Unity amid adversity

IN THEIR first days at university, students of journalism or mass communication learn that in professional media, they have a four-fold mission--to provide audiences with information, education, entertainment, and means to exercise vigilance over the government.

With proper technical training and experience as well as ethical formation, the member of the press has little difficulty gaining proficiency at collecting, evaluating, editing, and disseminating information in ways that teach and when so required, entertain.

But far more than a learned disposition and a steady hand are needed by the journalist as a watchdog of the powerful, more so today when power wielders along with other threats prowl about seeking media to devour.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s regime seems to be marching in step with increasingly authoritarian, populist counterparts from Istanbul to Moscow to Washington.

In fact, however, his regime’s creeping suppression of press freedom is homegrown, inherited from the dark, generation-old Philippine martial law era under Ferdinand Marcos that began with Proclamation No. 1081 dated Sept. 21, 1972. cess of awakening to wisdom, something that we are not born with, or something that comes to us in a transformative moment of Zen.

As in the process of birthing, so is growing, that takes a gradual process of awareness and insight gained through time and experiences here and there. We explore new areas and places, we experiment, we do things together, and slowly, our knowing and becoming slowly begins to take shape. Hopefully, we leave behind legacies, markers, stories in time that we ourselves can look back upon and recognize as...us. Hopefully, we leave our legacies of community and social structures that our children can be proud of too.

At the CHARMP2 and its scaling up phase, the process was and is important. That is why I am here, even if I shiver and suffer in the cold. We live and endure our current environment. We work together to make things better.

During the process of working together, men

Back then, critical journalists were rounded and locked up or tortured to death.

Today, the Presidential Task Force on Media Security notwithstanding, they are deprived of the opportunity to witness (Rappler reporters barred from covering Duterte events); killed or subjected to harassment (at least nine journalist killings, 16 libel cases, 20 cases of harassment on and offline), and accused of concocting fake news (Secretary Christopher Lawrence Go cries “fake news” as Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism reports on public works contracts awarded to firms owned by his relatives).

Tactics to weaken Philippine media are so unoriginal their intended effects are so predictable: vilification of the journalistic establishment, citizen cynicism with journalists’ efforts to keep public servants honest, accountable, and transparent, and eventually the surrender of a nation’s liberties and destiny to the unchecked control of a tyrannical oligarchy. and women create communities and strengthen the nation.

History bought with “blood, sweat and tears,” will stain the human consciousness too long, forcing the generations to revere and value their rich heritage. By going through some sacrifices in conserving and preserving the cloud forest, heirloom rice varieties, rice terraces, and constructing irrigation canals and pipes, farm-to-market roads, footpaths, food storage, among others, that we are working on with them, we hope that our scale-up barangays will evolve meaningful markers and memories in the process.

That is why I am here in a place like this, marginalized but remnants of a time, where the community is still intact. I am part of the ongoing effort that sustains, if not build new markers. Deep within, we all want a place we could be able to return to, a hometown of our memories. The place is pleasant and sweet that is built with hands united like the way we want it done in our scale-up communities.

Even if a super typhoon ravages the land, you still wish to be where the action is, where you build hometown memories. a newly-promoted head of office got the power immediately drilled into his head. Drunk with his own self, he ordered me to mop the floor in front of clients while berating me (as if it was part of my job description). I also recall being terrified in a traffic jam when a man pointed a gun at me so I would give way to his expensive car. I learned to suck it all up: “inya ngay garud ket isu da ti ada posisyon na…inya ngay garud ta isuda ti baknang” (what can we do? They have the position, they have the money).

What can we do? I asked myself for a long time. It seems that there are bullies everywhere we go. My child, Vash, two years old at that time, showed me what to do. In one of our vacations, an eight year-old boy was bullying a tiny girl on the beach; taking her toys away and knocking down her sand castle. Instantly recognizing that the tiny girl was his playmate, Vash ran towards the bigger boy and sucker punched the bully to protect her. The bully was stunned. Thankfully, I was observing the episode the whole time and I was able to get there before my kid will get a beating of his own.

What is the lesson here? If even the kid knows that bullying is wrong, then how much more for us adults who have spent most of our lives in learning environments? The lesson is that we have to speak up when there are injustices. Fight back for those who cannot fight for themselves. If we are strong, we should protect the weak. If we are privileged, we have to use such privileges to make the world a better place.