The following is a reflection from one of our volunteers on their experience going door-knocking.
By Elijah Tay
No time to waste! We hit the ground a day after polling day (the session was scheduled before the GE was announced and although many of us had a long and tiring night, we decided to power through this afternoon together!).
Today, six of us set foot in Nee Soon GRC. While we didn’t get to speak to most of the residents, out of all the conversations we had, majority of them expressed support for the petition calling for the moratorium of the death penalty.
Some conversations were difficult at first – we hear first-hand how depoliticised Singaporeans have become. “We’re just small fry. We can’t make a difference. There is no point voicing out – the government will just make the decisions.” Such sentiments are common during our door-knocking sessions and even in day-to-day conversations. We have been taught to believe that we should just cede power to the government – let them decide what’s best for us.
But we, the people, have agency and power. We, the people, when given the chance to, can form opinions about how we want our country to be run, what values our policies embody.
When one chooses to sign the petition, that is an act of democracy. When one chooses not to, that is an act of democracy. When we, the people, talk to one another about the policies that affect us and seek to understand the perspectives and experiences of the other, that is an act of democracy.
No matter where one stands on the death penalty, it always fills me with gratitude and hope to get a chance to even converse with residents on this topic, to hear about their lives, beliefs, and how they imagine a compassionate Singapore. Please join me and my friends at the Transformative Justice Collective as we knock on every door (and not just leave a flyer) – because the knowledge, experiences, and hopes of every single resident matters. Just drop me a DM if you’d like to get involved!
Please sign the petition at change.org/StopTheKillingSG and encourage your peers to sign it too. Let’s get to 50k signatures together by the end of 2025. Change can happen – we just have to make it happen together. ✊❤️
Leave a Reply