Justice for Hong Kong

I'm raising money to provide Hong Kong's protesters with protective gear and medical assistance as they continue their campaign for freedom.  I'll match all donations dollar for dollar and send supplies straight to protest groups in Hong Kong.

The supplies are being purchased by a social welfare fund run by the employees of HSBC's Hong Kong branch, which is coordinating with colleagues in both New York and London to find effective ways to get equipment to protesters.  Supplies fall into two categories: medical and riot gear.  The latter includes goggles, masks, and helmets to help shield protesters from tear gas, rubber bullets, and other projectiles that have to date been tools used to suppress peaceful pro-democracy protests. 

With respect to medical supplies, top priorities include quick clot hemostatic sponges used to contain wounds, gauze and antibiotic disinfectants, and saline both for eye washes from tear gas and for re-hydration through IV.  We have an arrangement with Baxter Pharmaceuticals to get each of these items at a discount, and employees of the bank traveling on business will carry the supplies in their luggage as they venture to and from Hong Kong.  

I will collect these funds and then pool them with the HSBC employee funds; the group from HSBC will find the best route to deliver the supplies to Hong Kong, whether through purchases in the US that are shipped or carried to the city or through local purchases to the extent such supplies are available on the ground.  

I have gotten to know these employees through email and phone calls over many years of doing business in Hong Kong, and now that the situation has become tenuous and dangerous, they have requested aid.  I am directly in contact with the young bankers who are funding many of the demonstrations through the provision of food, protective gear, and medical assistance, and their resources are stretched thin. 

I will terminate the campaign in one week and deliver the funds directly to this group.  They will brief me on how the plan to spend the funds before they make purchases, and they will provide receipts for their purchases and photos of the gear being delivered on the street or in group gatherings in Hong Kong. 

The situation in Hong Kong is growing increasingly strained and increasingly dire.  It is my hope that we can offer some external support and a ray of light to those fighting for freedom and opportunity in the city.  Last weekend, I was gripped by one headline that sums up the situation: "Hong Kong protests aren't about hope. We might as well go down fighting." (http://bit.ly/2OrFA1Z). The article sums up the incredibly reasonable and focused demands of the protesters, who believe they'll be exterminated fighting for freedom.

The headline is arresting as HongKongers head into their 10th month of sustained protests, punctuated with Molotov cocktails, live bullets being fired into crowds, tear gas, and thousands of arrests. Mainland Chinese military are now involved trying to suppress the protesters, whose ranks seem to grow larger as Beijing tightens its grip.

What's happening in Hong Kong is a remarkable display of human courage, highlighting the insatiable appetite human beings have to leave better lives to their kids and grandkids.

But it's hard to see how these protests can have any hope of succeeding. Hong Kong is small, and Beijing is a behemoth. Without the sustained and tangible support of outsiders, the protesters are merely giving the system in Beijing a headache when what the system really needs is chemotherapy. It may take time, but Beijing is going to win this fight without a change in the balance of power.

Protester throughout the city are running low on supplies and high on fear, while crowds in Hong Kong are closing in on police at choke points like the universities and main squares, creating a powder keg with no shortage of matches.

When similar uprisings in Czechoslovakia and Poland began to nip at the heels of the Soviets, it was easy to ignore the protests in the paper every day. But over the months, the protests grew louder and larger, bolstered by support from the US, UK, the Vatican, and West Germany, and, eventually, the Berlin Wall fell and the Warsaw Pact broke. The evils of the USSR were consigned to history's dustbin while Poland and Czechoslovakia built free and prosperous states.

This may be our chance to lend a hand to the 21st century's Vaclav Havels and Lech Wałęsas, the vanguard of a freedom-seeking, opportunity-loving Millennial global class. And while it's easy to feel powerless about something so far away, getting involved in this campaign is one way to help.  The campaign is modeled after the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, a group that provides logistical and medical assistance to protesters, especially those who have been attacked by police, but the HSBC employee group is both lower profile and somewhat protected because of the need to keep Hong Kong's financial sector operational.