High Profile Tibet “Flash Mob” in NYC’s Grand Central

SFT[Saturday, August 16, 2008]

New York, August 15 - Around 250 Tibetans and supporters gathered in NYC’s famous Grand Central Terminal today for a high profile “flash mob”.

At around 6:00pm groups of students, monks, children, businessmen, activists recently arrived from protesting in Beijing, and ex-political prisoners froze in place mimicking the pose of the iconic Olympic athletes John Carlos and Tommy Smith who shocked the world with their stance of solidarity during the 1968 Olympic Games.

Shortly after the group entered Grand Central Terminal members of the Tibetan community of NY and NJ dropped a banner reading the “One World One Dream Free Tibet” and a giant Tibetan off of the two adjacent staircases looking over Terminal.

The group stood motionless in the symbolic pose for nearly 15 minutes preceding a large applause by New Yorkers who witnessed the event.

“As the Olympic Games are underway in Beijing people of conscious and activists around the world are using effective and creative means to shine the spotlight on China’s use of the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a political tool to legitimize their brutal occupation of Tibet” said Nick Gulotta from Students for a Free Tibet.

Similar high profile actions will be occurring in cities across the world as the Olympics Games continue in Beijing in a festival of protest and nonviolent direct action during the Beijing Games demanding freedom and human rights for Tibet.