Dear Friends, Travelers, and Lovers of Peace and Democracy,

Many of you may have already heard about the political conflict in Thailand.  When the former Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, was ousted through a military coup back in September of 2006, it made international news.  When a large number of anti-Thaksin protesters took over all the Thai airports, again Thailand was on the forefront of international news.  Now, while Thailand may not have been in the headlines on a daily basis, the political situation here is far from resolved.

Today, on March 12 2010, a massive political protest is scheduled to begin.  This political protest can go two ways: either towards major violent riots or it can open a new chapter of peaceful co-existence of Thai people with different political beliefs. We are hoping for the 2nd option where Thai people will learn to truly live in an open society where people can cooperate and work together to build a better, stronger, more peaceful and democratic Thailand which will ensure sustainable growth as a liberal democracy and free economy.

Right now in Thailand, people are using creativity, persistence and compassion to run various social media campaigns to try to show that most Thai people are strongly opposed to any form of violence and instead are desperate for a creative solution to this seemingly political dead-lock.

Through Change Fusion Bangkok, an innovative social innovation organization, we have started a campaign for Thai Peace and need your help to gather international support so that we can put political pressure on the waring politicians to come to a peaceful agreement to this volatile situation.

I am writing to you because I believe you can help make this happen through your participation in online social networking. It happens that two opposing leaders of Thailand are using twitter and we all can encourage and pressure these leaders to come to a diplomatic solution as well as encourage their supporters to strive for a peaceful democratic solution to this issue before the actual confrontation today and beyond.

If you care about peace, democracy, human rights and Thailand, you can simply tweet to both leaders' twitter accounts at @thaksinlive and @PM_abhisit to tell them your hope that they will agree on a peaceful solution and never to resort to violence. You can tell them how your perception of Thailand is changing because of this. After your message please end with #thaipeace so that it will be part of this campaign.

For example, you can tweet the following:
@PM_abhisit @thaksinlive - Pls begin talking via Twitter. You are capable of creating lasing peace in Thailand! #Thaipeace #welovethai

Please also join http://www.facebook.com/thaipeace which is a page dedicated for Thais who really believe in seeing a peaceful solution coming out of this conflict. Although the content is mostly in Thai, I encourage you to post your constructive thoughts in English about how to move Thailand towards a strong peaceful democracy.  With the nearly 4,000 supporters in just 2 days, I hope that you can see how this Internet-enabled democratic movement is emerging in Thailand.

Please help us save Thailand!

We have our campaign picture translated into English below, it's also at http://tinyurl.com/ydv4gt5 , please help spread this as well and don't forget to use the hash tags: #thaipeace and #welovethai

Wishing you all a safe and happy weekend from the heart of Bangkok.

--
Brooke Estin
Coordinator | Change Fusion
www.changefusion.org