Always Rising Up

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese, were a series of popular demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China beginning on 15 April 1989. The protests ended with military suppression on 4 June.



"In the late 1970s, the Chinese leadership of Deng Xiaoping abandoned Maoist-style planned collectivist economics, and embraced market-based reforms. Due to the rapid pace of change, by the late 1980s, grievances over inflation, limited career prospects for students, and corruption of the party elite were growing rapidly. Communist governments were also losing legitimacy around the world, particularly in Eastern Europe.

In April 1989, triggered by the death of deposed Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang, a liberal reformer, mass gatherings and protests took place in and around Tiananmen Square. At its height, some half a million protesters assembled there. The largely student-run demonstrations called for continued economic reform, freedom of the press, accountability from officials, and political liberalization. Peaceful protests also occurred in other cities, such as Shanghai and Wuhan, while looting and rioting broke out in Xi'an and Changsha."

"The Arab Spring (Arabic: الثورات العربية‎ al-Thawrāt al-ʻArabiyyah; literally the Arabic Rebellions or the Arab Revolutions) is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began on 18 December 2010. To date, rulers have been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen; civil uprisings have erupted in Bahrain and Syria; major protests have broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, and Morocco; and minor protests have occurred in Lebanon, Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Western Sahara, as well as clashes at the borders of Israel in May 2011.

In neighboring Iran, a non-Arab country, protests by the Arab minority in Khuzestan erupted in 2011 as well. Weapons from the Libyan civil war stoked a simmering rebellion in Mali, and the consequent Malian coup d'état has been described as "fallout" from the Arab Spring in North Africa. The sectarian clashes in Lebanon were described as a direct result of the Syrian uprising and hence the regional Arab Spring."

"Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

This #ows movement empowers real people to create real change from the bottom up. We want to see a general assembly in every backyard, on every street corner because we don't need Wall Street and we don't need politicians to build a better society."

Sources: People in the World