Dear reader,
Please join us for our first live event of the year! It’s a panel on anti-racism at 1pm on May 28th at The Projector, featuring three of Singapore’s most dynamic young activists: Saza Faradilla, co-founder of End Female Genital Cutting Singapore; Suraendher Kumarr, community organiser at Workers Make Possible (WMP); and Kristian-Marc James Paul, activist at SG Climate Rally and co-editor of Brown is Redacted.
Racism is a topic that needs constant interrogation, as each generation forces the last to examine things in a more holistic, interconnected way. As somebody who’s researched and written a lot on the topic, and realises the archaic way I approach some issues, I’m really psyched to hear their views.
Tickets are limited: get yours here today. And see you on the 28th.
On Monday, Jom attended “Power to the People”, a Labour Day rally by WMP. It was an exhilarating mix of messaging labour exploitation narratives and body-shaking beats, as hip hop and punk performers got hundreds around Hong Lim Park moving.
We were there to profile a few workers, including Uncle Peter, a food delivery rider, Uncle Chua, an ex-SBS driver, Staffan Stewart, a nurse who uses his blog to discuss the many issues nurses face; and 20-year-old Lim Juan Swanhilda Kaur, who’s worked in the F&B industry since she was 14.
You’ll see their photographs and hear their stories in Jom’s first-ever print issue, which will go on sale in a few months. I’m really excited by the mix of content that we’ve commissioned. Jom’s Supporters and Patrons: your copy has been paid for and reserved. Everybody else: we’ll let you know when it’s on sale.
But for now, please read Faris’s blurb on the history of Labour Day rallies and unions in Singapore.
Finally, for the second week running, I’m excited to have a writer whose work I respect put out their first piece for Jom. In “Class and ethnic segregation in Singapore: are we mixing it up?”, Shin Bin Tan, an assistant professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, analyses whether our long-standing focus on ethnic integration has come at some cost to socioeconomic mixing.
In early 2022, I sent a mass e-mail to several academics asking, “Who’s a good long-form writer you’d recommend for our [still unnamed] publication?” Two mentioned Shin Bin. Her work “focuses on how built environment interventions and public policy can improve social and health equity.” Cool stuff.
We’ve exchanged e-mails over the past year, and so it’s nice that it all came together in the past two months, even as she was looking after her newborn!
To all who labour for us, thank you.
Jom kerja,
Sudhir Vadaketh
Editor-in-chief, Jom
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