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The Radical, Transnational Legacy of Tiananmen Workers

University of Wisconsin–Madison historian Maurice Meisner reported that “in the early weeks of the movement, student demonstrators often marched with arms linked to exclude workers and other citizens, thereby, they thought, preserving the ‘purity’ of their uniquely nonviolent crusade.” And the student leader Wang Dan told The New York Times that “the movement is not ready for worker participation because the principles of democracy must first be absorbed by students and intellectuals before they can be spread to others.”