entry the twelfth

hokai. so.
the whole posting something every day just isn't going to happen. i ran out of things to say about me on like day six. everything else i could probably pull off, but who cares to see that. so whatever flows out of my genius little fingertips into this glorious little box that holds words..that's what happens then.
last tuesday whitney and i decided to go to san francisco to protest china. so we got in the car at around 5, got to berkeley at midnight, took a tour of the campus with michele (i don't know why i'm not going to school there- more on that later) and then went to sleep in michele's dorm. we got up the next morning, went to the protest. had our signs. we were expecting for the torch to come by our group around 130 or so, but it never came. our side of the street was pro-darfur, and the other side was pro-tibet. on our block i'd say there were 500 people or so altogether- but i can be a terrible judge of numbers. what i'm sure of is that the torch never came by, which was really discouraging to every one of us. so we walked down to the plaza where the closing ceremonies were meant to be held to wait for the torch to get there. it never came, but there were so many people.
you should have seen all of them. there were just so many. hundreds. the majority were pro-tibet, which was so encouraging to see. there weren't as many pro-darfurians as i thought there might be, but actually i'm not sure that ended up mattering, because i know that the number of people there did make an impact. they wouldn't have changed the route of the torch if it didn't. as long as people are talking about these issues, that's wat matters. when we found out the torch was never going to come by, even for the ceremonies, whit and i headed back to the car to get on the road. i drove home, like the last time we went to san francisco. i like the drive, and i had a lot to think about. we listened to the once soundtrack almost the whole way back, and now i love love love it. probably when i listen to it a year or more from now all that i'll think about will be driving back from san francisco. i'm getting pretty good at it.
when we got back to school, the first thing chenese said to us was that protesting china right now is like protesting the olympics (period) which is disrespectful to the athletes and so no one should protest. that was super discouraging, maybe as much as not being able to see the torch come by us. i do have respect for the athletes. but i don't think there's ever a time where games that represent peace and equality can rightfully be represented by a country whose foreign and domestic policies dictate otherwise. and sports are never more important than human rights violations. i don't understand though how some aren't making a distinction between protesting the idea of the olympics and protesting these olympics and the issues that are happening right now. hm.
i know this happened like a week ago but maybe when i'm fifty i'll want to tell my children about it.
remind me to talk about berkeley later.