Saturday, November 26, 2011

From 9/19 Anti-Nuke Rally: "Don't Take Away Our Lives"

said Ms. Ruiko Muto at the No-Nuke Rally in Tokyo on September 19, 2011. Ms. Muto is a member of "Action Committee for Decommissioning 40-year-old Fukushima Nuke Plant." This committee was established in November 2010, before the accident.

According to Tokyo Brown Tabby's description on the youtube video, Ms. Muto runs a coffee shop in Miharu-machi in Fukushima, using natural energy. Miharu-machi is the only town in Fukushima Prefecture whose mayor distributed potassium iodide pills to the residents and told them to take the pills.

The speech is not exactly my cup of tea, but I just wanted my readers to know that there are people like her in Japan who try calmly and patiently to educate, inform, and call for actions.

If only she, and people like her stopped thinking "Don't take away our lives". Stop pleading the government not to take your lives. Just tell them that you won't let them.

Translation by Emma Parker (full transcript at the link) and captioning by Tokyo Brown Tabby.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

"[...] Just tell them that you won't let them."

... but you know, unless there are some real actions (for example a political push), citizens can only ask and not order. It is a good start to reformulate her sentence, but what matter in the end is the action. I believe that Japanese people are too calm for real actions, and that they will only "ask" politicians, in the same spirit than the speech of this lady, using with a different sentence.

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