The May 4th Movement was a Chinese anti-imperialist and nationalist movement that began on this day in 1919 when more than 4,000 unversity students took to the streets in protest of the Treaty of Versailles. These protests became a national and cultural movement that served as an inspiration for later left-wing movements.
On the afternoon of May 4th, over 4,000 students of Yenching University, Peking University, and other schools marched from many points to gather in front of Tiananmen. They shouted slogans as "struggle for the sovereignty externally, get rid of the national traitors at home", "do away with the Twenty-One Demands", and "don't sign the Versailles Treaty".
The next day, students in Beijing as a whole went on strike and in the larger cities across China. Students, merchants, and workers joined the protests. The demonstrators appealed to the newspapers and sent representatives to carry the word across the country. In Shanghai, a general strike of merchants and workers took place, negatively impacting the economy.
In the years that followed, many Chinese political thinkers turned to leftist politics in the wake of the political upheaval of the May 4th Movement. In 1939, Mao Zedong claimed that the May Fourth Movement was a stage leading toward the fulfillment of the communist revolution.
Megathreads and spaces to hang out:
- ❤️ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
- 💖 Come talk in the New Monthly queer thread
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reminders:
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Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
- 💙Comprehensive list of resources for those in need of an abortion -- reddit link
- 💙Resources for Palestine
Theory:
This has probably been discussed on the site already, but it’s the first I’ve heard about. Here’s the tweet I saw.
Remember how, during Trump admin, people were all very concerned about minors who had illegally crossed the border, been separated from their families, and then the government didn’t have any system in place to reunite them? The way I remember it is that the story first got media attention in 2018 when it was just a few hundred kids, and by the end of the Trump admin it was 5,000. I remember people were freaked out about it. There was a lot of insinuation by people that these kids were, either as a result of government malice or incompetence (implied to be intentional and malicious incompetence), being handed over to human traffickers. But good old harm reduction Joe was coming to steer the ship back on course.
Anyway, under Biden that number has gone from 5,000 to 85,000.
I feel like I've been hit in the side of the head with a shovel, something in my brain gave with an audible twang when I read that number.