Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has – Margaret Mead

2007 has been a rotten year for justice. For freedoms to express and assemble peacefully, for judicial integrity, for the right to a fair trial, for inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations.

I say enough. No more taking this lying down. Injustice in this country has gone too far, and 2008 will be the year we take Malaysia back.

In these last few months, I’ve seen an amazing swelling of Malaysians who care about their country, an amazing rise in numbers of people who are willing to step up and do something to save our country before it falls apart.

Now’s your chance.

I’m devoting most of January to building the structures and workflows that are needed to make a volunteer-based mass movement work.

We will start with simple things: spreading awareness and hope.

We will step out of cyberspace and our comfort zones to spread the message to every nook and corner. We will counter lies with truth, ignorance with information, and cynicism with optimism.

Out of the ashes of apathy, we will build cathedrals of concern.

We will set tangible targets and we will achieve them. We will build a network of activists and we will sustain the momentum to bring about change.

Be a part of it. Like Gandhi, be the change you wish to see in the world. No one is too young or too old, everyone can help!

What I envision building is a network of concerned citizens who are willing to do their part in making sure that as many Malaysians as possible are aware of what is happening around them; that as many Malaysians as possible have some sort of access to alternative sources of information and not just the bunk they broadcast and print nowadays.

If they won’t give us airwaves, then we’ll use our home/office printers and photocopy machines. If they won’t let us sell decent newspapers on the newstands, we’ll give away leaflets and leave them where people will find them. If they intimidate bloggers, we’ll flood e-mail inboxes.

*Anyone* can help do this. If you are reading this now, you can print copies of leaflets and distribute them, and you can forward e-mails.

I’ll be out of town until the 7th of Jan. In the meantime, I am going to leave this post up here. Consider it a recruitment notice (think Dumbledore’s Army :)

So sign up! I envision that we will have the following teams:

- Writing/Translation
- Design
- Video/VCD Production
- Distribution
- Tech (mostly web programming & maintenance)
- Fundraising/Business

Any media skills you have, we can most likely use :) Any other skills you have can likely come in handy at some point – let us know! Often times, we’ll also just need hands – hands to distribute, hands to photocopy, just hands.

I encourage both people who are sympathetic to KeADILan as well as people who prefer to be apolitical to sign up – I am confident we can find a satisfactory way of accommodating both.

*

Some time ago, I started thinking about one of the only ways justice and decency can prevail in Malaysia. The conclusion I came to was simple:

Everyone has to go one step further and do a little bit more.

If you haven’t registered to vote, register. If you’ve registered, vote wisely. If you’re voting wisely, persuade 10 others to do the same. If you’ve persuaded 10, persuade 20. If you’ve distributed a 100 leaflets, distribute 200. If you’ve distributed 200, distribute 500.

No matter how much or how little we’re doing now, we – myself included – need to do more. I think that’s my new philosophy and roadmap to change for 2008.

There’s a lot of people who’ll say that this quantity or this strategy isn’t enough. I think I’ve been in this line of work long enough to know that this is at least where we need to start.

There are too many who don’t know or don’t care, and we’ll never affect real change unless we can spread the word and expand the circle. If we’re not growing, we’re dying.

*

We need your name, e-mail, phone number and preferably a little bit of background with a few words of what motivates you.

E-mail volunteer[at]bettermalaysia.com (website to come!) and/or leave a comment on this post.

Give us a little bit of time, a week or two or so, and you should hear back from us :)

Feel free to reproduce this post and spread as far as you like.

One step further, doing a little more. Masa untuk perubahan!

Tags: Integrity // 6 Comments »