TheAgitator.com
Nicholas Kristof on Tiananmen
Thursday, June 4th, 2009The NY Times columnist was the paper’s bureau chief in Beijing 20 years ago, and was in the crowd when Chinese troops began the slaughter. He looks back in his column today:
Troops had already opened fire on an ambulance that had tried to collect the injured, so other ambulances kept their distance. Finally, some unlikely saviors emerged — the rickshaw drivers.
These were peasants and workers who made a living pedaling bicycle rickshaws, carrying passengers or freight around Beijing. It was those rickshaw drivers who slowly pedaled out toward the troops to collect the bodies of the dead and injured. Then they raced back to us, legs straining furiously, rushing toward the nearest hospital.
One stocky rickshaw driver had tears streaming down his cheeks as he drove past me to display a badly wounded student so that I could photograph or recount the incident. That driver perhaps couldn’t have defined democracy, but he had risked his life to try to advance it.
That was happening all over Beijing. On the old airport road that same night, truckloads of troops were entering the city from the east. A middle-aged bus driver saw them and quickly blocked the road with his bus.
Move aside, the troops shouted.
I won’t let you attack the students, the bus driver retorted defiantly.
The troops pointed their guns at the bus driver and ordered him to move the bus aside. Instead, he plucked the keys from the ignition and hurled them into the bushes beside the road to ensure that no one could drive that bus away. The man was arrested; I don’t know what happened to him.
From the article:
One of my Chinese friends explains that if he were to protest loudly, he might be arrested; if he were to protest quietly, it would be a waste of time. “I may as well just spend the time watching a pirated DVD,” he said.
I think that is a world-wide stance.
I really can’t think of what to say. Such a travesty, and yet such heroes. And I can’t believe that this happened in my lifetime.
Oh, and I had a math teacher in high school who was very knowledgeable. One day a kid wore a shirt that had a skateboarder riding in front of a tank, a la Tank Man. He got extremely pissed off at the kid and I think ordered him to go down to the office to get a new one because he found it highly offensive to compare the persecution of skateboarders to those thousands of students peacefully protesting for their rights. I didn’t fully understand then, but now I think I do. He was a great teacher, if you couldn’t guess already.
How soon we forget. When it comes to China, anyway. If this had happened in Cuba, I’m sure our leaders would have declared a national day of mourning and we’d be subjected to historical reenactments in Miami every year. No fan of the dictators in Havana, mind you, just pointing out the discrepancy in how we treat douche-y regimes depending on how easily we can push them around.
#3 I find it highly offensive that your math teacher would force somebody to change out of a shirt whose message he disagreed with. Sounds like a dick to me.
He didn’t force him to. He said it was disrespectful. Perhaps it was rash, but the office could have told him to return with that shirt on or told him to stay in study hall the rest of the day.
Ultimately, the skateboarders feel oppressed because they aren’t allowed to skate in public places where they damage public property, as opposed to the students that peacefully protested for their rights. You don’t think that deserves a personal lesson, even if it doesn’t hold physical weight in a public school?
Oh yeah, and fuck you, Judas! I wouldn’t mind the teacher getting in trouble by the administration, but I agree with his feelings toward the shirt.
Well argued, Danny.
Have you responded to the merits of my arguments (besides the “Fuck you”)? I mean, I said that I don’t care if he got a slap on the wrist or if the administrators told the teacher “fuck you” and let the kid come back to class with the shirt on, but ultimately he was trying to teach the kid something that I think was worth the teacher and the kid’s time. I don’t mind being down-modded as long as people justify it. I don’t like living in ignorance, but I will if you make me.
I can’t help but think back to the new coverage of the recent Olympics and how they used Tiananmen Square as a backdrop without once even mentioning that they were standing on a place were so many died. Guess it didn’t fit the corporate narrative.
Danny – you changed your story. First the teacher forced the kid to go change his shirt. Then he didn’t. And your response to being challenged was a brilliant “Fuck you.” Shocking that you are getting a few down votes.
Kristof’s conclusion, that one should wait patiently for gradual reform, brought to mind Letter from a Birmingham Jail. No one should have to wait for freedom.
His other conclusion, that the PRC has essentially bought its people’s complacence with better living standards (i.e capitalism), seems more troublingly accurate.
lol. Well my memory is a little (perhaps a lot) rusty of the incident, but the fact remains that hat the teacher found the shirt offensive and the kid was sent out of the classroom. I can’t remember if the kid acted up or what, but I agree with him that the shirt in the very least cheapens what happened in this incident. At least it doesn’t try to re-write or ignore that it happened, but in my opinion we can’t lose the value of history and he tried to teach the kid that lesson.
Forgive me for forgetting the details or unintentionally embellishing the story.
Danny,
The teacher using his arbitrary authority to silence an opinion he didn’t like.
Kinda like the Chinese.
That said, I’d agree with you that it could have been an important teaching moment…had the teacher not been an dick about it.
He did not silence the kid’s opinion! The kid was ignorant of the whole point, and seemed to think that he was oppressed and had the right to ride around on his skateboard and damage public property. It’s okay to feel falsely oppressed, but it’s not okay to damage public property.
This thread had a lot of potential.
“He got extremely pissed off at the kid and I think ordered him to go down to the office to get a new one because he found it highly offensive to compare the persecution of skateboarders to those thousands of students peacefully protesting for their rights.”
A distinction without a difference?
Not seeing the forest for the trees?
Persecution is persecution. No need to get offended, it’s counter-productive.
That’s a lot better. Thank you for actually elaborating, Cynical. The only difference I see now is the one I noted above that it’s not okay to damage public property, even though the kid seemed to send the message that he had the right to it just as much as he had the right to wear that shirt.
And I would have handled it differently than the teacher, but I understand why he would get angry, even if it’s counterproductive. I would have just told the kid about the incident and notified him that he doesn’t have the right to damage public property and left it at that.
Why is Danny bitching about skateboarders?
Most importantly because the shirt I mentioned in #3 attempts to cheapen the Tienanmen square incident by comparing skateboarders being hassled by cops for damaging public property to those students who peacefully protested for their rights.
Right here, right now. I would prefer not to wait until such time when I might have to become one of those rickshaw drivers. That’s the lesson I see here.
Dude, we get it–you don’t like skateboarders. Yeeeesh.
more t-shirt ideas:
- Anne Frank: Sk8tr grrl
- Rail Grind of Tears
- Bataan Death March… EXTREME!!! (brought to you by Carl’s Jr)
You are free to wear such things. But I think its all rather disgusting, and a teacher would be negligent to not point that out. If my son wore a shirt disrespecting Tank Man like that, he’d soon learn how many cans of food a used skateboard will buy.
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/behind-the-scenes-a-new-angle-on-history/
A new image of Tank Man.
You damn kids get offa my lawn! NOW!
Danny: This t-shirt you describe isn’t “comparing skateboarders being hassled by cops” to Tiananmen. It’s a visual riff on a striking image. It doesn’t even sound like a political statement at all, to me. Not that that should matter anyway.
It had words to the effect that skateboarders were being persecuted, which is a common theme for those shirts. I can’t remember the exact wording, though. When I was in high school, skating was a huge phenomenon and people wore tons of clothing representing their favorite brands. Most didn’t have a message, but this one did. Besides, the striking image isn’t all that striking if you don’t know what it means, but I could certainly see how a kid could think it is.
@#8 | Judas Peckerwood
I just spit water at my computer that was so funny.
Unfortunately, like another poster said, the teacher did lose a valuable chance to teach a lesson or at least open up discussion on the topic. The lesson the kid probably learned is “This isn’t about freedom to skateboard anymore, this is about my freedoms to stand up and say what I want. I am the Tank Man and the teacher is the tank.”
Teaching about freedom by oppressing speech is fucking for virginity.
Jesus christ… I say “fuck you” once and all of the sudden the rest of my words disappear? Everything else I said was an argument or explanation. I think you missed the point.
Danny, I got your point.
1) It’s disrespectful and ignorant for a kid to have this on his shirt.
2) Your teacher is great for punishing him.
3) Skateboarders cause damage to public property.
I agree with point 1 to a degree, assuming you are in his head and knew he wasn’t making a more subtle statement about putting yourself (the skateboarder) in Tank Man’s shoes.
On point 2, I think your teacher is foolish at best. At worst, the teacher created a smaller daily-life version of the same event in his classroom. The reason the Tank Man image is so powerful is that we all hope we will stand up for freedom when the time comes. That ‘time’ can be in real life-or-death situations or it could be the little dramatic moments happening every day.
On point 3, we weren’t talking about that. You only brought it up as a distraction from points 1 and 2. That the student depicts someone engaging in destructive behavior, has no bearing on points 1 or 2.
No, omar, I brought up point 3 because it is a valid, though secondary, point of the contention with the shirt and the behavior of the student. Besides, it says that the kid is wearing the shirt for one invalid and ignorant reason instead of memorializing the terrible times surrounding the Tienanmen events. Of course he shouldn’t be forced to memorialize or be prevented from damaging public property, but he can and hopefully will be retributed against if he does damage public property.
As far as the second point, I really don’t know how much trouble the student got into (presumably none), though I’m sure he was at least embarrassed, for which he should have at least gotten an apology. What I really praise my teacher for is for recognizing the purpose of the shirt and for wanting to preserve the purpose of those students in Tienanmen square. His execution was most decidedly poor, as others have pointed out.
tank guy gets Oscar worthy big budget sound track.
Danny gets played off by Keyboard Cat.
Curious…how much changed in China? What do the students today know of the murders?
Oh, and thanks, omar, for breaking it down so clearly and responding articulately, even if nuances of my arguments were lost in your reproduction of them. ;)
I’d say the point of the shirt was lost on the teacher.
AUTHORITARIANISM.
Boyd Durkin,
AUTHORITARIANISM
?
Comparing “persecution” of skateboarders for damaging public property to thousands of students being injured or losing their lives for peacefully protesting for their rights.
Which actually WAS the purpose of the shirt.
I imagine Radley is rather proud of the quality of posts he gets here. Not this one. Early favorite for Worst Comments of the Year.
Can Obama get me the last ten minutes back if I vote for him?
I can understand how one could be offended at the T-shirt Danny described. It would have been great for the teacher to explain why he was offended. But the whole point of freedom of speech is that we allow expression that offends us. By imposing any consequence on the kid for wearing the shirt, whether it was making the kid change it, or sending him to the office, the teacher was, in essence, saying, “It offends me that your shirt cheapens the stuggle for liberty. I myself believe that anyone should be free to say anything that I agree with. Since freedom is so precious to me, I will limit your freedom to cheapen an icon of freedom that I cherish.”
That’s some mighty fine analysis, Boyd Durkin. Are you sure that’s a sufficiently elaborate analysis of the shirt you haven’t seen?
{the teacher was, in essence, saying, “It offends me that your shirt cheapens the stuggle for liberty. I myself believe that anyone should be free to say anything that I agree with. Since freedom is so precious to me, I will limit your freedom to cheapen an icon of freedom that I cherish.”}
Which is why I said that the kid deserved at LEAST an apology, which I can’t verify did or did not happen.
To those downmodding #39:
So I guess after the incident the kid shouldn’t have gotten an apology? The teacher should have been thrown in the slammer? What? I don’t get your point of downmodding that statement.