The Black Blorchestra performs a gorgeous and stirring rendition of "Glory to Hong Kong" for an audience of protesters in HK, all dressed in the uprising's defacto uniform of masks and helmets. (Thanks, Jeff Wasserstrom!) Read the rest

Kick-ass political posters were a big deal generations before the moral panic over whether the #resistance was too concerned with instagrammable anti-trump signs; democratized access to layout, design and publishing tools have made the new authoritarian era into a golden age of brilliant protest art, as is evidenced by the Internet Archive's collection of protest posters from the Hong Kong uprising. Read the rest

China's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office hosted a press conference on the ongoing Hong Kong pro-democracy uprising, with spokesman Yang Guang directing every branch and agency of Hong Kong's government (including airports, universities, and the public transit system) to attack the protests, promising "Especially to those key violent criminals and their backstage masterminds, organisers and agitators, [we] must show no mercy and pursue till the end." Read the rest

Hong Kong's democratic uprising has been a long masterclass in high-tech protest tactics (and the hits keep coming). Read the rest

Last weekend, Jeanette Ng won the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer at the 2019 Hugo Awards at the Dublin Worldcon; Ng's acceptance speech calls Campbell, one of the field's most influential editors, a "fascist" and expresses solidarity with the Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters. Read the rest

Crystal Liu is the actor who plays Mulan in Disney's live-action reboot; on Weibo, she has been publishing messages in support of the Hong Kong police, who have been brutally attacking pro-Democracy protesters and tacitly collaborating with organized crime gangs. Read the rest

Flights in and out of Hong Kong's airport have halted as protesters filled the airport; many of the protesters at the airport are new to the protests, who have stepped off the sidelines after being exposed to video of police brutalizing other protesters, which inspired them to choose a side and take action. As I type this, local social media is filled with reports of increased riot police presence on the scene and protesters with young children are evacuating. (Image: Erin Hale) Read the rest

As protests in Hong Kong enter their seventh week, protest organizers are worried that the police might be infiltrating Telegram groups; instead, they've taken to organizing protests by sending messages over Tinder and Pokemon Go, and by using Apple's ad-hoc, serverless Airdrop protocol. Read the rest

Both Hong Kong protesters and cops have taken up laser pointers in support of their goals; protesters have used them to blind CCTVs and pinpoint vigilante thugs who assaulted them; cops use them to identify targets for snatch-squads. Read the rest

As the Hong Kong uprising hits its sixth week, the island is running out of protective gear to guard the surging protesters against police violence; in response, Hong Kongers in Taiwan and Taiwanese sympathizers have been bulk-shipping helmets, gas masks and other materiel (as well as cash) to the protesters (in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, queues formed as people waited to make donations). Read the rest

Today, Hong Kongers are staging a general strike, the latest peak in a series of escalating protests over democratic reforms in the face of increased pressure from Beijing and its autocrat-for-life, Xi Jinping. Read the rest

From a long thread documenting which workers are prepared to walk out on Monday for the general strike in support of the pro-independence movement: the news that Hong Kong Disneyland workers organized by the Hong Kong Disneyland Trade Union will be among the strikers. Read the rest

Freelance journalist Alessandra Bocchi posted this video of protesters in Hong Kong using some kind of laser to target security forces' cameras: it's part of the #612strike movement's stunning repertoire of improvised anti-police countermeasures, in a near-civil-war where faces have become a battleground. Read the rest

The hundreds of men dressed in white who beat up Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters last week were thought to be affiliated with the notorious triad organized-crime gangs, but according to the AP, the triads' main role in the violence was to round up people in "rural areas" like Yuen Long and paying them to participate in the beatings. Read the rest

The #612strike protests that have rocked Hong Kong for more than a month continue to gather steam, as Hong Kongers march to demand that China make good on its promise to respect the island's right to self-governance. Read the rest

For more than a month, Hong Kong has been rocked by an escalating series of public demonstrations that have persisted in the face of violent police suppression tactics; the demonstrations were kicked off when Hong Kong's puppet regime -- elected after China banned pro-independence candidates from standing in local government races -- proposed a new rule that would make it simple for Beijing to demand the extradition of political dissidents to mainland China, where torture and arbitrary detention of political prisoners is the norm. Read the rest

When the Chinese politburo gave itself the right to veto nominees for Hong Kong elections in 2016, it ensured that any future legislature on the supposedly independent island would be a puppet regime, its electors literally beholden to Beijing for their office; and by 2019, the puppet regime of Carrie Lam began to deconstruct Hong Kong's independence by introducing the "extradition bill," which would allow Beijing to demand that political dissidents be rendered to the Chinese mainland for show-trials and arbitrary detention. Read the rest