J. Beaman - The Magazine

Protest rallies are annoying. Inefficient, too. Nicole (a wavy, spacey new agey girl from work) said, “It just seems like a waste of resources.” Wow. Resource allocation. Not the first thing I expected to hear from Nicole (but, I’m wrong(ish) about people all the time, maybe she’s a closet realist). She’s fucking got it, though. Waste of resources. Waste of time. Waste of TV, blog, radio coverage. Here’s my solution (which I won’t do anything about - I leave that to the idealists - I don’t really care if Tibet is free or not):

Start an advocacy group. Twenty or so people to call, lobby and influence athletes, trainers, countries with this pitch: Go to Beijing and fucking win. Win big. And stand up there in a Free Tibet shirt (hopefully something more interesting and original) à la Tommie Smith and John Carlos in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. That would be some powerful shit. Tommie Smith and John Carlos accepted their awards shoeless with black socks, they only had one pair of gloves so they shared the pair they had. Smith wore a black scarf around his neck and Carlos wore beads. And here they are, striking this iconic pose during the Star Spangled Banner:

And sure, they got booed. Smith later said “If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight.”

Who knows how effective it was. Who cares? It was two powerful men. Winners. Standing up for something. Way cooler than a bunch of upper-middle class kids protesting a torch.

And, fine, I want Tibet to be free.