Messages on the Wall. Union Square. NY Stands with Hong Kong! #NYCLennonwallHK

 Last week at the Stay Strong Hong  Kong support rally, someone told me about a Lennon Wall which was planned for Union Square on Sunday.

Named after the Lennon Wall of messages in Prague posted during the Velvet Revolution and later the  Umbrella Movement, Lennon Walls are places where people communicate and get the word out, offer updates and times for demos.

More  than anything, these are places where people  show support and solidarity.
They are places to make sense of it all. 

“One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.” Simone de Beauvoir

 NYC Lennon Wall for Hong Kong II wrote on facebook:
“Hi everyone, my friends and I spontaneously hosted a Lennon Wall event on August 3 at Midtown Manhattan to show support for the recent protests in Hong Kong regarding the extradition bill, and we decided to host another event on August 25 at Union Square Park (across Whole Foods Market), from 11:00 to 20:00, to continue to show support for Hongkongers and also condemning HKPF’s violent acts towards protesters. 

Besides bringing the Lennon Walls that we made from the past events, we will also make a few more new walls with new posters and placards that show the latest situation of Hong Kong (e.g. the uses of violence and threats by HKPF on 8/11, the peaceful rallies hosted at Hong Kong International Airport, etc.)

Pens, markers and post-it notes will be provided so everyone is welcome to drop by and leave a message for the people in Hong Kong!”

“Thank you for coming. Thanks for your support,” noted a few activists when I arrived after noon.

“No Tiananmen 2.0” I write on a post-it note.

"Hopelessness is the end of justice..." keep fighting. Be water.”

says another post.

“NYCStands with Hong Kong!”

“I’m bulletproof.  So fire away.  Fire away.  Fire away,”

Declared a young woman’s sign referring to the song from Flying Dragon.

“People are losing their human rights and freedom in Hong Kong” another.

“1984 is happening in Hong Kong.”

“It  breaks my heart,” reflects one Hong Konger in Union Square today.“I’ve been here for fifty years but I think about Hong Kong every day.”No one here wants to see another crackdown.

People from around the world support this bottom-up movement,  with no formal leaders.
It has drawn millions of people into the streets.
And no one quite knows  where it will begins or ends. 

As some anarchists in the movement told Crimethink:

“We think it’s important for everyone to understand that—thus far—what has happened cannot be properly understood to be “a movement.” It’s far too inchoate for that. What I mean is that, unlike the so-called “Umbrella Movement,” which escaped the control of its founding architects (the intellectuals who announced “Occupy Central With Love And Peace” a year in advance) very early on while adhering for the most part to the pacifistic, citizenist principles that they outlined, there is no real guiding narrative uniting the events that have transpired so far, no foundational credo that authorizes—or sanctifies—certain forms of action while proscribing others in order to cultivate a spectacular, exemplary façade that can be photographed and broadcast to screens around the world.

The short answer to your question, then, is… yes, thus far, nobody is authorized to speak on behalf of the movement. Everybody is scrambling to come to terms with a nascent form of subjectivity that is taking shape before us, now that the formal figureheads of the tendencies you referenced have been crushed and largely marginalized. That includes the “scholarist” fraction of the students, now known as “Demosisto,” and the right-wing “nativists,” both of which were disqualified from participating in the legislative council after being voted in.

… Whatever is going on, we can say that it emerges from within a field from which the visible, recognized protagonists of previous sequences, including political parties, student bodies, and right-wing and populist groups, have all been vanquished or discredited. It is a field populated with shadows, haunted by shades, echoes, and murmurs. As of now, center stage remains empty.”