The Sunflower Movement in Taiwan

Sunflower Student Movement

Student protests in Taipei over a controversial trade accord between China and 

Taiwan turned suddenly violent Sunday night. Students stormed the Executive 

Yuan, and several hours later, were evicted by riot police armed with water 

cannons. Our Observer, who joined in the protests, says that students are 

demanding increased government transparency.

The standoff began when the governing party, the Kuomintang or KMT, 

attempted to skip normal legislative protocol to hammer through a 

controversial trade agreement opening the small nation’s economy 

to China. Hundreds of students, angered by the opaque nature of 

the decision-making, took to the streets. Starting on March 18, they occupied

the Legislative Yuan, the national parliament building in Taipei.

Several days into the protests, neither the students nor President Ma Ying-Jeou

 showed signs of backing down. At a press conference Saturday, the president 

refused to reconsider the pact or to hold direct talks with the students. A meeting 

between Prime Minister Jiang Yi-huah and Lin Fei-fan, a leader of the so-called 

“Sunflower Student Movement,” was also unsuccessful.

Frustrated by the lack of recognition from the government, a group of students 

broke off from those at the legislative sit-in and stormed the Executive Yuan 

Sunday.

For the first time since the protests began, the government called in riot police, 

who responded with force, using water cannons and batons. Since then, 

social media has buzzed with tweets, Facebook posts, photos and videos 

showing police trying to forcibly remove students from their sit-in

A WALK IN MARCH

by Grace Paley

This hill crossed with broken pines and 

maples lumpy with the burial mounds of

uprooted hemlocks (hurricane

of ’38) out of their

rotting hearts generations rise

trying once more to become

the forest

just beyond them

tall enough to be called trees

in their youth like aspen a bouquet

of young beech is gathered

they still wear last summer’s leaves

the lightest brown almost translucent

how their stubbornness has decorated

the winter woods

on this narrow path ice tries

to keep the black undecaying oak leaves

in its crackling grip    it’s become

too hard to walk    at last a

sunny patch    oh!    i’m in water

to my ankles   APRIL

From the National Women's History Museum

Mary Bowser, former slave of the Van Lew family, infiltrated the Confederacy by working as a servant in the household of Jefferson Davis. Bowser was assumed to be illiterate, and as a black woman was below suspicion. Practically invisible, she was able to listen to conversations between Confederate officials and read sensitive documents, gathering information that she handed over to the Union.