social media – Page 5 – Katrina Stuart Santiago

Let me start by saying: yes, government is responsible for this state of affairs. For the hunger. For the need and want. For the crisis that we are in, one year in this Covid-19 pandemic, with no free mass testing, no proper contact tracing, no reliable assistance for the most vulnerable, no real support for our healthcare system. One year of a Duterte government completely and utterly refusing to deliver a compassionate, competent, science-based response; one year of Duterte saying “wala na tayong pera”; one year of periodically hearing him say “wala na tayong magawa”; and this first four months of 2021 where the narrative about vaccines has been about richer countries getting our share, when in reality, it is Duterte shoving Sinovac down our throats instead. The past month of Duterte promising: things will get worse. At the same time that he says: I don’t know if we can vaccinate everyone. And also: We have done everything we can.

Yes this governance is the worst we could possibly have, especially in the midst of a public health crisis that at this point is also a socio-political-economic crisis. Yes, we want a better leader, and we work on it for 2022, but we would be glad if we could get one sooner, via a resign movement or an oust movement, both of which can only help us in building a real case against a continuation of this Duterte leadership (in the characters of a Marcos and Pacquiao).

But standing clear on the faults of this government, demanding accountability, insisting that we deserve better, does not absolve us of responsibility. It does not mean we can just do anything and be deemed faultless, it doesn’t mean we will not make mistakes.

We might be on the side of democracy, freedom, and rights, but that doesn’t mean we’re doing everything right.

This is even truer now, given the community pantries with long lines, as well as the narratives that it has created space for, the notions of the poor that it has lived off. In the course of the pantry’s virality, what has been dissolved is its core of community, what has disappeared is a basic grounding in what the poor need, who is responsible for this state of affairs, and the truth that the goal of any relief operation—and this is what the pantries are—is to make itself obsolete. What we have refused to say is that there is a virus, with variants that are not only more dangerous, but also which spread the virus quicker.

These erasures are not minor ones, and it is wrong to think that these do not matter. When what you do can be taken against you, you want to make sure that you do things better than the Duterte side. The pantries have failed at this, no matter how we silence the criticism against it.

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Only the naive would be surprised by the narrative turn that the community pantries took. We knew it was only a matter of time. After all, we are under a Duterte government that has made it official policy to red-tag anything that has so much as a a raised fist, a placard, a slogan. We are under an NTF-ELCAC and a propaganda machinery that has made its living out of vilifying the Left, activism, and critics the past year or so.

When the appearance of Liza Soberano on a panel by Gabriela is enough to warrant a red-tag, you know the level of absurdity is insane.

Which is why it’s a surprise that the actors in this particular situation seemed so unprepared. And therein lies the real naiveté. Because recent history teaches us to be prepared. Since last year, relief efforts have been vilified by this government. Many experienced being stopped at checkpoints, and at the height of the first lockdown, many were kept from doing anything, including helping get much-needed food to the hungry. In May 2020, the DILG itself announced that all relief efforts needed to get LGU accreditation; at some point last year, there was a memorandum that was spread in our inboxes requiring a PNP permit. We of course remember Teacher Lita and her group in Marikina arrested for continuing with their soup kitchen operations, as we do how a group delivering relief goods to Bulacan were detained. There was also a soup kitchen in Cubao, housing the homeless and hungry, that was shut down for not having permits.

Now layer any effort that highlights government negligence, incompetence, violence with virality, and you level-up that risk. Long before this pandemic, virality was already a key factor in getting Duterte all riled up, and his propaganda flexing its well-funded muscle. Think everything from Silent No More, to Pinoy Ako Blog; think ‘Di Mo Ba Naririnig, to every hashtag that has trended on this side of the political fence.

And when virality has a willing participant, a talking head for media to interview over and over, someone to fashion into “hero,” someone they can use for click-bait content, then this is a win-win: you get mileage and media gets its shares and likes. This makes it “lucrative” for both sides, which is part of why virality is something we have been taught to aspire for, whether you’re a tiktok content creator, an advocacy, or a Duterte supporter.

Now layer this landscape of anti-criticism and predisposition towards virality, with the existence of NTF-ELCAC and a Duterte propaganda machinery, and the kind of success it has had in killing activists, violating rights, discrediting activism, and creating a climate of fear, and you’d be silly not to be afraid. Or careful. (more…)

Of the many things we need to admit about the past four and half years under Duterte, it’s that he’s been killing it.

This government has of course also been killing people.

But that he has gotten away with it is because his propaganda machinery’s been killing it, too. How else to explain the fact that despite thousands of dead bodies, the militarization of the government, billions in unaccounted public funds, the stench of corruption growing stronger by the day, and an epic failure of a Covid-19 response, this government has stayed afloat?

We give credit where it is due, and that has to be the propaganda machinery that’s just been well-strategized, hard-at-work, uncompromising, and unstoppable.

And yes, we’re still talking about what we like to dismiss to be nothing more than troll discourse, brought on by a few high-profile propagandists and spread by troll farms, all paid for with probably taxpayers’ money. But this is not all that it’s about anymore. The 2019 elections proved how this propaganda is not something that can be dismissed, but also, neither can it be easily beaten.

In fact, going into the campaign for 2022, it’s become even more clear how this machinery is multilayered and complex, and unless we agree about what it is and how it works, then we will be delivering 2022 to Duterte-Marcos-GMA on a silver platter.

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There are many things we might have in common, living where we do, under the leadership that we have, in a 2020 riddled by crises. Here where it wasn’t (isn’t) just the pandemic, as it was a Taal Volcano eruption early in January 2020, government’s refusal to ban Chinese mainlanders from entering the Philippines despite the threat of Covid-19 spread in February, the longest lockdown/quarantines in the world from March 2020 to the present, strong typhoons and massive flooding in the last two months of the year.

It is easy to think this is all a matter of being Filipino, but it seems important to highlight how this is also a matter of social class. Of course one is mindful about using the term “middle class,” tenuous and unstable as that category is, especially given the pandemic. To my mind though, the category suffices to define this particular privilege that is important to acknowledge, as it is important to address. Because we are often told to check our privilege, which also inevitably silences us: the majority after all, have it worse.

But why invalidate this particular experience of the middle class? Why be silenced by the notion of privilege, when while we are not the majority who are poor, neither are we at the opposite end of this deepening wealth gap? We are not the 5% who are oligarchs and old rich, for whom half-a-million beach trips and vacations is part of this new normal. Neither are we influencers and celebrities who are selling a new normal of spending thousands on Covid-19 tests just to go on a beach trip, or to party with friends. (more…)

It’s a question we ask more and more now, I think more sincerely and honestly than we ever have, of friends and family, even of Facebook contacts and acquaintances. It’s never seemed more important to ask people: how are you? As opposed to “what’s up?” or “what are you doing these days?”

Because we all know what’s up, and regardless of what we’re doing, we all know that on a very basic level, we’re all just trying to survive. The pandemic takes its toll on the best of us, and on this fifth month since a lockdown was first declared, I think the mental toll is one that’s almost paralyzing.

Almost. Because privilege teaches us that some are luckier than others—we are luckier than the majority who did not only lose jobs during the two-month lockdown, but also had their communities taken over by police power, were disenfranchised from government assistance packages, silenced by fear, and disregarded by policy. Yes, we are all victimized by the Duterte government’s lack of an efficient, sufficient, and scientific Covid-19 public health response, as we all are by its Cabinet filled with incompetent and unkind officials, but as with many (all) things, social class difference puts things in perspective.

No, this is not a treatise on gratefulness, as much as it is a promise of solidarity. (more…)

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