{"id":17958,"date":"2022-10-14T16:57:25","date_gmt":"2022-10-14T08:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=17958"},"modified":"2022-10-14T18:03:34","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T10:03:34","slug":"2958-reviewing-we-are-marching-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=17958","title":{"rendered":"[2958] Reviewing We Are Marching Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

I try to read (and finish) at least a book a month. That is a slow, given there are hundreds of titles in my to-be-read list. So long is the list, that I have stopped updating them altogether, realizing keeping track of my appetite is a futile exercise. But when We Are Marching Now<\/em> by Danny Lim came out, I put it right into the list and bought it when the author launched his book at Central Market in downtown Kuala Lumpur. I paused my current read\u2014Bill Hayton\u2019s The South China Sea<\/em>, which is about the history of China\u2019s territorial claim in the area\u2014and started going through my latest purchase.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed the book. It was an easy read.<\/p>\n

While reading it, I struggled to think of similar books published in Malaysia. By similar, I mean a book in the style of investigative journalism. There is Billion Dollar Whale<\/a><\/em> but that is not a Malaysian publication, though it is about the country. While I have not read it, Money Logging<\/em> by Lukas Straumann is another. I have not read too many investigative genre myself. My last read before Billion Dollar Whale<\/em> was Bob Woodward’s The Agenda<\/em> about the Clinton administration.<\/p>\n

I might be wrong, but it does look like We Are Marching Now<\/em> is one of its kind, as far as Malaysian publication is concerned. If not, then it has to be a very rare breed at the very least. That makes it refreshing within the context of local publication.<\/p>\n

As for the topic of the book itself, I have a short remark: the book is about the genesis of Bersih, understood through various interviews the author had with personalities involved in the early days of the organization. I think the author did a good job weaving the interviews together to form a coherent narrative.<\/p>\n

Additionally\u2014others have mentioned this\u2014it is worth highlighting that political parties played a crucial role in making Bersih a success.<\/p>\n

I think this is an important point to be remembered by civil activists who value non-partisanship above everything else. It is not easy to gain public support and then corral it towards a cause. More often than not, political parties excel at that, more than anyone else. Yes, party politics are messy and self-interested. Events in the past two or more years have been nothing but angering. But when it is done right, these parties could be a powerful force for good, as in the case of Bersih.<\/p>\n

I have been to all of the Bersih protests, and here, I want to leave you with, possibly, the favorite of mine, out of thousands<\/a> I snapped from those protests:<\/p>\n

\"By<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I try to read (and finish) at least a book a month. That is a slow, given there are hundreds of titles in my to-be-read list. So long is the list, that I have stopped updating them altogether, realizing keeping track of my appetite is a futile exercise. But when We Are Marching Now by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,11],"tags":[411,1995,1997,323,1996],"class_list":["post-17958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-printed-materials","category-politics-government","category-society","tag-bersih","tag-civil-rights","tag-danny-lim","tag-malaysian-elections","tag-we-are-marching-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17958"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17964,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17958\/revisions\/17964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}