Category Archive for: pulitika

kultura

classism at its best: the “jologs” and the blogosphere

when i heard about what happened at the U.P. Fair on Friday the 13th, i didn’t think it was anything extraordinary. i’ve been going to the u.p. fair since 1995, and what the blogosphere has labeled the “jologs” have always been part and parcel of the affair. even then, and everytime i’ve gone, an imagined mosh pit is expected, some minor scuffles might happen, and what i’ve learned to do is get out of the way. then and now, i’ve always called them the punks and nothing else. because that really is what they are. and because they paid for the same ticket to enter the Sunken Garden, there is never reason for me to insist that my space cannot be theirs.

and so when, via Manolo, i was treated to the blogosphere’s general agreement that the “jologs” who broke through the walls were the issue here, i was surprised. even more so when i realized that most other bloggers agreed as well with the Construct‘s assessment of the situation, which doesn’t only “condemn the jologs” but also quite clearly misunderstands the situation:

I believe it was a defining moment for the UP community. We have always regarded ourselves as the future leaders of the country, the advocates of democracy, and the protectors of our fellow Filipinos especially the masa. Last night was different though. It was clearly us versus them. The educated versus morons. The burgis versus the masa.

so many things are wrong about this, i’m surprised as well that no one has taken him to task, no one has spent the time and energy to explain what is wrong here, with this. so here i’ve made time and found energy to do so:

(1) to invoke the notions of “us versus them, the educated versus the morons” limns over the fact that the issue here is not who’s educated and who isn’t, it’s who paid for tickets but didn’t get into the venue. A comment to another anti-“jologs” entry, screams the truth about what was going on outside of the walls of the Sunken Garden — but no one seems to be listening. Thumbbook, as part of the “them” that Construct, well, constructs, recounts that after buying tickets, waiting in line for two hours, and finally deciding to watch the concert from outside, some things became clear to her:

Whoever organized the concert had obviously failed to consider that there will always be these young punk groups who will cause havoc. If you have the balls to call in the best rock groups, you have to be ready for a mini-summer slam in your hands. It was very disappointing. Everyone who had tickets and couldn’t get in were rooting for these punks! I hope next time, they organize rock concerts better. I feel bad for those who were hurt, but I put the blame on the organizers because they should have been responsible.

the truthfulness here is infallible, and in fact points a finger not at the punks (thank god, Thumbbook knows to call them what they are!), but at the organizers who sold tickets but didn’t want to let buyers in. if there should be an “us versus them” here, it should be the ticket buyers versus the show’s organizers. or is Construct saying that “them” from the outside, which of course includes those who cheered the punks on, were all uneducated? then that would just be wrong.

(2) to say that the morons = the masa, is to say that U.P. itself has ceased to accept the “masa” into its studentry, which is absolutely false. regardless of the demographics, U.P. remains as the only University in this country where the “masa” thrives, even with the P15,000-peso tuition fee. if Construct has yet to encounter his masa classmates, then it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.  all he needs to do is start having conversations with people who aren’t part of his “us” and he might be enlightened. in truth, and i bet you, Construct’s “us the educated, us the burgis” who were inside the Sunken Garden, included the masa he so pinpoints as “them”.

and let’s say Construct can’t find a masa student to save his life, then there are all those manangs and manongs who keep the University’s wheels turnings: Ikot and Toki jeep drivers, mga manininda, mga staff, mga taga-Shopping Center, mga xerox boys and girls, mga janitor, i could go on and on. they are as much U.P. people as the U.P. student, and yes, they are all part of the masa he says don’t belong in the U.P. Fair.

(3) Construct insists that this was a “defining moment” because he had always considered himself as the “future leader of this country, the advocate of democracy, the protector of the masa”.  not only is this the cliche that has rung false for many a U.P. graduate (hello GMA’s human rights abuses), it is also obviously misunderstood here.if true that Construct believes that this is what his U.P. education stands for, then he should be able to see that the punks — the “jologs” as he calls them — are his responsibility as well. that the goal must be to understand them, not condemn them. that yes, they endangered his life, but why did it come to that? what was going on here, other than the black and the white of theus and the them?

because it’s too easy to simply label them as the masses who are uneducated morons and link them to your assessment of EDSA 3. if there’s anything a U.P. education must teach you, it’s that there are many grays here, and that if you deem yourself the “most educated” then you are also in the best position to understand. to call people names does nothing but reveal your own social class. if this was a “defining moment”, it is only so for people like Construct, who were under the impression that they owned U.P., that they are the only ones who are worthy. Smoke gets it right:

One gets the sense of outrage from The Construct: HOW DARE THEY BITE THE HANDS OF THE PEOPLE WHO WILL ONE DAY LEAD THEM AND PROTECT THEM? KATY BAR THE DOOR! DON’T EVER LET THESE INGRATES IN! This, unfortunately, seems to be the subtext here.

a subtext that reeks of the most horrible case of classism, which the U.P. student — of all students — must have been cured of, if not made conscious of, by her mere presence in a University that includes the bigger community that surrounds it. Marocharim insists that the U.P. student brings into the university her own ideology. but you know, it would take apathy for any U.P. student not to be affected by the world that surrounds the campus, from which the campus lives, and within which the U.P. studentry is but another sector, not the whole deal. it is this as well that makes the whole consensus of exclusivity for the University problematic. to wall it up, as Smoke has discovered, is almost impossible. and yet this is what Construct ends with:

<…> This event, I think, will come under great scrutiny of the University officials. In the advent of crimes committed to members of the academic community by “outsiders” (the Veteran’s Bank robbery, the rapes, the thefts and robberies, etc…), I think that they will be considering “closing” the University and limiting its access to UP people. Sure, we’ll be like Ateneo or any other coño private campus, but check the demographics today. What’s the difference?

more than problematic though, the whole “close the university” conclusion is dangerous. because we are under a U.P. administration that has consistently been trying to make the University more exclusive to “U.P. people” that is, only U.P. students and employees: imposing a no-i.d.-no-entry policy, putting up gates and closing many of the university’s entrances and exits. and while we presume that this makes things safer for us who own cellphones laptops and mp3 players, it glosses over the fact that in the process, the members of the bigger U.P. community are being disenfranchised. if you are part of any of the communities (Krus na Ligas, Areas 1 2 and 3, the Hardins, among others), if you’ve been allowed to build businesses in this area (the talyers along many of the minor roads, the Bonsai Garden, for example), if you’ve lived here all your life but are not enrolled or employed by the University, why must you be disenfranchised from the spaces of U.P.? this is as much yours as it is theirs who hold I.D.’s and form 5’s.

truth to tell, the blogsphere’s classist consensus can and will be used by the University admin to continue its project of oppressing its own in the name of security. and in the end, all it will do is highlight difference among U.P.’s many sectors, and allow for the U.P.’s “educated”to deem their security as more important than the oppression of so many others who are part of the community.

this community is what makes U.P. different from Ateneo, demographics notwithstanding. it is this community that we learn to be mindful of, that we deal with everyday, that we do become dependent on. we live with them, we breathe the same air, we are in fact one and the same.

i don’t doubt that the punks could’ve started throwing stones at the people inside the Sunken Garden, and that they had the capacity to actually take down those walls. i do not question the truth that many of the people there — and i’m sure they weren’t ALL u.p. students — were scared shitless. but i also don’t doubt that this was the organizers’ fault as Thumbbook has said. Smoke goes so far as to mention the Wowowee incident in pointing a finger at whose fault this all is. all i invoke is command responsibility.

meanwhile, we have Construct, invoking the ideology of the “us and them, the educated and the morons, the burgis and the masses” which really does reveal more than just one blogger’s (and his supporters’) classist ideology. it reveals how careless we have become about invoking oppression.

komentaryo

stimulus via SSS? utang na loob!

i will not even get into the legality of Chairman Romula Neri’s decision to use Social Security System’s funds for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s stimulus package — Rep. Liza Masa is doing a good job of that already. nor will i get into the probability that this will expectedly be used by GMA to win the 2010 elections, because her government always seems to think that the downtrodden will be easily impressed by contractual jobs, with little pay and no benefits (oh such little faith in the intelligence of the oppressed masses!).

what i will insist on is this: the Social Security System is in no position to give out its money, because it has yet to even serve its members. and you know i’m not even one to complain about long lines (i come from the University of Pila after all) and rude employees (i’ve had my share of government offices after all).  all i ask is that the SSS be able to give its members what’s due them: our I.D.’s when we need them and access to our benefits with as little of those bureaucratic hassles as possible.

and yet what we are treated to is an unfair system that puts members through hell because it is disorganized, unjust, and downright unacceptable.

let me begin with this: those of us who live in the Mandaluyong and Pasig areas have to go all the way to Quezon City to get our Identification Cards processed because both the Mandaluyong and Pasig SSS branches have broken I.D. card machines. Mandaluyong has had a broken machine for oh, three years? and the Pasig branch for over a year. this is not just inconvenient, it is unforgivable given the fact that in order to get any — ANY! — of your benefits you must have at least your SS ID claim stub.

but of course when you are desperate, and in need, you will go that length of traveling from wherever you are in this country to that rare SSS branch that has an SS I.D. machine. so i get there at 7:30 AM, thinking that i was to early only to find that i was too late. i was number 442 — four hundred f*** forty two! — and my I.D. application was only going be entertained four hours later.  i had to wait outside the building, in the heat, with no food and no clean comfort room.

when you finally face the scowling SSS employee, she processes your papers with nary a smile, and you are told to return at 7AM the following day for the I.D. picture. and i do, at a little over 7AM, only to find that they started giving out cards at 5:30, when the first member arrived. and i was now number 96 — an improvement nonetheless, i think.

but now the issue is this: you are told to wait inside the building and not outside, and you are told to sit in proper order on the row upon row of seats. you are also told by the Security Guard that if you step out for any reason, you might lose your place and there will be no getting it back, sorry na lang kayo. and as the airconditioning is on high (it’s a huge space after all), and i’m stuck in my assigned seat (the guard is a scary scary man), i am forced to keep my pee in, kidney stones and UTI be damned!

i listen to those around me, and i realize that i am better off.  two men who met while waiting, started talking about having to leave — one for Dubai, the other for “Saudi” — both as construction workers. they expect to get their I.D.s today because they need it to travel.  meanwhile, a pregnant lady two seats to my left who, by the looks of it was well into her third trimester, was talking about how much money she needed for giving birth, and how difficult it has been being pregnant and trying to get her SSS maternity benefit. the old man beside me was holding his forms for dear life, newly-employed as he was, and needing an SSS I.D. to get his employment papers properly processed. he should’ve been there to collect retirement benefits.

we were all finally being told to enter these cubicles with the oh so rare computers for I.D. processing, one-by-one. and when we are done with the process of putting in a Personal Identification Number (P.I.N. — which not everyone had a sense of), and giving our electronic thumbprint and signature, we are told this: your I.D.s will be delivered via snail mail in seven months. SEVEN F*@%^ MONTHS!

and i couldn’t help but wonder about those who needed it already, because they are due to fly out and work elsewhere for home and family. i wonder about the old man whose papers might only be processed when he has his I.D. in hand. i do think about how unfair the whole process has been, because the difficulty is uncalled for.  had there been a machine in Mandaluyong, i can’t imagine that i would be number 442 OR 96. had there been more machines, and more people manning them, as well as more people printing out those I.D.s, i can’t imagine that it should take seven months to get these via mail.

and ultimately, i can’t imagine that any of this can’t be fixed with the P12.5 billion pesos of SSS money that Romulo Neri has so generously decided to dole out for the stimulus package. it is unbelievable that given the horrible third world system of the SSS, which puts its members through hell in its incapacity to serve properly and punctually, it is so willing to spend on “saving the world” even when it is not clear about where the money’s going. that the SSS will be “spending” its members’ money — that which they work hard for, that which they fall in line for, that which they expect must be easy to claim — makes this all the more despicable.

SSS Chairman Romula Neri wants to save the world. and as a member who has been oppressed by the SSS’ (lack of a) system, my response is simple: utang na loob!

komentaryo

don’t forget the woman

it’s easy to get lost in the mudslinging that goes into debates about any bill that touches on reproductive health and its contingent issues (contraceptive use, family planning) in this country. what with the notions of morality and rights, the Church and the State, religion versus the law, that get thrown in for good measure. talaga naman, the weak at heart would rather not say anything. baka nga namang matawag ka pang imoral (which, given the Church’s definition isn’t a bad thing at all), o demonyo.

minsan, mas madaling pagtawanan, the things that are revealed about our institutions in the midst of issues like this. one can’t help but laugh, for example, at the outmoded ways in which the Church views its devotees as: (a) living sexless lives or (b) responsible, compassionate and intelligent adults, who aren’t wont to give in to sexual needs. anyone who does research on this issue will also be brought to sites like this one, where Pro-Life people insist on keeping families smaller by what they call the “mucus method” – where women will keep track of their vaginal discharge, (maybe even touching it and smelling it for good measure, you can never be sure after all), so that they know when they can have sex (which is of course dependent on whether or not they want to have children).

recently though, the laughter has been a pained one. the kind that’s premised on a fear of the Church and its ability to insist on things political using their notion of morality. particularly given the ways in which GMA has tried her best to keep this institution happy – even if only through her silences and wry smiles. it’s even harder to be hopeful when all we hear from her comes from Gov. Joey Salceda, who has the gall to reduce the issue and the government’s stand to this: “There’s very little pressure for drastic change in the policy, which the President says she wants to be consistent,” he said. He added partly in jest, “Apparently, there are no people going out on the streets calling for less sex because it is sinfully delightful.” what a pointless thing to say.

along with the silence, or stupid soundbites, from GMA’s camp, there’s the Church and its believers, coming out in droves, talking about immorality and death, and all the possible evils that a reproductive health bill will bring on. where we talk about population control, they’ll say but the population’s fine, what we need are economic policies to take care of our admittedly growing number. where we talk about impoverished families with too many children, they say but i have eight children, and i’m perfectly happy! where we talk about parents’ right to choose how many children to have, when to stop having children, and how to keep from having children; they’ll point a finger and scream: a culture of sin, a culture of evil! anti-life advocates!

but this is not, cannot simply be, a debate that’s about pro-life versus pro-choice. that debate, to begin with, is premised on an abortion law, not a reproductive health bill. a bill, that in its current version continues to insist that abortion is illegal in this country. when the Church and its cohorts say otherwise, they are lying.

what this bill does call for is medical attention for the half a million women who go through illegal abortions every year, in some godforsaken dirty room in the bowels of our urban spaces. what it does insist on, is the right of every woman to choose for herselfwhat kind of method to use, if she wants to have less children, or none at all, given the sexual relationship she’s embroiled in, within or outside of marriage.

what the Consolidated Reproductive Health Bill knows is that while it would be great to imagine that all Pinoy husbands will not insist on sex when their wives don’t want it, or when their wives say it’s a “bad time” (because you know, my mucus isn’t right); while it’s fantastic and ideal to imagine that the youth aren’t sexually active too early for their age; while it would be great if all single Pinoy adults were sexually responsible; in reality, in truth, these ideals aren’t what we’re working with.

it only takes a more intelligent assessment of the ideologies that surround relationships and marriage in this country to see that this can’t simply be about couples deciding privately how they can grow their families. here, in the land of poverty and miseducation, marriage and patriarchy, couples living in shanties and unable to afford basic services, have 8, 9, 10, 11! children; women die at childbirth, children die before they turn one, more before they turn five; and the women who do want and need to control their pregnancies can’t afford the choices available.

what this highlights, and which discussions on pro-(culture-of-)life forget, is that ultimately, a reproductive health bill is about women and their right to their bodies.

and it is when we speak of women that we must acknowledge their diversity: not all women want children, or want many of them, and some women just enjoy having a husband/lover and the sexual relationship that allows; not all women want to focus on their mucus or the calendar, and risk getting pregnant given the uncertainty of these methods; a majority of women in this country are poor, uneducated or miseducated about their rights and the roles within the family, and don’t know any better than to accede to their husband’s sexual whims and demands; and while their lives seem to be made of the same cloth as your daily soap opera, these women’s lives are real and painfully true.

even when it’s not you or me, na nakakapit na sa patalim, stuck between a rock and a hard place, we must be able to imagine that woman. she who’s more than willing to batter the body and risk one’s life, instead of bringing out another unfed, malnourished baby into the world, and make life more difficult than it already is.

to forget that this is about women’s choices, their bodies and their lives, is to gloss over the fact that women – as much as the children- are victims of the current state of things, too. to forget the woman who is central to the reproductive health bill, is to imagine that we are all the same, that our bodies aren’t our own, that the Church can decide on our bodies for us.

anti-reproductive-health-bill advocates conveniently forget that some women have the luxury of choice and the capacity to spend on these choices. others can only imagine their choice to be among stealing formula milk for another newborn, throwing their pregnant selves down a flight of stairs, or leaving their newborns in a trashcan somewhere in the metro. at least give these women the choice to keep from getting pregnant to begin with. then we can truly say that we promote a culture of life. that we respect life – the child’s, the man’s and the woman’s. regardless of whether they’re rich or poor.

komentaryo

presidential torture

of course this president is torture enough. that grimace that she seems to always have on her face. her capacity at giggling in kilig and laughing at jokes made at the expense of a nation in calamity. and we’re not even talking about her ability to say one thing and do another. and to lie through her teeth.

and then this, a perfect example of how torture is but part and parcel of GMA’s presidency. and how people still suffer for their politics – when it’s the kind that is not one of a heckler’s, or a rightist’s, or that of an America-loving-Pinoy – in the closet and otherwise.

According to the Manila Times editorial today, the NCR director for the Human Rights Commission Dr. Renato Basas has confirmed that various forms of torture have been employed by the GMA administration. And while she has also ratified the U.N. Treaty Against Torture, the editorial also says that obviously

“The unfortunate reality is that absolutely prohibiting the police, the jail managers, the military and others charged with the duty of ensuring that law and order prevail is not among the top priorities of Malacañang.”

A measure as well of GMA’s fear in the military’s power over her, thus the decision to coddle the Palparans of this world and celebrate then as fantastic officers, despite witness upon witness saying otherwise. Proving otherwise.

i caught Storyline‘s episode on the desaparecidos of the present. And while sometimes the show’s format doesn’t work (more on this next time), last night, it just did, as it allowed King Catoy to just speak to the camera, with no real sense of an interviewer. Catoy told the story of his 2003 abduction, and spoke of the activists with him who were summarily executed: human rights worker Eden Marcellana and peasant leader Eddie Gumanoy.

what struck too close to home was the fact that he and two others had identified Master Sgt. Donald Caigas as one of their abductors. Caigas would also be the one name that would surface in relation to Karen Empeno’s and Sherlyn Cadapan’s disappearance, and apparent torture and rape. the latter story was witnessed and told by the abducted farmers who would come to be known as the Manalo brothers, Raymund and Reynaldo.

it was Raymund Manalo who claimed that he saw Palparan twice during his three-month detention, before he and his brother escaped to tell their story. in one of those instances, Palparan told him to tell his parents to stop going to protest rallies.

blindfolded, hands tied behind him, and kneeling on the ground, King Catoy was also told the same thing: stop going to rallies, stop whatever it is you’re doing with these activists. stop being yourself.

and everyday, we live through the torture of knowing that many others are disappearing and dying for doing what they do, believing what they will, living a life for justice and democracy that we all should want to live. because people are stolen, are made to disappear, are tortured and raped, and are killed, not simply for their politics. in GMA’s time (as with Marcos’), they are being made to suffer for being themselves.

komentaryo

of real women: ces and cheche, hazel, mary and juana, karen and sherlyn, erlinda and connie

hazel, a Pinay OFW working as a dancer in Japan cries rape against an American serviceman, three days after she arrived in the land of the rising sun. the case has been dropped by Okinawa police due to “lack of sufficient evidence”. nanay melly, left behind in the philippines, feels helpless, and distance is beside the point. there’s been no government support for her daughter, who would otherwise be seen as a “bagong bayani”, who bringshome the bacon, if not the dollars.

mary, a Pinay OFW from Dubai, comes home and decides to get liposuction. the pressure to be thin(ner) than she is, is too much; media images of acceptable women tell her she is otherwise. she dies on the operating table of the Borough Medical Center in Libis Q.C.

in 2006, Pinay nicole got justice in the lower courts, as Lance Corporal Daniel Smith was convicted of raping her. even then, the GMA gov’t allowed for Smith to be kept under US custody in the US Embassy. now, a year and a half later, news has leaked that the Court of Appeals Justice Vasquez Jr., is leaning towards Smith’s acquittal.

juana, an OFW since 2003, was suppose to get her permanent residency in Canada in 2006, as per Canada’s federal live-in caregiver program. as she went through the required medical and criminal clearances, she was found to have cancer. juana asked that the good health requirement be waived for humanitarian reasons, given the fact that she had worked well enough to meet all other requirements for residency. the Canadian gov’t sees her as a liability, a burden to the health care system. now, with stage 4 cancer, the chances remain slim that juana will be granted residency; even slimmer that the Philippine gov’t will help her cause. she has until august 8 to leave Canada.

nanay erlinda cadapan, mother of U.P. student sherlyn who has been missing for two years, finds herself on ANC program “Media in Focus”, beside a female PNP officer who tells her “you are more than welcome in my office anytime, Mrs. Cadapan.” the emptiest line she could possibly hear after two years of searching in vain for sherlyn, and dealing with the police and military’s refusal to cooperate and investigate their own ranks. nanay connie empeño, must feel exactly the same way.

at the end of the segment that featured her, nanay erlinda asks a rhetorical question: bakit po kaya si ces drilon, sampung araw lang ay nahanap na ng gobyerno, samantalang ang aking anak na dalawang taon nang nawawala, at napakarami po naming witnesses, ay hindi ninyo kami matulungan sa paghahanap?

to which host cheche lazaro, maybe surprised that her colleague ces was being dragged into the discussion, or maybe aghast that this woman dared put a media personality on the same level as a student activist, or even that nanay erlinda dared pinpoint a clear discrepancy between how hi-profile personalities and the everyday person is treated by gov’t, says: ano po bang gusto ninyong gawin ng gobyerno para sa kaso ninyo?

as if the answers aren’t obvious enough. as if media itself isn’t guilty of creating the kinds of lives that real women have in this country; or isn’t guilty of perpetuating the notion that we don’t have answers to such cut and dried questions.

as if we didn’t know that if gov’t really cared for its women, then none of them – none of us – would be in the news. for being other than what we want to be, away from home and family, and our sense of selves.

(and it is for these very reasons, that we are hard put to celebrate successes such as this one. via tonyo and adobo:)