Tibitan Protest on 2nd Avenue
I’ve been under the weather recently and was recovering nicely, but still hadn’t stepped out of my place all day today. And then I heard whistles and shouting coming from the direction of Second Avenue and 42nd Street. I have a very minor view of the street from my window and peered out, knowing I’d see something.
And I did. Cops. There was a protest afoot. I left as quickly as I could and, by the time I hit street level, the noise volume was very high and my doorman was trying to figure out what was going on.
It was a protest. It looked a bit “thrown together” with minimal planning, but the cops were cooperating.
It wasn’t tiny though. Okay, it was relatively tiny, but it was a fairly good protest march. It was the Tibetans protesting the Chinese. (It’s always a little strange when I see a protest where one nationality is protesting another and the US is sort of left out of the equation. But that’s neither here nor there.)
The cool part; where else are you gonna have enough Tibetans to have a good protest? These aren’t your college students who sign petitions several times a month. These were mostly Tibetans in exile or just otherwise here.
The cops were leading them down 2nd Avenue on a single lane. The group was perhaps four blocks long. I didn’t try any sort of count, but I’m guessing less than a thousand. It sounded louder though.
As you can see, the cops were out in force, but mostly to make sure they stayed in their designated lane. The cars in the side streets weren’t being let in and you could see them backing up.
The Tibetans did have people on both sides of the street handing out literature. Their protest was centered on the Chinese crackdown to protests in Tibet and they were calling for the release of prisoners there and an international investigation into what is happening.
Of probably more import to the Chinese is their call for boycotting the Olympics.
-H
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