As many as 180,000 people would gather to light candles in #Victoria#Park to remember June 4th 1989,
when China’s army brought a bloody end to weeks of peaceful pro-democracy protests in Beijing.
(China has never put a figure on the number who died in what it terms a counter-revolutionary incident.)
Hong Kong’s vigils became a symbol of #defiance of mainland authority
and an ardent evocation of the city’s #independence.
“It was magnificent,” says one resident. “We wanted to make [the massacre] known, not just in Hong Kong, but throughout the world.”
🔥 Organising such a vigil would be unthinkable now.
The commemoration was #banned in 2020, ostensibly because of covid-19.
Some 20,000 people gathered anyway.
The following month the central government in Beijing imposed a draconian national-security law on the territory,
a response to large pro-democracy protests in 2019.
The authorities have since snuffed out memories of Tiananmen.
Memorials have been removed.
The commemoration’s organisers have been jailed;
-- in March they lost a bid to overturn their conviction.
Wearing black or lighting candles near Victoria Park on June 4th may now be considered criminal activity.
This year, like the last, the park is filled with food trucks instead of candles.
Pro-Beijing groups have organised a carnival in the vigil’s stead.
Firestorm Books is giving away 22,500 books rescued from the public schools in Florida’s Duval County (Jacksonville and surrounding areas). Find out more, order some books, and make “Meatball Ron” cry!
#CanadaPost is refusing to collect #firearms that were #banned by the federal government in 2020, complicating Ottawa's plans for a #BuybackProgram to remove 144,000 firearms from private hands, federal sources say.
The Crown corporation informed the government of its position in a recent letter. It said its decision was based on concerns about its employees' security, according to federal sources who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
I was today years old when I found out that #scifi#books are #banned in prison! "Is the banning of fantastical #literature in prisons just carceral paranoia—or it is indicative of a larger cultural attitude that simultaneously denigrates and fears imagination? After all, prisons are part of U.S. culture which, despite a thriving culture industry that trafficks in #magic and #fantasy nonetheless degrades it as lesser than realism."
A variation on the #webcomic page I've drawn before, focused especially on #twitch for recently finally allowing "nonsexual nude art" only to reverse the decision 24 hours later "because their AI #censorship bots can't tell the difference between photography and realistic paintings". (and somehow the exact same pose and composition stops being porn the second it's slightly less than photorealistic, even if it's just painted by a really, really good artist). And as we all know, Twitch rules being designed by #patriarchy - worshipping tech bros like all mainstream #socialMedia are, "nudity" includes "female looking nipples" but not "male looking nipples" 🙃
Still waiting for the day that enough people call out this insanely blatant #sexism and #misogyny enough to force these platforms to think they'll make more money off #toplessEquality than their current #doubleStandards (see how they've been shilling under the guise of supporting #lgbt / #lgbtq / #queer equality for the last decade, especially during Pride month... Except in red states, of course). It's so blatantly sexist, yet so few people even notice it? How do I wake more people up??
I love this.
Karen Smith was sworn in as school board pres in PA Central Bucks School District; not on the Bible but on a stack of banned books.
Books include Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust survival memoir “Night, ”Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”; Donna Gephart’s “Lily and Dunkin,” with a transgender main character; George M. Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” growing up Black and LGBTQ+; Mike Curato’s graphic novel “Flamer”; and Susan Kuklin’s “Beyond Magenta.”
Well, my #zine on how to start a radical, fighting #union has officially been #Banned on #Facebook ! Several posts from several people have been removed. From up to a year and a half ago! So why not check it out? If Zuckerberg doesn't want you to read it, there must be something good in there, right?
Just a lil reminder that my feminism-and-other-progressive-activism video series Topless Topics is "constantly banned from every platform you've heard of and some you haven't,"
so if you'd like to help me try to convince new people (and someday far in the future, the platforms themselves) that enforcing different levels of censorship based on "what gender you look like" is absurd and blatantly sexist,
please consider widely sharing, reblogging, and posting your own reply content (or just shouting out my channel) to my own posts, to help me get out of the shadowban-void I'm constantly fighting against (when my content isn't banned outright, as happens almost daily)
I have to change social media accounts fairly often as they get banned (always and only for the heinous unforgiveable sin of "female nipples") but here they are as of me writing this post:
(see the most up-to-date contact list at toplesstopics.org/contact )
Best Ways to Contact Cleo in Order of Preference:
In the future I'm hoping to set up my own mastodon instance focused on progressive activists and creators, and their supporters, called the "Outcast Creator Collective." You can read up more about that here: https://www.toplesstopics.org/outcast/