Category Archive for: middle class

komentaryo

(Middle Class) Crisis: Why rising from May 2022 has been difficult

It would be silly to talk about the present of politics in this country without acknowledging two, maybe three, things.

First, that we are at a standstill. From the ranks of our specific educated, middle to elite classes, generally woke and politicized, that campaigned hard for a Marcos-Duterte loss in May 2022 — there is little movement happening. Sure we went back to our old lives since May, we went back to the daily grind, but that is a movement that is about survival for majority of us — we have no choice given skyrocketing prices and the multifarious crises nation faces. We have no choice, and know no other way, but to go back to the lives we had pre-elections, no matter how frustrated, angry, sad we are. No matter how little we understand (or how much) of why things turned out the way it did.

Which brings us to two: here, where we are, a year after the 2022 elections, we have to admit the possibility that we have stood still all along — because that is what happens to movement when all it does is go around in circles, or repeat its own mistakes, or deny how big the enemy is and how the battlefield has changed.

It is what happens when we cannot get over ourselves, when we only listen to what we have to say, when we insist that we are the only ones who know what’s happening, who know what should be done, who have the answer to questions — because we lived through a past that was similar, because we are older, we are the fourth estate, which is replaceable with what’s unsaid: we are the gatekeepers, we are the bearers of truth, we are sacred cows, not to be questioned, not to be critiqued.

It is what happens when we refuse to see the possibility that maybe we should start with first asking the right questions, so that we get the productive answers, in dialogue with as large a group of people as possible, open to the probability that the ways we know, the perspectives we take, might not apply to the present anymore. (more…)

komentaryo

47 days: Bring Back Leni #Halalan2022

To some extent, it is no surprise how the closer we are to the May elections, the deeper we are into our echo chambers. This is, after all, what it means when more people agree on something. After all, the number of people it takes to disbelieve Covid numbers is also the same number of people you need to debunk Presidential surveys; the number of people you need to start believing SMNI would be the same number of people you need to start championing Google trends as the basis for “real” presidential survey numbers. The more you are in a bubble of a rally, the more you believe this is it, the election can be won by this.

That we are mirroring the actions of the other side should be no surprise, but it also bears articulation.

Here, a basic lesson in gentrification. The spaces we inhabit are based on our privilege, as it is based on the lack of it. Our access to certain areas of a city dictates the same. Places within the same city, even in the same zipcode, can completely disenfranchise the poor. Emerald Avenue, Ayala Avenue, and all the “business districts” do this. This is why the same stretch of JP Rizal that ties together Cembo, Pembo, Rembo is a space as fancy as Rockwell and Powerplant mall.

This is not the time to problematize gentrification. The point is only to acknowledge that the choices made for where the big Robredo rallies are held is indicative of the audience it caters to. 

And that audience is us, people who are already voting for VP Leni, who are already voting for the 1Sambayan slate, who are already in the echo chamber. We are the ones who would not think twice about going to the business districts, who would not feel out-of-place in these spaces, and might even have friends and family who live in the area. The question really is why VP Leni is spending time and energy still talking to us, the people who are already on her side?   (more…)

komentaryo

61 days: content wars, elitism, fandoms, radio silence #Halalan2022

After the 2019 elections, I gave a short talk at an event in CubaoX and said very clearly and pointedly: this is a propaganda war. The 2019 results tell us that no matter student surveys, and good debate mileage, and better candidates, we are on a losing streak. The Liberal Party and the Left have public opinion going against it, no matter the delusions our social media echo chambers allow us to have. On ground, and in reality, a chunk of the population (43% is the number I’ve heard) are a hard no on LP, and going into the elections, this would be a hard no against VP Leni.

Did changing to the color pink from yellow mean anything? I think it did, especially for the middle and upper classes who are as incensed with LP and the kind of politics they stood for—2010 to 2016 is very very recent history after all. But the question now, with 61 days to go, is how far the pink has brought us, beyond our echo chambers, despite the rally numbers.

Yesterday a message went around calling on everyone to get out of echo chambers because despite the massive turnout and social and mainstream media noise about the consecutive rallies Robredo had last week, in reality the share of voice online was still dominated by Marcos. Again, as with surveys, this is data—real numbers that should tell us whether or not any and all parts of this campaign are going in the directions it needs to.

Do the surveys contradict the rally numbers? I don’t think so. The rallies and surveys come together as proof of the complexity of the electoral landscape. The numbers out there are important—these give the impression of mass support, and provides us with the content we need. But the numbers on the surveys are just as important, especially given how these also function as a way to prove mass support. (more…)

komentaryo

Generation Exhausted #Halalan2022

Since Duterte became President, consistently undoing democracy, constantly violating people’s rights, just generally trampling on all our freedoms, and swinging the pendulum to the extreme of no accountability and no transparency, layered with flagrant lies and utter incompetence, I’ve held out for Generation X.

This is not some blind, baseless assessment of what it is my generation can do. Instead, it comes from a very keen sense of where we’ve come from, what is at stake for us, and the kind of future we still want. So many of us after all have families of our own, children who will grow up in this nation we all love to hate but love regardless, and one would like to think that there are enough of us who cannot imagine leaving.

Pinning my hopes on middle class Generation X is also based on recent history. At another time when we were fighting for freedom, a civil society of private citizens, the Church, schools, businesses rose in this country and worked together towards taking back democracy. They built a civil disobedience campaign that paralyzed businesses run by the dictator’s cronies, they boycotted San Miguel Beer and Magnolia Ice Cream, pulled out their cash from crony banks, stopped shopping in Rustan’s.

We are the generation born to parents and grandparents who made this happen. And we are this generation that might have been in a great crisis of apathy in the mid-90’s, but—I’d like to think—was really about getting our head together about nation. What is wrong with it, given the status quo it keeps, and the possibilities for re-imagining the ways of circumventing it.

But then the pandemic happened.

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komentaryo

The problem with boomers #Halalan2022

I started 2021 with such hope in the possibility of gathering together the politicized generations X, millennial, and Z towards affecting 2022 election outcomes. I sent out documents, talked to people, revised the documents, talked to even more people and groups, and kept that hope going. The vision, many agreed, was wonderful. We want to talk platforms not personalities; we want to champion the issues that we think are important for 2022, list the demands that we want candidates to talk about and take a stand on, if they want our vote.

I had hoped that if the Filipinos in their 40s, (Generation X, the Martial Law generation) and younger (millennials, gen Z) could organize themselves into the monolith that they are, proven as that is by the fact of our having risen to the occasion of the most vulnerable during the lockdowns last year, then all other generations (hey boomers!), and sectors (business sector, NGOs and CSOs, the Church, the schools) would have no choice but to listen, and join in.

I had thought that this was the perfect time, when so many of us in the middle have been politicized by the past pandemic year, and when it is clear that we have much to unite on not just among ourselves but especially and more importantly, with the masses. We have all suffered in this pandemic and under this governance. There is no reason to imagine we cannot unite on that.

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