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Latter on when I got back to the BAYAN office, after the noise barrage (and after having lunch with the Secretary-General of Bayan, Nato Reyes, in where I had a soft drink, rice, curry chicken, and a banana for P85; that’s US$1.77 !), there was a lot of activity in the anticipation that a political prisoner would be released that night from jail.
As I stated in the previous post she wasn’t released that night, but was released latter due to pressure on the government inside the prison (form the prisoners) and outside the prison.
As people were preparing to take off toward the jail (we were on the bottom floor, an open area beneath the four story Bayan building and enclosed by a large gate) I saw a young man walk in with the cutest damned baby you ever saw (she was only around six months old and had chubby cheeks). As we were introduced and after acting like a fool around the baby (you know how it is, all talking in a squeaky voice and such) I was told by one of the Bayan officers that the father of the child had actually been captured by the military and was heavily tortured during his one year of capture. They had accused him of being a communist and a member of the New People’s Army (the communist guerrilla insurgency). He was able to escape from the place and later ended up going to the UN and successfully petitioned the Court of Appeals in the Philippines for a Writ of Amparo (which forces the government to give protection to a person seeking the Writ of Amparo).
After talking to the father for a bit the same officer pointed to the security guard (an unarmed man wearing no uniform who mainly watches the gate and lets people in or keeps folks out) and said, “He lost his father under Marcos.”
Then she pointed to someone else and said, “Her daughter disappeared under [the current president] Arroyo even though [her daughter] wasn’t an activist.”
She then turned to me and said, “So you are surrounded by victims, torture victims, and people on hit lists.” She too is on a hit list as well. Obviously, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed.
Today is the day I start my series on how my experience was in the Philippines. Basically I’ll be digging through my notebook and photos and will be posting a post or two a day on what I had done for that day and my general feelings of the whole situation. So, naturally, I’ll start at day one, which I blogged about for a bit while I was in the Philippines.
My first day was quite busy, my flight arrived at MNL (Ninoy Aquino International Airport) at around 4 am on Monday, July 20th. When I got to the BAYAN office (after arriving at the Kilusang Mayo Uno office in Project 3 in Quezon City on Narra St.) on the corner of Maaralin St. and Matatag St. it was around noon and I was informed that I would be going on a four day march with workers, peasants, and youth all the way from Calamba, Southern Tagalog to Makati City, Manila.
Latter on there was a press conference at the BAYAN office condemning the fact that there are BAYAN officers and organizers that are on military hit lists and watch lists. Then I went to a “noise barrage” were around 50 people or so from different BAYAN organizations held up signs and chanted along the street (I think it was Quezon Blvd.) in Quezon City to essentially “advertise” the upcoming protest of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address the following week. During the noise barrage I bumped into two amazing organizers from FOCUS from San Jose, California, Melissa and Noemi (whom I latter went on an incredible three day trip to Isabella, Bulacan to see what the local KilusangMagbubukid ng Pilipinas chapters were doing to organize the peasants).
Later that night I arrived back at the BAYAN office where many folks were in a celebratory mood because one of their comrades and friends was being released from prison after two years (after she was originally kidnapped by the Armed Forces of the Philippines and then resurfaced after four days). The daughter of the prisoner was there getting ready to hop into a van with a group of eight or so people to greet her mother as she was to be released from prison. I was told she was originally jailed because she is an adviser for the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF) and the government had trumped up charges that she had murdered people (this was to make sure she couldn’t get bail) but she was being released because the NDF and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) are going to restore peace talks between themselves. However, I was informed the next day, despite government orders to release her, the military refused to release her (however she was eventually released I believe two days latter, after initiating a hunger strike and coordinating protests with other prisoners).
This, of course, was only day one of twenty-one, I was just beginning.
Mendiola St., Manila, Philippines: Protesters apart of BAYAN (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan) gather at Mendiola in Manila to oppose the president’s plans to change the constitution to allow her to become Prime Minister and hold power after 2010 (Photo by Jack Stephens)
Plenty of these happened during my trip, a four day march from Calamba, Southern Tagalog to Makiti City, Manila, the death of former President Cory Aquino, and me being accused by local militia of being a communist rebel.
Recently Al Robles, a figure prominent in the San Francisco Bay Area Filipino American community passed away. Here is a short excerpt from a post I did on him:
Manong Al was a native San Franciscan and fought for the rights of the poor and the elderly all throughout his life. During the 1970s he fought against the eviction of elderly Chinese and Pilipino American residents at the I-Hotel during which time the fight for the I-Hotel became a symbol of corporate greed and community solidarity across race and class. While the elders were evicted from their homes and the I-Hotel was demolished, creating a crushing defeat and feelings of despair for the Chinese and Pilipino community in San Francisco Manong Al (like many others as well) did not give up. He and the community continued to fight and kept the spot where the I-Hotel originally stood from being developed. Finally, around four or so years ago the I-Hotel rose from the ashes and became a center of housing for low-income senior citizens and a space for community organizers and the Manilatown Heritage Foundation.
Throughout the years Manong Al continued to be an advocate for the elderly and especially for the manongs and manangs of the Pilipino American community; those folks who immigrated from the Philippines to work, hunched over with broken backs, in the fields of California. As he would deliver meals to the manongs and manangs and provide other services for them he would collect their stories of joy and hardship, and he was ever the consummate oral historian, and in turn would put their experiences down in the form of poetry. He also became something of a father figure for many community artists and activists at the Kearny Street Workshop and imparted his wisdom onto the many folks who walked through those doors as well.
Coming soon (within the next two weeks) xMabaitx and I will be doing a joint half-hour podcast (either bi-weekly or monthly, not sure) that can be best described as kind of PTI format, except its just us talking about one topic that has to do with either academia, race, news, and (mostly) philosophy.
We got the idea because when we get together and talk we tend to spout off a lot of opinions and one-liners and get into deep (and often funny…to us) discussions on post-structural, post-modern, and Marxian theory.
Our upcoming inaugural podcast, which might be called PA (for “Public Announcements from a Priest and an Atheist”), will be on existentialism, mostly on Jean-Paul Sartre and possibly some of crazed Nazi Martin Heidegger. We’re not sure what to talk about, we were thinking of just quoting some of our favorite Sartre passages and then rant and rave about how hard and fucked up it is to understand him but we are also thinking about tackling Sarte’s views on Zionism.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Heads up, cause xMabaitx is ’bout to light up the podcast-sphere.
i used to be an antiracism trainer for a progressive organization a few years ago. i was really really good at.
this year i finally realized after a lot of soul searching that teaching white folks how to be good allies is not helpful to anyone.
…
its like us giving white folks all the correct rhetoric just allows for them to be able to better racists, because they are able to justify their racism using anti-racist rhetoric.
in that they are able to say things like: i realize that such and such is a function of racism and then they continue to do the same fucking thing that they just acknowledged was racist.
