Posted: Outside the Computer section of the Library
This is an original photograph taken on June 5, 1989, the day after the Tiananmen Massacre that occurred in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in 1989. It is titled “Tank Man”. Jeff Widener of the Associated Press took this photograph, which is similar to four other versions. I originally searched “Tiananmen Massacre” in Google, and the cropped image came up. I looked for another image that was not as pixelated, and discovered that the original image is actually much larger, showing the brave man standing in front of a row of ten plus tanks, rather than just four in most images.
It was taken during the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989, showing the students’ willingness to stand up against the Chinese Army for what they believed in. It is a clear image; we can see an unarmed man standing in front of the tanks that are forcing him to move. I chose this image because in my Freshman year of high school, my history teacher had this posted on his wall and I really had no idea what it was as a new history student. I researched more about the image, and discovered the poster was a photograph taken during the student led protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It is now four years later, and in our history class we have been discussing many student led protests that took place in Berkeley around the 70’s and 80’s as well. The massacre began on June 3rd and lasted until June 4th, 1989 in the heart of Beijing, China, where many students and other demonstrators had been on strike for seven weeks.
The photograph shows the People’s Liberation Army of China clearing out the unarmed protesters from the Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process. This relates to Berkeley because unarmed protesters were killed and arrested for standing up against the government. This image is widely considered an iconic image of the 20th century that still marks an important day in history today.
This week in lecture Professor Putman discussed the Watergate scandal and how it forced Nixon to eventually resign, instead of impeachment during the 70’s. Directly in Professor Putman’s Powerpoint slide he says the significance of Watergate was the “widening gap of mistrust in the government”. I feel that there is also a gap today that is widening between the police force and citizens, especially because of what has been shown on the news the past few weeks. The “suspicious” death of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore man who died of a spinal injury in police custody has recently caught everyone’s attention, and suddenly the masses are starting to retaliate against the police forces, definitely widening the gap between the police (and government) force and the citizens of the cities, and ultimately the United States. Also, because of social media exaggerating every aspect of what is told in the news, many people are misinformed, like myself, and have to research what is actually occurring without being informed from a one-sided perspective.
Two years ago today, the Boston Marathon bombing happened and I found this shocking because it seems not so long ago. In section we talked about the Vietnam war and all the tension it caused in America because it was the first televised war in which Americans saw dead soldiers in body bags firsthand. Just two years ago, the Boston Marathon bombing was all over the news when it happened, and we saw the chaos that was filmed. Thinking about this stuns me, if the Vietnam war was never the first televised war, what would be?
The atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 by the United States which ultimately ended World War II; also killing almost 129,000 people by doing so.
I found this picture and thought it was relevant to what’s been talked about in lecture this week. Ever since the atom bomb was dropped, it has been in ads, on television, in movies, in papers, books, pretty much all the news; and usually displayed as a joke. This picture shows how these two children instead of being shocked by the immensity of the bomb, are smiling in front of it.
I looked on the New York times website and found an article from Feb, 13 2015, “States Consider Increasing Taxes for the Poor and Cutting Them for the Affluent”. I read the article and was shocked that the rich, who have more wealth than more than America practically combined, feel that they are being taxed too heavily and want even more money from those who have none. “If the top 1 percent were taxed at such rates, the revenue would be $68 billion…and that would be almost 10 times the amount needed to restore five years’ worth of cuts to higher education…” I tweeted Professor Blum information from the article that was astonishing to me.
“If it were not for this dead lady, women would not be writing books about other women, or have a say in society.” I hacked a bibliography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton that was co-written by both a man and woman. About 150 years later a book was published glorifying a feminist fighting for what she thought was necessary even when no one was at her side. Without Stanton and her fight for women’s rights in the 1860’s, the 19th Amendment would never have been ratified. If the 19th Amendment was never ratified, who knows what our nation would be based upon today. Elizabeth Cady Stanton jump-started the feminist movement in the 1800’s, and us females have her to thank for taking charge against authority back when that was unheard of.