Philippine Forum May 1998 Newsletter (excerpts)

Higantes Join National Day Parade on Sunday, June 7

In this centennial year of the victory of the Philippine War of Independence against Spain, the Philippine Forum and several other organizations have formed the Sentenaryo Coalition (People's Centennial Coalition) to celebrate the rich history of struggle of the Filipino people aswell as to support our motherland�s unfinished struggle to achieve genuine independence, democracy and prosperity, and freedom from U.S. control and dictation.

We held meetings in March and April, in which representatives from Kinding Sindaw, Arkipelago, Kilawin Kolektibo, Brecht Forum, Makabayan (Philippine Forum youth group), Philippine Health Support Network, and other groups and individuals participated.

We will march together in the Philippine National Day parade on Sunday, June 7, at 11 a.m., as the Sentenaryo Coalition, carrying higante (giant) figures representing the mother country, peasant farmers, overseas workers, Fil-Am youth, Katipunan, and others, and wearing T-shirts with the Sentenaryo Coalition logo. Julia Camagong is the Parade Cordinator for Sentenaryo. Robert Roy is Philippine Forum Coordinator.

The construction of the higante giants takes place on May 23-27 at Brecht Forum, 122 West 27th Street, 10th floor. Several members ofthe New People�s Artists of Los Angeles - Jun, Ding, Armand, Rico, and Jojo -are coming to New York to contribute their time and talents to construct the higantes, as are Fil-Am youth and others from QBD in the Washington DC/Virginia area, including Ren, Rome, Rose, and Roman.

Interested individuals and organizations can participate in different ways, including construction of the higante giants, handling the higantes during the parade, and donating money to help with the costs of materials and flying the visual artists from California. You may want to sponsor an entire higante or cosponsor one with another organization. Please send your contributions to: Philippine Forum, PO Box 250103, Columbia University Station, New York, NY 10025. They are much needed!

Makibaka Inaugural Activity on Friday,June 12

The Philippine Forum women�s group, Makibaka, is sponsoring a talk by Lualhati Abreau on the Philippine revolutionary struggle and women�s movement, Friday, June 12, the 100th anniversary of Aguinaldo�s declaration of Philippine independence (which, however, was flawed in that it sought the protection of the United States).

The talk will be held at Brecht Forum, 122 West 27th Street (between 6th & 7th Ave.), 10th floor, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Ms. Abreau has long and varied experience in movement work in the Philippines. Please join usfor this inaugural activity of Makibaka!

Ramos Picketed at Marriott

Philippine Forum, joined by other individuals and organizations, staged a picket in front of Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square on November 26, 1997 during a banquet for Philippine President Fidel Ramos. The picket was held to protest Ramos� participation in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Conference in Vancouver, Canada. Ramos had also come to the United States to ensure the Philippines remain an important area for foreign investors, despite the economic crisis in Asia.

More than 50 protestors marched in the cold for over two hours, chanting slogans such as "Down with APEC, Down with Ramos." Most held placards with slogans, from those which read "Say NO to Imperialist Globalization" to a small child who had a poster nearly as big as she was, which read "No to Child Labor." Many passers by were interested in learning what our protest was about, as we explained what APEC was and what it meant for the people directly affected by it.

APEC is a group of 18 economies in the Pacific Rim which aims to impose free trade over the region. This involves the deregulation, liberalization and privatization of the economies by 2010 and 2020, although Ramos has pledged to have this process underway by the year 2000 with his "Philippines 2000" plan. Under the guise of economic cooperation, APEC seeks to hasten the process of globalization, propagating the myth that free trade and cooperation will serve the interests of the people and the economies of the region, while it really only serves the interest of multinational cooperations and imperialism.

For the people, APEC and imperialist globalization mean increased misery. Workers are faced with higher unemployment and depressed wages, peasants and farmers are losing their livelihoods to transnational agribusiness corporations and because of the cheap imports flooding the local economies. The exploitation of women and children continues to worsen, and indigenous communities are forced from their ancestral lands in order to open forests and mountains to foreign logging and mining corporations.

We see all of these things happening in the Philippines. Ramos claims to want to find a niche for the Philippines in the global economy, but his economic policies don't serve the interests of the Filipino people or the basic economy of the Philippines. If they did, would there be so many Filipinos seeking work outside the Philippines as overseas contract workers? The Philippines� biggest export is its own people! Ramos' policies really serve the interests of the multinational corporations and imperialists and not those of the people of the Philippines.

We will continue to oppose the imperialist exploitation ofthe Philippines, and the Philippine Government's complicity in this exploitation.

Baylosis Talks on Philippine Political and Economic Crisis

Philippine Forum and Liga Filipina, the Filipino student organization of Columbia University, presented an extensive talk by Rafael Baylosis on the Ramos Government and the Filipino people's struggle for livelihood and social justice at Columbia University�s International Affairs Building on Saturday, November 22, 1997, from 3 to 6 pm.

Mr. Baylosis was a leader in the underground during the martial law period and after, and a political prisoner for several years during the Marcos and Aquino regimes. He is at present the head of workers education in KMU (Kilusang Mayo Uno, or May First Movement), the progressive trade union federation in the Philippines, and a consultant to the Integrated Bar of thePhilippines and the National Democratic Front.

The forum also featured a performance by the Kinding Sindaw artistic troupe of "Lupang Hinirang," the Philippine national anthem, and a war dance; the classical Tagalog song Mutya ng Pasig (Maiden of the Pasig River), rendered by Michael DeBorja; poetry by Julman Tolentino; and songs by Jessica Maya.

The panel of discussants included Dan Fernandez of SUNY Binghamton, co-chair of the East Coast Fall 1997 FIND (Filipino Intercollegiate Networking Dialogue) Conference; Adam Auriemma, a Cornell University graduate student who is organizing Filipino American youth in New Jersey; and Rick Baldozof SUNY Binghamton, who is doing a dissertation at SUNY Binghamton on the history of Filipino labor activism in the United States. Julia Camagong emceed the entire program.

Earlier in the year, Liga Filipina had also sponsored a talk by Robert Roy, coordinator of Philippine Forum, on a new mining law sanctioning rampant exploitation of Philippine natural resources by foreign corporations, and by Michael DeBorja on Philippine history.

Progressives Featured at FIND Conference

The FIND (Filipino Intercollegiate Networking Dialogue) Conference, which is held in the East Coast in the Spring and Fall, is the largest gathering of Filipino youth outside the Philippines. The Fall 1997 FIND Conference was organized by Cornell University and SUNY Binghamton Filipino American students and held at Binghamton. Rick Baldoz presented a stirring account of Filipino labor struggles in the United States, including a highlight of the American trade union movement when thousands of workers recruited in the Philippines to break a plantation strike in prewar Hawaii joined the picket line to a man as soon as they got off the ship. Michael DeBorja of Philippine Forum presented an overview of Philippine history, including Kabataang Makabayan(Patriotic Youth), which spearheaded the new radical movement in the Philippines, and reestablishment and rectification in the Communist Party.

Protest at Dutch Consulate

More than a dozen Filipino and other Asian American activists, including Yuri Kochiyama, beloved Asian-American activist leader and friend of Malcolm X, threw a lightning picket on August 14, 1996 in front of a Rockefeller Center building in midtown Manhattan which has the Dutch Consulate as one of its tenants. The reason was to protest the unjust efforts of the Dutch Justice Ministry to deport Jose Maria Sison to the Philippines, where the Philippine military has long been after him.

Jose Maria Sison is a preeminent Filipino political activist who has aroused his people to struggle for social change. He was tortured, put in solitary confinement, and imprisoned for nine years by the Marcos dictatorship. In 1988, while on a lecture tour in the Netherlands, his passport was canceled by the Aquino regime and a million-peso bounty offered by thePhilippine military for his arrest, capture or neutralization. Amnesty International has urged the Dutch government to give Sison refugee status.

In July 1990, the Dutch Justice Ministry, under pressure from the United States and Philippine governments which consider him the "intellectual author" of the Philippine progressive movement, denied him political asylum. On appeal, in February 1996 Raad van State, the highest administrative court in the Netherlands, recognized him as a political refugee entitled to protection under the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. However, the Dutch Justice Ministry refuses to grant him political asylum and wants to expel him from the Netherlands. We urge the Dutch government to reverse this arbitrary decision, uphold the rights of political refugees, and give political asylum to Prof. Sison and his family.

Among the distinguished signatories to the petition forpolitical asylum for the Sison family are Jose Ramos-Horta, 1996 Nobel PeacePrize awardee; Cornel West, Harvard University; Noam Chomsky, MIT; Bertell Ollman, New York University; Paul Sweezy, Harry Magdoff, Monthly Reviewmagazine; Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General; Manning Marable, Richard Cloward, Peter Marcuse, Columbia University; Erik Olin Wright, University of Wisconsin-Madison; James Petras, Immanuel Wallerstein, State University of New York-Binghamton; Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York; Howard Zinn, Boston University; James O�Connor, University of California-San Diego; and Barbara Ehrenreich, Democratic Socialists of America.

Asia Pacific American Festival

Philippine Forum and Kinding Sindaw shared a booth displaying their brochures as well as various pamphlets and books on the Philippine struggle, during the recent Asia Pacific American Heritage Festival at Union Square on May 3, 1998. Quite a number of people at the fair stopped by our table and bought pamphlets and signed the petition for asylum for Jose Maria Sison and family.

Summer Picnic and Camping

Good food, conversation and all-around fun were had by all at the Philippine Forum Christmas party on December 19, at Cheryl Baun�s place in West Village. A summer picnic and overnight camping upstate are slated in July or August. Please send your suggestions for the dates, venues, and other preparations for these activities to [email protected].

Human Rights Day, 1997 and 1998

Philippine Forum and Kinding Sindaw commemorated Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, 1997, with an affair at Washington Square Church featuring Adam Auriemma of Cornell University, who spoke on the situation of Filipino Americans, and Michael DeBorja of the Philippine Forum, on Philippine history. Kawal served as emcee. Kinding Sindaw, led by Potri Ranka Manis and including Eleanor Lipat, Lisa Parker, Paolo Mendoza, and others, performed dances from the southern Philippines. Julman Tolentino recounted his experience during a visit to the Philippines in the form of a poem, and Mike Hanopol and Jessica Mayasang.

We will hold a cultural night with Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other friends on December 10, 1998, the centennial of the Treaty of Paris where Spain ceded its colonial possessions of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba to the United States. We are also planning an art exhibit of works of the New People�s Artists of Los Angeles in Soho in late November to early December.