I am inspired by the way you understand your role in society. After Chow and Shum’s speeches, a group of you stepped forward to explain why you have joined the movement. You told us that you study social work, you described extreme inequality in Hong Kong and people living in human cages, and you said that you defend social justice. You explained that you were studying to be a lawyer, and you outlined the idea of the rule of law. You said that you were going to be a doctor, and you asked what diseases plague Hong Kong. Your job is to come to the rescue, you said, and your job is to cure. Your words echoed down the length of the plaza and reflected the writing on the “Democracy Wall” of the medical sciences building, “Medicine is fundamentally a revolution: above, it heals the nation, among us it heals people, below, it heals the illness.” I am inspired by your ability to teach yourself, as you organized activities following the rally and moved to a week-long boycott in Tamar Park. I went to the teach-in and saw your mini-university and watched you streaming between the simultaneous lectures. You had come of your own accord. You were taking assiduous notes. You broke into groups and talked about the meaning of direct action, of civil disobedience, of protest. You wrote to tell me how the boycott made you understand society more deeply, and I smiled when you confessed that it was so far a superficial understanding, that you would have to read more books to combine theory with practice. What teacher would not be filled with joy to watch his students seize learning so independently, so concretely, and with such passion? If we shed tears at this moment it was because we saw how you did not need us anymore, you could learn and act on your own. I am inspired that you are making the student boycott your own. Earlier I had written that you were inspired by May Fourth and the awakening of social consciousness. But observing you I have come to realize that this interpretation is far too simplistic, that initial reportage did not give you enough credit for both adaptation and innovation. Some have invoked May Fourth, and some—like Longhair when he spoke to you —lectured on Gandhi and Martin Luther King. No doubt their examples have inspired you. But reading the Chinese University boycott magazines and your reportage in Ming Pao, I see that your examples are recent and cosmopolitan. You are looking to 1968 in Paris, the 2011 Chilean student boycott, and 2012 in Quebec. You self-consciously organized the preceding campus meetings to follow Quebec, to be as democratic as possible, to give each of your classmates ownership. What I thought had been naïveté was a careful imitation of a model you had identified to be successful. So, though elements of your protests may have historical roots, I salute you for seeking a new model for Hong Kong, one which—your leadership tells us—will influence student movements to come. But as I listened to you, I was and am fearful. During the rally on Monday my eyes followed one of you, my own student, as he spoke on the stage. Was it less than two years ago that he was one of the silent ones in class? When had he grown so tall, so articulate? And where had that beard come from? As I watched you tremble with the rightness of your words, with the fury of the wronged—when you shouted that you would make the Chinese state come to its knees—something clutched my heart with fear. At that moment I suddenly felt old, in a way that wrinkles and grey hair have not chilled me. When I was young, I too had many dreams.
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 04:14:03 +0000
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