Squeaky Wheel

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here.

The drug-pushers have reappeared at certain street corners of Harlem, the neighbors have complained, and the cops flex their presence with mobile posts. But the policing is lackadaisical because the cops know it's a cat-and-mouse game. More, they know there is an international network of producers, suppliers, and middlemen behind the street-corner pushers, and it is the network that must be dismantled, and not the pushers, who are often addicts and victims themselves. 

Some problems appear so vast and complicated that we content ourselves by tackling their most immediate manifestations, instead of aiming at their sources. Our "solutions" fall hard on the little people, and not the powers-that-be. Worse, the problem is then blamed on the little people, thus obscuring the source of the problem and the lack of effective action on the part of the authorities. This is true of Harlem, but also of Singapore, the supposed model of state efficiency. In the debate about the legal execution of drug couriers, proponents of the death penalty focus on the victims of drug use, but overlook the victims of socioeconomic inequities in the couriers. 

This week I explained to my sixth-graders the saying "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." But I did not explain that the wheel belongs to a car, which is zooming down an expressway, in a national network of roads. If the car is heading in the wrong direction, or the building of the roads has devastated the natural environment or a historical legacy, greasing the wheel is not going to do much good. On the contrary.

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The deadline for the 2022 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize has been extended to May 31! Now is your chance to submit your manuscript, if you have not done so already. Submission guidelines here.

Jee Leong Koh
May 19, 2022

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