Sa panahon ni Recto hanggang ngayon, makabuluhan pa ring tingnan kung paano natin igigiit ang ating kalayaan, at kung paano natin makakamit ang tamang paggalang at pantay na pagtingin sa atin ng ibang bayan.
Category: Columns
An appeal for sobriety and prudence
he defense for Lisandro Claudio, PhD is an opportunistic reaction to a petition signed by 467 academics, artists and activists. The petition rightly argues that an academic who is engaged in tagging activist organizations as communist fronts is doing something unbecoming. It correctly articulates the global and local contexts in which such disposition is lamentable at the very least.
Pagmumuni-muni sa biyahe
Mainam ang paminsan-minsang pagbiyahe sa labas ng bansa para makita kung paanong ang mga bagay tulad ng palpak na LRT at MRT sa Pilipinas na unti-unti nang nagiging “normal” ay hindi talaga katanggap-tanggap.
How I survived anti-Left academics and became an activist
I was prepared to be disappointed with NatDem politics but instead, I became more immersed in their mass campaigns. I was overwhelmed with several political realizations: Here was a movement making democracy work through collective leadership, here was a political force whose strength is linked to the empowerment of its members in the grassroots, here was history claiming the present to build a new future.
My first five years as a full-time activist
It is methodical, thorough, repetitive, but never dull. That’s why those who lampoon the mundaneness of rallies are either clueless commenters, misinformed keyboard analysts, or apologists of the state.
How attacks against workers’ rights ‘censored’ us
How unfortunate, really, since there were only three journalists in the restaurant at that time – Marya, Zeng, and I. And all three of them happened to be holding a spoon on one hand and fork on the other and not a camera to capture the moment.
Persistent disasters
It is not by accident or a matter of racial superiority that rich countries have the technologies for disaster preparedness and management such as early warning signs, sturdy infrastructures. The resources at their disposal are proof of unequal development of nations as a direct result of imperialist plunder of resources and exploitation of cheap labor in the Global South by the Global North’s oligarchy. Imperialist plunder accounts for the stark differences in welfare, well-being and chances of survival people in this political-economic and spatial divide under global capitalism.
From Negros to the Academe and back
When the Spaniards came to Buglas in April 1565, they saw dark-skinned natives and ironically cut them off from the act of naming one’s land after one’s labor. Buglas in Hiligaynon is precisely the act of cutting off. The Spanish conquerors, needy and exploitative as they were, re-named the land Negros to naturalize a violent…
Tuloy ang laban, Anna
Panata namin na wag magbitiw ng luha sa pagpanaw ni Anna Kapunan, huwarang maka-kalikasan, matapang na makabayan, at mapagmahal na ina, asawa, at kaibigan, dahil mahigpit na tagubilin niya sa amin na wag maging malungkot sa kanyang burol. Una naming nakilala si Anna sa isang piket sa harap ng DENR noong July 15, 2015. Kakatambak…
Reading in the age of distraction
We are back to the basics. Threatened by armies of disinformation, our best weapon is the truth. Reading the truth, deciphering the truth, fighting for the truth. In the age of ephemeral attention, reading is an act we can pursue, promote, and steer towards our other political endeavors.
How redbaiting triggers the killing of activists in the Philippines
No one has stopped them from lampooning the CPP in local and international platforms. But they turned their valid right to criticize into a cheap redbaiting ploy to attack activists. It is therefore not a surprise to learn that the state has used their work to develop a propaganda material and even legal evidence to persecute militant activists while praising the politics of the moderates.