Throughout human history, protest has always held a center-stage role, shaping the narrative with the timbre of collective voice and action. From the rugged cobblestone streets of colonial Boston to the sunbaked squares of Tahrir, the black soil of Selma to the neon-lit expanses of Hong Kong, the power of protest has reverberated through time and across continents, shifting paradigms and confronting the status quo.
About 100 protesters were trapped in the Polytechnic University a day after students, some tired and fearful of police storming the campus, tried again and again to flee, only to be beaten back by police firing rubber bullets, water cannon and tear gas. Some 235 injured were taken to hospital on Tuesday, the Hospital Authority said. “I just want to leave. I feel very tired,” said Thomas, 20, a student at another university who has been on the campus since the siege began. “I didn’t throw Molotovs. I was here to support the protest.”
Beijing released an official White Paper, which declared that anyone whom the people of Hong Kong nominated to run for the office of Chief Executive must first be vetted by Beijing. What’s more, anyone nominated by the people to become a potential political leader in Hong Kong must “love the country” – but what that actually means is that any candidate to be selected must “love the Party.”
The leadership and activist numbers are coming from Generation ’97, young people born during the 1997 handover of the then-British Crown colony to Chinese sovereignty. These youngsters, most still in the secondary level (high school), are finding themselves at the forefront of a populist struggle for electoral rights. They are motivated by anxieties about local identity and a consequent need for better representation, reflecting attitudes that differ subtly but significantly from the traditional opposition parties.
Slavery has existed in nearly every society in the world in some form or another. Until British Atlantic societies developed the chattel model, no form of enslavement gave such complete and utter dominion to enslavers on such a scale. Consequently, no society had organized its entire social, political, religious, and economic systems around the exploitation of a more or less permanently enslaved underclass.
That was my first encounter with Martin Scorsese, a director who shaped my teenage and early adult years. Possibly the greatest American filmmaker, Scorsese is incapable of making uninteresting films, thus defining his 10 best films would be a fool’s task. In curating these titles, it's less a question of greatness, but rather selecting the titles that I believe surmise Scorsese, the artist and person.
