Councilman Avella Speaks Out Against Tibet

If you had to put the adjective "reformer" next to a noun like "New York City Councilmember," you would likely come up with Tony Avella. Tony has fought against the horse drawn carriages in Central Park and now he is appealing to the corporate sponsors of the Olympics based here in New York to boycott the Beijing summer games. Many people have heard about Steven Spielberg dropping out of his Olympic role, well now NYC's Avella is engaged and will be participating in today's protest against the Chinese government for their atrocities perpetrated on the Tibetan people as well as commemorating the anniversary of the 1959 uprising.

From The Gothamist:

City Council member and probable 2009 mayoral candidate, Tony Avella, is the latest politician to ask for America's withdrawl from the Beijing Olympics if China will not grant Tibet independence. Under China's rule for over 50 years, Tibet has made no headway, even with the support of human rights groups, activists...and Richard Gere. When we interviewed Robert Thurman, co-founder of the Tibet House, earlier this year he touched on the Olympics, saying:

The thinking is that if you give them a big P.R. thing to do like the Olympics, they won’t want people to see how they’re beating up the Falun Gong or whatever it is they’re doing lately. This is a fallacious concept but within that it’s true that the Chinese are trying to clean up their act so they won’t be embarrassed during the Olympics. Unfortunately, what the Chinese consider ‘cleaning up their act’ is to wipe out people who might do human rights protests; they don’t mean stopping the human rights violations.

Today a rally in Manhattan is taking place commemorating the anniversary of the 1959 uprising against China. Avella is in attendance and will most likely use this event to introduce his resolution, which demands New York City-based corporate sponsors boycott the 2008 Olympics, and that the International Olympic Committee move the games from Beijing. He stated, "That's the only thing that will make them do anything — international pressure."

If we were able to boycott the 1980 Olympics, we can do it in 2008. Bush may not care about the plight of the Tibetan people enough but many Americans certainly do, especially when they resonate with what the citizens of Tibet want.

Thank you Councilman Avella for the principled stances you take and to show you our support, I'd like to ask anyone who is free at 11:30 AM on Thursday, March 13th 12 PM Friday March 14th to show up at the steps in front of City Hall to help him in his other quest, for clean elections here in New York. I'll be telling you about it again, so if you forget today don't worry.