James Gomez began his involvement with civil society in Singapore at the national level starting in the mid 1990s. This included participation with experiments such as “The Working Committee” and a brief stint as a member of the now defunct Roundtable. At the government's official Feedback Unit, James was member in two groups, Political Matters and Media, and served as secretary for two terms to the former. He was also part of a government consultative process that published the Singapore 21 report.

However he found through his experiences in the above organisations and processes of civil society was still penultimate when it came for advocating for political change. Many in Singaporean civil society, for a variety of reasons such as attachments to notions of non-partisanship or abhorrence for anything political, could not nor did not want to contribute directly to political change.

To capture the culture of fear that James witnessed through his experiences with civil society, in September 1999 James published Self-Censorship: Singapore's Shame which explains why people in Singapore are afraid to speak up when it comes to politics.  The book became number one on the best-sellers list at MPH, a local bookstore chain. Events around the book and his use of the Internet led to the founding of Think Centre, a multi-partisan human rights NGO. As its Head, he organised political forums and tested the limits of the Speaker's Corner and organised the ‘Save JBJ Rally’.

The birth of Think Centre also provided James the opportunity to network with regional NGOs. This opened the path for James and other Think Centre members to travel regionally and internationally to various NGO network meetings to represent the Think Centre in Asia. James and couple of other Think Centre members were also invited to the US under the Department of State for Education’s International Visitor’s Programme. When, James moved to Thailand for his work with Friedrich Naumann Foundation, he co-founded Think Centre (Asia) in Bangkok in 2001 and stepped down as its chairman in 2002.

To round off his work with Think Centre, James published his second book, Internet Politics: Surveillance & Intimidation in Singapore which was based on the activities of the Think Centre and released in 2002. An abridged version was also published in the academic journal, Asian Journal of Social Science – Special Issue “Internet and Society” entitled Think Centre: Politics in the New Economy (2002).

The high profile and impact of the Think Centre under James’ leadership became the target of several scholarly studies. Singaporean journalist turned academic, Cherian George, devoted an entire chapter on the work of James Gomez and the Think Centre in his book entitled, Contentious Journalism and the Internet: Towards Democratic Discourse in Malaysia and Singapore. In the chapter entitled, Think Centre: Activism through Journalism, he had this to say about Centre’s impact in Singapore,

“What made it work was that many of its activities were genuinely ground-breaking, and served as test cases for democracy in Singapore. Occasionally, even the officials in charge of administering this or that regulation seemed unsure of how to handle Think Centre’s requests, as they were without precedent.”

(George, 2006)