Most recently, my friend Hanbin Cho went to Munich and witnessed a gay pride parade. Masses of people showed up at the city square in Marienplatz to proudly hold up their signs, display their outfits, and have their voices be known.
Today I heard about demonstration in NY where women went topless to try and change the laws about public nudity. Well, at least for going topless. Because men are seen without their shirts all the time but women aren't afforded the same "luxury". My friend Sheila Borkar described it as "changing a double standard and desexualizing women's body parts"
As much as I agree with that, and support women who need to breastfeed their children in public. I don't there to be a reason for women to parade around topless and make a huge commotion as 20 men take pictures of them and grab at them.
But read the article and watch the video here for yourself. Apparently this law is also a thing in San Francisco according to friend Charles Yeh.
Yet another demonstration I found today....well it shocked me when I first saw it. So I won't say anything until you see the pictures first:
These people are protesting bullfighting in Spain. I believe it's still legal. This form of entertainment and spectacle is rooted in history and culture. I always thought that bull fighting was dangerous only for the man and nothing actually happened but the man waved a red flag, the bull got angry for a bit, and thus ends the show.
But clearly that is not that case as you examine the bodies of these protestors. I am baffled by the coordination for them all wearing the same outfit. The goal is to be semi naked to simulate an animal and the fake blood...it terrified me upon first sight. With them laying on the ground, I actually thought some sort of massacre happened. It just sends such a powerful message. It looks too similar to the bodies of hunted animals, lying there and dying upon the ground.
This is an article by the NY times on this demonstration
And last but not least, this demonstration really touched me personally because it hit so close to home. Last semester I took a class all about Taiwan, the country of my birth.
I've tried to understand exactly what the 228 incident was, and while I still have a bit of a hard time figuring out the details, essentially what happened was the Kuomingtang (KMT) party in Taiwan violently crushed an anti-government uprising. It resulted in the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians.
So the 228 hand-in-hand rally was a gathering of Taiwanese citizens on the 57th anniversary of the incident. The people of the Taiwan formed a sort of "human chain" 500km long, from Keelung in the most northern part of Taiwan to Eluanbi on the southern tip of the Taiwan Island. The demonstration was a call for peace and for commemoration of the citizens who died that day.
There aren't very many good pictures online for this, but instead here are two very short videos taped on the day of the rally. They show a very good idea of the personality of the island and the pride Taiwanese people have for their country.
Video 1 actual rally
Video 2 preparation beforehand
There must be others out there, but for now these are the four that I have found that really interest me.
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