Heeding the call of our time
DURING the 27th year commemoration of the Edsa People Power I, I decided to spend the day with the thousands of typhoon Pablo survivors who stormed the DSWD Regional Office XI. I saw up close the scars left by Pablo in their faces. I heard their grumbling stomachs that, for three months, never had a taste of a complete meal. I felt their misery. I decided to stay with them and joined them until they got what was for them.
As a consequence, on the second day of the barricade, I was detained by the policemen for less than an hour for allegedly instigating chaos. On the fourth day, I was surprised when I was forcibly dragged home by my father who was lurking in the crowd waiting for me to pass near him. He was insisting that I took the wrong path. I asked if fighting for the right of the hungry and oppressed was indeed wrong. Mediamen tailed us as I exchanged words with my father. Worst, most of the coverage were malicious against me and even risked my security and safety as an activist.
No parent would wish ill for his children. I am aware of this because since I was younger, my parents dreamed for us nothing but a good life. I have proven it once again when my father took me home from the barricade. He does not want me to be beaten, worse, abducted and tortured by the fascist state forces. He does not want me to suffer in the same way fellow UP student-activists Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno suffered. My father feared that by fighting for the truth and for justice, that by siding with the oppressed and deprived, that by studying the society in order to change it to a more humane one, I might get killed. He told me to do well in my studies instead.
I told him that the society is my real school.
We, the youth, are known for our passion to become truly agents of social change. We are resolved to build a better tomorrow by overhauling the current rotten system. We study not only within the four corners of the classrooms but also in the picketlines, in the communities of the peasants, in the workplaces of the workers, and even in our homes, to understand their plight for liberation.
We have proven in history that the youth’s role in the protest movements is essential. We took part in the fight against Martial Law in EDSA I, and the youth also participated in ousting the US bases.
We took part in the ouster of Erap in EDSA II, in the advancement of the rights of our Moro and Lumad brothers and sisters, in the call for higher state subsidy for education, health and other basic services. Our dignified heroes were in their youth when they struggled for our freedom. Jose Rizal, Emilio Jacinto, Magat Salamat, Andres Bonifacio and many others were in their youth when they decided to become selfless and stood for the masses. We owe a lot to our young leaders, young fighters, young heroes who braved fascist forces.
Even if we are not the direct victims of Pablo, my involvement and the involvement of my fellow youth in the barricade is not new as it has meaningful historical precedence.
We struggle with the oppressed masses because I have seen the oppression and repression against them and that gave me the imperative to dare to struggle and to win. I was never paid or brainwashed. As a human being and as an Iskolar ng Bayan, I am capable of rationalizing things and discerning what’s best not just for myself but for the multitudes of nameless masses.
I condemn the statement of Maj. Obliga- do implicating me with the New People’s Army when he said in a TV interview that “86% of the rebel surrenderees belong to the youth sector” and that he seriously felt pity for me, when the news was just about me being fetched by my father. Maj. Gen. Obligado is sending an unwritten shootto-kill order to his men to liquidate me. He showed false concern for my parents. If he was indeed concerned to the parents of activists, he should present himself in court together with Ret. Maj. Gen. Palparan and face the parents of my fellow youth they butchered during Oplan Bantay Laya I and II.
To the media, let us not sensationalize and derail the issue. The real seed of these all is not about the love of a father to his activist daughter but the typhoon survivors suffering from hunger despite the billions of pesos of funds and donations intended for them . The issue here is the corruption enshrouding the DSWD. The issue here is the rotten socio-political and economic system manifested by the inept government. Mariel Moralde Spokesperson Anakbayan UP Mindanao