BANGKOK – Close to 1,500 provincial red shirt leaders assembled this Saturday morning to kick off the 2011 political school year for the UDD. The School for Provincial Committee Coordinators met as a one-day teachers’ college designed to educate district-level leaders on the movement’s politics and strategies in the lead-up to this year’s parliamentary elections.
Restraint and nonviolence were the main themes of the morning as both UDD-leader Thida Thawornseth and spokesperson Natthawut Saikua asked their audience for patience. “We’re not going to teach you how to use guns,” Mr. Natthawut told the crowd. “Instead we’re going to give you the weapon of thinking and if this knowledge is spread throughout the country, then victory is at hand.”
After the Songkran holiday, Saturday’s students will become this season’s Red Shirt teachers, holding classes in villages and cities throughout the country.
Natthawut Saikua lectures from the stage.
Grumblings of disunity and disorganization have plagued the movement since last May’s bloody government crackdown sent much of the Red Shirt leadership to prison and left 91 supporters dead. Now, just six weeks after the group’s leaders were let out on bail, the scene on the sixth-floor of the Ladprao Big C felt far from haphazard. Before the crowds arrived, registration tables were erected and attendance lists laid out – the names and telephone numbers of every enrolled student were waiting to be checked and confirmed. Inside the classroom, attendees thumbed through their twenty-five page textbooks, eyeing full-page illustrations of the organization’s network and bullet-pointed lists of its stated goals.
Later, after lunch, Mr. Natthawut told reporters that the day’s aim was to organize their supporters “so they could unify the country.” But national unification will be a tall order, particularly for an organization whose rally today saw the preemptive mobilization of 22 police companies. However, if the themes of Saturday’s lessons can speak for the movement, then Bangkok’s police have little to worry about.
[UPDATE: April 16, 2011 – A PDF of the textbook has been linked to in this article. Though The Isaan Record has digitally erased its margin notes, the rest of the book appears in full.]
Sisters of Isan displays Isan (the northeastern part of Thailand)’s value and their construction at the beginning of the 20th century together with Thailand as a modern state. The book has recorded the stories of two sisters growing up and working from the countryside to Bangkok. At the same time, the book shows the perspectives of Isan people through their belief, lifestyle, culture, social norm, value and fate. This book covers the changes by over 50 years of Isan workers and Thailand. Hence, beyond two sisters who had shifted from rural to urban landscape, the stories inside reflect how Thai society has come. The struggle is not something Isan people choose, whereas, reading this book may imply the answer. Sisters of Isan is not just a book. This infers lives… the Isan’s lives.
The atmosphere of the general election today in the Northeast was bustling. Even in areas where it rained, voters still showed up to exercise their rights.
A team of local artists have proposed a design for a memorial commemorating the “Holy Man Rebellion” in Ubon Ratchathani province. They want to promote the area to become a historical tourist destination and symbolize a kind of a public apology to those slaughtered.
Media of the margins join hands to build bridges through their effects that lead to increased understanding and reduced conflicts in society. A former TV anchor of Thairath says the media can serve as a bridge that connects people with different opinions. The Editors of local media outlets, as well as the alternative media, Prachatai, in Bangkok, speak out about their roles and hopes for a better Thailand
