political activism in singapore
The stereotypical image of the average Singaporean seems to be apathetic, ungracious, materialistic, and willing to cede civil liberties and societal responsibility if it means more time to go shopping. While I have seen examples of all of this behavior, I discovered another one yesterday: passionate political activism.
For just over three hours yesterday, I sat riveted to my iPod Touch at a coffeehouse in Suntec City Mall, as Janet attended the AWARE Extraordinary General Meeting in the next building over and several storeys up. ( Background on the "steeplejacking" of AWARE. The short of it is that a group of bigoted evangelicals with ties to Focus on the Family hijacked a 25-year-old women's rights organization five weeks ago and placed all their people in top positions; they subsequently changed the locks, installed scunts in the AWARE offices, and spent $90,000 of the NGO's money. The old guard called for a special meeting to take back their organization.)
Glued to incoming tweets marked with the #AwareSG hashtag (which made it searchable), I got a realtime feed of what was going on in the meeting. It was astonishing to see how tech-savvy and connected the women in that meeting were, as the tweets rolled in pretty much continuously; soon, #AwareSG was trending at the very top of the Twitter searches, above the new Wolverine movie and swine flu, and it stayed in that position for five hours (by my last count). I should reiterate this: #AwareSG was the no. 1 Twitter trend in the world for at least five hours.
At 6 p.m., three and a half hours after the meeting had started, Janet called to say that there was nothing more she could do (as she'd already voted to boot out the crooks), and she was hungry. When a pregnant woman tells you she's hungry, you drop what you're doing and feed her. Janet's dad (who'd dropped us off, and was now picking us up) met me walking on the way to the hall, and we both met up with Janet soon after. The vote still had not been counted by the time Janet had left the meeting, and we had to wait until we got home and followed the Twitter feed again to hear the news: 1414 yes, 761 against, a 2:1 ratio in favor for no-confidence. We were all smiles. Here are my tweets for the day, and here is Janet's account of the event.
Boing Boing covered the initial story a couple of weeks ago. More bloggery on this issue can be found with a Google search; it was front-page news in The Straits Times this morning. Today also brought a wonderful open letter to new AWARE president Dana Lam and her team from Ng E-Jay at SGpolitics.net:
If there is anyone who still wonders whether we as a people have the courage to stand up for righteousness, justice and tolerance, who still doubts whether Singaporeans are able to rise up to the challenge when the occasion calls, Saturday night banished those doubts forever.
Those doubts were banished by the men and women who took time off from their families and their busy schedules to attend the most pivotal conference in the history of civil society in our nation, by the housewives, mothers, grandmothers, businesswomen, women from all walks of life, who waited hours in a packed seminar room to cast their vote for openness and tolerance, by the thousands of volunteers and activists who toiled tirelessly in the past month to craft the greatest campaign ever to help AWARE reclaim its purpose and its values.
Those doubts were banished by the married couples and the single parents, by the lesbians and the straight women and the bisexual women, who came out of their closets and stood up to be counted, who told the world that we are no longer a nation of sheep, that we will no longer look on helplessly when tyranny descends upon us, that when bigotry and intolerance threatens our lives and our rights and our dignity, we will NOT stand idly by.
For just over three hours yesterday, I sat riveted to my iPod Touch at a coffeehouse in Suntec City Mall, as Janet attended the AWARE Extraordinary General Meeting in the next building over and several storeys up. ( Background on the "steeplejacking" of AWARE. The short of it is that a group of bigoted evangelicals with ties to Focus on the Family hijacked a 25-year-old women's rights organization five weeks ago and placed all their people in top positions; they subsequently changed the locks, installed scunts in the AWARE offices, and spent $90,000 of the NGO's money. The old guard called for a special meeting to take back their organization.)
Glued to incoming tweets marked with the #AwareSG hashtag (which made it searchable), I got a realtime feed of what was going on in the meeting. It was astonishing to see how tech-savvy and connected the women in that meeting were, as the tweets rolled in pretty much continuously; soon, #AwareSG was trending at the very top of the Twitter searches, above the new Wolverine movie and swine flu, and it stayed in that position for five hours (by my last count). I should reiterate this: #AwareSG was the no. 1 Twitter trend in the world for at least five hours.
At 6 p.m., three and a half hours after the meeting had started, Janet called to say that there was nothing more she could do (as she'd already voted to boot out the crooks), and she was hungry. When a pregnant woman tells you she's hungry, you drop what you're doing and feed her. Janet's dad (who'd dropped us off, and was now picking us up) met me walking on the way to the hall, and we both met up with Janet soon after. The vote still had not been counted by the time Janet had left the meeting, and we had to wait until we got home and followed the Twitter feed again to hear the news: 1414 yes, 761 against, a 2:1 ratio in favor for no-confidence. We were all smiles. Here are my tweets for the day, and here is Janet's account of the event.
Boing Boing covered the initial story a couple of weeks ago. More bloggery on this issue can be found with a Google search; it was front-page news in The Straits Times this morning. Today also brought a wonderful open letter to new AWARE president Dana Lam and her team from Ng E-Jay at SGpolitics.net:
If there is anyone who still wonders whether we as a people have the courage to stand up for righteousness, justice and tolerance, who still doubts whether Singaporeans are able to rise up to the challenge when the occasion calls, Saturday night banished those doubts forever.
Those doubts were banished by the men and women who took time off from their families and their busy schedules to attend the most pivotal conference in the history of civil society in our nation, by the housewives, mothers, grandmothers, businesswomen, women from all walks of life, who waited hours in a packed seminar room to cast their vote for openness and tolerance, by the thousands of volunteers and activists who toiled tirelessly in the past month to craft the greatest campaign ever to help AWARE reclaim its purpose and its values.
Those doubts were banished by the married couples and the single parents, by the lesbians and the straight women and the bisexual women, who came out of their closets and stood up to be counted, who told the world that we are no longer a nation of sheep, that we will no longer look on helplessly when tyranny descends upon us, that when bigotry and intolerance threatens our lives and our rights and our dignity, we will NOT stand idly by.