‘Freedom is in our mind’: Why Hong Kong protests are still escalating

Wearing a black T-shirt, black pants, and a surgical mask to hide her face, Valerie folds a delicate pink origami crane, crafting the bird that represents happiness together with thousands of other pro-democracy protesters packing a Hong Kong mall on Sunday.

The group quickly fashions more than 1,000 of the paper cranes, a tradition to make a wish come true. With the little figures, they build one huge, multicolored bird that they hoist skyward to the cheers of the gathered crowd.

But the day that begins with a peaceful shopping boycott and a wind ensemble playing the protesters’ anthem, “Glory to Hong Kong,” ends with Valerie and her fellow demonstrators building fiery barricades and clashing with riot police.

“At first I was only for peaceful protest,” says Valerie, a nursing student at the Open University of Hong Kong, asking to withhold her full name. But her views shifted after months of peaceful activism and