MY VIEW
Rick Harrington: Despite dark moments our future looks bright
I was standing on a ladder painting my infant daughter’s bedroom ceiling when the phone rang on June 4, 1989. What’s going on in China? I hadn’t heard. My friend told me of the massacre. I was shocked.
I’d taught Chinese at Calasanctius School, and was just then its too-fresh headmaster. Soon everyone was calling me for guidance about what was going on. I was trying to keep the school going. I wasn’t thinking much about the news of the day, and anyhow the classical Chinese poetry I had studied in college wasn’t exactly relevant to the event.
A small group of concerned citizens brought together by Chinese students in Buffalo held a demonstration at the Rose Garden in Delaware Park. A year later, we in the June 4 Memorial Fund were holding some donations generated in horror and in sympathy; to help in any way, as Americans do.
But Mayor Jimmy Griffin stood in the way of our using the Rose Garden. He explained over the phone that he didn’t want people bashing heads in his parks. I explained that this would be a peaceful gathering, and that Americans had the right to gather and to speak out. We initiated a lawsuit and went ahead with planning.
Tom Toles depicted our good cause—“no democracy protests in Delaware Park either??” he mused pictorially; Tiananmen Square in one panel, the Rose Garden in the other. We won our suit and the show went on as planned.
The year Calasanctius School closed for good, I was at the Scotty Norwood love-fest in Niagara Square. The first Gulf War had been kicked off, and we in Buffalo turned our own grief at “wide right” into a huddling closeness. Candles lit, hearts full, I went back there again after 9/11.
We’ve come a long way in these United States over the last 20 years. But I remain worried about China. It seems to have turned the tragedy of Tiananmen into a nationalistic cause — keeping chaos at bay is its excuse for what governments do with power. Even elite students now will hear no evil about what their government does in Tibet, my student-organizing daughter tells me. In China, people know only that whatever happened back then marked their lives getting a whole lot better.
In Buffalo, we never did live very high on our credit scores. How should we gather now?
I was once inside the Communist Party headquarters and watched with some fascination as my host wrote a message on a white board that simultaneously displayed on every board in every location of the “world’s largest university,” where all 300,000 cadre get educated upon “election” to local and regional office. There’s still only one party there.
Zhao Ziyan was the man in charge before the massacre in Tiananmen. He refused to sign off on his party’s resolution, and lived out his days locked within his own house. Cleverly, he smuggled out his secret memoirs now recently published. He calls for parliamentary democracy in China, for its survival.
Remember when the walls came down all over the world, following on the example of the young Chinese? That brave young man, who stopped the tanks, might yet be our model. Taking cues from no one. Moving in lockstep dance against the machine of power. No one knows yet how he’s grown up — or if.
There are moments in each of our lives we will never forget. These are some of mine. I share Pete Seeger’s optimism for our future. I share Buffalo’s sense of not having to be the winner to feel special among friends and family.
Log into MyBuffalo to post a comment
MyBuffalo is the new social network from Buffalo.com. Your MyBuffalo account lets you comment on and rate stories at buffalonews.com. You can also head over to mybuffalo.com to share your blog posts, stories, photos, and videos with the community. Join now or learn more.
Reader comments