Category Archive for: komentaryo

komentaryo

Freedom*

One rarely thinks about one’s freedoms until one feels it is being impinged upon, where one is being told of the price you pay for insisting on your right to free speech and independent thought.

In the course of this government’s reign in Malacañang, and despite its grand proclamations about how this is a democracy – for look at how they let critics critique and rallies happen! – I have thought more and more about the mortality of the freedoms we hold dear.

I realize that sometimes we so believe that oppression and repression can only wear the same clothes, invoke the same proclamations, that we fail to see how our freedoms are sacrificed as a matter of course, every day, in the more insidious ways that we do not talk about, sometimes, can’t even imagine. (more…)

komentaryo

#YesAllWomen

i had watched the hashtag #YesAllWomen take a life of its own on Twitter, and was fascinated that while it didn’t trend in the Philippines, the tweets from elsewhere in the world (mostly the US it seems) resonated with this Pinay so removed from that context.

i’m the last to imagine universality to be a valid enterprise, imagining as i do that we are always more complex than just being / standing for / standing against one thing. yet it is feminism still — no matter how it is not named such, no matter that it denies this label — that i realize i fall back on, if not go back to. (more…)

komentaryo

Activism* (or what is wrong with the STFAP and STS)

Activism, to me, has always been about daring to ask the more difficult questions. And wanting to do – and actually doing – something about it.

Anyone who thinks Kristel is being used for the cause of free education was obviously blind and deaf to the years of protests against tuition fee increases and the repercussions of the slow process of the State ceasing to subsidize state colleges and universities. So no, Kristel is not some mascot being used for this cause; Kristel is but proof that this cause is a valid one to take on, to engage in. Kristel proves that the current system kills, the spirit and otherwise. (more…)

komentaryo

Rage* (or what is wrong with the STFAP and STS)

When I entered the State University as a freshman in 1995, I was part of an English block that was diverse by virtue of class. It didn’t take long to find that while some of us were from well-off families (I had a Romualdez in my class for example, and there were children of lawyers), and there were some of us who were versions of middle class; many of my blockmates came from poorer families, many from the provinces. Many of them, I later found, were dependent on scholarships, mostly from elsewhere other than the State U.  (more…)

komentaryo

dear UP Manila,

one hopes for some kindness.

four UP Manila students will be appealing their case to the Board of Regents today, March 28. this past semester, all four went to all the classes they registered in, they were accepted by their teachers, and they fulfilled requirements. this past semester, they aimed for graduation and went through their thesis classes.

they did so despite the fact that they could not and did not pay their tuition fees on time. they went to school, did the work, no matter the financial problems that befell their families. they forged through and hoped that soon enough, there would be money to pay for tuition. they did the work, regardless. (more…)