My Experience Of Sri Lanka’s Powerful Protests
Sri Lanka is in the midst of huge protests which are really the culmination of months of protests, following even more months of misery. Let me walk you through what today’s experience was like for one person. Me.
Decades of neoliberal capitalism have completely collapsed in Sri Lanka and there’s no fuel, power cuts, and less and less to eat. Protests built and built until the government violently attacked them on May 9th, and the momentum never really recovered. Two months later, however, people (no one in particular) called for everyone to somehow assemble in Colombo today. And people somehow did.
People walked. People came on bicycles. They came in moving vans, in vehicle transporters, in lorries, they even commandeered trains that the government had tried to stop from running. The government cut fuel supplies even further, they tried to call a curfew, they thought about blocking internet, but—like the Grinch—they couldn’t stop the Aragalaya (struggle) from coming.
We went out on our bicycles to look and there were a few people, but just a…
