“Never underestimate the power of small group of highly committed individuals”.
If Walt Disney was the master of animation, we, citizens of the youthful Republic of Indonesia are the master of drama.
Earlier this month, Prita Mulyasari, a customer assistant of a private bank in Jakarta was convicted of defamation. She was ordered by the court to pay Rp 204 million ($22,000) as damages to Omni International Hospital, and spent 3-weeks in jail.
The Prita v. Omni case went to national center stage, bloggers unite and launched a “Pennies for Justice: Help Free Prita” campaign. Thanks to Y! Groups, Facebook, Twitter & the blogs, as of today (12/17/2009), Pennies donated from all over the country reached over Rp 592 million ($62,000). The plan is to pay the fine entirely in Pennies delivered straight to the hospital’s front door, today it is proven that nothing can beat the will power of small group of highly committed individuals.
Koin Untuk Keadilan was launched in early December, in a little over 2 weeks, the organizers have successfully mobilized drop points, volunteers & enough buzz to gather hundreds of million worth of hard-to-come-by Pennies (plus a Khong Guan [1. A household brand of biscuit manufacturer in Indonesia] biscuit can of foreign and no longer in circulation mints).
Never before in the history of this country that such a huge amount of money were gathered in such a short time in such a meticulous was; most importantly, this is a monumental moment to be remembered that Yes, we can stand up to injustice and not let the power walk away in arrogance. If Obama can, so can we, one Prita is enough.
I’m sure there are many more cases of injustice that we left in oversight, as well as many more touching stories that we has witnessed all over the world, what’s important is how we learn from it, and what can we do to overrule a case of injustice to an inspiration, how to flip arrogance and turn it to an act of wisdom.
More about the case here, and head over to the blog (Bahasa Indonesia) or Translated version by Google here for some interesting behind-the-scene stories, including a makeshift invention of how to count pennies more efficiently.
