It was June 4, 1989. I was 30 years old. After what I was hearing last night in the world news, I turned on the television in the morning at my apartment in the Washington DC suburbs to see if there had been any changes. Americans were proud of the Tiananmen Square Protests for democracy in China, which had seemed so hopeful for our fellow lovers of freedom in China.

We had felt so helpless and furious at the U.S. government for doing nothing to help the protesters for democracy. The day before on June 3, my co-worker turned to me and said, “there’s nothing we can do.” I looked out the window.  I pushed my keyboard aside and slammed my fist on the desk. “That’s not true,” I replied. “I am not going to just sit here if the protesters are attacked. We have to do something.”

On June 4, the worst was known to the world. What would become known as the “Tiananmen Square Massacre” was revealed to the stunned silence of people around the world.  It was clear that something major had been happening the night before on June 3; I took off work to be home that day and follow the situation.  I could not pretend to be focused on work, with this world-changing situation occurring before our eyes.

By June 4, the worst of the news started to filter out to the American people in Washington DC and the suburb where I lived.

The Communist Chinese Party (CCP) Army had turned on their people and a massacre was occurring. I was typing at a keyboard, writing and listening to the reports, and the shocking news of the massacre, slowed the incessant tapping of my fingers typing to a total silence. In homes and offices around Washington DC, people stopped talking as we heard more about the incoming reports. 

Those who sought to fight for freedom in China with their own statue of the “Goddess of Liberty” (in the fashion of our Statue of Liberty) were being mercilessly killed by the CCP Army in the streets of Tiananmen Square.  

Then I looked up the address of the PRC Embassy at 2300 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. in the telephone book, and I got up out of my chair, and headed for Washington DC and the PRC Embassy.  I got a bus and subway to Metro Center, and I took the subway to Dupont Circle.

The Washington DC traffic was always heavy, and it was that afternoon. The only real choice was to walk. It was about a mile and a half. I took off my jacket, and started walking from Dupont Circle to the PRC Embassy. People were starting to talk about the massacre around Dupont Circle, and I asked some if they were headed to the PRC Embassy, and for those who didn’t know what was going on, I filled them in, and then kept walking. People starting together in groups at Dupont Circle, and some individuals like myself started marching to the Embassy up past the Washington Hilton Hotel (where there was an attempt to assassinate President Reagan in 1981).

As I got further up the street on Connecticut Avenue past the Hilton, I really started to notice the public crowd building. You could see spontaneous crowds headed up the sidewalks marching towards the PRC Embassy. You saw a number of Chinese Americans, but people of every race, background, age, some in groups and some alone. Some carried radios as we tried to stay abreast of what was happening.  One man had a large “boom box” style radio, who we gathered around when we reached the Embassy.

We had no Internet, no email, no instant messaging, no Facebook, no Twitter, no portable cell phones.

But Americans across your nation’s capital had one thing: a CONSCIENCE.

We were not simply going to “do nothing.”

Americans and immigrants of every identity group – all with one shared mission on June 4 – we were going to the Chinese Embassy. When I arrived at the Embassy, there were already about 50 protesters in place. Some where chanting protests. Others had signs (I didn’t think to do that). Others were listening to a radio on the street corner and updating us on what was happening. I joined my fellow human beings protesting at the Embassy. The people I met were not “activists,” but people who had been following the news and spontaneously felt something must be done.   I would imagine the crowd of protesters swelled to over 200. It could have been a larger number. No one was thinking we should “count;” we were outraged over the massacre.  I never saw a “news report” on the U.S. protests at the Embassy.

We raised our voices to the enemies of freedom in the CCP government represented there at the embassy. One of the protesters in a bright colored shirt and mustache helped to organize the protesters’ chants:

“FREE CHINA NOW.”

“STOP THE KILLING”

“FREE TIANANMEN SQUARE”

We protested into the night. We continued to have new reports about the killings and the crackdown on the freedom protesters in Tiananmen Square in what would later become known as the “Tiananmen Square Massacre.” Everywhere, except in Communist regime China, where even today, all these years later, they still refuse to acknowledge that it even happened.

As the night grew later, we could see those remaining in the embassy had left, and we had only the ever-watching eye of security left. People began to gather up there things to go home. But we knew that for those killed by the CCP tanks and soldiers, they would be going home, and that their families would be mourning the loss of their loved ones. The bright flames of the sacrifices would never never NEVER be forgotten by those who love freedom and human rights.

It would a long walk home…. for all of humanity.  This massacre never should have happened, and our world needed to find a way to end such terrible violence.

I turned up to the windows of the embassy on Wisconsin Avenue.

The ever watchful eye goes both ways, both to tyrants and to those who respect our shared universal human rights.

I shouted to the Embassy watchers, “We’ll be back!”

And we will continue to go back to challenge the enemies of freedom – everywhere and anywhere in the world.

Our CONSCIENCE makes us Responsible for Equality and Liberty.

———————

Postscript:

People often tell me the ever-popular half-quote of Reinhold’s Serenity Prayer “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” but conveniently forget the rest of the quote about having “the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”  The Courage to Change is also what we seek as well.

Enemies of freedom and our shared universal human rights love the silence of those who do nothing. That is all they need.

But the courage we need, and the serenity we need, is our willingness to continue to try. I have seen it. I have seen the real courage of people around the world who will not let fear, oppression, and difficulty silence their conscience and trample their human rights.

They don’t need to be told what to do.
They are simply RESPONSIBLE.