Speakers Corner is now open

Speaker's Corner is now open for outdoor demonstrations! Our first legal demonstration lasted a whopping 10 minutes! With no overturned cars and burning effigies! Well, it's a start.

All we've ever heard about since before the lifting of the ban is how quickly and easily protests degenerate out of hand, resulting in injury and arrests for people, damage and destruction to property... like the madness in Thailand in the last couple of days.

So, how are we going to create a peaceful demonstration that can make people sit up and take notice? If nothing else, we S'poreans understand (believe it or not) the power of tongue-in-cheek humour in making our displeasure palpable to the powers-that-be. Case in point: the Buangkok "white elephant" incident. It's because of the previous ban that we've become so clever at demonstrations aimed at the brain and the heart, rather than the fist and random throwing objects.

Think when I have time again, I'll ask the kids to consider what issues they'd want to protest, and maybe get them to design the form their protest is likely to take. It's their world that's opening up to them, and I am curious as to how they see it. Or perhaps they are too contented to raise any protests at all? I wonder.