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Chicago 7 and Hong Kong’s dark age|Pat To Yan

蘋果日報 2020/12/06 10:51


This week has been hard for Hong Kongers. Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Ivan Lam are sentenced to prison for over a year. Jimmy Lai is detained before trial. And he is expected to go to court after half a year. In other words, he’s sentenced too. Ted Hui announced he is in exile. Uncountable protesters are jailed or bearing court cases. The end of darkness is endless darkness.
More than one person have told me that they could not follow the news closely anymore. It’s too painful and it seems that there is nothing we can do regarding this sh*t. It is well understood. I advised them to have a break from the news and social media for a while in case they couldn’t stand it anymore. I also have no idea to initiate big change, but at least I could keep regarding the pain of others and mine. I think that already helps to support them despite being a small action.
Arts and Literature always give me consolation during hard times. There’s a new movie released on Netflix which might arouse our resonance. The Trial of Chicago 7 was set in 1968 in the USA. It was the prime time of the anti-Vietnamese War. A group of demonstrators crossed the state lines in order to protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Finally, a ‘riot’ was caused and the US Police arrested and sued eight of them, including Tom Hayden and Bobby Seale, the national chairman of the Black Panther Party.
Ridiculously, the Judge lacked the ability and obviously showed prejudice. He even couldn’t read the names of defendants correctly. And he dismissed the jurors who were suspected of sympathizing defendants. He used excessive violence on Bobby Seale in the court. Bobby Seale’s assistant was killed during a police raid while the trial was in process. Actually, Bobby was irrelevant to the ‘riot’ and later the Judge declared it as a mistrial. The film ended with the moving speech of Tom Hayden who was supposed to say something to alleviate the sentence. Instead, Tom read all the names of soldiers who died in the Vietnamese War.
People who are inclined to dictatorship may reinforce their accusation of democracy after watching this film: you see, in a democratic country like the US, there are still injustice trials and Police brutality. People might have unrealistic imagination of democracy: it’s an ideal nation without injustice. Everyone leads a perfect life. I have studied Sociology at the Chinese University (nickname as Rioters’ University). In the lesson on Democracy, Professor Chan Kin Man always reminded us that democracy is not a system of choosing the best; instead, it’s a system of eliminating the worst. In a democracy, there are mechanisms countering balance against those in power. In the trial of Chicago 7, the Judge had sentenced all the defendants to lengthy sentences, but all were reversed and all of the convictions for inciting riots were overturned.
The movie had a lot of scenes which we found familiar. Tom Hayden was a student leader at that time and insisted on non-violence protest. Today, he might be described as Leftard. As compared, Abbie Hoffman (as well as Jerry Rubin) always wanted to take more radical actions and denied social construct. In their later lives, Tom Hayden was an influential scholar, activist and politician. He was once elected as a Senator. Abbie was disappointed by the young generation of the 1980s who were not interested in protests. Abbie finally took his life at the age of 52. I am not going to say which way is better. There’s no such thing as a better way. It seems to me if one denies the social construct more thoroughly, it might lead him/her a more difficult way ahead.
(Pat To Yan, Active in Hong Kong and German Theatre. Playwright, Director, Lecturer. Elected Council Member and the Chairman of the committee of Literary Art of Hong Kong Arts Development Council.)
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