Libertarians Take the White Paper Protests to the NFL

David Boaz

Last Sunday activists from Students for Liberty and Young Americans for Liberty, along with a few young Cato staff, demonstrated for Chinese human rights at the Commanders‐​Giants NFL game at Washington’s FedEx Field and the inaugural Fenway Bowl in Boston.

Demonstrations erupted about three weeks ago in response to a deadly fire in Urumqi and quickly expanded to cities across the country. The protests broadened to include complaints about China’s zero‐​Covid policies, denunciations of the Chinese Communist Party, chants of “Need human rights, need freedom,” and calls for dictator Xi Jinping to step down. Of course, the Chinese government doesn’t countenance dissent and moved quickly to crack down on the protests. It simultaneously eased the strict lockdown policies, which may or may not have been a response to the protest rallies.

Well aware of the risks of dissent in Xi’s China, protesters took to holding up blank sheets of paper, hoping that most citizens would understand the message but the absence of any actual language would stymie the police. That’s the tactic the young libertarians took to the bleachers. Of course, this being the United States and not China, the blank sheets of paper had a message about human rights on the other side. Journalist Ford Fischer posted video of the FedEx Field protest on Twitter and YouTube. Pictures were posted on the Reddit China page. Kent State Students for Liberty tweeted — don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with your computer — a blank sheet of paper.

Cato scholars have written about human rights in China many times.