Stand Up For Your Rights

Melbourne

This entry shold be titled “Murphy’s Law Case Study: Stand Up For Your Rights”. As I said many times to the crew during the course of the day, the alignment of the planets just wasn’t quite right this year. Many many many things went horribly wrong. I suppose the challenge of event management is to plan and run things in such a way that, in the event that everything should go wrong, the event still “works”. I think the night worked. Arj Barker, Wil Anderson, Hung Le, Dave O’Neil, Sue-Ann Post, Greg Fleet, GUD, Sista She, Damian Callinan, Lawrence Leung, Andrew McClelland, Charlie Pickering, Justin Hamilton, Rachel Berger, Cal Wilson, Gerard McCulloch, Joanne Brookfield, The Pinch and Michael Connell were great, which I suppose is all that really matters.

One of the stuff-ups was that four pages of the program didn’t get printed, which included my welcome note. So for all those who are interested, here it is in all its glory:

Organiser’s Welcome

Welcome for coming, and thank you to the third Stand Up For Your Rights comedy night for Amnesty International Australia. On behalf of the SUFYR executive committee, I wish to extend a very warm hug to all of you as a token of my extreme gratitude of your decision to come along tonight to have a laugh and defend human rights. Many long hours have been invested in this night by volunteers and professionals alike proving, once again, that one can never misunderestimate the power of a group of passionate people devoted to a worthy cause.

They say that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. In light of the events of the past weeks, months and years, the echo of that old Chinese proverb has resounded loudly in the darkness that is the world of grave human rights abuses (because that’s what echoes do). We so often take our freedom for granted while many others around the world suffer in the silent, lonely darkness of impunity and indifference. Yes, we must certainly all stand up for our rights, but we must also use our freedom to stand up for the rights of others.

Have a fun night. I insist. I realise that there are many wonderful things that one can be doing on a Saturday night in October in Melbourne , but I hope that of all those things, this is the most wonderfullest of those things. It is good to know that in a world like ours, there are organisations like Amnesty International and it is good to know that we’ve not got no better friends and allies as you folks out there in the audience. I honestly hope that you enjoy yourselves while you are here.

Sincerely

Daniel Yeow

on behalf of the Stand Up For Your Rights Executive Committee