For five months huge protests have rocked Hong Kong. Hundreds of thousands of people taking on the authorities and the might of China. So why are they risking so much in an ever more violent battle. And how will this struggle end for ordinary Hong Kongers? Our World, Inside the Hong Kong Protests, BBC 2019
Since June hundreds of thousands of protesters have been out on thee streets in Hong Kong. The demonstrations were sparked by a proposed law change allowing the extradition of Hong Kongers to face trial on mainland China, but they morphed into a movement demanding democracy and an end to the steady erosion of rights. ibid.
Holly is one of many dedicated first aid volunteers. ibid.
One year after the annexation of Crimea, a protest march was organised in Moscow by opposition leader Boris Nemsov. On the even of the march, Nemtsov was murdered within sight of the Kremlin. He was shot four times in the head, heart, liver and stomach. All the CCTV cameras in the area were switched off for maintenance. KGB: The Sword & The Shield III, BBC 2019
The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police has sparked America’s biggest series of protests over race in a generation, highlighting once again the deep divide between black and white. With violent scenes and police forces seemingly out of control. The protests have gone global. Panorama: George Floyd: A Killing that Shook the World, BBC 2020
Could George Floyd’s death finally force America to confront the scourge of racism within. ibid.
Derek Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder. Three other officers have been charged with aiding and abetting murder. ibid.
The latest in an endless line of lives taken by violent cops. It is part of the black experience: an American tragedy. ibid.
One sweltering evening on the streets of Minneapolis yet another black man falls victim to police brutality. The killing of George Floyd has sparked outrage not only across America but also across the entire world. It is the latest chapter in the history of race injustice that is as old as the country itself. 8 Minutes & 46 Seconds, Sky Witness 2020
Derek Chauvin – In that time over a dozen complaints have been lodged against him. ibid.
But in 24 hours the death of another black man in police custody unleashes a fury that has existed for generations. ibid.
You may think our modern world was born yesterday. But it wasn’t, not even the day before yesterday. Democracy in the streets and the rise of people power. The raw passion of national belonging. Good and bad. Our obsession with the self and our own psychology and the dark recesses of the human mind. Even our love of nature, our concern for the future of the planet, all of this was the creation of the romantics: a generation of artists living and working two hundred years ago around the time of the French revolution. Their art was created over nearly a century of upheaval and change. And it speaks to us now with as much ferocious power as it did then. The Romantics & Us With Simon Schama, BBC 2020
The Romantics lived hard, worked feverishly, and many of them died young. ibid.
If you’ve ever been on a march for whatever cause, you’ve experienced one of the great inventions of the Romantics brought into the modern world … A new religion of insurrection and agitation in which everyone can take to the streets to fight for freedom, equality and justice. ibid.
Liberty Leading the People (1830) by Delacroix: It’s been a focal point of intoxicated devotion ever since … Delacroix was born into an age of revolutions in which the monarchy and aristocracy was under siege from the ideals of liberty, equality and the rights of man. ibid.
Delacroix’s image had its most famous resurrection during the Paris Uprisings of 1968 when students and workers came together on the barricades to break apart the rigid conservatism of French society under [Charles] de Gaulle. ibid.
The students took over the most prestigious art school and covered Paris in revolutionary slogans, poetry and street art. ibid.
I feel lucky and blessed that I’m serving in the Congress but there are forces today trying to take us back to another time and another dark period. John Lewis: Good Trouble, Sky Documentaries 2020
His voice and his example are probably needed now as much as they’ve ever been. ibid. Hillary Clinton
Arrest us if we’re wrong, don’t beat us. ibid. Selma protester
As we crossed the bridge we saw a sea of blue – Alabama state troopers. ibid. Lewis
I hated this system telling people you cannot be seated at a lunch counter, you cannot go into a restaurant simply because of the colour of your skin. ibid.
We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. ibid. Martin Luther King, essay Loving Your Enemies
Within a matter of weeks, freedom riders are boarding buses all over the South. The riders are harassed and jailed, sometimes they are beaten by angry crowds of whites while southern sheriffs look the other way. ibid.
People all over the world take the knee. But for centuries black resistant to oppression has taken many forms: when the Quarterback Colin Kaepernick first took the knee in 2016, during the national anthem at an NFL game, there was a huge backlash. Ultimately, this act of defiance cost him his livelihood. In the years since, taking the knee has become a powerful symbol of resistance. 400 Years of Taking the Knee I, Dotun Adebayo narrator, History 2020
Queen Nanny – Granny Nanny – aka Granny of the Maroons, is Jamaica’s original national hero. Her face adorns the country’s $500 bill, recording the story of a freedom fighter who stood up to the might of the British people to win freedom for her enslaved people. ibid.
Toussaint Louverture, St Dominique: emerged as the rebellion’s national leader … and abolished slavery from Hispaniola for ever … Bonaparte’s army suffered huge losses. ibid.
The American Civil War was over. Enslaved people were now free people. Though the chains of physical bondage were gone, new ways were found to restore the pre-war social order to keep black people down and subjugate them. Racist Jim Crow bylaws for example were enacted in the South long before South Africa institutionalised them as Apartheid … Not all men were created equal; in Black America the struggle continued. 400 Years of Taking the Knee II
William E B Du Bois 1903: condemned Washington’s programme of industrial education, conciliation of the South, and submission and silence at their political rights. ibid.
Marcus Harvey was described by du Bois as, ‘The most dangerous enemy of the Negro in America and in the world.’ ibid.
100 days after Emmett Till was lynched, in December 1955 Rosa Parks was to initiate the year-long Montgomery bus boycott. ibid.
‘We can’t solve this problem through retaliatory violence. We must meet violence with non-violence.’ ibid. King
Rosa Parks’ bus boycott eight years earlier had it parallel in Bristol in the west of England: Paul Stephenson, the city’s first youth black officer … The Bristol Bus Boycott was organised: it took just 60 days to succeed. ibid.
Muhammad Ali’s boxing career took a turn towards social activism in 1966 when he refused to be drafted into the military, publicly declaring his opposition to the Vietnam war. ibid. King
It’s was the noisiest march I had ever been on. Women were furious … It was never just about these murders. The Ripper III: Reclaim the Night, marcher, Netflix 2020
Black power: the words that can send shivers down the spine of the nervous white man. While the white man struggles with his nightmare, the black man struggles with his dream. Black Power: A British Story of Resistance, contemporary commentary of march, BBC 2021
West London 1970: a group of protesters march against harassment by the police of a black-owned restaurant called The Mangrove. Black power had arrived in Britain. Young black people were fighting back against a hostile environment. They stood up to the state and they defied the brutality of the police. It was a conflict that reached the highest courts in the land. ibid.
The migrants played a key role in rebuilding Britain. ibid.
Kelso Cochrane, a carpenter from Antigua, was stabbed to death by a white gang one night near Notting Hill. The police denied that the killing was racially motivated and nobody was prosecuted. (Black People & Racism & Miscarriages of Justice: Mangrove 9 & Oval 4 & Demonstrations & Protest & Resistance) ibid.
Even at school children were not safe from institutional racism. ibid.
Stokely Carmichael’s visit had the Labour government so concerned that Special Branch ordered him to leave the country and he was banned from re-entering. Soon afterwards the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, set up a secret police department specifically to monitor radical black groups in Britain. ibid.
On Sunday 9th August 1970 a crowd of over 100 people gathered outside the Mangrove restaurant to show their support … ‘They [Conservatives] wanted to justify the Immigration Bill’ … For the 9 people arrested following the Mangrove Demonstration, it seemed that the whole machinery of the state was now set against them, and the idea of Black Power in Britain was being unfairly demonised. ibid. activist
Oval 4: When a BBC journalist started investigating Winston’s case, it was revealed that Detective Sergeant Derek Ridgewell’s testimony was directly contradicted by eye-witnesses … ‘The only [mugging] witnesses were the anti-mugging squad themselves’ … The media’s account of Winston’s case helped him appeal and his sentence was reduced, but the judge did not overturn the criminal conviction. ibid.