Carrying the Olympic Torch, and Protesting It, Too
By JOHN ELIGON
Published: April 11, 2008
In her left hand she held a water bottle, which was serving as a stand-
in for the Olympic torch. In her right sleeve was tucked a Tibetan
flag. Majora Carter was ready.
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Ron Harris/Associated Press
Majora Carter not long after she waved a Tibetan flag while carrying
the Olympic torch.
Run in place, swing arms, slip fingers into sleeve, wiggle wrist and --
voil=E0! -- out comes flag.
This was the scene in a hotel room in San Francisco on Tuesday, where
Ms. Carter, an environmental activist from the Bronx, was practicing
for a pro-Tibet protest she had planned for Wednesday during the
Olympic torch run. But she was not one of those trying to disrupt the
procession. She was one of the torchbearers who would be leading it.
She would wave the Tibetan flag while carrying the very flame that
Olympic authorities had worked so meticulously to keep demonstrators
away from, adding extra security officers and occasionally making last-
minute changes to the route.
Only a handful of people knew of Ms. Carter's plan. The relay
organizers certainly were not among them, though Ms. Carter had
dropped a very public hint during a passionate speech she made before
thousands of Tibet sup****ters in San Francisco on Tuesday night.
"Think of me as I'm carrying that torch and understand what's in my
heart as I do," she said, "and understand I am with you in your fight
and in your struggle and that I love you and that I love the people of
Tibet."
Coca-Cola, one of the sponsors of the relay, chose Ms. Carter, 41, to
carry the torch in San Francisco, its only United States stop, because
of her environmental activism. Ms. Carter started an environmental
action group, Sustainable South Bronx, in 2001.
She won one of the MacArthur "genius awards" in 2005, which come with
$500,000 grants and are awarded by the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation to people who show exceptional creativity,
originality and potential in their fields.
Ms. Carter agreed to meet on Tuesday with someone from a group called
Students for a Free Tibet, who gave her two Tibetan flags -- one to go
up her sleeve, one to go down her pants as a backup.
The moment arrived about 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Pacific time. Her leg of
the run was only about 200 yards, and she would be surrounded by
Chinese guards. She knew she had to act fast.
Some people would have been scared, or at least nervous. Ms. Carter
said she was neither.
"I really felt a total, complete sense of oneness with the people of
Tibet," she said. She added that as "a civil rights activist in this
country," she could not stand in sup****t of China.
Five seconds into her run down Van Ness Avenue, Ms. Carter pulled the
Tibetan flag from her sleeve and began waving it. There she was, a
mole at the head of the procession.
She waved the flag for roughly five seconds, until a Chinese guard saw
her. He lunged at her. She dodged him. He lunged again and soon
wrested the flag from her hand, saying, "Sorry, I can't let you do
this."
She said she was pushed toward a group of San Francisco police
officers, who then pushed her into a crowd of bystanders. Her time in
the spotlight was over. The torch kept moving.
On Thursday, staff members at the office of Sustainable South Bronx,
the organization Ms. Carter started, sifted through hundreds of e-
mails, most of them praising her protest. But some said she had acted
disgracefully.
A Coca-Cola spokesman, Kelly Brooks, said, "It's unfortunate that Ms.
Carter used an invitation to participate in the torch relay as a
platform to make a personal political statement. We firmly believe the
Olympics are a force for good that celebrates the best in s****ts, and
we are proud to sup****t the Beijing 2008 Olympics."
Ms. Carter, who signed a code of conduct agreement before carrying the
torch, said she did not believe she had been prohibited from
protesting. A man who carried the flame in San Francisco said that the
code prohibits torchbearers from displaying political or religious
signs.
At a rally in San Francisco on Wednesday, Ms. Carter was brought to
the stage by an escort for the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader who
fled Tibet during an uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. People
bowed, hugged her, kissed her and cried. They threw scarves around her
neck. One person told her she must be related to the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.
"Oh my gosh," Ms. Carter recalled thinking. "Just that one little act
that I did was seen as so substantial."
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