Tibet
Today was an interesting day. I spent the morning writing e-mails and cleaning up. In the early afternoon I met my friend Lucy who designed new business cards for me. It was fun hanging out with her and I am very happy about the new the cards. Afterwards I spent some time at Starbucks reading and then made my way down to the gym to take a yoga class. When I was done it was already almost 8 PM and I still had no image for the blog. That changed as soon as I got to Union Square.
There were hundreds of people most of them Tibetans protesting for a free Tibet and the boycott of the Summer Olympics in Beijing while they were surrounded by thousands of candles.
There have been lots of protests recently against the Olympics and specifically against the torch relay. The protestors are against the Summer Olympics in China because of the occupation of Tibet and human rights violations by China. The torch relay has been disrupted in Paris, London and San Francisco this week. The Dalai Lama openly opposes any violent actions against the games.
The protest today was absolutely peaceful. There were Tibetan monks chanting and waving flags. They came up with form protest that had a deep impact on me. People would get their heads shaved.
There is something very powerful about cutting off hair. As an act of protest it shows that whatever we do it for we are very serious it is very important for us that things change. It was hard enough to see 10-15 men’s heads getting shaved within 15 minuets even though they all had short hair to begin with but when this girl with long beautiful black hair sat down the scene started to become very dramatic. Within three minuets she was as bold as everybody else.
Cutting their hair off shows us a couple of things. People must be very serious about their cause. They must know how much people suffer to go ahead and say, “My looks a much less important then to change this”.
Maybe it is time for all of us to get more aware of what is happening in Tibet.
"Tibet" Manhattan/New York City/Union Square 04-11-08 at 08:39 PM
Please check out my website at carstenfleck.com