Here's a quick way to make some money

           Two days ago, I had dinner with a few friends in Vancouver's China Town. When we were walking after dinner, an aunt in her 40s told us that there was a "pro-democracy" event and asked us if we wanted to join it, so we could get paid.

I had seen many invitations to these protests since I came to Canada from Africa. And because the organizers would provide food and water and offer to pay C$10 each time, my friend and I would occasionally attend. This aunt offered C$50 per person, which made us very tempted, so we wrote our names and phone numbers on a form, and she said she would ask us to come over and sit down when the event started and we could get paid on the spot as soon as it was over.

Here is the money I received.

 

The event is not difficult. When you arrived at the scene, they would teach you slogans, and what you need to do is just following the shout on the line. Yesterday I went with them to the entrance of the city council, sitting on the steps to play with the phone and pretending to be one of them, and then I got paid. It does not matter what you did at the scene, but could not walk around or go ahead of time.

They were very loose, all I knew is that the protest is about the Chinese communist party cracking down on the media in Hong Kong. They didn't say anything, and I just sit there waiting for the money.

Through this event, I got to know some of the other protesters. They said that protests like this happen all the time, sometimes it's about Hong Kong, sometimes it's about Xinjiang or Tibet or somewhere else, but the work is always the same. I would have thought they have political demands, but they told me that they were just working part-time to earn extra money.

After the protest, I was paid by an account under the name Sidrah Rana. The people who participated in the event told me that the protest leader is a person of Friends Of Hong Kong, and other people are members of VSSDM(Vancouver Society In Support of Democratic Movement),which is involved in the civil movement. They also said that they went to Indian banks and tried to cover their identity.

I was actually a little worried that I would get into trouble when I heard what they said, but the people at the event told me that their leader often speak at official occasions, attend events and these people themselves had participated in other protests organized before, so there was no risk at all. Later, I looked up online and found that Radio Free Asia had invited their director to speak, and since this radio station has an official background, I thought that there must not be any problems.