Actually, this post should be what is happening in Khon Kaen, one province in the Northeast.

Thomas Fuller in the NYT reports from Khon Kaen. Some excerpts:

The red shirts’ rallying cry against “double standards” in Thai society — the wealthy, the Bangkok elite and the top military brass break laws with impunity, protest leaders say, while the poor are held to account — has found fertile ground among farmers like Takum Srihangkod. Mr. Takum listens to broadcasts of protests in Bangkok with a cheap Chinese-made radio he tucks into his waistcloth, next to his slingshot.

“Abhisit doesn’t want anything to do with poor people,” Mr. Takum said as he tended his cattle. Not even the most fundamental farm work interrupted the stream of angry political rhetoric: Mr. Takum’s radio stayed tuned as he muscled out a newborn calf in a difficult birth.

Supporters of the government often portray the red shirts as a mob for hire, mercenary protesters who receive a daily stipend. In a country with a long tradition of vote buying, it seems likely that some protesters have received support, possibly from their hero in exile, Mr. Thaksin. But villagers bristle when asked whether they are being paid to protest. Local officials and police officers describe a widespread fund-raising effort to support the demonstrators in Bangkok.

“We help each other,” said Triem Tongkod, a farmer who grows sticky rice in a village outside Khon Kaen. Pickup trucks with loudspeakers travel through his village periodically asking for donations. “You give what you can afford: 20 baht, 100 baht,” Mr. Triem said.

On Saturday, at a Buddhist temple about 40 kilometers outside Khon Kaen, Mr. Triem was one of thousands of people attending the funeral of Praison Tiplom, a protester killed in the April 10 crackdown on protests by the red shirts in Bangkok. (A total of 25 people died, including five soldiers, in circumstances that remain under investigation.) Organizers walked through the crowd carrying large cash donation boxes for Mr. Praison’s widow. They collected 310,000 baht, or about $9,400, according to Num Chaiya, a D.J. at Red Station Radio who helped organize the funeral.

It was far from a typical somber ceremony, the crowd cheering loudly as Mr. Praisom’s coffin, draped with the Thai flag, was carried around the crematorium three times. “Give a big hand to a warrior of the people!” Mr. Num exhorted the crowd, as some blurted out political slogans. Nearly all in attendance wore red instead of the traditional black. Those who could not fit under a large tent stood in the surrounding woods.
…
Successive Thai governments, including the current one, have embarked on development projects in Isaan, but the region remains “poor and underserved,” said Krasae Chanawongse, a medical doctor by training who has worked as a minister in four previous governments. Dr. Krasae said the protest movement was underpinned by income inequality and the need for more doctors, universities and opportunities for young people in Isaan. There is one doctor for every 5,300 people in the northeast, compared with one per 850 in Bangkok and one in 2,800 for the country over all, according to government statistics.

Thailand’s centralized political system has engendered a “colonial attitude of governors” posted here, according to Dr. Krasae. “They are more or less dictating, not consulting,” he said.

BP: Have a read of the whole thing.

 An American academic, David Streckfuss, who is based in Khon Kaen posted the below on a mailing list (used with permission from author):

Not much is being shared about conditions outside Bangkok, so for those interested, here are some impressions from Khon Kaen:

Khon Kaen, April 19

As nights previous, the area in front of Khon Kaen’s provincial hall is aflush in red.

Behind the city park’s skateboard ramps, as many as 3,000 or 4,000 people in the Khon Kaen area settled in for the nightly public rally, and people are still streaming in. On the stage at one point a molam group from Phuwiang performs to the crowd’s great delight. Next is a list of donations. Then an analysis of the situation. And then to the Bangkok stage. The mood is reminiscent of when movie companies would throw up a screen in the middle of a field and call villagers in.

One organizer estimated that as many as 30,000 gathered the night of the 10th. That night was not so festive. Someone shot a gun in the air at one point, and the leaders had to call the police in to take the gunman away. At another point, posters of Abhisit were torn down and stomped upon.

The previous night (the 18th), an organizer estimated that Khon Kaen red shirts had ferried about 150 to Bangkok on buses and in private vehicles, along with rice, fruit, bottles of water, and anything else donated. They were to encounter a series of military and police checkpoints, but they finally made it to Ratchaprasong intersection to join the Khon Kaen groups already there.

The red shirts of Khon Kaen were sending—and stopping. Red shirts monitored the two nearby military camps and the provincial police headquarters to see if any were being sent to Bangkok. Using the Red Shirt Radio Station, they had in a number of instances called followers, who blocked military and police vehicles from leaving.

Once the Khon Kaen groups reached Bangkok, they stay for an unspecified time. Some stay for two or three days, others stay for as long as a week. It is up for each person to decide.

Villages throughout the 2,000 villages of Khon Kaen each have at least one red shirt group. Each group drums up the funds and organizes transportation. Each group met first at the provincial hall in Khon Kaen to register, and with much fanfare, cheers, and blowing of horns, off they went to join the protests in Bangkok. Tonight, the first bus’s engine is idling, waiting for it to fill up. Numerous pick-up trucks looked geared up to go as well. On the night of the 10th, the day of great carnage, 850 registered and joined their friends and relatives in Bangkok.

Tonight, as last night, there is a line of hundreds of applicants for a UDD card, snaking itself around and through playground equipment. A neighbor of mine proudly showed me her card. Maybe people do apply because there will be a reward one day if they succeed in their goals (I forgot to ask). But I wonder whether it was this future reward that was in the mind of the red shirts on the night of the 10th near Democracy Monument. A journalist who witnessed the event told me he was astounded to see the red shirts holding their ground, even as their compatriots were falling.

In an interview with the Red Shirt Radio Station of Khon Kaen, DJ Numchai Ya, 36, estimates that at least 90 per cent of every village in Khon Kaen are backers of the red shirts. If they don’t go themselves, they donate money or food. Some of the donations help support the rallies in Khon Kaen; the rest is sent to Bangkok.

DJ Numchai Ya says that Khon Kaen was one of the strongholds of the red shirts. All day long, he and other DJs read off names of those who had donated, usually organized according to village—“Father Somchai —-, 50 baht, Mother Thongjan —, 30 baht, Miss Janpen —, 100 baht.” On an average day, Khon Kaen reds are able to raise 40-50,000 baht—not including donated items. When there is something special going on—like the 10th of April—donations go as high as 130,000 to 140,000.

DJ Numchai Ya notes that since even the yellow shirt rallies of the PAD which largely depended on ASTV, there are more avenues of information, and try as it may, the government has not been able to block everything. Communication lines persist amongst the reds. He points out that the free flow of information has created a great deal of damage not to just the reds, but also to the military.

How much of this is based on Thaksin, I ask. If Thaksin disappeared tomorrow, would the reds disappear too? On the contrary, he answers, if Thaksin were to die or be killed, there would be even more reds.

Call it what you want, Thaksin has created an impression, and some sort of vision of Thai society that people are willing to give themselves fully to.

Are there any reds who are against both coups and Thaksin, the so-called “light reds”? DJ Numchai Ya disabuses me of any such fantasy. These light reds, he says, would have their own color. Why bother joining the reds?

What about a coup? If a coup happened, would the red shirts oppose it? DJ Numchai Ya points out that the frequency of coups is unique to Thailand. Coups are a seizing of power, a redistribution of power, he says. Maybe 40 or 50 years ago, people would (and did) accept coups. But now, “people have more knowledge. People have high school educations; some have studied abroad.”  The PAD says people in the countryside are ignorant. PAD, like most Thais, “believe people in the North and Northeast are stupid.” But villagers know now. They know that coups can’t solve problems.

The problems, he says, come from the system, from amart. Privy Council President Prem Tinsulanonda is a symbol of amart, but it goes beyond Prem and represents the entire system: bureaucrats, “big persons”, capitalists who receive government support. All of these new color groups—pink, multi, etc.—can be traced back to the government, and from that to the PAD. They are all the same group that is creating an impression of many different groups. But they are all amat, he says.

Abhisit is just a “hollow shirt” (hun shirt). He is not the real prime minister. He probably wanted to dissolve parliament for a long time now, but has not been allowed to.  He is “unable to decide for himself.”

DJ Numchai Ya argues that the phenomenon of the red shirts “is the largest of its kind in the world.” “This country,” he says, “has never had a real revolution”—only coups. Students led the October “Revolution,” but now it is the grassroots leading it. America, he points out, had its single great revolution. Now Thailand is having its.

DJ Numchai Ya is confident that in the red shirts will succeed in getting parliament dissolved—before there is a military coup.

He points out that Khon Kaen can endlessly supply supporters and supplies to Bangkok. Eventually, the red shirts will prevail. We may die, he concludes, but in the end “we will win.”

As I am walking away, a bus crammed with people wearing flower-pattern shirts honks its horn, and from the stage and the throng comes a great cheer. I wasn’t sure where they were going, given their attire. “To Bangkok,” one man answers. Not wearing red shirts would speed their way through checkpoints. Once in Bangkok, they will change into red shirts and become what the Thai government call, “terrorists.”
 
Another 103 Khon Kaen red shirts, waving and smiling to their nearby loved ones, on their way to injury and death for something they believe in.

BP: It should be noted that Khon Kaen is one of Thailand’s larger cities in the Northeast. It has significant red shirt support (although from what BP has heard, the support is stronger outside the provinvcial capital – PPP swept the province in the 2007 general election), but is not as economically deprived as other provinces in the Northeast (it is No. 45 out of 77 provinces).