Category Archive for: komentaryo

komentaryo

Lumad, first

Work kept me from visiting the Lumad Camp in the University of the Philippines Diliman early in the week. On Tuesday evening, their second night, I arrived close to midnight to bring a cash donation for the camp’s food fund and some medicines from a doctor.

Feeding 800 Lumad at P50 pesos per head is P40,000 pesos per meal after all. From the moment I heard that they were coming, this was what I wanted to raise funds and get donations for.

Thankfully, my network of real and virtual (i.e., social media) friends were ready and willing to donate, depositing varied amounts into my bank account and hoping it will help in any way. A writer-musician friend got the product he endorses to make a huge tocino donation, with some hotdogs for the kids to boot.

At the tail-end of the week, Art Relief (the heavens bless them!) was coming in to put up their mobile kitchen and feed the Lumad. Many food and water donations came in, too, throughout the week, and one can’t help but be glad that so many are rising to the occasion of the Lumad. (more…)

komentaryo

Meet the Lumad

I hear that the Lumad communities who have been in UP Diliman the past week will be transferring to Manila in Liwasang Bonifacio on November 1, and staying there at least until November 12. What I say in this essay stands still. And I hope that we all realize how these Lumad have traveled four days to get here, and are camping out in Manila for reasons far larger and more urgent and important than we can even imagine. I hope we realize that this behooves us to speak to them, engage with their stories, and listen listen listen. There is no justification for the kind of violence they have experienced, no rationale for the kind of displacement and fear they live with.  (more…)

kultura

Poe and Pinoy cinema #Eleksyon2016

On election season, it is clear when we’re hearing nothing but pa-cute and pa-media mileage, not just because we must be critical of everything we hear, but because usually it is in these instances that candidates slip up, revealing precisely how little they know of the subjects they speak of, and how they presume — they imagine! — that we will believe anything at all that they say. (more…)

komentaryo

letter from China 1

A trip to China at this point in time can only be embroiled in questions about the crisis that is the West Philippine Sea dispute.

But also it is about everything that we know of China from third world Philippines, where global news means Western media, talking about China and Asia using a gaze that is far from objective, and always necessarily – and maybe inevitably – about protecting the interests of the world-power-that-be, i.e., America.

There is nothing like seeing Asia as separate from America, to realize that we might really only be understanding very little about the world. (more…)

komentaryo

#StopLumadKillings

I’ve been away, in a place with no social media and a schedule packed so tight there has not been a lot of time for the internet. This was September 6’s RadikalChick column published in The Manila Times, on the killings of Emerito Samarca, Dionel Campos, and Bello Sinzo in Surigao del Sur, and the violence inflicted on their communities there. For more information on the #StopLumadKillings campaign, please click here for Tonyo’s website.

***
While De Lima was partying*

Where is Department of Justice (DOJ) Secretary Leila de Lima?

One cannot help but see her smiling happy face waving the L sign in front of that crowd in Cebu. One cannot help but see her dancing the “Macarena,” enjoying the festivities of her birthday.

One cannot help but wonder where she is, why we have yet to hear her voice about the cases of Emerito Samarca, Dionel Campos, and Bello Sinzo, all from Surigao de Sur. All dead in the hands of AFP units and its paramilitary group. (more…)