than I could bring home.” He should compare notes with the Bidens.

It’s weird that Walz and his wife, Gwen, chose June 4 as their wedding date to commemorate the bloody anniversary of China’s brutal crackdown on democracy protesters in China’s Tiananmen Square.

“He wanted to have a date he’ll always remember,” said Gwen.

It’s weird that Walz quit the National Guard when he was about to be deployed to Iraq, then told everyone he had gone to war.

It’s weird that Walz said he wanted to provide ladders to illegal migrants so they could climb over Trump’s border wall.

It’s weird that Waltz says, “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”

It’s weird that Harris and Walz claim they are defending “democracy” but he signed a law to give driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, the first step to voting ­illegally in elections.

It’s weird that Walz criticizes Trump for his record on law and order when crime in Minneapolis has soared on his watch.

It’s weird that he poses as a “folksy,” common-sense working man with “Midwestern dad vibes” who hunts and wears camo caps.

Yet he governs like a crazed, green-haired radical, with taxes among the highest in the country and residents fleeing the state as fast as they can.

It’s weird that Walz is a teacher married to a teacher, the son of a teacher and claims education is a priority, yet on his watch, Minnesota students’ average reading and math scores have plummeted to below the national average, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Despite record spending, for the first time majorities of K-12 students are not meeting grade-level standards, finds the Minnesota Center of the American Experiment.

Minnesota’s CNBC education ranking has dropped from fifth to 19th place in the country since he became ­governor.

It’s weird that Harris has not done a single interview since being appointed the presumptive Democratic nominee for president more than two weeks ago.

It’s weird that she laughs at her own jokes.

In psychology, attributing your own flaws to others is called projection, and Walz and Harris have a bad case of weird.”

[smashthest8]

fuck off you antivax nutjob. Vaccination saves lives.

[supersoftly]

Artist Sanmu Chan was stopped, questioned and taken away by police in Causeway Bay on Monday, the eve of the Tiananmen crackdown anniversary, as he sought to partake in some performance art.

A large police deployment had appeared near Victoria Park, a venue that once hosted mass remembrance vigils.

Dozens of uniform and plainclothes police officers were stationed across the shopping district, concentrated around East Point Road, Hennessy Road and Lockhart Road. An armoured police vehicle was briefly seen parked outside SOGO mall.

HKFP reporters witnessed Chan write the Chinese characters for “8964” with his finger in the air, referencing the date of the 1989 crackdown.

He also mimed pouring wine onto the ground to mourn the dead, per a Chinese tradition, before police moved in.

The Tiananmen crackdown occurred on June 4, 1989 ending months of student-led demonstrations in China. It is estimated that hundreds, perhaps thousands, died when the People’s Liberation Army cracked down on protesters in Beijing.

Over 30 police officers took Chan away for questioning and created a cordon to separate the artist from the media.

He was then taken away in a police vehicle a little before 9:30 pm, in a scene similar to his detention last June on the eve of the crackdown anniversary.

It is unclear if he was arrested. HKFP has reached out to the police for comment.

First anniversary since Article 23

Tuesday will mark the first Tiananmen crackdown anniversary since the city passed domestic security legislation, more commonly known as Article 23.

Police invoked the new law for the first time last week to arrest former Tiananmen vigil organiser Chow Hang-tung and six others over alleged sedition. They stand accused of using an “upcoming sensitive date” to incite hatred against the central and Hong Kong authorities through social media posts. Police made an eighth arrest in connection with the case on Monday. Hong Kong used to be one of the few places on Chinese soil where annual vigils were held to commemorate the people who died in the 1989 crackdown. But police banned the gathering at Victoria Park for the first time in 2020 citing Covid-19 restrictions, and imposed the same ban in the following year.

No official commemoration has been held since the vigil organiser, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, disbanded in September 2021. Currently occupying Victoria Park – historically the site of Hong Kong’s vigils – is a five-day patriotic carnival organised by 28 pro-Beijing groups.

[lenbryant]

I owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology. I’ve been critical of the Trump presidency these last four years, and am still exhausted from the experience. But to be fair, President Trump wasn’t that bad, other than when he incited an insurrection against the government, mismanaged a pandemic that killed nearly half a million Americans, separated children from their families, lost those children in the bureaucracy, tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church, tried to block all Muslims from entering the country, got impeached, got impeached again, had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history, pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden, fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia, bragged about firing the FBI director on TV, took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community, diverted military funding to build his wall, caused the longest government shutdown in US history, called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,” lied nearly 30,000 times, banned transgender people from serving in the military, ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions, vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers, refused to release his tax returns, increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion, had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history, called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers, coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist, refused to concede the 2020 election, hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House, walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl, called neo-Nazis “very fine people,” suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID, abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey, pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans, incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic, withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords, withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal, withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances, insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter, pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op, failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies, called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries, called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,” claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere, forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader, believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe, suggested the US should buy Greenland, colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges, repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,” claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases, violated the emoluments clause, thought that Wakanda was a country, told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public, called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution, etc. etc.

(character limit reached!)

[originallandlockedmariner]

2023

Pickleball. Generative AI. Lula takes office in Brazil, Amazon Rainforest throws a party. Prince Harry refusing to stop talking about his frozen penis no matter how many times society begged him to stop. UFOs are real. Viral cat dubbed ‘largest cat anyone has ever seen’ gets adopted. Pee-Wee’s big adventure ends. Musk & X. Turkey-Syria earthquake kills thousands. India surpasses China as ‘country squeezing in the most peeps’. Tucker Carlson ousted. Miss USA and her 30 lbs moon costume. Wildfires in Kelowna and Hawaii. Macron tinkers with retirement age of the French. Paltrow can’t ski. Big Red Boots. Bob Barker leaves us. Alabama mom delivers 2 babies from her 2 uteruses in 2 days. Charles III. Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces as the war drags on. Taylor Swift is Time’s Person of the Year. African ‘coup belt’. Flo-Jo dies in her sleep. Chinese spy balloon shot down. Hollywood writers strike. Human ‘nice mugshot’ Shitstain and his 91 indictments. Highest interest rates in 2 decades. The Bear’s Christmas episode. War in Gaza. Shinzo Abe is assassinated. Alex Murdaugh. Ocean Cleanup removes 25 000 lbs of trash from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Vase purchased for $3.99 sells for $100 000 at auction. Barbenheimer. A third of Pakistan is flooded. Lionel Messi is the GOAT. Travis Kelce. The Sphere opens in Las Vegas. Regulators seized Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, resulting in two of the three largest bank failures in U.S. history. “The Woman In Me”. WHO declares COVID ain’t a thing no more. Titan sub sinks, rich people die. Matthew Perry drowns. Dumbledore Dies (again). Massive sales of ‘Fuck Trudeau’ flags for jacked-up micro-dick trucks. Everything Everywhere All At Once. June-August was the hottest three-month period in recorded history across the Earth. Tina Turner dies. And the Beatles release a new song?! Wow… You got big shoes to fill 2024.

Archives for context:

2020

Kobe. Pandemic. Lockdown. Koalas on fire. Harry and Meg retire. Toilet paper hoarding. Alcoholism. Impeach the f*cker. Parasite. Bonnie Henry. Tiger King. Working from home. Sourdough bread. Harvey Weinstein guilty. Zoom overdose. Dip your body in sanitizer. 6 feet. Quarantine. OK Boomer. Home schooling (everyone passes). Murder hornets. Dolly Parton. Don’t hug, kiss or see anybody, especially your family. Chris Evans’ junk. TikTok. Glory holes. Face masks. CERB. West Coast wildfires. Stay home. Small Businesses lose, big box stores win. F*ck Bozos. ‘Dreams’ and cranberry juice. Close yoga studios, but thumbs up to your local gym. Speak moistly to me. George Floyd. BLM. F*ck Trump. Phase 2, 3 and Summer. RBG. Baby Yoda. Biden wins. Bond and Black Panther die. No more lockdown. Back to school and work. Just kidding... giddy up round 2. Giuliani leaks shit from his head. Resurgence of chess. UFOs are real. Restrictions. Dave Grohl admits defeat. Monolith. “F*ck... forgot my mask in the car”. No Christmas shenanigans allowed. Bubbles. Alex Trebek. Use the term ‘dumpster fire’ one too many times. Jupiter and Saturn form 'Christmas Star'. Happy New Year Bitches!!!! 2021... you better not sh*t the bed!!

2021

“We love you, you’re very special”. Failed coup attempt at the Capital. Twitter, FB and IG ban Donny. Hammerin’ Hank goes to the Field of Dreams. Bozo no longer richest man but still a twat. Leachman, Tyson, and Holbrook pass. The economy is worse than expected. Kim and Kanye split. Brood X cicadas. Dre has an aneurysm and nearly has his home broken into. Bridgerton. MyPillow CEO is a douche. Covid restrictions extended indefinitely. Captain Von Trapp dies. Proud Boys officially a Terrorist Organization. Richard Ramirez. Cancer takes Screech. Travel bans. Impeachment trial (again?… oh and this was barely February? WTF??!!) Suez Canal blockage. Myanmar protest. Kong dukes it out with Godzilla, while Raya watches. Olympics. Friends compare elective surgeries. F9. Canada Women’s Soccer Gold. Free Britney. Multiverses. Residential Schools in Canada unearth children’s bodies. Kate is Mare of Easttown. Cuomo resigns. Disney and Dwayne cruise together. Wildfires. Delta variants. Musk passes Bezos. Candyman x 5. Capt. Kirk goes to space. F*ck Kyle Rittenhouse. Astros didn’t win. Squid Game. Goodbye Bond. Dune is redone. Angelina is Eternal. Astroworld deaths. Meta. Omicron. Three Spidermen. Tornados in December? World Juniors cancelled. Pills against Covid. School opening delayed. And Betty White dies. 2022… my expectations are ridiculously low…

2022

Wow… eight billion people. Queen Elizabeth II passes away after ruling the Commonwealth before dirt was invented. The monkeypox. Russia plays the role of global a**hole. Wordle. Mother Nature rocks Afghanistan. Hover bike. Styles spits on Pine. Olivia Newton John, Kristie Alley, and Coolio leave us. Pele was traded to team Heaven. FTX implodes. Madonna and the 3-D model of her vagina. Pig gives his heart to a human. Beijing can brag that it is the first city ever to host both the Summer Olympics and Winter Olympics. Uvalde. $3 trillion Apple. Keith Raniere gets 120 years. The Whisky War ends with Canada and Denmark going halfsies. Mar-a-Lago. Nick Cannon brood hits a dozen. Shinzo Abe is assassinated. Inflation goes through the roof (if you can actually afford to put a roof over your head). Volodymyr Zelensky. European heat wave. Bennifer. Salman Rushdie is stabbed on stage, Dave Chappelle tackled, and Chris Rock is only slapped. Thích Nhất Hạnh. Heidi Klum goes full slug. Cuba knocked out by Ian. Liz Truss and 4.1 Scaramuccis. Taylor Swift breaks Ticketmaster. Human shitstain Elon Musk ignores helping mankind and buys Twitter instead. Riri becomes a mommy. NASA launches Artemis 1. Trump still a whiny little b*tch. Music lost Loretta Lynn, Christine McVie, and Meat Loaf. Democracy died at least three times. Pete Davidson continues to date hottest women on the planet (no one understands how?!) Microplastics in our blood. Alex Jones is a c*nt. So is DeSantis. Argentina wins the World Cup. Meghan and Harry. Eddie Munson rips Metallica in the Upside Down. tWitch. Roe vs Wade is overturned by the micro dick energy of the Supreme Court. CODA. James Corden shows he is a "tiny Cretin of a man". Amber (and the sh*t on the bed) Heard (round the world). Sebastian Bear-McClard proves he’s one of the f*cking dumbest men alive. Latin America's ‘pink tide’. Anti-Semitic rants by Ye. Bob Saget. A verified blue checkmark. Godmother of punk Vivienne dies. And, Tom Cruise feels the need for speed yet again. 2023… whatcha got for us?!? Nothing shocks me anymore.

@daily-esprit-descalier

[allmylove-minh]

musings on compassion

To know an individual, ask them how they developed compassion. When did you start to be aware of hardships and your ability to help? I have heard answers that range from thought-provoking to horrifying. In seventh grade, my math teacher revealed that he had been a high school bully. His youth was peppered with bruising fights and sharp racial slurs. It took being roommates with a Black student in college for him to recognize the impact of his actions. It shocked me that someone so intelligent regarding math could be so dense. If only what I thought was true. Academic achievement does not always correlate with capacity for kindness. One can have a doctorate in math, yet lack their theory of mind.

 Theory of Mind is the idea that people develop empathy and an understanding of other people's views and struggles at a certain stage of brain development, typically as children.. Of course, everyone develops at a different age. But, I have always felt that children of color are expected to develop theory of mind at a younger age. We are expected to be grateful for American progress. Every Martin Luther King Day, we are reminded of the need for nonviolent cooperation. Never are we taught to advocate against cruelty, to do what it takes to have an equitable society. No school lesson taught me that MLK had a 4% popularity rate when he got executed. To be a student in America is to read about the March on Washington, yet hear protesters get insulted for asserting their right to live without police brutality. We learn lessons of compassion. But the overarching message is compliance. If every student was taught self advocacy and empathy, society would be a fairer place. Instead, the scales of justice lean towards acquitting the privileged.

Survivors of their treatment must grit their teeth and walk it out. It kills my sister and I to be understanding when our peers are cruel or spiteful, but being upset only earns us reminders of how bad things used to be. Of course we have to understand. People fear those who are different. We were both children. But one of us had to forgive, and the other got to forget. Many youth of color encounter people that seemingly lack theory of mind when it comes to us. People are not born cruel. Unfortunately, other children are not born understanding the causes and consequences of discrimination.

My sister and I developed compassion at a young age. In Oklahoma, students like us had it thrust upon us. Every teacher I complained to called me dramatic. Their precious favorite would never hurt a fly. Maybe I was not hit with a flyswatter. However, I was constantly encountering traps that reminded me of how little compassion people had. Students at my high school refused to sit near me because they thought I would give them Covid, as if my very presence was a harbinger of doom. None of them said it to my face, but whispers of “China virus” trailed in my wake. The rumors were about as avoidable as my own shadow. Likewise, other Asian students were used for target practice. I remember my best friend and I getting hit with a barrage of pencils as we were chased down the hallway. Passers-by saw and heard. No one made a move to help us.

The one thing I am grateful for is that it gave me the ability to find my people. I was able to understand who was safe and who was not. When I was in class I gravitated towards people who I felt would understand the same ostracization. Even though my friends who are Black or Hispanic may not have my exact struggles, they know what it is to be mocked for the way they were born. I've heard horror stories from friends who were body shamed for having a certain physique that people associated with being more adult, even though they were still children. I think many other children of immigrants can sympathize with the feeling of being treated with suspicion. No matter how long it has been on American soil, no one acknowledges the roots we’ve sprouted. Instead we are seen as foreign, other, alien. I hope that children in the future do not have to carry compassion and understand that white kids are still learning how not to be cruel. Instead, I hope that society develops understanding and respect towards people who have historically faced oppression. I want to have children, but I feel dread at the possibility of having to explain racism. I feel sad at the fact that my culture has beauty standards and oftentimes society has beauty standards that I'm going to have to talk to my kids about. My mom tells me that it's because of my compassion that I worry about these things. but that just makes me wonder how people live their lives without feeling these things. Why did my math teacher need to be college roommates with a black person to understand why calling them slurs was wrong?

 Part of me has always felt that my white friends can't really feel as much compassion towards me because there's a chance they were those bullies in high school. In sophomore year, one of the people I considered a best friend told me that she didn't want to date a person of color because she was afraid that their culture would be too weird and different for her. If my life was a book, that would have been foreshadowing. At one point, she defended her boyfriend’s disparaging descriptions of Chinatown. He called it filthy, boring, and full of Asians. The last part was said in the same tone one would describe cockroaches.

Eventually, I broke off our friendship. She did not respect me as a friend. Our conversations centered around her. What Albanian dance was like, who she had feelings for, her strict parents. My interests were boring at best, and disgusting at worst. Comparing my beloved cultural dessert to vomit was the last straw. But I was called dramatic. Our mutual friends thought what she did was wrong. Yet they remained friends with her. I think they are compassionate. They’re aware of social issues and privilege. Somehow, racism was not a deal breaker. Compassionate is a fickle feeling. We feel stronger compassion based on our existing biases. Sometimes I wonder if the injustice we tolerate hints at our numbed senses of compassion. We spend our childhoods seeing our peers grow cruel, learning harassment and stereotypes. How do I stay hopeful when I know what it is to be hunted?

[interstellar-elf]

So Halloween is being banned in China

Why is that? Let me tell you

It really begins after the end of the Covid Lockdown in 2023, when people were allowed to mingle in public again. It just so happened that Halloween was happening around that time, so people gathered outside to wear costumes and party. However it wasn't all about Halloween, it was also a time to express anger at censorship, the policies of the lockdown, unemployment rates, and many other issues plaguing China at the time. Some of that protest was conveyed in costume form, whether it was as surveillance cameras or dressing up as Winnie the Pooh as a jab at Xi Jinping. There were many other costumes worn expressing anger at the zero-covid policy and censorship. In addition, the death of the moderate reformist Li Keiqiang happened about 4 days before the 2023 Halloween due to a heart attack. His death however was thought to be more than just an accident, mostly due to Li's reformist policies being a challenge to Xi Jinping.

Due to the protests around Halloween, there has been a crackdown on banning Halloween as of 2024. There has been bans on costumes, decorations and make-up in several districts and there's been caution against it in the name of "foriegn influence" (in consideration, Halloween in China has been decolonized and localized with costumes and mythology from internet memes and Chinese mythology). The word "halloween" and words related to it have been banned on the internet in China. In addition, in the followup to the holiday, various streets in Shanghai have been cordoned off by police, with people in costumes being arrested.

Twitter thread about it here:

[spider-xan]

The annoying thing about showing up to protest Tr*deau over Palestine or anything else as a leftist is that bc everyone who is not an apathetic centrist (average Canadian tbh) hates him, you end up having to share space with the fascists who show up to protest Tr*deau putting nanobots in their brains via Jewish COVID vaccines from communist China and Cuba while wearing N*zi insignia and ranting about 5G mind control waves.

[beardedmrbean]

The Chinese Communist Party escalated its persecution of Christians throughout 2022 as the country clamped down on churches and online religious content while demanding allegiance to Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to a watchdog group.

A report released last week by the U.S.-based non-governmental organization ChinaAid warned that the Chinese government is using charges of "fraud" to financially suffocate the house church movement, which consists of Christian congregations that have not registered with China's official Protestant church.

Authorities are using the traditional Christian practice of giving tithes and offerings to trump up charges against house churches under the "Measures for the Financial Management of Religious Activity Venues," which were updated last June, according to the report. The report noted that multiple house church pastors and elders have been jailed and potentially face years in prison.

CARDINAL JOSEPH ZEN, 90, BEGINS TRIAL IN HONG KONG ON CHARGES OF FOREIGN COLLUSION

ChinaAid president and founder Bob Fu said in a statement that his organization is also "gravely concerned" with how state-sanctioned churches are being treated in China, which has approximately 96.7 million Christians, according to persecution watchdog Open Doors.

"By using the new measures against religious content online and the infamous 'zero-COVID' policy, authorities limited or eliminated Christian gatherings," said Fu.

The Chinese government is also cracking down on Christian websites and apps in an attempt to "remove Christianity from cyberspace," according to ChinaAid.

Following the implementation of the "Administrative Measures for Internet Religious Information and Services" in 2022, censorship of online Christian content — including even in group chats — has reached an "unprecedented" level, the report warned.

PASTOR FACING 10 YEARS IN PRISON FOR PREACHING AT CANADA TRUCKER BLOCKADE PROTESTING VACCINE MANDATES

CathAssist, which became China's first Christian phone app in 2013, was among those that were shut down under the new regulations because they were unable to obtain a license. ChinaAid's report said the app "did not meet the government's requirements for the license, despite having taken various actions including suspending sharing, changing its name, and modifying content."

Fu also noted that while the Chinese government has long demanded sole allegiance to the Communist Party, in recent years it has been emphasizing allegiance to Jinping.

"Before, during, and after the opening of the Congress, China's state-run religious groups lavished compliments and praise on Xi with more extravagant words and phrases than China's state-run media, showing that religious Sinicization is evolving from supporting the CCP to worship and allegiance to Xi Jinping," the report said.

"Their goal is not only to curate a ‘socialist-friendly’ church; they hope to erase it," said Fu. "The international community needs to know about these trends and developments as China continues to rise on the global stage."

[potatoes83]

Random...

Some time ago, 2 or 3 years now, the Detroit Zoo rebranded the Arctic Cafe, which has been the primary food court since the Arctic Ring of Life exhibit was put in however long ago now, as Table 28. 28 referencing the fact that the zoo was first opened to the public in 1928. I hadn't been there since that had happened, I had heard about it, but the goofy ass covid restrictions under Big Gretch pushed us towards the Toledo Zoo for about 3 years in a row. What can I say, Ohio has a republican governor. So we went to the zoo about a month ago, and lunch was on our to-do list.

First off, I don't necessarily love the self-order kiosk thing. That to me reeks of lingering covid bullshit where you're supposed to avoid human interaction at all costs (unless violently protesting, then it's OK). Second, I am somewhat amused at just how poncey it has become, or rather, is trying to be. At the end of the day, this is a zoo food court. They're selling wildly overpriced burgers, chicken tenders, salads, it's not like we're having table service steak dinner on china with linen napkins or whatnot. I got the chicken tenders and the mac and cheese. And the menu of course has the name of the food, and then a little description. Chicken Tenders. Three all-white meat chicken breast tenders in a crispy breading, served with fries. Ok, I'm with you so far, that's what we're doing here... Macaroni and Cheese. Cavatappi and fondue.

...really? Really? Now, understand where I come from, I love food. Absolutely fucking love the truth and nature of good food. I'm like Remy in Ratatouille; the creation of food, the mingling of flavors and textures is like writing a symphony to me. My stove is the stage at Orchestra Hall. I love food. But I hate artificial inflation through poncey terminology. Cavatappi, a type of pasta. Curlycue macaroni essentially, instead of half-moon shaped. Fondue, literally melted cheese. So... macaroni and cheese.

There's having a strong vocabulary, and then there's just being snobby... Stick to your lane, food court. 🥔

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

American fashion designer mom who lived in China for 16 years says she MISSES how Communist government 'co-parented' her children - dictating even what they should eat - and wants U.S. to learn from its example

An American fashion designer who spent 16 years in Shanghai has published an essay in the New York Times highlighting the virtues of raising her children under the watchful and authoritarian eye of the Chinese government.

Heather Kaye, 49, arrived in Shanghai in 2006 with her husband George and planned to stay for a year. But the couple stayed and ended up raising their two daughters there. However, in 2022 the family was driven to return to the US after living for two years under the country's draconian COVID-19 policies.

She has now described her return to Washington DC as a 'culture shock' that makes her miss the way her children were 'co-parented by the Chinese government'. 

Yet her own remarks will come as a shock to many who are concerned about the looming threat the Chinese government poses both domestically and to global economics, technology and businesses.

In October last year it emerged that the Communist Party operates secret police stations in New York City to hunt down dissidents force them back to China, while those protesting the country's zero-COVID policy have been known to disappear without explanation. Kaye acknowledged the ways in which the Chinese Communist Party would insert itself into family life, be it by controlling what her kids ate or by dictating the number of hours they should sleep at night.

'In China, government co-parenting begins in the womb,' she wrote, referring to the limits on how many children parents were allowed, which have since been relaxed.

She added that not long after enrolling her kids in state-run schools it started controlling how her kids should live.

'Chinese kindergarten lectured us on everything, including how many hours our daughters should sleep, what they should eat and their optimal weight,' she said.

But she claimed she was grateful for the discipline instilled in her two daughters, born in 2008 and 2010, at school.

She recounted: 'Each morning all of the students performed calisthenics in straight rows and raised China's red flag while singing the national anthem.'

And she commended the Chinese system for independently 'instilling a solid work ethic and a total drive for academic excellence', teaching them that hard work leads to results. 

Kaye claimed she was also grateful for the way surrendering parts of their children's lives to the state reduced burdens on her and her husband - and wished American parents might see the value in doing the same.

'I learned to appreciate the strong sense of shared values and of people connected as a nation. Parenting, like governing, is an imperfect art,' she added.Kaye saw merit in Chinese censorship too. 'Raising kids in China was a plus in other ways — such as the heavy censorship,' she wrote. 

The government imposed limits on how much time her kids could spend playing video games and it saved them from accessing problematic material on the internet.

Not only that, the state's supervision would keep here daughters safe as they navigated the sprawling, but relatively safe, according to Kaye, Shanghai subway.

In spite of all of this Kaye was driven to leave China, having lived through its zero-COVID approach that confined them for two months to home and limited them to government food rations.

But even as the family left she maintained her admiration for the country and the life they had been able to make there.

In a story covering her family's departure from Shanghai in 2022, she told Reuters: 'Anything you can imagine, you can build it here. Anything you want to be, you can make it happen here.'  

A recent report by human rights watchdog Safeguard Defenders revealed that the Chinese Communist Party has at least 54 'overseas police service stations' in 30 different countries, including across the US.

Since the launch of that program in April 2021, China reported that it had 'persuaded' 230,000 Chinese nationals to return home.

The Safeguard Defenders' campaign manager Laura Harth alleged that China has been using it to track down dissidents and force them to return home.

[mayasinghal]

Writing on the Walls:

A Socially-Distanced Ethnography of Asynchronous Communication

Son looked in vain for children. He couldn’t find them anywhere There were short people and people under twelve years of age, but they had no child’s vulnerability, no unstuck laughter… It wasn’t until he caught the downtown A that he saw what they had done with their childhood. They had wrapped it in dark cloth, sneaked it underground and thrown it all over the trains. Like blazing jewels, the subway cars burst from the tunnels to the platforms shining with the recognizable artifacts of childhood: fantasy, magic, ego, energy, humor and paint. -Toni Morrison, Tar Baby (1981, 215)

So many things begin and perhaps end as a game, I suppose that it amused you to find the sketch beside yours, you attributed it to chance or a whim and only the second time did you realize that it was intentional and then you looked at it slowly, you even came back later to look at it again, taking the usual precautions: the street at its most solitary moment, no patrol wagon on neighboring corners, approaching with indifference and never looking at the graffiti face-on but from the other sidewalk or diagonally, feigning interest in the shop window alongside, going away immediately. -Julio Cortázar, “Graffiti” (1983, 33)

In April 2020, about a month after Boston began Covid-19 social distancing protocols, posters appeared around my neighborhood in Allston, stuck to mailboxes and streetlights. On brightly colored paper, bold printed lettering read, “Meat markets cause pandemics,” referring to allegations that Covid-19 originated from human-animal contact in a meat market in Wuhan, China. A few weeks later, I took a walk around the neighborhood and noticed that someone had written on the left side one of the posters in black Sharpie: “This is anti-Chinese racism.” On the right side, in the same black Sharpie handwriting, it said, “We have them here too.”

It was not immediately clear why the poster should be construed as anti-Chinese racism. Maybe the Sharpie scribe was reading the sign as referencing racist tropes about Chinese people eating varieties of meat jarring to Western ideas of morality and health (for instance, dogs and bats). I also wondered what the commentator meant by “We have them here too.” We have pandemics here, too? We have meat markets here, too? And, what is the importance of “here” versus “there” in racialized reactions to global events? The Sharpie scribe seemed to emphasize the xenophobia central to anti-Chinese racism: that there is some fundamental, inheritable Chinese-ness that marks all Chinese people and practices as inherently blameworthy for problems between China and the rest of the world.

These posters disappeared shortly after I witnessed this graffitied commentary. They were replaced by pig head illustrations bearing the caption, “Animals are not products.” A few weeks after these posters went up, I found another poster glued on top of them. It showed two Black children, climbing on the Lincoln Memorial with large red letters that stated, “Black liberation is human liberation” (Fig. 1). It was June 2020, not more than a month since an African American man, George Floyd, was murdered by a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, prompting Black Lives Matter protests around the world. Recalling histories of legalized enslavement in which Black people were sometimes treated as commodities, the “Black liberation” poster challenged the “Animals are not products” one it was placed over, highlighting tensions between animal rights and human rights. Certainly, environmental degradation, climate change, and pollution disproportionately impact communities of color around the world (Nixon 2011; Taylor 2014). And, many indigenous approaches to animal studies argue that decolonization must be a multispecies endeavor that accounts for Native peoples’ relationships to the environment and land (Struthers Montford and Taylor 2020). However, in practice, white environmentalists and animal rights activists often use concerns about non-human species to legitimate violence against people of color or prioritize non-human species over people of color (Kosek 2006). The juxtaposition of these posters raises questions about the status of arguments for animal liberation when predominately African American populations are still legally enslaved and otherwise financially exploited in the US prison system.

Throughout the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, I saw several of these graffitied exchanges about human and animal rights on walks around my neighborhood. While animal rights posters are somewhat ubiquitous around all of the college campuses I’ve been to in the Northeast, I was struck by the extent of these asynchronous conversations that took place on my neighborhood’s walls during the pandemic. In this essay, I want to think through the content of these discussions: human and animal rights in the context of the pandemic, the Movement for Black Lives, and Stop Asian Hate. I also want to think further about the form of these discussions, about doing socially-distanced ethnography by reading writings on the walls.

Fig. 1: A poster reading “Black liberation is human liberation” on top of posters that read “Animals are not products” (June 2020)

Wall Art

In the epigraph to this essay, taken from her 1981 novel Tar Baby, Toni Morrison describes New York City in the 1970s from the perspective of Son, an African American New Yorker returning to the city after a long absence. In the face of poverty and mass incarceration, Black people in the city do not seem to Son to experience childhood anymore: “There were short people and people under twelve years of age, but they had no child’s vulnerability, no unstuck laughter” (Morrison 1981, 215). They seem to be missing the kind of freedom, but also the innocence and helplessness, associated with childhood. This idea parallels a common claim from law enforcement officials guilty of using force against unarmed African Americans who insist they feared for their lives during encounters with young Black people they perceive as having the size, strength, and prowess of grown men. However, unlike law enforcement officials, who have sometimes used graffiti as evidence of local criminality, Son sees childhood in graffiti. For Son, 1970s New York is jarring, filled not only with new fashions, but, he thinks, new kinds of gender- and racially-ambiguous people: “beautiful males who had found the whole business of being black and men at the same time too difficult and so they’d dumped it” and “black people in whiteface playing black people in blackface” on TV (Morrison 1981, 216). Stunned by these changes, Son searches for signs of normative life stages: children and old people. When he finds no old people either, Son clings to his recognizable sign of childhood: graffiti. Graffiti, for him, is a public display of things that cannot be communicated publicly or embodied in other forms, a material vestige that he collects, almost archeologically, as proof that these new New Yorkers are still human.

Julio Cortázar similarly treats graffiti as an illicit method for communication under repressive conditions in his 1980 short story “Graffiti.” Going further than Morrison in this regard, Cortázar depicts a conversation through layered public art, similar to the postering that I discussed, shown in Fig. 1. Set in the context of authoritarian rule, an allusion to Argentina’s military junta in the 1970s, two graffiti artists navigate a prohibition on street art and increasing “disappearances” of people in the city. The narrator writes in second person to a male artist who makes chalk sketches on walls when one day, he finds a sketch next to his done, he is sure, by a woman. The narrator explains: “You couldn’t prove it yourself, but there was something different and better than the most obvious proofs: a trace, a predilection for warm colors, an aura” (Cortázar 1983, 34). This logic and evidence prime the reader for the interpretive and imaginative relationship the artists develop. Their art becomes a call and response, building on each other’s meanings to develop a visual language between the two of them: “if he didn’t look at it closely, a person might have said it was a play of random lines, but she would know how to look at it” (Cortázar 1983, 35). Cortázar doesn’t describe most of the drawings in detail—focusing simply on outlines or colors. However, the climax of the story is told with pointed emphasis on the art:

At dawn on the second day you chose a grey wall and sketched a white triangle surrounded by splotches like oak leaves; from the same café on the corner you could see the wall (they’d already cleaned off the garage door and a patrol, furious, kept coming back), at dusk you withdrew a little, but choosing different lookout points, moving from one place to another, making small purchases in the shops so as not to draw too much attention. It was already dark night when you heard the sirens and the spotlights swept your eyes. There was a confused crowding by the wall, you ran, in the face of all good sense, and all that helped you was the good luck to have a car turn the corner and put on its breaks when the driver saw the patrol wagon, its bulk protected you and you saw the struggle, black hair pulled by gloved hands, the kicks and the screams, the cut-off glimpse of blue slacks before they threw her into the wagon and took her away.             Much later (it was horrible trembling like that, it was horrible to think that it had happened because of your sketch on the grey wall) you mingled with other people and managed to see an outline in blue, the traces of that orange color that was like her name or her mouth, her there in that truncated sketch that the police had erased before taking her away, enough remained to understand that she had tried to answer your triangle with another figure, a circle or maybe a spiral, a form full and beautiful, something like a yes or an always or a now. (Cortázar 1983, 36)

Particularly when the woman is arrested, the conversation becomes clearer. For the first time in the story, the reader is given descriptions of the drawings, but the narrator also provides the interpretations. Where the graffiti at first was a sign of the presence of others, the public life available even under authoritarian conditions, when the other is taken away, the communicative capacities of graffiti become even more clear.

Later, the man returns to the spot the woman had been arrested: “There were no patrols, the walls were perfectly clean: a cat looked at you cautiously from a doorway when you took out your chalk and in the same place, there where she had left her sketch, you filled the boards with a green shout, a red flame of recognition and love, you wrapped your sketch in an oval that was also your mouth and hers and hope” (Cortázar 1983, 37). The patrols somehow miss this sketch, and it stays up for a long time. In the last scene of the story, the man returns to his sketch and sees a reply:

From a distance you made out the other sketch, only you could have distinguished it, so small, above and to the left of yours. You went over with a feeling that was thirst and horror at the same time; you saw the orange oval and the violet splotches where a swollen face seemed to leap out, a hanging eye, a mouth smashed with fists. I know, I know, but what else could I have sketched for you? What message would have made any sense now? In some way I had to say farewell to you and at the same time ask you to continue. I had to leave you something before going back to my refuge where there was no mirror anymore, only a hollow to hide in until the end in the most complete darkness, remembering so many things and sometimes, as I had imagined your life, imagining that you were making other sketches, that you were going out at night to make other sketches. (Cortázar 1983, 38)

In this final scene, the narrator is revealed as the woman artist, after her arrest. The torture she endured has broken down her sense of self (“there was no mirror anymore”), so instead she narrates her past through the eyes of another artist who represents her hope and lingering sense of community, of social life. Through a tale of layered artworks, Cortázar treats graffiti as a form of public discourse when public discourse is limited. Where scholars often focus on graffiti as a way of communicating marginalized ideas, Cortázar’s story takes it up as a way of preserving public space and public fora. The comparison of the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly in the US, to an Argentinian dictatorship is problematic, not least because the US has not had mandated lockdowns. Still, the pandemic has occasioned state and municipal strictures concerning public congregation. Cortázar highlights the ethnographic importance of attending to how layered graffiti can function as a kind of artistic conversation, especially when considering how people develop socially distanced spaces of interaction.

Police and Pigs

During Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and 2021, some protestors brandished severed pig heads, playing on “pig” as a slang term for a police officer. These expressions of outrage at police violence were quickly taken up by some animal rights organizations and condemned as “hypocrisy,” “protesting against rights violations while violating the rights of others.” Meanwhile, other animal rights activists argued that it is anti-Black to focus on how Black people use dead animals to protest oppression instead of the much more serious violence against animals perpetrated by racist institutions. The layered “Animals are not products” and “Black liberation is human liberation” graffiti (Fig. 1) index these debates about real and metaphorical pigs, emphasizing the pig head in the middle of the “Animals” poster. Not only are the rights of real pigs put into tension with human rights, the rights of Black people specifically, but also the pig head becomes a representation of police, bringing these human and animal rights into greater conflict.

Animal rights and human rights, particularly those of African American people, have often been placed at odds with each other. For instance, in 2018, actress Tiffany Haddish suggested that she would not stop wearing fur until the police stop killing Black people. “So sorry, PETA!” she added in an Instagram video. “Don’t be mad at me. Be mad at the police.” The implication of this joking “protest” was that white people often seem to prioritize animal lives over Black lives; therefore, by threatening animal lives, Haddish might force white people to address police murders of Black people.

Similar arguments about people caring more about animals than African American people have been made about pets being rescued after Hurricane Katrina while many Black New Orleanians died. An analogous claim centers on the football phenom, Michael Vick, who was incarcerated on dog fighting charges, while police officers (and some civilians) accused of murdering African Americans have frequently been acquitted (Kim 2015). Yet, the utility of these comparisons is not always obvious. In fact, as Bénédicte Boisseron has argued, “The ‘America-likes-pets-more-than-blacks’ attitude… is symptomatic of a system that convulsively pits blackness against animality, forcing blacks themselves to engage in a battle over spared likeability” (Boisseron 2018, xiv). Furthermore, these comparisons also obscure real concerns about the status of animals, given anthropogenic climate change and environmental degradation.

On the other hand, animal rights activists have often compared the plight of farm animals to chattel slavery to argue the injustice of animal treatment (Boisseron 2018). These analogies are troubling, not only because they recall racist comparisons between Black people and animals. As Claire Jean Kim writes:

Analogizers claim to be connecting and avowing, but in many cases they seem to be instrumentalizing the other cause in question or treating it as a means to an end. The analogizer does not connect x and y in the sense of exploring them as independently significant and conjoined logics. Rather, concerned to validate x, which is her true focus, the analogizer seizes upon y, which already enjoys some measure of social validation, and posits x =  y. This exercise seeks to transfer the legitimacy and social importance of y to x. (Kim 2015, 285)

In short, by comparing the experience of enslaved African people to animals, this analogy “suggests that the Black story is a triumphalist one of overcoming racism, thus bolstering white fantasies of colorblindness and postraciality. It succinctly repackages and falsely truncates the story of anti-Blackness to serve the present purposes of animal liberation” (Kim 2015, 285).

Perhaps it is these regular implications of “postraciality” by animal rights movements that so frequently prompt people to respond to animal rights postering with graffiti about racism and slavery. In February 2021, on another walk around my neighborhood in Allston, I found a poster advertising a documentary about animal abuse papered over with an image of George Floyd, the man whose murder by police prompted the Movement for Black Lives in 2020 (Fig. 2). A few months later, a little north, around Harvard Square, I saw posters depicting a cow strung up after slaughter with the caption “Stop lying to your kids about their ‘food.’ ” On top of them, someone had written in Sharpie, “Socialism is slavery” (Fig. 4). However, the fact that graffiti about animal rights is often read by other graffiti writers as having implications for communities of color certainly also has to do with how racism references animals, from comparisons between people of color and animals to allegations that communities of color endanger animals or enact particular cruelty against animals (Kim 2015; Boisseron 2018). Shortly after the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, an art director for the brand Lululemon posted a link to a shirt depicting “bat fried rice” with the words “No thank you” on the sleeves, referencing allegations that Covid-19 originated from Chinese people eating bats (King 2020). In the context of these prevalent forms of Sinophobia, particularly at the beginning of the pandemic, the exchange about anti-Chinese racism on the “Meat markets cause pandemics” poster reads into a statement about vegetarianism a whole history of associations between Chinese people and forms of meat consumption deemed “cruel and transgressive” (Kim 2015). Still, other graffiti discussions about veganism and racism begin from links that seem much less apparent.

Fig. 2: Poster showing George Floyd placed over an animal rights poster (text illegible)

Fig. 3: A similar animal rights poster as the one visible in Fig. 2, advertising a documentary called Dominion

Fig. 4: Posters showing a picture of a cow hung upside down with the words, “Stop lying to your kids about their ‘food.’” Several of the words have been crossed out in Sharpie. In pencil, someone has written “Who’s lying” on one poster. Another person has written in Sharpie, “Socialism is slavery,” which another person has crossed out in Sharpie.

If These Walls Could Talk

In October 2020, a couple months after I found the “Black liberation” poster, I saw a more extensive discussion on another set of animal rights posters. On a mailbox, someone had placed two posters of roosters with the words “Go vegan” coming from their mouths. One respondent wrote in black capital letters, “End human suffering first.” In the same handwriting, “This is cringe” was written next to the rooster, suggesting that the poster is problematic and “cringe-worthy.” Another person then added in black marker, “You can’t buy tofu and vegetables because someone else is suffering?” Yet another person added a profane statement, playing on the rooster or “cock.” Still another person, in white marker, wrote, “I don’t like ppl [people] who can’t write words.” The second poster was colored black except for the rooster to obscure the “Go vegan” statement, faintly visible under the marker, and someone added in reddish ink, “BLM,” or “Black Lives Matter,” coming from the rooster’s mouth in its place.

Fig. 5: “Go Vegan” posters with annotations and redactions

This exchange highlights another kind of graffiti debate concerning animal rights and human rights through revision, or what Christina Sharpe might call “Black annotation and Black redaction.” For Sharpe, the most familiar work of annotation and redaction takes the form of violence against Black people: captions included with photographs of Black death and suffering and redacted government files about Black activists, for example. Through “Black annotation and Black redaction” (emphasis added), Sharpe proposes a radical reappropriation of these editorial tools. They are “ways to make Black life visible, if only momentarily, through the optic of the door” (Sharpe 2016, 123). Sharpe uses the examples of the annotations on the second autopsy Michael Brown’s family requested after he was murdered by police officer Darren Wilson in 2014 and her own redactions of a New York Times article to highlight the voice of the Black girl who was its subject. She argues that through these Black annotations and redactions, we see the lives of Black people beyond how they are portrayed by the state.

In the example of the mailbox “Go Vegan” and “Black Lives Matter” graffiti, the Black annotations and redactions make visible Black people who may or may not have been there before. As one of the graffiti writers asked, “You can’t buy tofu and vegetables because someone else is suffering?” Or, as Boisseron has asked, “Why should the black become so blatantly visible against the animal rights backdrop?” (2018, xix). In part, in October 2020, Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police were still central in the national conversation about social justice, and communities of all kinds were organizing under the slogans: “X for Black Lives.” As such, one reading of the annotations and redactions here is that it places animals in solidarity with Black people. Where, in the first poster, the rooster is meant to highlight the animal lives at stake in “going vegan,” through Black annotation and redaction, the rooster becomes an animal arguing for Black lives. Perhaps part of the appeal of this message, too, is that the animal rights posters I saw never highlighted how the environmental impact associated with farming animals impacts communities of color. Instead, I only saw comments on the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic as a whole (“Meat markets cause pandemics”). By avoiding how animals and people of color are connected, not merely compared, these posters invite people to write back to them—to paper over them, annotate and redact them—to highlight the diverse groups implicated in any project concerning animal rights.

Open Letters

I want to suggest another genre to make sense of this form of political graffiti: the open letter. Laurence Ralph, in his 2020 book The Torture Letters, experiments with the open letter as a form of ethnographic writing by writing open letters to a variety of people and groups affected by the cases of torture by police officers in Chicago between 1972 and 1991. Ralph writes that his method of “ethnographic lettering”—

includes three ways of layering field research. First, it transforms research “subjects” into “interlocutors” during the research process by focusing on the projects they are already invested in as a way to explore broader social problems; second, it includes exchanges with interlocutors in the research and writing phases of the project; and third, it positions one’s interlocutors and the communities they want to address as the primary audience for the ethnographic material that will ultimately be produced. (Ralph 2020, 192)

This method, he explains, is indebted to James Smith and Ngeti Mwadime’s Email from Ngeti (2014), which is written through the authors’ email correspondence; however, Ralph writes, “As I have written to a host of dead people, others who had no interest in responding to me, and to another group who did respond but whose responses are not included in this book, my idea of exchange is much more expansive than Smith and Mwadime’s approach” (Ralph 2020, 199). Ultimately, Ralph explains that his method of “ethnographic lettering”—and letter writing generally—requires an invested audience and “a sense of voice and a sense of purpose” (Ralph 2020, 199). Certainly, these criteria apply to any form of writing, but Ralph’s book of open letters does highlight the uniqueness of the open letter as a genre of writing.

If a standard letter’s audience is the named addressee, an open letter’s audience is not. It is possible, but not necessary, for the open letter that the addressee will read it. The audience of an open letter is the public, who is recruited to witness the writer speaking toward the addressee. Written in the second person, Cortázar’s story, “Graffiti,” functions similarly to an open letter as well. The reader is positioned as a witness to the narrator speaking to the artist she addresses as “you.” Similarly, the creators of the original animal rights graffiti posters need not ever return to their pieces for the graffiti commentators’ discussions to be effective, as the point of these layered posters, annotations, and revisions is to register disagreement or offer an alternative perspective rather than to change the original writer’s mind.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, open letters have also been an important mode of public art and activism in more official capacities. In response to anti-Chinese violence by people who blamed China for the pandemic, people around the country began “Love Letters to Chinatown” projects. Inspired by the first Love Letter initiative started by the Wing On Wo Project in New York’s Manhattan Chinatown, Pao Arts Center in Boston collected its own set of love letters to Boston’s Chinatown, which they translated into English and Chinese and posted around the neighborhood. Many of the letters are addressed to Chinatown as a whole, while others are addressed to specific shops and restaurants that people hold dear. First shared online and then posted throughout Chinatown, these open letters become part of the street art landscape of the neighborhood—ways of communicating support to a neighborhood particularly hard-hit by the pandemic, often by people who are no longer frequenting Chinatown’s streets due to public health concerns. Projects like these are fascinating ethnographic sites in themselves to consider the innovative ways that people have found to conduct public dialogues in public space, despite social distancing requirements. In conjunction with the graffitied conversations about animal rights and racial justice, these open letters shape how I read the possibilities of street art as a kind of letter writing. Rather than seeing graffiti only as a one-directional form of protest or speech more broadly, the graffitied discussions during the pandemic have served as forums for people occupying the same space at different times to argue over how to weigh concerns about animal rights and human rights and racialized and culturally specific approaches to food. With restrictions on public space, graffiti served as a mode for people to discuss some of the most fundamental issues about how Covid-19 impacted all of us yet impacted us differently.

Works Cited

Boisseron, Bénédicte. 2018. Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question. New York: Columbia University Press.

Cortázar, Julio. 1983. “Graffiti.” In We Love Glenda So Much and Other Tales, translated by Gregory Rabassa, 33–38. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Kim, Claire Jean. 2015. Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

King, Michelle T. 2020. “Say No to Bat Fried Rice: Changing the Narrative of Coronavirus and Chinese Food.” Food and Foodways 28 (3): 237–49.

Kosek, Jake. 2006. Understories: The Political Life of Forests in Northern New Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Morrison, Toni. 1981. Tar Baby. New York: Vintage Books.

Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA.

Ralph, Laurence. 2020. The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Sharpe, Christina. 2016. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham, NC.

Struthers Montford, Kelly, and Chloe Taylor, eds. 2020. Colonialism and Animality: Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies. New York: Routledge.

Taylor, Dorceta. 2014. Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility. New York: New York University Press.