The student-led presentations day has finally came. I was really interested in our peer, Amanda's presentation on the recent Hong Kong Umbrella Movement. It was one of the main presentations in which I could connect to on a personal level because I could be considered a middle man. My family's from Canton, which is in Mainland China but is closest to HK and also speaks Cantonese.
The originality of the presentations that were being held today were somewhat faulty. Some of which were data shown through one lens and biased. That is not to say, though, that all of the stats shown were false, some which I agree to the fullest extent.
Today I woke up a lot earlier than usual: 6AM. I seriously have no idea as to why I might wake up so early considering that I slept at 2AM last night. I'm guessing that I was really excited to go to class in the morning. The morning session was didactic not only for me but also for people who have not been exposed to the Umbrella Movement. Amanda has said in her Powerpoint that the Umbrella movement was an non violence act and the police was using brutality on the protesters. Yet from what I've seen and heard, it was because the scholars who are university and high school students that were destroying public property and ruining store merchandises that resulted in the police using firearms and other things of that such. I elaborated on how I feel like it should been said clearly on the PPT that it was originally a non-violent later turned a violent movement. Amanda responded by saying that it was an infinitesimal number of students who decided to conduct such poor choices but 90% of the other students were practicing non-violence act. I personally disagree on this because I see faulty stats on the 90% because there were way more students who did physical abuse to public property that they weren't given the full respect and attention that they would've gotten if not were their ignorance.
The afternoon session was similar in terms of the regions of discussion and the presentation raised various eyebrows throughout the room but it did point out some controversial issues about the contemporary times of India, China, and Japan. I've never researched this in fuller detail so everything the student presenters said will just store it and when I finally figure out just exactly what is wrong, then I will go get that.
After class, we were required to have "dinner" with our TF groups yet the only thing our TF bought us all 10 people were a bag of reezes and two bags of gummy bears. Like...what?!? Good thing I mushed a hotdog into my stomache before starting this conversation. We left the discussion a tad big earlier than usual because we really wanted to go to center city. How can one person be in Philadelphia and have not even walked down to center city? I certainly do not want to be that person so we all met up with the RC's who was chaperoning this trip and left at 6:04PM. Because we had to meet back at 7:30PM, we had a little more than an hour to shop at ONE store! Well, at least I can say I've visited downtown Philly! Today has just been another fantastic day and I'm sad just thinking about tomorrow, the last day of UPenn Social Justice.
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