From Three into Six Thousands

Last night, I was watching the movie Gandhi with Elmer. The film talks about the life of Gandhi and how he worked hard to free the Indian people against British rule. Independence are not served on a silver platter; instead, one must have to shed blood and tears in order to attain it. Gandhi was the one man who made the tiny step towards a big leap for his country. Big changes came from little modest steps that one has ever made, and me and two of my friends has also made our tiny steps towards a change in our country.

It all started from a little forum discussion about Singapore’s Pink Dot. Eager to take part in this event, an idea was created by three persons namely: Rocky, Tobie, and me. We organized our very own version of pink dot here in the Philippines by wearing a pink shirt on June 18, the same day which Pink Dot will be held. Then we created an event page in Facebook to make the people known of this event.

To those who doesn’t know what Pink Dot is, it is an event in Singapore supporting the LGBT community. The participants are asked to wear a pink shirt and gather around Hong Lim Park to form a giant Pink dot. Here is a picture taken in Hong Lim Park on June 18, 2011 and a picture taken from 2010. As you can see, the Pink Dot this year is bigger compared to that of last year. This would mean that many has shown their support towards the LGBT community and towards the freedom to love.

I really wanted to go—we all do—to participate in this event, but it’s almost impossible considering financial and time constrains; however, we came up to an idea to improvise our own version of this event. It started out few and there were only a few number of participants in our event page—thanks to Tobie for creating the page—in Facebook. We didn’t really expect the number would rise, but as the day of Pink dot came near, so does the number continued to rose skyward. From three people it became a hundred then into thousands. Before June 18, about 6,000 Filipinos have joined our event page.

On that day, some participants decided to gather around in the park. One also announced that he will be offering discounts from his booth if the costumer wears pink. For me, I wore pink during my review class together with my two closest friends. We may differ on how we spent our day on June 18, but we have one voice that speak to all. The message is clear and we want to express our freedom to love. For all those who participated, thank you for our efforts will be meaningless without your help. Always remember to be the love, be PINK! :)