(please share, repost, tumblelog, tweet this statement of support)
We, University of the Philippines alumni, academe, artists, writers, students, human rights advocates, friends and colleagues of Ericson Legaspi Acosta, call for his immediate and unconditional release from his current illegal detention.
Ericson is a cultural worker and writer, and a former UP activist. During the ‘90s, he served as editor of the Philippine Collegian, UP’s official student publication. He is a former chair of the student cultural group Alay Sining, a former chair of the campus alliance STAND-UP and member of the UP Amnesty International. (Read article about Acosta’s journey from “troublesome” artist to political detainee here.)
His works as a writer, poet, thespian, singer and songwriter have remained relevant especially to the succeeding generations of UP activists in and out of the university. His bias for the poor and oppressed dates back to his campus days.
Last February 13, soldiers in San Jorge, Samar arrested him on mere suspicion that he is a member of the New People’s Army. Ericson was unarmed and was in the company of a local barangay official when he was arrested without warrant. He was held for three days without charges and was subjected to continuous tactical interrogation by the military. He has been charged with illegal possession of explosives and is detained at the Calbayog sub-provincial jail.
His rights continue to be violated each day he remains incarcerated. The fabricated charges are intended to keep him under government’s control and scrutiny. His frail appearance in the photo released to media by the AFP heightens concerns for his health given the conditions in jail.
The road to genuine and lasting peace cannot be paved with government’s continued iron-fist policy of arresting its perceived enemies on mere suspicion. It behooves the Aquino government to forge favorable conditions in the conduct of its peace efforts by releasing political prisoners.
Ericson has dedicated his life to serving the people. We, his friends, colleagues, family and supporters, call on the Aquino government to effect his immediate release by dropping the trumped-up charges.
FREE ERICSON ACOSTA NOW!
RELEASE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS!
Support the Ericson Acosta Legal Defense Fund
Dear Friends,
Last February 13, former UP activist, journalist and cultural worker Ericson Acosta was arrested by the military in San Jorge, Samar on the suspicion that he was an NPA rebel. He is currently detained at the Calbayog sub-provincial jail and faces trumped-up charges of illegal possession of explosives. Contrary to the AFP claims, Ericson was unarmed and in the company of a local barangay official at the time of his arrest. He was held for three days without charges and was subjected to continuous tactical interrogation by the military.
Ericson was a former editor of the Philippine Collegian in UP, a former chair of the student cultural group Alay Sining, and a former chair of the campus alliance STAND-UP. He is a writer, journalist, poet, thespian, singer and songwriter. His works remain relevant on and off campus. Since his UP days, Ericson has worked closely with the poor and oppressed.
We his friends, together with his family and human rights groups, are working for his immediate release and for the dropping of all the fabricated charges made against him.
We appeal for your support for the legal defense fund which we have put up for him. The funds raised will go to Ericson’s legal defense and medical needs. There are the inherent difficulties faced by the family who are based in Metro Manila while Ericson is detained in Samar.
Through your help, we can see to it that Ericson will be released and be reunited with his family and the people he serves.
You may donate through the account:
Isaias Acosta
BDO The Block SM City North branch
Savings Account # 0251065464
For international donations:
Isaias Acosta
BDO The Block SM City North branch
Savings Account: 00-0251065464
Routing #: 021000089
Swiftcode: BNORPHMM
because I can already hear Willie Revillame’s defense, against all the anger directed at him given this video of the little boy contestant who danced, and did so ala macho dancer on Willing Willie. I can hear him invoking the fact that he did not teach the boy to dance that way, that even he didn’t expect that kind of dancing, which is obvious in that viral video, too. I can hear him saying it’s the parents’ responsibility, that the parents themselves must have taught the boy this dance. I can hear him saying: here, in Willing Willie, every Filipino can be himself, and the boy’s dance was part of that.
worse, I can hear Willie invoking some “us versus them” rhetoric for greater effect: ‘yang mga ‘yan, hindi kase ‘yan mahirap, kaya hinuhusgahan nila ang mahirap, kaya hinuhusgahan nila ang show na para sa mahirap.
then for good measure he will respond to anti-Willie and Willing Willie sentiments: inaapi ninyo ang show na tunay na nagpapasaya sa bawat Pilipino. on cue his eyes will tear up.
I know this because I’ve watched Willie, both in Wowowee (ABS-CBN2) and Willing Willie (TV5), though the latter has been because of Shalani Soledad, which is of course beside the point. my point being: bakit ngayon lang tayo na-offend?
and when I say ngayon lang, I mean this concerted effort to stand up for little boy Jan-Jan and the perceived abuse he suffered on the show. when I point out this fact of public outcry happening only now, I mean what of those countless — countless! — times that these Willie Revillame shows have offended, are offensive, which is really pretty much most of the time.
bakit ngayon lang tayo na-offend? is a question that is not about forgiving Revillame or his show. it’s a question that’s about figuring out how these current conditions with regards Jan-Jan are different from the five years of Wowowee and the less than a year’s existence of Willing Willie. or maybe it isn’t different at all, we just got this one on a youtube video. in which case what does this really say about us?
well, for one thing, it’s obvious that many of those who speak of the Jan-Jan issue now haven’t really been watching Willie or his shows, maybe not a lot of local TV at all. because if you did watch these shows, you’d know that Willie’s responses, the ones I mentioned and the ones I cannot even imagine, have been used before. you’d know that this is rhetoric that’s borne of two things: (1) those of us from the educated and/or middle and/or upper classes calling him crass and bastos and offensive, and (2) Willie turning things around and making it seem like he’s the one being abused here, that we are the ones pointing a finger because we are discriminating against him and his show, and those who watch it.
if you were watching local TV at all before all this, you’d know that this kind of reaction only fuels rhetoric that also always means more money in Willie’s pocket, and about as much for whatever network he works for. it’s rhetoric that has always worked to his advantage, and has just meant making that divide bigger between us who sit and tweet and write FB notes and statuses, and the masses who go and line up for Willie’s shows.
this is class divide at its most stark and painful. yet, only Willie will invoke it to be true, and in the process he’ll run all the way to the bank with it.
as would any company (network or otherwise) he’s worked for. and here it needs to be said that if we’d actually and truly like to pinpoint the culprit in this cultural degradation that has brought about this little boy dancing ala macho dancer on TV, that would be ABSCBN’s Wowowee and the kind of imagination it justified as entertainment. if we were to go to the root of this problem, it would be that contemporary television culture isn’t so much about money for the capitalists, as it actually is about an audience that is willing to die (and already have) for some TV time that’s equal to earning some money.
if we were going to the root of why Willie and his shows even exist, we would need to deal with the fact that there’s a needfor it. there’s a need that’s being met by the one show that gives out money like it’s a can of Birch Tree circa Kuya Germs in GMA Supershow.
and no, to say that Willing Willie appeals to the lowest common denominator doesn’t help either. in fact it makes things worse, proving Willie’s accusation correct that we are all just (mis)judging him and his show on the level of class. speaking of these shows’ values (entertainment and otherwise) would also fail at seeing the conditions that allow for it to exist, with or without Willie there. it’s also to discriminate against this audience who are there because life is that hard, and because in truth these people see it as a way to some money, a way that they work hard for, falling in line as they do for hours or days, traveling as they might from across the country. it’s no joke to be part of a Willie show audience. even less of a joke when someone leaves the show with P10,000 pesos.
which is what Jan-Jan did. after he danced the first time, with tears in his eyes, Willie gave him P10,000 pesos. then Jan-Jan’s tears disappeared. then every time that song played he just began dancing, like a wind-up doll. then Willie makes like he discovered a talent in Jan-Jan and made him dance some more. surely to give the little boy even more money after.
and this is what we took offense at, yes? but which part of it exactly? the fact that this little boy was like a wind-up doll? the fact that he was dancing like a macho dancer? the fact that he was crying as he danced? the fact that he was given money?
these are important questions because as I watched that video, while I knew what was offensive about it, I also knew that this is standard fare for a Willie show. this is not to say it happens often that a little boy will do some macho dancing. but it does happen that a contestant will be brought to tears because they forgot their cheer, or weren’t sure what to say, or were just too darn overwhelmed to be in front of the audience and cameras. it happens that little girls — oh a great number of them! — dance sexily skimpily clad in clothes ala sexbomb girls. and you know that ispageti dance is no wholesome dance move right?
and so I do wonder why there hasn’t been public outcry about these instances. I do wonder what kind of double standard we are practicing here as we scream: child abuse! in light of Willing Willie, and every other show like it. I wonder how much of this is us reacting to things we don’t know. or is this all a matter of (our) taste?
this is Bugoy Drilon Carino (salamat yol jamendang sa correction) reality show contestant and guest who danced for Willie on Wowowee. we didn’t care that he danced hiphop did we? had he cried while doing so would we have cared?
the fact is we don’t quite know why Jan-Jan was crying. what is obvious though is that he wasn’t crying when he was called onstage, nor was he crying when Willie was interviewing him. the camera was on his aunt (who had brought him to the show) for a bit as she cried because she finally got to hug Willie. the camera was back on Jan-Jan to give a message to his aunt and father (who was there, too), and that’s when it seemed like he was close to tears. Willie tells him it’s ok, bakit ka naiiyak? he asks kindly, even giving the kid a hug. those tears would fall as Jan-Jan was dancing an obviously rehearsed performance.
after, he is given P10,000 pesos by Willie, Jan-Jan pockets the money excitedly and stays onstage to play the game. the music plays again, and he promptly dances on cue. he loses the game and is close to tears again. the game unfolds with the other contestant, and after a commercial break, Jan-Jan is back on stage again doing the same dance, this time with no tears.
it’s clear here why this is offensive, even clearer once you see the video, but what it reminds me is how late the hero we all are in taking offense only now. i do wonder if this is just because we’ve got Jan-Jan on video? or if this this is us acting on our hatred of Willie to begin with, being reminded of the fact that he is too crass, too bastos, for our TV viewing pleasures? maybe this is us barking up the wrong tree really, thinking Jan-Jan as a cause to rally around, Willie as the person to rally against, forgetting that in fact there is this:
the conditions of nation are such that parents of impoverished families will knowingly teach their own kids what they imagine is unique and different, at least enough to warrant extra cash from gameshows like Willie’s (and here Jan-Jan’s parents were successful weren’t they). the conditions are such that when this little kid danced, his father and aunt cheered him on; and when Willie poked fun at the whole act, the little boy had stopped crying because he already had 10k tucked in his pocket. the conditions are such that an absurd situation like this one can exist on local primetime TV. these conditions are exactly what must change, this bigger context is what we must be putting our energies into changing, really.
because these conditions are what allow for the crassness of Willie, the production’s lack of sense, TV5’s MVP raking it in the way a capitalist should. at the same time, to that little boy that is Jan-Jan, and to every other little girl that’s been on a game show gyrating in an outfit she shouldn’t be in to begin with, it’s about the money that’s possible to win in these spaces, it’s about the transaction that might unfold given their talent, the more unique and different the better.
it’s a transaction that we are not privy to, we cannot even imagine as relevant or necessary in our lives, not one we would think to join ever. yet it’s one that has fed mouths forgotten by government, has fueled movement from across the nation to Manila, unlike any trip we imagine taking. it’s a transaction that parents who are responsible for their children consciously and willfully enter. a transaction we might not agree with, but really, why do we even think we are the point?
we are farthest from the point. our anger towards Willie and Willing Willie will barely scratch the surface of possibility of both being cancelled out of local TV. in fact at this point it’s almost something they can shrug off, and something to use against us. because here we are shooting from the hip, angry and disgusted, in the process revealing our social class. we forget that Willie will know to see this for what it is: the class divide at work, one that we refuse to deal with, one we will deny, and ultimately one we will not put out P10,000 pesos for. even if we could.
The first thing that strikes you when you enter the Looking For Juan (L4J) art space (Serendra, Taguig City) for the Mga Kuwentong EDSA exhibit is how familiar the images on both the small and large canvasses are, with faces and figures both real and abstract that speak of a time we might be too young to remember.
But the icons / slogans / colors continue to have currency.
Two artists are part of this exhibit, from different generations, both working with the EDSA Revolution of 1986 as premise. The works here are so obviously different, the similarities are just startling.
The failure happens first on the level of being disallowed to take photos in the Ayala Museum, something that’s even stranger when the exhibit is purportedly about people power, and yet the people aren’t allowed to take photos anywhere in that museum, a reminder really of why I’ve stopped going there.
It took an exhibit like Revolution Revisited(Ayala Museum, Makati City now up at on a mall and campus tour) by photographer Kim Komenich to make me step foot in this museum again; it is also an exhibit that I can barely be happy about. Komenich’s curatorial note attached to the exhibit is a failure in itself, a re-writing of history from an obviously removed perspective, one that has stuck to a narrative of EDSA 1986 that has since become highly questionable, if not proven false.
Two of the more glaring things: many factors informed the people’s march to the streets on February 22 to 25 1986. There was the cheating in the snap elections, the only one that Komenich acknowledges, but also: the civil disobedience campaign that had Cory and the people going up against the oligarchies and capitalists, the military defection of Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel Ramos even when that was filled with too many silences still, and the truth that since Ninoy’s funeral march the people had gained an amount of courage that just kept on growing, through the Cory campaign, then the snap elections and poll watching, fearlessly ignoring the possibility of being picked up by the ever-watchful Marcos military.
Another glaring historical mistake was the assertion that February 25 1986 was the birth of what Komenich calls “the people power phenomenon.” What of tanks being stopped on February 23? What of people welcoming defiant soldiers who refused to disperse the crowds on February 24? What of artists and celebrities coming out to the streets and providing entertainment through the wee hours of February 23 to February 25?
I cringe at the idea that the 25th was the one day that gave birth to people power. I dare argue that its birth happened when people showed literally the kind of power they hold collectively, not when the dictator and his family began packing their things to leave Malacañang. I daresay that people power was born when people joined Cory’s civil disobedience campaign and literally refused to buy San Miguel and Nestle products, emptied Rustan’s of its shoppers, closed down banks, deemed the economy unstable. These were the same people who thought to, who knew to, stop tanks at EDSA. They proved people power then.
Komenich’s reading of EDSA ‘86 to be about cheating in the snap elections and the Marcos dictatorship ultimately just allowed it to revolve around the Cory-Marcos dichotomy, which wasn’t all that those four days was about. This reading of EDSA ’86 actually set this exhibit up for failure.
Which is not to say that it didn’t try to speak of the people, too; except that the way it did only begged the question: but in what light? The exhibit begins with photos of the every man pre-EDSA ‘86: a farmer with a carabao in the fields, a woman carrying a new born baby surrounded by even more of her children, a malnourished boy looking out onto the world. Then Revolution Revisited goes back and forth, from a photo of Cory Aquino’s proclamation rally and the aforementioned every Pinoy in 1986, to 1983 onwards with photos of Lean Alejandro, Evelio Javier, Ninoy Aquino and the snap elections. What was more surprising to me than the fact that our local photographers have their own versions of these photos, is the fact that of the four days of EDSA, what this exhibit had was only three days — three days! There were no photos of Day 3, February 24 1986, unless my turning around and going back to look for even just one photo was a failure in curation.
Day Three of course was a crucial time of defections and false alarms, people jumping and celebrating, government stations being taken over, as well as the threat of Marines in Camp Aguinaldo poised to shoot at Crame. Its absence in a revisiting of EDSA ’86 just seemed like a huge dark gaping hole.
Meanwhile, the stretch of colored photos at the end of this black and white exhibit highlighted even more the distance of the power players from the people who made EDSA happen. That these personalities were allowed to speak about EDSA seems like the most redundant of things: we know what presidential daughter, now sister, Pinky Aquino-Abelleda, as well as Fidel Ramos, Juan Ponce Enrile and the rich of this country, would say about EDSA ‘86: they’ve been saying it the past 25 years.
And then there is this: these personalities are already the ones who contribute to a mainstream narrative that speaks of EDSA ’86 on the superficial level of unity and the general notion of change. They are also part of the oligarchies and powers that Cory had set out to fight through the civil disobedience campaign. Pray tell why would I want a businessman and capitalist to talk to me about EDSA ’86?
Ah, but Revolution Revisited also lets the faces of the every Pinoy in the beginning of the exhibit to speak at this point. Their photos are taken within the same contexts as before, reminding us that the farmer is still a farmer, the impoverished mother is still such, except that it’s been 25 years. Yes, nothing has changed for them, and this they also say in so many words. The malnourished boy has since died, and his family is still as poor as they were in ’86.
Thus this exhibit ends with the heaviest of feelings about EDSA ’86, highlighting the idea that it has led to nothing, that it was to a certain extent pointless. To have ended with the impoverished and the constancy of their conditions is to forget that EDSA ‘86 was a promise of possibility. That the poor are still such, that the conditions have stayed the same, is the fault of those big personalities who were in power yet have failed to truly affect change. It is not the failure of EDSA ‘86, or of people power at all.
Revolution Revisited in this form is thus just a reminder of the fact that Komenich’s perspective is that of someone who might have lived with us in those four days of EDSA, and who might think himself one with us. But ultimately this exhibit is reminder that he is just a foreigner who fails tremendously to see and celebrate EDSA ’86 for what it was then, and what it should be about now: a time when the greatness of a people was proven by their collective ability to be fearless and courageous in the face of possible death.
This exhibit’s revisiting of EDSA 1986 fails the people power revolution; as such it also ultimately fails all of us.
Revolution Revisited ran until March 5 2011 at the Ayala Museum, Makati Avenue corner Dela Rosa St., Makati City, and is now on a mall andcampus tour.
EDSA 1986 historical facts from reading Chronology of a Revolution by Angela Stuart-Santiago. All of it is up at EDSARevolution.com.
The road to genuine and lasting peace cannot be paved with government’s continued iron-fist policy of arresting its perceived enemies on mere suspicion. It behooves the Aquino government to forge favorable conditions in the conduct of its peace efforts by releasing political prisoners.