#silent protests

[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

[squarecloud73]

*I worship you Tumblr please don’t remove it

傳達不到的一些東西

Dumb school girl crush

[bellaciao-ciao-ciao]

[inkedberries]

i have a headcanon that Yoichi trims AFO's hair because i can't help but compare AFO's nicely trimmed hair to Yoichi's and i thought someone had to have cut AFO's hair for him and it is only logical for me to assume it was Yoichi who did. I think AFO would only trust Yoichi to be so close to him with a sharp object like a pair of scissors lol

I think Yoichi would have also liked cutting his brother's hair at first, because it would make him feel helpful in a way? And I just think even when AFO put him in the vault, AFO would still go there to get his hair trimmed by Yoichi.

and once Yoichi joins the resistance, he offers to do this for Kudo as well.

[aashiqeddiediaz]

you know, after watching day 3 of the democratic national convention, i need to say something, especially to other muslims like me.

most of the muslim communities that i'm a part of have chosen to vote uncommitted, or independent, or sometimes, even trump. they refuse to give their vote to kamala harris and tim walz, because of the way the us has handled the war in gaza, and how they have been careless with acknowledging palestinian lives lost, how it was american bombs and american tax money that went towards funding this genocide. it's fucked up, and it's wrong, and there shouldn't be any debate on that.

and i am 100% in support of that anger. i am 100% in support of forcing america to stop funding this genocide. no one wants to keep seeing palestinian lives suffer. no one is free until we're all free, and i believe that to my very core.

my only concern is that where this anger is being placed, from 1 year to 11 weeks before the presidential election, is so scary. because the reality of the situation is that america has a bipartisan outlook. whoever gets the presidency is either democrat or republican. and every vote that doesn't go towards democracy (i.e. voting for kamala harris) inadvertently goes towards trump's big plan of project 2025, which is basically dictatorship. Even voting uncommitted, even voting independent. we cannot afford to elect trump for a second term, and voting anything other than democrat draws that line way too close, especially in swing states like michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin, georgia.

yes, there are many issues that we wish joe biden would handle better. there are many ways that the democratic party has fucked up beyond repair. there are many ways the democratic party has refused to acknowledge the pain of people affected by their military people throughout the years, and we've been seeing it for years. this is not a new thing. this did not start on october 7th. we see it during pretty much every administration.

however, voting for your candidate should never be based on a singular issue. no political candidate is ever going to check every single box. and its so unfortunate that we have to always take the "lesser of two evils" approach when nominating our president, but that's the reality of the situation at this very moment. there are many other rights to be considered that are at stake this election, all of which trump is trying to remove. abortion bans, women's rights, healthcare, social security, climate change, to name a few.

(and, somehow, there's a belief that trump will lead to a ceasefire deal where biden-harris didn't? let me tell you that is never going to happen.)

does this mean we just stop protesting or pressuring? absolutely not. you NEVER stop, because if our votes are the ones that put the candidate in their position of power, then we expect results. we expect them to work towards what they promised. and we can't let up on reaching out to our local county offices and our state governors and escalating these issues further until someone takes notice and does something about them. we don't elect them and just leave them to do what they want. we keep them accountable. use that anger i was talking about.

but it also means not having tunnel vision. the election in november could very well mean the end of democracy if kamala harris doesn't win. this post is not me all giggly-happy over the democratic party, because trust me, i have my fair share of issues with them as well. this post isn't to tell you what to do, because i can't force you to vote blue. i can't force the community i'm in to change their minds about toss-up votes. but what i can do is put down plainly what's at stake this election. and that is, very simply, our right to choose everything.

so if you are eligible to vote and haven't registered, please do. if you haven't voted before because "what's the point", please see above what the point is. a handful of votes is enough to flip the outcome of an election, especially with the electoral college.

and if you're still on the fence on whether to vote for kamala or trump, hopefully this post gives a little bit more perspective in the most streamlined way i could manage without bogging you down with statistics and numbers.

the choice is yours.

[remindertoclick]

Daily Reminder to Click for Palestine!

[penwrythe]

What's stopping the possibility of a ceasefire is pretty simple. Hamas is holding 239 Israeli civilians hostage including children and the elderly. What's happening in Palestine is a travesty and horrendous. But Israel can't initiate a ceasefire from the position they're in, so we need to be agitating for Hamas to release the hostages and call for a ceasefire instead.

NO GENOCIDE IS JUSTIFIABLE

HOW DOES THE KILLING OF INNOCENT PEOPLE ON THIS EXTREME LEVEL FORCE HAMAS TO RETURN HOSTAGES??

ISRAEL'S BOMBARDMENT AND INDISCRIMINATE SHOOTING IN GAZA THREATEN EVERYONE THERE INCLUDING DOCTORS JOURNALISTS CHILDREN ENTIRE FAMILIES AND THE HOSTAGES

EVERYONE IS TARGETED

YOU HAVE HOSPITALS BOMBED HOW ANY OF THIS IS JUSTIFIED

@sarroora @fairuzfan @palipunk @wearenotjustnumbers2

You know more about this than I do.

[the-sonic-crew]

I'm so scared right now. The government is slowly taking away all of our rights, and I don't have the money or resources to move out of the country

I can't be me, or i'll be killed

I'm scared

I know kid, it's really fuckin shitty, but please don't let things like that consume you.

There are people, good people, out there fightin' for ya.

One breath and one step at a time, kiddo.

[ghostlylicious]

[writer-room]

Lloyd’s the kind of person to be completely silent while everyone is horribly singing Bohemian Rhapsody only to belt out the line “I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all” in perfect pitch and then fall dead silent again as he went back to like, reading a book or something. send post

[isweartheyregayyourhonor]

Power bears a hefty shovel, burying beneath it the seeds of dissent. But there’s something that they do not see: the roots dancing down below. They do not see our journey to the surface, they do not know our strength until we have breached soil to scream it.

Do not go silent just because you cannot see; scream, and scream, and scream. They can bury you, but they cannot erase you. It is in darkness that we must link arms, join each other in the fight for freedom, in the demand for light. No one can be left behind. We must not allow them to reap us of our words, of our spirit. Hope may seem far from us now, but we cannot forget it. Stand tall knowing that one day will come the harvest, and it is our people that will sow the future today. Our silence is just as strong as our words - and we will not be complacent. Allow yourself to mourn the fresh air that we have lost but always remember that your voice holds power too.

Stay angry, stay loud. The sun only rises if you rise with it.

-

All that to say, do not let the hopelessness quiet you. They can censor us, they can threaten us, but they will never truly silence us. The time has passed for us to hold hope in the strength of democracy, and now we must remind our “leaders” of who really holds the power. Even if we are an army of ants, we outnumber them tenfold. It does not matter if the oligarchy holds an obscene amount of this country’s wealth. They are made of flesh just like you and I. Overwhelm local government, call your representatives, and protest until all the world’s ears bleed. Do not think for a second that this presidency will not affect you. It is only a matter of time before every head rests on the chopping block. A hundred executive orders today is only a snapshot of what’s coming.

Do not let them bury us.

[quotesfrommyreading]

The auditory version of the blank sheet is, of course, silence. Protesting wordlessly was a technique employed by Black Americans in July 1917, when an estimated 10,000 citizens, organized by religious groups and the NAACP, marched down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to protest racial violence and discrimination. As the New York Times reported, “Those in the parade represented every negro organization and church in the city. They marched, however, not as organizations, but as a people of one race, united by ties of blood and color, and working for a common cause.”

In September 1968, tens of thousands of students staged a silent march calling for greater democracy in Mexico. Contradicting the Mexican government’s accusations that they were resorting to violence, the students protested by simply carrying flags. (Around this same time, civil rights activists in the United States wielded flags with similar goals in mind.) “You’re taking the symbols of the regime and exposing the illegitimacy of the regime at the same time,” says David Meyer, a sociologist at the University of California, Irvine.

Other protests have employed more obvious symbols of repression, including handcuffs, blindfolds and gags. The last of these became widespread as a political prop following the trial of the Chicago Seven (originally eight), antiwar protesters who were charged with inciting a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. During the 1969 trial, the judge ordered defendant Bobby Seale to be gagged and chained to his chair.

Decades before football player Colin Kaepernick created a stir by kneeling during the national anthem, Black athletes silently used their status to fight oppression. At the awards ceremony for the 200-meter dash at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos each raised a clenched gloved fist in a call for global human rights.

The operating theory behind silent protests is that when the cause is clear and righteous, there’s no reason to yell about it—a principle demonstrated by more recent examples of silent protests, too. In 2009, a peaceful rally in Iran against unfair elections ended in gunfire and explosions. To vent their fury, hundreds of thousands of Iranians met at Tehran’s symbolic central roadway, Islamic Revolution Street, and marched quietly to Freedom Square, hoping to avoid a police crackdown. In 2011, protesters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, stood quietly in solidarity with activists detained without trial by the country’s regime. Multiple times in Hong Kong, lawyers have marched in silence to protest Beijing’s incursions into the city’s constitution and legal affairs.

  —  The History Behind China's White Paper Protests

[niccocum]

Yesterday 25th of January, 100.000 People in Berlin alone coming together to protest against the far-right and our new nazi party (AfD). More protest across Germany happened in 60 different cities.

A sign for the upcoming election in February.

Picture credit: @santiago_rodriguez_photography

[the-light-of-stars]

that one terf a few days ago: "oh but the vice chancellor is only outlawing antisemitic islamist protests, not all pro-palestine protests!! Don't be mean to him!!"

the german government: "Not buying products, holding peaceful protests and vigils and calling for human rights violations to be put on trial in front of the international court of law is antisemitic terrorist extremism and has to be heavily condemned and outlawed!!!!"

[thehouseofmorningstar34]

I will never ever stop talking about Palestine 🇵🇸

This is genocide

A modern genocide

Funded by the red white and blue

How disgusting

Please ceasefire now

Put the weapons down

Find your humanity

Free Palestine 🇵🇸

[imaginethathaikyuu]

it actually makes me sick to see people share the BDS boycott list but continue to support companies on the list lmao

one of my mutuals just made 3 tweets in a row about getting mcdonalds when a month ago they were making a thread of helpful information, posting the bds list, and tweeting the watermelon emoji

like do you actually give a fuck about whats happening or are you only virtue signaling for retweets? this shit is so fucking mind numbing like im so pissed off and i know im directing my anger at something small retrospectively but how are you going to be a hypocrite in this situation how are you going to pretend to care how are you going to ignore the simple things we’ve been asked to do i want to just scream

when the bare minimum is not supporting corrupt brands, and self proclaimed leftists can’t even do that, how is anything going to change. am i going to be angry for the rest of my life