The whole world is watching Hong Kong, where a battle is playing out in the streets between authorities and citizens protesting China’s encroachment on their independence. It started in June in response to a proposed amendment of an extradition bill that would make it easier for Hong Kong citizens to be sent to mainland China, and has escalated as authorities refuse to make concessions. Now, police in riot gear are marching into crowds of masked protestors with tear gas and water cannons.

Protesters escaping PolyU by rope from a footbridge to nearby volunteer motorcyclists
by inHongKong

In an effort to retain control of Hong Kong Polytechnic University (and the rest of the city), the protesters began crafting gear of their own: improvised catapults, slingshots and barricades. They’re also using encrypted messaging apps to coordinate daring escapes from police, like descending by rope from a footbridge to be picked up by riders on motorcycles below.

On r/HongKong, Redditors are posting some of these inventions alongside updates from within the semi-autonomous city. Many of them are incredibly simple yet effective, like gluing bricks to the streets or driving nails through sections of garden hose.

Students from the University of Hong Kong building brick walls to defend themselves from the police.
byu/DustineTetris inHongKong

Who will win?
byu/sadandwant2die inHongKong

In some cases, bamboo poles are zip-tied to the bricks to create barriers that could damage the undersides of vehicles that attempt to drive over them. It would appear that the police used armored trucks to break through the barricades, clearing the path for other vehicles, but it seems like it could be an effective way to shut down traffic in other protest scenarios.

A Hong Kong style barricade set up in Central today.
byu/EDoric inHongKong

Using little more than bamboo poles and helmets, some protesters set up homemade catapults:

The students of the Chinese University of Hong Kong successfully created a giant slingshot using only bamboo sticks and helmets. The campus has been under siege by the police for 3 days by now.
byu/DustineTetris inHongKong

Citizens in the streets are also demonstrating novel ways to fight tear gas with thermoses and leaf blowers.

The new way of Hong Kong protesters deal with the tear gas
byu/OWStep inHongKong

Man used a blower to deal with tear gas in Mongkok tonight
byu/Orhac inHongKong

Observers are also reporting the use of drones to deliver supplies to those trapped inside Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Thus far, thousands of people have been arrested, some being transported by train to unknown destinations (which some fear to be mainland China.)

The protesters are also leaving messages to each other and the world using graffiti:

We are not rioters. We are gamblers, gambling our futures for a better Hong Kong.
byu/thpkht524 inHongKong

Don’t know if this has already been posted here but this shows the extremity of things.
byu/ThatisWild inHongKong

Check out more of the Hong Kong protesters’ creations at Interesting Engineering.

Top image via u/VaelinAISo

A bronze bust of the late educator Hikoichi Orita was vandalized so often, Kyoto University administrators put it into storage – still, the students persisted.

Orita-sensei played an instrumental part in the founding of Kyoto University back in 1897. In 1950, a bronze bust of the revered former headmaster was set atop a stone plinth near the university’s Yoshida South campus. Uneventful decades passed… until one night in 1990, students protesting the First Gulf War spray-painted the statue’s face red and captioned it “Angry Person”.

The school’s Faculty of Integrated Human Studies dutifully cleaned the bust after each incident and added a signboard reading: “As headmaster of Third Senior High School, Orita Hikoichi-sensei assisted in the founding of Kyoto University, and is a person who has left behind many achievements in pursuit of academic liberty at Kyoto University. Please do not dishonor this statue.” Problem solved!

Notwithstanding the printed admonishment (see “Streisand Effect”), poor Orita-sensei’s bronze bust was defaced again and again while the vandalism grew gradually more elaborate. A bizarre tug-of-war ensued between authorities trying to maintain the bust and students trying to deface it. Finally in 1997, the school had had enough: the bronze Orita-sensei bust was removed from its plinth and unceremoniously retired to the basement of the Integrated Anthropology Department. Problem solved… again?

It’s still there today, suffering only the occasional minor indignity of a feather-dusting by the cleaning staff. Poor Orita-sensei doesn’t look too pleased by his relocation, as snapped by Flickr member jun sasaki (doublemachen) in February of 2015. Meanwhile, the stone plinth still stood outside at the Yoshida South gate, bust-less. It would not remain so for long.

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Sensei Tion Kyoto Us Much Defaced Orita Bust

Residents of Waterloo Estate towers in Sydney, Australia, were given a uniquely visible voice this year amidst city plans to change the neighborhood. The #WeLiveHere2017 project gave 500 residents in two 60-story towers ‘mood lights’ so they could express their views on the proposed future of their home.

“#WeLiveHere2017 celebrates the community of Waterloo before a large scale redevelopment changes the area forever,” explain the project’s creators, “bringing with it swathes of high-density private dwellings and an uncertain future for the thousands of existing residents.”

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A post shared by #Welivehere2017 (@welivehere2017)

An estimated 3,600 elderly and low-income residents will be moved out of the way when a new metro station is added and associated reconstruction complete. Indirectly, the lighting lends a voice to people living in vulnerable low-rise structures below, which are the most likely to be demolished and replaced.

“We chose the Matavai and Turanga towers to represent the whole estate as they are the tallest and most visible,” explained one local resident of the project. “They were purpose-built for elderly residents, and I don’t think I’ve met anyone living there who is under the age of 65.”

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A post shared by #Welivehere2017 (@welivehere2017)

“By telling the stories of this inner city community, the project empowers residents to participate in a collective statement of presence: a beacon to the place and the people.” It is also “a dynamic platform to generate valuable discussion around the importance of public and affordable housing, and the right of every person to a home.”

There is also a personal element to this approach — each light represents an individual, and creates a spot of bright color to help people remember that, even if it looks a bit dreary on the outside, there is someone living in a tower.

The project wrapped up last month, and it remains to be seen how much it will impact development in the area, but it is certainly an intriguing template for would-be protesters in urban settings well worth looking at (images via WeLiveHere2017, Tom Wholohan and Shuang West).

This past Saturday, Trump supporters and counter-protesters from the left clashed violently in liberal Berkeley, all while one intrepid street painter captured the scene live on canvas. As reporters filmed and photographed the chaos, John Paul Marcelo biked his mobile painting station into place.

At Least 15 Arrested Amid Violence At Alt-Right Rally And Counter Protest In #Berkeley https://t.co/AC1uxsV9HT pic.twitter.com/TpPFilrz3l

— SFist (@SFist) April 15, 2017

https://twitter.com/shane_bauer/status/826980737446391808

The alt-right rally organizers and their opponents arrived ready for a brawl, variously equipped with shields, helmets, wooden poles, pepper spray and other weapons. “By mid-afternoon,” reports Blake Montgomery, “the dueling protesters were screaming insults at each other over a flaming pile of trash and using a dumpster as a battering ram.” In the end, dozens were arrested on both sides.

https://twitter.com/shane_bauer/status/853370341246226432

But in the midst of the mayhem (or at least: slightly off to one side) was perhaps the most unexpected sight of all — Bay Area street artist John Paul Marcelo standing his ground and calmly painting the chaotic scene as it unfolded before him.

My favorite Berkeley riot moment: the street artist who strives to capture the conflict between alt-right and black bloc, pepper bombs & all pic.twitter.com/Lqam1Ccasi

— Paige St. John (@paigestjohn) April 15, 2017

Marcelo is a fixtures of the San Francisco community, a fifteen-year resident who can be found painting ordinary street scenes as well as timely and tragic still lifes, like: a building just after a fire, burnt out and abandoned.

His artistic gear collapses on demand, folding neatly for transportation by bike to events unfolding in around the Bay or calmer, more everyday still-life subjects (below: Morning on Broadway and Telegraph in Oakland as seen in Cafe 817).

John Paul Marcelo studied graphic design and advertising, then started painting the urban decay of Chicago streets and decided to “reject modern technological mediums” and “paint exclusively en plein air, and migrate to the majestic California coastline.” And although he reports being “very content with painting existing idyllic scenes like Big Sur and Marin, past expeditions have brought him to places like post Katrina New Orleans and Cabrini Green housing projects.” His influences “include Claude Monet, James Nachtwey, and Ai Wei Wei.” (Images via AP, SfGate & KQED)

In recent years the Monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia, Bulgaria has become a colorful canvas for protesters, much to the chagrin of Russian politicians.

The Monument to the Soviet Army is quite large as military memorials go. Built in 1954, the monument is centered by a 120-ft-tall stone plinth supporting a statue of a Soviet soldier surrounded by admiring Bulgarian women. The monument also features large bronze sculptural compositions on all four sides at ground level. One of these secondary compositions was “artistically vandalized” on June 17th of 2011 by Destructive Creation, a group of street artists who for a variety of reasons have chosen to remain anonymous.

Destructive Creation descended on the monument at night and were able to paint every figure in the pantheon of attacking soldiers without interruption. The result was breathtaking no matter what one’s political bent, as the onrushing platoon of Soviet troops was transformed into a bizarre version of the Justice League: from left to right there’s The Mask, The Joker, Wolverine, Santa Claus, Superman, Ronald McDonald, Captain America, Robin, and Wonder Woman.

Spray-painted black text below the figures translates to “In Step With The Times”. Activists embellished the monument the next day, during the Fourth Annual Sofia Pride Parade, before city workers power-washed the monument.

Mask Communications

The initial vandalizing of the Monument to the Soviet Army resulted in an explosion of international publicity, mainly due to the skill and content of the artwork. In general the reaction was one of bemused admiration, especially from the global geek community, but Russia’s Foreign Ministry was of a different mind. Not only did Russia vocally condemn the vandalism, they pressed the Bulgarian government to find, arrest and punish the artists. This only served to embolden a host of copycat graffiti artists and make the monument the focus of repeated street art protests.

The next such incident occurred on February 10th, 2012 when the monument’s soldiers were fitted with Anonymous masks of Guy Fawkes in conjunction with anti-ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) protests being held all over Europe. Not certain if the perpetrators were anonymous or Anonymous.

Pussy Riot Act

On August 17th of 2012, three previously arrested members of Russian feminist protest punk rock band Pussy Riot were convicted by a Russian court of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” and were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment each.

The sentencing was widely criticized outside Russia and on the same day of the conviction, activists placed colorful knit balaclavas (Pussy Riot members’ trademark costume) over the heads of figures at the Monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia.

On October 15th of 2015, Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova visited the monument and participated in a reenactment of the original masking event.

Bulgar Not Vulgar

Observed initially in 2010, the first day of February is officially the Day of Remembrance and Respect to Victims of the Communist Regime in Bulgaria. Approximately 20,000 to 30,000 Bulgarians lost their lives due to state-ordered repression between 1946 and 1990.

On February 1st of 2013, areas on several sides of the Monument to the Soviet Army were daubed with red, green and white paint – the colors of the Bulgarian flag.

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Makeup Not War Soviet Army Monuments Many Makeovers