Director/producer/independent reporter Kempton Lam has made three full-length documentaries from 2004 – 2015. Kempton’s debut documentary Long Hair Revolution 「長毛革命」 has been collected by the Canadian National Archive since 2009. The three documentaries are collectively known as “Revolution Trilogy” 「革命三部曲」 and are in Cantonese with English subtitles (廣東話、英文字幕). You can watch the three films at this YouTube Playlist (beautifully projected on your big screen HDTV or on your computer). Enjoy!
“Emma’s silence” was Jaclyn Corin‘s, MSD student and one of #MarchForOurLives organizers, answer to the Twitter question “What was the most emotional moment during March?” I felt the same.
I watched the 3-hour event live and I was initially puzzled of the silence from the beginning to the end of the silence like many people. But in hindsight, it was the most powerful and emotional moment for me as it uses time, an abstract idea in itself, to share the horror the MSD students experienced that tragic day. In merely 6 minutes and 20 seconds, the time since Emma came out on stage till she spoke again after the alarm rang and she broke her silence,“The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest.” Emma concluded: “Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.”
If the #MarchForOurLives is to succeed, thousands and thousands of American students, youths, and adults have to keep on fighting for changes. While I’m less hopeful for adults’ abilities and determinations. Fortunately, today’s students and youths will become adults tomorrow and they will change the world!
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead remains the top quote in my collection of Quotes I LOVE!
Again, here is Emma’s full speech transcript which I shared previously.
“In a little over six minutes, seventeen of our friends were taken from us, fifteen were injured, and everyone, absolutely everyone in the Douglas community, was forever altered,” she said. “Six minutes and twenty seconds with an AR-15, and my friend Carmen would never complain to me about piano practice; Aaron Feis would never call Kyra ‘Miss Sunshine’; Alex Schachter would never walk into school with his brother Ryan; Scott Beigel would never joke around with Cameron at camp; Helena Ramsey would never hang out after school with Max; Gina Montalto would never wait for her friend Liam at lunch; Joaquin Oliver would never play basketball with Sam or Dylan; Alaina Petty would never; Cara Loughran would never; Chris Hixon would never; Luke Hoyer would never; Martin Duque Anguiano would never; Peter Wang would never; Alyssa Alhadeff would never; Jaime Guttenberg would never; Meadow Pollack would never.” Then she stood in silence. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She said nothing. The crowd watched, also silent. A chant of “never again” started, and then faded out. Emma still stood. Finally, the beeping of an electric timer rang out. “Since the time that I came out here it has been six minutes and twenty seconds,” she said. “The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest.” She concluded: “Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.”
[credit: speech transcript mostly from New Yorker with some corrections made near the end of the speech.]
The speech video with subtitles.
Watch Emma Gonzalez take the stage for 6 minutes and 20 seconds — the exact amount of time it took for a gunman with an AR-15 to take 17 lives in Parkland pic.twitter.com/s2pCWdoPnB
March 29, 2018 Update: Vice News, “Hoaxers Say Survivors of Mass Shootings Are “Crisis Actors”” //”This isn’t a fucking conspiracy. This is real life, and people are fucking dying.”
Immediately after the tragedy in Parkland, conspiracy theorists claimed that the school shooting was staged, and that survivors were actors.//
I’m so inspired by the students who spoke today at #MarchForOurLives in DC yesterday and so many sibling marches around US and even the world (including Calgary, Canada and UK)!
Video and transcript of Emma González’s short speech.
Watch Emma Gonzalez take the stage for 6 minutes and 20 seconds — the exact amount of time it took for a gunman with an AR-15 to take 17 lives in Parkland pic.twitter.com/s2pCWdoPnB
“In a little over six minutes, seventeen of our friends were taken from us, fifteen were injured, and everyone, absolutely everyone in the Douglas community, was forever altered,” she said. “Six minutes and twenty seconds with an AR-15, and my friend Carmen would never complain to me about piano practice; Aaron Feis would never call Kyra ‘Miss Sunshine’; Alex Schachter would never walk into school with his brother Ryan; Scott Beigel would never joke around with Cameron at camp; Helena Ramsey would never hang out after school with Max; Gina Montalto would never wait for her friend Liam at lunch; Joaquin Oliver would never play basketball with Sam or Dylan; Alaina Petty would never; Cara Loughran would never; Chris Hixon would never; Luke Hoyer would never; Martin Duque Anguiano would never; Peter Wang would never; Alyssa Alhadeff would never; Jaime Guttenberg would never; Meadow Pollack would never.” Then she stood in silence. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She said nothing. The crowd watched, also silent. A chant of “never again” started, and then faded out. Emma still stood. Finally, the beeping of an electric timer rang out. “Since the time that I came out here it has been six minutes and twenty seconds,” she said. “The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest.” She concluded: “Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.”
[credit: speech transcript mostly from New Yorker with some corrections made near the end of the speech.]
“The scene was brought to mind Saturday, on that impressive outdoor Washington stage before the countless faces at the March for Our Lives demonstration, as Emma González, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student who has become one of the most prominent voices in the #NeverAgain movement, went on with her speech — and then, for a few minutes, didn’t.
It was one of the day’s most galvanizing moments, and a reminder of how little we appreciate in this Tower of Babel culture that the most powerful message can be the one we don’t try to put into words. After naming the dead in the Parkland, Fla., massacre, and identifying, like Hamlet, experiences they never would get to see, González simply stopped talking. The rest really was silence.
The absence of language, the extended pause for contemplation, remains a rare thing in public discourse, and even rarer onstage. A moment of silence is the ritualized form of respect we employ on many occasions to mark tragedy, but it’s usually only a moment. González’s silence was an act that felt, in its way, radical. It was as if she dropped the mic — yet a mic was still in front of her. The silence went on for about five minutes, and, as cable news cameras swept the crowd, you could tell some people did not know quite what to do with themselves. Gonzalez fixed her gaze into the distance, as if she were concentrating on something out of our normal range of perception; at times, she trembled and wiped away a tear. In the crowd, some people started to chant, or applaud, perhaps because the rule in this society seems to be that if there is a vacuum of noise, someone has to make some.
The interruptions were respectful, though, and eventually, as González steadfastly held her tongue, the hubbub died down. We were left with the image of a young, grieving woman, drawing our attention not to herself but to something more abstract: to time — the amount it took for a killer to mow down her classmates and teachers.
[…] González touchingly reminded us that a profound dialogue doesn’t always require them.“
20180324 update: For now, I’ve found these two posts by Brad Templeton to be very insightful and cover some of the issues that I want to write about but Brad wrote in much more detail! Have a read, 03/20 “New facts and questions on Uber robocar fatality” & 03/21 “It certainly looks bad for Uber“. I may still add more if I see more facts of the case especially when Uber starts to voluntarily (or be compelled to) provide more of its internal technical data. I hope Uber won’t try to brush this fatality under the carpet. Will see.
From the AP report “Experts: Uber self-driving system should have spotted woman”, this Uber self-driving SUV is using LIDAR laser sensors technology to “see”. (note: LIDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging and it “measures distance to a target by illuminating the target with pulsed laser light” which can see perfectly well even in total darkness as it uses laser.) I made this observation re LIDAR in direct response to this sentence of the news report, “The lights on the SUV didn’t illuminate 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg on Sunday night until a second or two before impact, raising questions about whether the vehicle could have stopped in time.” And the fact the Uber safety driver was NOT paying attention to the road when he killed the 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg!
““The victim did not come out of nowhere. She’s moving on a dark road, but it’s an open road, so Lidar (laser) and radar should have detected and classified her” as a human, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies autonomous vehicles.
Smith said the video may not show the complete picture, but “this is strongly suggestive of multiple failures of Uber and its system, its automated system, and its safety driver.”
Sam Abuelsmaid, an analyst for Navigant Research who also follows autonomous vehicles, said laser and radar systems can see in the dark much better than humans or cameras and that Herzberg was well within the range.
“It absolutely should have been able to pick her up,” he said. “From what I see in the video it sure looks like the car is at fault, not the pedestrian.”
Smith said that from what he observed on the video, the Uber driver appears to be relying too much on the self-driving system by not looking up at the road.
“The safety driver is clearly relying on the fact that the car is driving itself. It’s the old adage that if everyone is responsible no one is responsible,” Smith said. “This is everything gone wrong that these systems, if responsibly implemented, are supposed to prevent.”
The experts were unsure if the test vehicle was equipped with a video monitor that the backup driver may have been viewing.
Uber immediately suspended all road-testing of such autos in the Phoenix area, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. The National Transportation Safety Board, which makes recommendations for preventing crashes, is investigating the crash.”
I will try to come back to this article and add more details and updates in the coming days when I have more time. Will see.
Minister of Transport Hon. Marc Garneau (@MarcGarneau) is expected to testify again in front of the Senate committee next week to address some of the concerns. Dr. Lukacs hope the minister will be “asked some very tough questions about the air passenger rights issues“. Dr. Lukacs sees “no reason why tarmac delay should be more than 90 minutes“; “no reason why passengers should not be getting compensation for delays caused by the airlines’ own maintenance issues“; “no reason why third party complains by public interest advocates advocating for public interest should be barred“.
Dr. Lukacs and his Air Passenger Rights group have been more effectively using social media (Twitter: @AirPassRightsCA, Facebook page: AirPassengerRights, website: AirPassengerRights.ca) in raising Air Passenger Rights issues. In one recent tweet, a video clip of Minister Garneau was shown (see below) where he stated in his senate hearing testimony he has “never ever said that the Bill of Passenger Rights is contained in the legislation” and then followed by Hon. Garneau saying, in a House of Commons CPAC video clip, “and on top of that we’re providing a Passenger Bill of Rights“.
Government forced to admit: there's no passenger bill of rights #travel#SenCA#TRCM
— Air Passenger Rights (@AirPassRightsCA) March 19, 2018
In the above tweet, the one click weblink bill-c49.ca directs people to a AirPassengerRights.ca web page with a quick and easy way to send a letter of complain to senators expressing their concerns re Bill C-49.
“In an interview late Sunday night, [Dr. Stacy] Smith said she was shocked and grateful to hear that McDormand had given a shout out to her work.
“I’m utterly elated,” she told the Guardian by phone. “It’s a complete surprise.”
Smith said she had worked with attorneys to create specific contract language and has already been in touch with numerous actors interested in the idea.
“The real goal is to counter bias in the auditioning and casting process,” she said, explaining that the contract could also stipulate that if the film ultimately failed to meet the requirements, the distributor would have to pay a “penalty” to a fund that supports female directors and other underrepresented groups.
Smith said A-list stars could use inclusion riders to ensure proper representation and inclusion of women, people of color, LGBT people and people with disabilities.
“The goal is that talent can take the inclusion rider and adopt it in ways that make sense for their values and their beliefs,” she said.“
Seems like an interesting proxy for the toxicity of National Rifle Association (NRA)? Can this perhaps be the end of the beginning for the NRA? Time will tell.
“Car rental company Enterprise and First National Bank of Omaha have severed their relationship with the National Rifle Association.
First National Bank of Omaha said Thursdsay it will not renew a contract to issue its NRA-branded Visa credit card.
“Customer feedback has caused us to review our relationship with the NRA,” a bank spokesperson told CNBC. “As a result, First National Bank of Omaha will not renew its contract with the National Rifle Association to issue the NRA Visa Card.”
The website advertising the card disappeared on Wednesday, less than one day after advocacy group ThinkProgress reported the bank’s support of the pro-gun lobby. The bank and car rental company were used by the NRA to promote its membership through discounts and bonus deals.“
I LOVE Norman Rockwell and you can’t be more America than NR! This play on a famous painting really shows how ridiculous the idea of arming teachers is!
“Without context, twin announcements from Delta and United airlines on Saturday morning might look trivial: The end of flight discounts to the NRA’s annual convention, which few outside the gun rights organization likely knew existed before they became boycott targets.
But in abandoning the NRA, the airlines followed car rental giants Avis, Hertz and Enterprise, the Best Western hotel chain, the global insurance company MetLife, and more than a dozen other corporations that have severed affiliations with the gun group in the last two days. […]
First National Bank of Omaha, one of the largest private U.S. banks, may have been the first to respond publicly to the boycott calls. The bank had previously advertised the “Official Credit Card of the NRA,” according to the Omaha World-Herald — a Visa card with 5 percent back on gas and sporting good purchases.“
Video and transcript of Emma González’s short speech.
Watch Emma Gonzalez take the stage for 6 minutes and 20 seconds — the exact amount of time it took for a gunman with an AR-15 to take 17 lives in Parkland pic.twitter.com/s2pCWdoPnB
“In a little over six minutes, seventeen of our friends were taken from us, fifteen were injured, and everyone, absolutely everyone in the Douglas community, was forever altered,” she said. “Six minutes and twenty seconds with an AR-15, and my friend Carmen would never complain to me about piano practice; Aaron Feis would never call Kyra ‘Miss Sunshine’; Alex Schachter would never walk into school with his brother Ryan; Scott Beigel would never joke around with Cameron at camp; Helena Ramsey would never hang out after school with Max; Gina Montalto would never wait for her friend Liam at lunch; Joaquin Oliver would never play basketball with Sam or Dylan; Alaina Petty would never; Cara Loughran would never; Chris Hixon would never; Luke Hoyer would never; Martin Duque Anguiano would never; Peter Wang would never; Alyssa Alhadeff would never; Jaime Guttenberg would never; Meadow Pollack would never.” Then she stood in silence. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She said nothing. The crowd watched, also silent. A chant of “never again” started, and then faded out. Emma still stood. Finally, the beeping of an electric timer rang out. “Since the time that I came out here it has been six minutes and twenty seconds,” she said. “The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape, and walk free for an hour before arrest.” She concluded: “Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.”
[credit: speech transcript mostly from New Yorker with corrections near the end of the speech.]
****
What a powerful speech from Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School! This is the most powerful speech I’ve heard on #GunControl ever. (wiki page on the shooting)
“Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, addressed a gun control rally on Saturday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, days after a gunman entered her school in nearby Parkland and killed 17 people.
Below is a full transcript of her speech: [K: emphasis added] We haven’t already had a moment of silence in the House of Representatives, so I would like to have another one. Thank you. Every single person up here today, all these people should be home grieving. But instead we are up here standing together because if all our government and President can do is send thoughts and prayers, then it’s time for victims to be the change that we need to see. Since the time of the Founding Fathers and since they added the Second Amendment to the Constitution, our guns have developed at a rate that leaves me dizzy. The guns have changed but our laws have not. We certainly do not understand why it should be harder to make plans with friends on weekends than to buy an automatic or semi-automatic weapon. In Florida, to buy a gun you do not need a permit, you do not need a gun license, and once you buy it you do not need to register it. You do not need a permit to carry a concealed rifle or shotgun. You can buy as many guns as you want at one time. I read something very powerful to me today. It was from the point of view of a teacher. And I quote: When adults tell me I have the right to own a gun, all I can hear is my right to own a gun outweighs your student’s right to live. All I hear is mine, mine, mine, mine. Instead of worrying about our AP Gov chapter 16 test, we have to be studying our notes to make sure that our arguments based on politics and political history are watertight. The students at this school have been having debates on guns for what feels like our entire lives. AP Gov had about three debates this year. Some discussions on the subject even occurred during the shooting while students were hiding in the closets. [K: Wow!] The people involved right now, those who were there, those posting, those tweeting, those doing interviews and talking to people, are being listened to for what feels like the very first time on this topic that has come up over 1,000 times in the past four years alone. I found out today there’s a website shootingtracker.com. Nothing in the title suggests that it is exclusively tracking the USA’s shootings and yet does it need to address that? Because Australia had one mass shooting in 1999 in Port Arthur (and after the) massacre introduced gun safety, and it hasn’t had one since. Japan has never had a mass shooting. Canada has had three and the UK had one and they both introduced gun control and yet here we are, with websites dedicated to reporting these tragedies so that they can be formulated into statistics for your convenience. I watched an interview this morning and noticed that one of the questions was, do you think your children will have to go through other school shooter drills? And our response is that our neighbors will not have to go through other school shooter drills. When we’ve had our say with the government — and maybe the adults have gotten used to saying ‘it is what it is,’ but if us students have learned anything, it’s that if you don’t study, you will fail. And in this case if you actively do nothing, people continually end up dead, so it’s time to start doing something. [K: So eloquent] We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we’re going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because, just as David said, we are going to be the last mass shooting. [K: Godspeed in this challenging journey!] Just like Tinker v. Des Moines [K: US Supreme Court 1969 decision], we are going to change the law. That’s going to be Marjory Stoneman Douglas in that textbook and it’s going to be due to the tireless effort of the school board, the faculty members, the family members and most of all the students. [K: Godspeed on this again!] The students who are dead, the students still in the hospital, the student now suffering PTSD, the students who had panic attacks during the vigil because the helicopters would not leave us alone, hovering over the school for 24 hours a day. [K: This is just terrible!] There is one tweet I would like to call attention to. So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities again and again. We did, time and time again. Since he was in middle school, it was no surprise to anyone who knew him to hear that he was the shooter. [K: What a painful moment to listen to this part.] Those talking about Read the rest of this entry »
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