komentaryo

Privilege, pantries, and the poor

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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komentaryo

Risk-taking in the time of red-tagging

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…)

komentaryo

Duterte’s killing it #Talk2022

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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komentaryo

Ma’am Lilia #LQS

I’ve always considered myself lucky to have been in the State U in the late 90s to the 2000s, across an undergraduate degree and my MA, because it gave me the opportunity to have the best teachers in the humanities.

LQS was one of those teachers, and she didn’t just welcome me as a sophomore into a basic Filipino classroom, she also would have me in her MA classes the years before she left for the States. I don’t remember much about what those classes were exactly, as much as I have a keen sense of what it was that I learned in them, beyond readings and syllabi, given the kind of teaching she practiced.

It was in that sophomore Filipino classroom, for example, where I had the best lessons in diversity and unity, history and empathy. It was there that I became friends with Anifa, who was the lone Muslim girl in class, and who LQS grouped me with for final projects. This meant being forced into discussions about Muslim Mindanao and the struggle of the Bangsamoro, with the goal of building upon similarities, toward working on truths borne of the multiplicity of voices. I was in over my head. I realized very quickly that there was no cramming all this information about Mindanao into my head, and that I had to settle for admitting that I knew very little, and what I had instead were questions. It was also the first time I had a sense of risk and privilege. Where I realized that a conversation such as this one meant so much to Anifa, whose life, history, heritage were on the line, while it did not, in any way, affect the way in which mine would unfold.

At some point before that final project’s presentation, I told LQS that I felt it was important that Anifa be the one to lead the discussions, and she nodded. Like I had learned the lesson she meant for me to discover for myself. Read the room. Let others speak. Admit your limitations. Be an ally. Know your place. (more…)

komentaryo

The battle for thought

A couple of days before Christmas, on probably the only time I’ve driven down the stretch of EDSA-Northbound since the March 2020 lockdown, I saw huge tarpaulins hanging on flyovers and walkways obviously released by the Duterte government. In small font on top of the tarp, it said Communist Party of the Philippines and at center it crossed out the number 52. Both of these are secondary to the declaration, in larger font, for us to “Disown and Junk Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” (Itakwil at Ibasura Marxismo-Leninismo-Maoismo).

I remember pointing it out to my younger sestra—a former student—riding with me in the car, to which she cheekily replied: “Ha? How do we takwil class inequality and struggle?” or something to that effect.

It was then that it became clear to me that while this government will insist it is only after “the communists” and “the Left,” it is in fact lying through its teeth. What it fears is not the insurgency or the number of people who might decide to go to the mountains and join the armed struggle. Its real fear is that as more of us see how incompetent and violent this Duterte government is, we might start thinking differently about governance and politics, focused as we become on class inequality, injustice, and rights violations, and the kind of systemic corruption in government that has brought us to this point of crises. (more…)