Lim It-Hong: The Taiwan Martyr

11-10-13 7:18am Sun. (2)

That typhoon passed south of Taiwan due to northwest winds this time of year. Yesterday, after teaching Leona's seven-year-old niece and her two twin cousins EFL, we got on a train north past Miaoli to visit a fellow malcontent we'd met in 2003. His cafe has had windows broken twice by enemies as he helps locals and youth organize against arbitrary government land seizures. With Leona's help, I made my case for him and his protégées to join the IWW. He has the property right to sit on the fence, which he did. We met the young cultural hero who threw a sneaker at the head of the local corrupt mayor and saw the sneaker itself. The young man is basking in the limelight proud of being sued but lacks content of character or purpose. Leona got riled up in a conversation with a politician who was in the cafe. I guess malcontention is contagious. Today I will ride the bike to Taichung Port to hand out IWW business cards I made, but mostly to enjoy the ride and listen to Hendrix on my iPod.

      Lim It-Hong is now divorced and living in a shabby house in the middle of a field not far from the shore outside Miao-Li. His girlfriend came downstairs after Leona and I arrived around 3pm yesterday. We stayed there until 8pm in his café about fifteen minutes from his home talking with him and Gary, a protégée. I tried to sell them on joining the IWW and gave he and Lim the Taichung radio interview CD’s and the IWW Mandarin introduction. I explained that the immediate benefit of joining the IWW was the structure it would lend to their organization, international outreach and solidarity to their efforts, endurance to their endeavors, and funds to their treasury. It would link them to a international anti-capitalist movement. As typical, no one was willing to commit and Lim didn’t help by saying his efforts were not labor oriented. I said that if the bulldozer drivers who raised the house in Miaoli were union, they wouldn’t have crossed the picket line. He couldn’t disagree. I think he just doesn’t want to dilute his power by sharing it with an outside organization. He wants to have all the glory. He’ll fail if he does so. I hope he reconsiders and joins me in the IWW organizing here, for the sake of the young restless radicals.