I will be at the University of Illinois, Urbana, for a week, next month. Also giving a talk at the St. Ambrose Conference on trafficking. Hereunder are details. After St. Ambrose, I will be in Manitoba, Canada, to give a talk on globalization and the patriarchal surge.
Global & Local Perspectives on Human Trafficking
Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008
All events are held in the Rogalski Center on the
St. Ambrose University campus
Presented by the Ambrose Women for Social Justice
1:45 p.m. Panel Presentation
Attorney Samir Goswami, founder of the Prostitution Alternatives Round Table for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, and director of policy and outreach at Justice Project Against Sexual Harm
Mark Rodgers, dsw, lcsw, bcd, dean of the Graduate School of Social Work, Dominican University, Chicago
Yogesh Shah, md, associate dean for Global Health, College of Osteopathic Medicine, and associate professor, Department of Geriatrics, Des Moines University; and assistant clinical coordinator, Iowa Foundation of Medical Care
3:30 p.m. & 5:30 p.m.
FILM Cargo: Innocence Lost
This compelling documentary by award-winning director and writer Michael Cory Davis unveils the dark underworld of sex trafficking through interviews with some of America’s top officials on the subject, victims’ advocates and victims themselves. “Cargo” looks at the full scope of the crime of sex trafficking—from where and why it’s happening, and what’s being done to stop it.
7:30 p.m.
KEYNOTE LECTURE
Trafficking as Re-feudalization of Women
Filipina writer, human rights activist and feminist Ninotchka Rosca addresses the ways in which the international trafficking of women in both labor and
sex markets profoundly threatens the gains
made by the global women’s movement.
INFORMATION (including Nursing CEUs)
Katy Strzepek, 563/333-6113
StrzepekKatyA@sau.edu
Friday, September 19, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Steinem on Hillary, Palin
This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.
We had all better weigh in and work on what the flavor of that new pie should be -- and how it should be sliced.
We had all better weigh in and work on what the flavor of that new pie should be -- and how it should be sliced.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Any Woman Will Do
Apologies for the tardiness of this post. I’ve been watching the conventions, bemused by how warring factions are brought into the fold – always a matter of interest to me, since I belong to an ethnic community eternally wracked by grudges.
Still watching the Repubs and feeling uncharacteristically drained of energy; something about the spectacle is deadening. I can’t even take seriously the debate about Sarah Palin, the shrill outcry of “sexism!” whenever her credentials as a politician and/or as a soccer mom are questioned. Seems to me that there’s sexism in here, all right, but everybody misses what it is, exactly.
The choice was, to put it mildly, totally d**k-brained, classical patriarchal thinking that women are interchangeable, replaceable, disposable. The objective was to sop up all those females left disgruntled by Hillary’s loss and never mind that Palin’s and Clinton’s positions on women’s rights are diametrically opposed; in the patriarchy’s eyes, they are, as one comedian put it, “genital sisters.” Most of the so-called male “pundits” – a word that comes from the Indian pandit, meaning scholar; just as boondocks come from the Tagalog word bundok, meaning mountain, ah, these legacies of colonialism in the English language… in any case, most male pundits ignore or take as normal this assumption in the Repub’s decision to field a female vice-presidential nominee.
Truth is I’ve seen many a cynical and contemptuous decision about women but this just takes the cake, assuming as it does that women wouldn’t notice the difference; that, in that comedian's words, the “genital sisterhood” would flock in support of a woman who’s for restricting women’s reproductive rights.
The view that women are interchangeable is right up there in the mainstream, an undercurrent through a range of political thought and agenda, left to right. In this era of patriarchal resurgence – one undoubtedly partly fueled by the success of the worldwide trade in women in both labor and sex markets – few notice it and many take it as normal, par for the course. From Canada to Africa, women with a combined ten thousands years of accumulated knowledge from lifetimes of engagement in women’s liberation are being disposed of, with impunity, and replaced by often younger, malleable ones willing to accept the thesis that the struggle for women’s rights and freedoms comes last in the pantheon of social grievances that must be addressed. Had they been male, they would’ve been considered irreplaceable, in the tradition of octogenarians who occupy positions of power to their death beds.
Fact is the momentum for a “de-genderized” female leadership has been increasing in the last decade, as various deceptions and arguments are used to erode the little gains in rights and freedoms for women. The small centers of political power that women manage to develop are under constant siege from day one of their establishment, the viciousness of such attacks disproportionate to the power and influence such centers wield. From day one, such organizations and centers for women’s political power are reminded of their “proper” place in the hierarchical universe.
A further irony is that women are complicit in this disempowerment of women, preferring a familiar oppression to the unknown responsibility of a new freedom. And as long as a sizeable portion of womankind refuses to acknowledge the particularities of oppression and exploitation for women, refuses the commonality of oppression stemming from what Engels called “the historic defeat of womankind,” then the task of women’s emancipation is made that much more difficult, that much longer to achieve.
BTW: here’s news from GABNet:
NEW GABNet CHAIR-ELECT IS WORLD-FAMOUS HIP HOP ARTIST; 10TH CONGRESS UNVEILS PLAN OF ACTION AGAINST SEXISM, MILITARISM AND TOWARD INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY
SAN DIEGO, CA, 1 September 2008 – The 10th Congress of GABNet USA elected its new national council and laid down the new focus and direction for the largest and oldest continuously operating all-women's organization led by women of Philippine ancestry. Members from seven cities attended the three-day gathering.
Candice "Kuttin Kandi" Custodio, world-famous hip hop artist, was voted GABNet National Chair-Elect. Her formal oath-taking will take place at an event to be designated by the organization…
...
Ms. Custodio heads an impressive national council that includes union organizer Jollene Levid as GABNet secretary-general; Executive Director of the University of California San Diego Women's Center Emelyn de la Pena as campaign director; youth organizer Ivy Quicho as organizing director; writer and paralegal Olivia Quinto as education director and civil engineer Laureen Abustan as finance director.
The National Council will have a term of two years during which it will lead GABNet in mobilizing women to intensify the Purple Rose Campaign Against the Trafficking of Women and Children; to protest US militarism and expose its devastating effects on women; and to defend defenders of women's rights and freedoms around the world.
My first meeting with Kuttin Kandi was way back in ‘99, I think. Sockie, another GABNet member, and I were sent to speak to her as she had volunteered to put together an event for the Purple Rose Campaign. It was near Thanksgiving and New York City was practically devoid of people (yes, most New Yorkers come from elsewhere). We entered this building which turned out to be a nightclub with dim red and blue lights, complicated musical electronic equipment and music blaring from mammoth speakers. We walked past a male teenager upside down on the floor, twirling on his head. Sockie bent down to ask, “are you all right?” We searched for Kandi through six floors, feeling like we were in a weird labyrinth, encountering performers trying out what looked like Cirque de Soleil antics (yes, I was a Cirque groupie when it was just an unknown Montreal circus). We finally found her, spoke a little through the eardrum-splitting music and agreed to meet. So a week later, I went – very, very, very nervous – to Kandi’s family’s house in Queens, not knowing what to expect, the hiphop world being totally alien to the Shankar fan that I was. To be frank, I expected bizarreness galore. I walked into this bungalow and laid eyes on a life-sized Virgin Mary in the living room. Ah, well, nothing to worry about, familiar grounds and all that, very Pinoy... Years later, Kandi cracked up when I told her the story. -- #
Still watching the Repubs and feeling uncharacteristically drained of energy; something about the spectacle is deadening. I can’t even take seriously the debate about Sarah Palin, the shrill outcry of “sexism!” whenever her credentials as a politician and/or as a soccer mom are questioned. Seems to me that there’s sexism in here, all right, but everybody misses what it is, exactly.
The choice was, to put it mildly, totally d**k-brained, classical patriarchal thinking that women are interchangeable, replaceable, disposable. The objective was to sop up all those females left disgruntled by Hillary’s loss and never mind that Palin’s and Clinton’s positions on women’s rights are diametrically opposed; in the patriarchy’s eyes, they are, as one comedian put it, “genital sisters.” Most of the so-called male “pundits” – a word that comes from the Indian pandit, meaning scholar; just as boondocks come from the Tagalog word bundok, meaning mountain, ah, these legacies of colonialism in the English language… in any case, most male pundits ignore or take as normal this assumption in the Repub’s decision to field a female vice-presidential nominee.
Truth is I’ve seen many a cynical and contemptuous decision about women but this just takes the cake, assuming as it does that women wouldn’t notice the difference; that, in that comedian's words, the “genital sisterhood” would flock in support of a woman who’s for restricting women’s reproductive rights.
The view that women are interchangeable is right up there in the mainstream, an undercurrent through a range of political thought and agenda, left to right. In this era of patriarchal resurgence – one undoubtedly partly fueled by the success of the worldwide trade in women in both labor and sex markets – few notice it and many take it as normal, par for the course. From Canada to Africa, women with a combined ten thousands years of accumulated knowledge from lifetimes of engagement in women’s liberation are being disposed of, with impunity, and replaced by often younger, malleable ones willing to accept the thesis that the struggle for women’s rights and freedoms comes last in the pantheon of social grievances that must be addressed. Had they been male, they would’ve been considered irreplaceable, in the tradition of octogenarians who occupy positions of power to their death beds.
Fact is the momentum for a “de-genderized” female leadership has been increasing in the last decade, as various deceptions and arguments are used to erode the little gains in rights and freedoms for women. The small centers of political power that women manage to develop are under constant siege from day one of their establishment, the viciousness of such attacks disproportionate to the power and influence such centers wield. From day one, such organizations and centers for women’s political power are reminded of their “proper” place in the hierarchical universe.
A further irony is that women are complicit in this disempowerment of women, preferring a familiar oppression to the unknown responsibility of a new freedom. And as long as a sizeable portion of womankind refuses to acknowledge the particularities of oppression and exploitation for women, refuses the commonality of oppression stemming from what Engels called “the historic defeat of womankind,” then the task of women’s emancipation is made that much more difficult, that much longer to achieve.
BTW: here’s news from GABNet:
NEW GABNet CHAIR-ELECT IS WORLD-FAMOUS HIP HOP ARTIST; 10TH CONGRESS UNVEILS PLAN OF ACTION AGAINST SEXISM, MILITARISM AND TOWARD INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY
SAN DIEGO, CA, 1 September 2008 – The 10th Congress of GABNet USA elected its new national council and laid down the new focus and direction for the largest and oldest continuously operating all-women's organization led by women of Philippine ancestry. Members from seven cities attended the three-day gathering.
Candice "Kuttin Kandi" Custodio, world-famous hip hop artist, was voted GABNet National Chair-Elect. Her formal oath-taking will take place at an event to be designated by the organization…
...
Ms. Custodio heads an impressive national council that includes union organizer Jollene Levid as GABNet secretary-general; Executive Director of the University of California San Diego Women's Center Emelyn de la Pena as campaign director; youth organizer Ivy Quicho as organizing director; writer and paralegal Olivia Quinto as education director and civil engineer Laureen Abustan as finance director.
The National Council will have a term of two years during which it will lead GABNet in mobilizing women to intensify the Purple Rose Campaign Against the Trafficking of Women and Children; to protest US militarism and expose its devastating effects on women; and to defend defenders of women's rights and freedoms around the world.
My first meeting with Kuttin Kandi was way back in ‘99, I think. Sockie, another GABNet member, and I were sent to speak to her as she had volunteered to put together an event for the Purple Rose Campaign. It was near Thanksgiving and New York City was practically devoid of people (yes, most New Yorkers come from elsewhere). We entered this building which turned out to be a nightclub with dim red and blue lights, complicated musical electronic equipment and music blaring from mammoth speakers. We walked past a male teenager upside down on the floor, twirling on his head. Sockie bent down to ask, “are you all right?” We searched for Kandi through six floors, feeling like we were in a weird labyrinth, encountering performers trying out what looked like Cirque de Soleil antics (yes, I was a Cirque groupie when it was just an unknown Montreal circus). We finally found her, spoke a little through the eardrum-splitting music and agreed to meet. So a week later, I went – very, very, very nervous – to Kandi’s family’s house in Queens, not knowing what to expect, the hiphop world being totally alien to the Shankar fan that I was. To be frank, I expected bizarreness galore. I walked into this bungalow and laid eyes on a life-sized Virgin Mary in the living room. Ah, well, nothing to worry about, familiar grounds and all that, very Pinoy... Years later, Kandi cracked up when I told her the story. -- #
Sunday, August 03, 2008
The Usual Can Be Criminal
We Filipinos needed to re-calibrate our understanding of what’s usual or normal, the instant we began to move out into the world en masse.
Unfortunately, that has been difficult, because of the re-feudalization accompanying migration, particularly for women. The necessary re-definition of relationships – from the most basic (family relations) to the most complex (labor relations) – has been frustrated by the very nature of the work into which majority of exported Filipinas are funneled.
Household work has been historically women’s slave shackles, rendering her a service unit in the family power structure, stunting her growth and development, erasing her sense of self.
It is much more so when one works in a foreign household. Here, one’s needs, one’s hopes, come absolutely last – after the father’s, the mother’s, the children’s, the pet’s, the guest’s… Here, one is told what to do every minute of the day, how to look at events, what to think … One is forever a junior member of the household, isolated even while ensconced in the family bosom.
I had to tell a friend who had been an organizer, an activist and a former political prisoner to quit being a nanny when she turned out to be the only one among us who could finish the “I’m a teapot short and stout” song. Your brain has turned to oatmeal, was my reaction.
The irony is that most Filipinas who leave the country do so with a vision of achieving an Angelina Jolie-Laura Croft personality: self-sufficient, independent, adventurous, treasure-seeker... Many do have adventures galore but there’s hardly ever a treasure at the end; only drudgery and the black hole of a demand for money that becomes the family they left behind. The de-skilling of nurses and even doctors, of those holding degrees and doctorates in various fields, of artists and writers, is tragic to watch.
In an effort to re-calibrate the essence of household work, we call our women domestic workers, so that work standards may be set, employer-employee relations may be modernized and even the processes of entering into such relations brought into congruence with modern labor standards. As a consequence,, we miss the essentially feudal and patriarchal nature of this work into which we send millions of Filipinas.
The women have to be maintained in a docile state, beholden to a patriarchal system of power and obligation. Domestic workers are prime targets for religious recruitment by fundamentalist sects and cabals of all kinds. Whenever a domestic worker visits, she leaves behind inevitably a pamphlet or two about this-that charismatic group, the crudeness and inanity of which can take your breath away. Who’s this so-called prophet with a keyboard around his neck, singing in the worst voice possible?
But we ignore what it means really to tie women to kitchen and bed and children. And in a 30,000 year tradition, we accept that as normal and usual.
Hence, Marichu’s adversaries can make such claims as she was recruited in accordance with normal procedures, hence no trafficking was involved; or she’s filed a complaint against a man with an astonishing curriculum vita, more’s the pity he will be sullied on the word of only a maid…
Well, an intern’s word and a blue dress nearly impeached the president of the U.S., remember that.
We should remember that:
If one recruits for one category of work and substitutes another -- that is considered fraud and deception and will land one in the realm of trafficking.
Trafficking is not limited to the sex trade; it includes labor – as in slavery and peonage, and even debt bondage.
These definitions we Filipinas helped create, through the 11-year Purple Rose Campaign of GABNet.
They do not go far enough in bringing us to a thorough understanding of re-feudalization and the patriarchal surge that accompany the sale of women as domestic servants.
Yes, I know, that phrase is not the correct one. I use it deliberately, in the hope that we will come to a comprehensive understanding of the nature of this unconscionable situation into which we place roughly half a million Filipinas every year; and having come to that understanding, we can take full cognizance of all the issues and problems attendant to it.
As a Canadian reporter said to me, what Marichu underwent, this is normal treatment of servants in the Philippines, no?
Yes, I said to him; but this is not limited to Filipino employers. Something happens to the human psyche when one has control over another human adult. I was thinking of the Stanford prison experiment (see www.prisonexp.org) wherein students fell into their roles of guards and prisoners.
Unfortunately, for lack of radio time, I couldn’t develop my thesis: that having a household servant impacts even the employer who slides into this semi-feudal role of patriarch and patron. I hope others will seriously develop a political economy of housework. A serious one.
Please note: The U.S. GAO report on the abuse of “private employees” by diplomats was revelatory in what wasn’t said. Of the top ten countries bringing in household staff for diplomats (“A” visas for employees of foreign embassies, consulates and governments; “G” visas for employees of international organizations like the World Bank) -- four are likely to use Filipino domestic workers: Manila, of course, which leads the pack with 1,775 visas issued; Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (558); Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (509); and Doha, Qatar (502). And although only 42 cases of abuses have been reported and hence, documented, like most cases of abuse and violence against women, it is likely that only one in ten reaches the ears of authority. -- ##
Unfortunately, that has been difficult, because of the re-feudalization accompanying migration, particularly for women. The necessary re-definition of relationships – from the most basic (family relations) to the most complex (labor relations) – has been frustrated by the very nature of the work into which majority of exported Filipinas are funneled.
Household work has been historically women’s slave shackles, rendering her a service unit in the family power structure, stunting her growth and development, erasing her sense of self.
It is much more so when one works in a foreign household. Here, one’s needs, one’s hopes, come absolutely last – after the father’s, the mother’s, the children’s, the pet’s, the guest’s… Here, one is told what to do every minute of the day, how to look at events, what to think … One is forever a junior member of the household, isolated even while ensconced in the family bosom.
I had to tell a friend who had been an organizer, an activist and a former political prisoner to quit being a nanny when she turned out to be the only one among us who could finish the “I’m a teapot short and stout” song. Your brain has turned to oatmeal, was my reaction.
The irony is that most Filipinas who leave the country do so with a vision of achieving an Angelina Jolie-Laura Croft personality: self-sufficient, independent, adventurous, treasure-seeker... Many do have adventures galore but there’s hardly ever a treasure at the end; only drudgery and the black hole of a demand for money that becomes the family they left behind. The de-skilling of nurses and even doctors, of those holding degrees and doctorates in various fields, of artists and writers, is tragic to watch.
In an effort to re-calibrate the essence of household work, we call our women domestic workers, so that work standards may be set, employer-employee relations may be modernized and even the processes of entering into such relations brought into congruence with modern labor standards. As a consequence,, we miss the essentially feudal and patriarchal nature of this work into which we send millions of Filipinas.
The women have to be maintained in a docile state, beholden to a patriarchal system of power and obligation. Domestic workers are prime targets for religious recruitment by fundamentalist sects and cabals of all kinds. Whenever a domestic worker visits, she leaves behind inevitably a pamphlet or two about this-that charismatic group, the crudeness and inanity of which can take your breath away. Who’s this so-called prophet with a keyboard around his neck, singing in the worst voice possible?
But we ignore what it means really to tie women to kitchen and bed and children. And in a 30,000 year tradition, we accept that as normal and usual.
Hence, Marichu’s adversaries can make such claims as she was recruited in accordance with normal procedures, hence no trafficking was involved; or she’s filed a complaint against a man with an astonishing curriculum vita, more’s the pity he will be sullied on the word of only a maid…
Well, an intern’s word and a blue dress nearly impeached the president of the U.S., remember that.
We should remember that:
If one recruits for one category of work and substitutes another -- that is considered fraud and deception and will land one in the realm of trafficking.
Trafficking is not limited to the sex trade; it includes labor – as in slavery and peonage, and even debt bondage.
These definitions we Filipinas helped create, through the 11-year Purple Rose Campaign of GABNet.
They do not go far enough in bringing us to a thorough understanding of re-feudalization and the patriarchal surge that accompany the sale of women as domestic servants.
Yes, I know, that phrase is not the correct one. I use it deliberately, in the hope that we will come to a comprehensive understanding of the nature of this unconscionable situation into which we place roughly half a million Filipinas every year; and having come to that understanding, we can take full cognizance of all the issues and problems attendant to it.
As a Canadian reporter said to me, what Marichu underwent, this is normal treatment of servants in the Philippines, no?
Yes, I said to him; but this is not limited to Filipino employers. Something happens to the human psyche when one has control over another human adult. I was thinking of the Stanford prison experiment (see www.prisonexp.org) wherein students fell into their roles of guards and prisoners.
Unfortunately, for lack of radio time, I couldn’t develop my thesis: that having a household servant impacts even the employer who slides into this semi-feudal role of patriarch and patron. I hope others will seriously develop a political economy of housework. A serious one.
Please note: The U.S. GAO report on the abuse of “private employees” by diplomats was revelatory in what wasn’t said. Of the top ten countries bringing in household staff for diplomats (“A” visas for employees of foreign embassies, consulates and governments; “G” visas for employees of international organizations like the World Bank) -- four are likely to use Filipino domestic workers: Manila, of course, which leads the pack with 1,775 visas issued; Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (558); Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (509); and Doha, Qatar (502). And although only 42 cases of abuses have been reported and hence, documented, like most cases of abuse and violence against women, it is likely that only one in ten reaches the ears of authority. -- ##
THE SONA (YAWN)
The SONA (State of the Nation Address), usually delivered by the President of the Philippines at the start of the annual session of Congress, at the Batasan (Legislative) Building.
YAWN.
Best Comment on the SONA:
TV Reporter: What is the significance of the SONA to Filipino-Americans?
Interviewee: It is significant because it is important…
SONA of my dreams: The President arrives to find the red carpet still rolled up. Except for the occasional jeepney, the streets are empty. Even the vendors of ices, fans, hats and what-nots have gone elsewhere. The police have gone away. Media’s disappeared. No radio or television crew. The House security guards are just leaving. Inside, the congressional hall is empty. Just rows and rows of vacant seats.
If one cannot move the 90% to action, perhaps they can be moved into inaction – a Zen point of passive aggressive resistance.
Hard to stay awake listening to Gloria.
Amazing that, considering all the money from corruption floating around Manila government offices, they can’t even hire a better speechwriter. Were a SONA speech to carry as banal a truism as, say, “tomorrow is another day,” 80 million people would go into instant shock and die applauding, so used are we to the boring fabric of lies and spin that partisan political speeches have become. If one were to string together all the pages of SONA speeches, they will reach to the moon and back, “all sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Same as last year, when in the aftermath, the attempt was made to hold the GABNet 3 at the Ninoy Aquino Manila International Airport and instead three women took down the so-called "terrorist" list of 500 names created by minions of Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum Gonzales.
I make a point of this because women are so deprived of historical signification. --#
YAWN.
Best Comment on the SONA:
TV Reporter: What is the significance of the SONA to Filipino-Americans?
Interviewee: It is significant because it is important…
SONA of my dreams: The President arrives to find the red carpet still rolled up. Except for the occasional jeepney, the streets are empty. Even the vendors of ices, fans, hats and what-nots have gone elsewhere. The police have gone away. Media’s disappeared. No radio or television crew. The House security guards are just leaving. Inside, the congressional hall is empty. Just rows and rows of vacant seats.
If one cannot move the 90% to action, perhaps they can be moved into inaction – a Zen point of passive aggressive resistance.
Hard to stay awake listening to Gloria.
Amazing that, considering all the money from corruption floating around Manila government offices, they can’t even hire a better speechwriter. Were a SONA speech to carry as banal a truism as, say, “tomorrow is another day,” 80 million people would go into instant shock and die applauding, so used are we to the boring fabric of lies and spin that partisan political speeches have become. If one were to string together all the pages of SONA speeches, they will reach to the moon and back, “all sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Same as last year, when in the aftermath, the attempt was made to hold the GABNet 3 at the Ninoy Aquino Manila International Airport and instead three women took down the so-called "terrorist" list of 500 names created by minions of Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum Gonzales.
I make a point of this because women are so deprived of historical signification. --#
Sunday, July 06, 2008
A Journalist's Nirvana
By-lined article, banner headline, Sunday edition of the country's premier newspaper.
I've died and gone to heaven.
----------------------------
For months, I've been picking up little rumors about this from hanging out with Filipina domestic workers. Then one of the specialized search engines I use (is that the proper term?) gave a ping! And there it was, docketed with the Southern District Court of New York.
Have a glass of my favorite Riesling wine with me, friends. And thanks to you all; you helped me survive a two-year-running crisis.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Bushwhacking Gloria
It’s the most popular item on the HuffPost, with nearly 200,000 viewers and nearly 1,500 comments, most expressing astonishment at what George W. said to Gloria Mac-Arroyo, de facto president to de facto president. He said “First, I want to tell you how proud I am to be the President of a nation that -- in which there's a lot of Philippine-Americans. They love America and they love their heritage. And I reminded the President that I am reminded of the great talent of the -- of our Philippine-Americans when I eat dinner at the White House.” And then added: “And the chef is a great person and a really good cook, by the way, Madam President. “
I wish she’d replied, with a smile, “thanks and General Taguba was no pushover either” or “I hope she serves you dinuguan” or “have you checked on your dogs lately?” But she sat there like stone, muttering “thank you” as George W. Bush stereotyped her and her entire nation.
Oich! To discern ethnic stereotyping can be difficult, especially if one has had little experience with racism. In my early months in New York, a guest at a dinner given in my honor started telling me about her maid in Italy. This guest was Rome bureau head of a mega news magazine and she had a “Filipino maid” who was, as she put it, a “good person” but who had started pilfering small items. Embarrassed, I vacillated between allegiance to my compatriot (how much was this news great paying her?) and being polite, per Catholic nuns' instruction. Fortunately, my host returned from the kitchen, asked what we were talking about, gave me a swift glance, and started shouting at her guest: “Why are you telling her this? She’s a journalist and a writer. What’s she got to do with maids? With your maid?”
The Rome bureau head stuttered, turned red and said, “I just thought…” My host snapped: “Well, you just stop that thought right now!”
Not having experienced insidious, constant and subtle ethnic stereotyping, I had to work out the subtext of that conversation in my sleep and woke up furious. A year later, as guest of honor at a one-woman show at a Washington D.C. art gallery, I was introduced to the artist’s mother, who promptly said: “Oh, you’re from the Philippines! My daughter’s nanny is from the Philippines.” By then, I could snap back: “What a coincidence! My secretary’s white!”
How ironic that one had to be prickly to fit into this society, especially when one wasn’t white. But one had to acquire armor against the subtle put-downs, usually given when one was occupying, in the eyes of the put-downer, a “privileged” position. When my first book was reviewed favorably by the Times and my excited landlady made practically everyone in our building read the article, one neighbor who had a toy terrier with a diamond collar asked, “is it true Filipinos eat dogs?” I said of course and called out to his dog, “here, Foxy, here; straight to the kitchen, I’ll make you a good dinner.”
Sometimes you just have to out gross "them."
Many Filipinos do not get this kind of nuanced insult. Some would even be flattered that George W. remembered the Filipina chef in the White House kitchen, “a very good cook,” chrissakes. It’s akin to the pleasure we feel when a feudal warlord joins the town fiesta and dances with the hoi polloi; never mind that he's just taken away half of the harvest. I’ve had Filipinos tell me to “please not insult our American friend” who’s just insulted me galore, as if they, despite citizenship, weren’t Americans. I would’ve dearly loved to have said "neither can your president" to this guy in my neighborhood – a guy who, upon catching sight of me walking on the sidewalk, said over his cell phone that the place was beginning to be full of aliens “who can’t even speak English.” As it was, I could only advise him to buy a Vlasik and sit on it.
Two things mystify me about this Gloria Mac-Arroyo visit. First, the “roll-in-the-dust” gratitude for the paltry sum of $700 million in aid, considering the public humiliation. If it’s just a matter of money, overseas Filipino workers send home up to $20 billion per year, without needing to insult anyone. Had Gloria Mac-Arroyo been attentive to their needs – ordered the government to negotiate for really decent wages and working conditions for domestic workers, instead of the monthly $200 they get at the United Arab Emirates, for instance, working 16 hours 24/7 – the bloody $700 million would’ve meant only a hundred dollar donation per OFW. Were the Philippine government just a shade more caring, OFW’s would’ve sent home an extra billion dollars, with pleasure and without subjecting even the most deserving public servant to public embarrassment.
More, that would’ve been cold, hard cash -- unlike foreign aid, which is usually spent on goods made by American corporations and on salaries for American experts who tell Filipinos what to do and how to do it. Aid is not aid for the recipient country; it is aid for American big business who thus are spared the need to be grateful for U.S. taxpayer's money. More, such goods invariably change the lifestyle of the recipient country so it becomes a vulnerable market for U.S. goods. It’s part of the national US budget for advertising. Consider that at one time, the weight-loss meal replacement Metrecal was sent to the Philippines as part of foreign aid.
After all these years of receiving foreign aid, one would expect Philippine government officials to conclude that foreign aid, foreign investments, etc., do not solve/resolve anything; that issues of poverty and inequity have to be resolved at ground level, by our bootstraps, as it were.
The second mystifying thing is why Gloria Mac-Arroyo started thanking U.S. congress people for the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill – which is not even approved yet. The bill is intended to provide pensions for the few surviving Filipinos who fought with USAFFE in WWII; they were denied equal benefits as U.S. soldiers by the Rescission Act of 1946 which declared that the services of some 250,000 Filipinos under the U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East "shall not be deemed to be or to have been service in the military or national forces of the United States or any component thereof or any law of the United States conferring rights, privileges or benefits."
That clause meant no medical attention, no recognition, nothing whatsoever, all history of that service erased. I have occasionally exclaimed, "that's what you get for fighting under a foreign flag" but this is such a palpable act of racism it cannot be overlooked.
Over the years, the veterans and a few allies have fought to eke out “rights, privileges or benefits,” starting with access to the Veterans Hospital. Now here comes Gloria Mac-Arroyo thanking US legislators for an unpassed bill, pretending that she had had a role in the struggle for veterans’ rights. And who weren’t thanked for this struggle for equal rights? Why the veterans themselves, the Fil-Am community of supporters, advocates who’d gotten old and hoarse trying to correct this discrimination. As 86-year-old veteran Faustino Baclig said, “sobra ang tsu-tsu” (too much of a suck-up).
Because the Philippine government refuses to recognize and rely on the indomitable character of the people it purportedly governs and represents, because the Philippine government continues to be led by suck-ups, all who are of Philippine ancestry become vulnerable to ethnic stereotyping, public humiliation and the disgrace of being perpetual beggars even as the Philippines gives away all of its resources -- from human to natural. Sad, just too sad. -- ##
I wish she’d replied, with a smile, “thanks and General Taguba was no pushover either” or “I hope she serves you dinuguan” or “have you checked on your dogs lately?” But she sat there like stone, muttering “thank you” as George W. Bush stereotyped her and her entire nation.
Oich! To discern ethnic stereotyping can be difficult, especially if one has had little experience with racism. In my early months in New York, a guest at a dinner given in my honor started telling me about her maid in Italy. This guest was Rome bureau head of a mega news magazine and she had a “Filipino maid” who was, as she put it, a “good person” but who had started pilfering small items. Embarrassed, I vacillated between allegiance to my compatriot (how much was this news great paying her?) and being polite, per Catholic nuns' instruction. Fortunately, my host returned from the kitchen, asked what we were talking about, gave me a swift glance, and started shouting at her guest: “Why are you telling her this? She’s a journalist and a writer. What’s she got to do with maids? With your maid?”
The Rome bureau head stuttered, turned red and said, “I just thought…” My host snapped: “Well, you just stop that thought right now!”
Not having experienced insidious, constant and subtle ethnic stereotyping, I had to work out the subtext of that conversation in my sleep and woke up furious. A year later, as guest of honor at a one-woman show at a Washington D.C. art gallery, I was introduced to the artist’s mother, who promptly said: “Oh, you’re from the Philippines! My daughter’s nanny is from the Philippines.” By then, I could snap back: “What a coincidence! My secretary’s white!”
How ironic that one had to be prickly to fit into this society, especially when one wasn’t white. But one had to acquire armor against the subtle put-downs, usually given when one was occupying, in the eyes of the put-downer, a “privileged” position. When my first book was reviewed favorably by the Times and my excited landlady made practically everyone in our building read the article, one neighbor who had a toy terrier with a diamond collar asked, “is it true Filipinos eat dogs?” I said of course and called out to his dog, “here, Foxy, here; straight to the kitchen, I’ll make you a good dinner.”
Sometimes you just have to out gross "them."
Many Filipinos do not get this kind of nuanced insult. Some would even be flattered that George W. remembered the Filipina chef in the White House kitchen, “a very good cook,” chrissakes. It’s akin to the pleasure we feel when a feudal warlord joins the town fiesta and dances with the hoi polloi; never mind that he's just taken away half of the harvest. I’ve had Filipinos tell me to “please not insult our American friend” who’s just insulted me galore, as if they, despite citizenship, weren’t Americans. I would’ve dearly loved to have said "neither can your president" to this guy in my neighborhood – a guy who, upon catching sight of me walking on the sidewalk, said over his cell phone that the place was beginning to be full of aliens “who can’t even speak English.” As it was, I could only advise him to buy a Vlasik and sit on it.
Two things mystify me about this Gloria Mac-Arroyo visit. First, the “roll-in-the-dust” gratitude for the paltry sum of $700 million in aid, considering the public humiliation. If it’s just a matter of money, overseas Filipino workers send home up to $20 billion per year, without needing to insult anyone. Had Gloria Mac-Arroyo been attentive to their needs – ordered the government to negotiate for really decent wages and working conditions for domestic workers, instead of the monthly $200 they get at the United Arab Emirates, for instance, working 16 hours 24/7 – the bloody $700 million would’ve meant only a hundred dollar donation per OFW. Were the Philippine government just a shade more caring, OFW’s would’ve sent home an extra billion dollars, with pleasure and without subjecting even the most deserving public servant to public embarrassment.
More, that would’ve been cold, hard cash -- unlike foreign aid, which is usually spent on goods made by American corporations and on salaries for American experts who tell Filipinos what to do and how to do it. Aid is not aid for the recipient country; it is aid for American big business who thus are spared the need to be grateful for U.S. taxpayer's money. More, such goods invariably change the lifestyle of the recipient country so it becomes a vulnerable market for U.S. goods. It’s part of the national US budget for advertising. Consider that at one time, the weight-loss meal replacement Metrecal was sent to the Philippines as part of foreign aid.
After all these years of receiving foreign aid, one would expect Philippine government officials to conclude that foreign aid, foreign investments, etc., do not solve/resolve anything; that issues of poverty and inequity have to be resolved at ground level, by our bootstraps, as it were.
The second mystifying thing is why Gloria Mac-Arroyo started thanking U.S. congress people for the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill – which is not even approved yet. The bill is intended to provide pensions for the few surviving Filipinos who fought with USAFFE in WWII; they were denied equal benefits as U.S. soldiers by the Rescission Act of 1946 which declared that the services of some 250,000 Filipinos under the U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East "shall not be deemed to be or to have been service in the military or national forces of the United States or any component thereof or any law of the United States conferring rights, privileges or benefits."
That clause meant no medical attention, no recognition, nothing whatsoever, all history of that service erased. I have occasionally exclaimed, "that's what you get for fighting under a foreign flag" but this is such a palpable act of racism it cannot be overlooked.
Over the years, the veterans and a few allies have fought to eke out “rights, privileges or benefits,” starting with access to the Veterans Hospital. Now here comes Gloria Mac-Arroyo thanking US legislators for an unpassed bill, pretending that she had had a role in the struggle for veterans’ rights. And who weren’t thanked for this struggle for equal rights? Why the veterans themselves, the Fil-Am community of supporters, advocates who’d gotten old and hoarse trying to correct this discrimination. As 86-year-old veteran Faustino Baclig said, “sobra ang tsu-tsu” (too much of a suck-up).
Because the Philippine government refuses to recognize and rely on the indomitable character of the people it purportedly governs and represents, because the Philippine government continues to be led by suck-ups, all who are of Philippine ancestry become vulnerable to ethnic stereotyping, public humiliation and the disgrace of being perpetual beggars even as the Philippines gives away all of its resources -- from human to natural. Sad, just too sad. -- ##
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Post Script
Watched Hillary Clinton's concession speech. Was taken aback when everyone started praising her afterwards. I thought the speech was ironic. She laid it on really thick, mentioning Barack's name like 30,000 times in half an hour. The speech's undertone, it seemed to me, was "you want me to roll in the dust? okay; i'll not only roll in the dust; i'll tear off my hair; smear my face; claw my eyes out; etc., etc." Overpraise, overstate, over-everything -- something women do when they get tired of the caviling; just give in so totally no one knows what to make of it. Or am I being overcomplicated?
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Hammurabi in Texas
The evening he amasses enough pledged delegates to win the mantle of Nominee Presumptive, Senator Barack Obama chooses to deliver an apotheosis on Senator Hillary Clinton, thus creating the rather curious phenomenon of a winner lauding his defeated rival at the instant of his success. He thanks her on behalf of his daughters, in tacit acknowledgement of the truth that what one woman achieves becomes a potentiality for all women, that indeed there is a world of commonality among women. He says he is a better candidate for having had the honor to run against a formidable woman… and while it is true that one CAN’T not listen to Barack, he’s that good an orator, it is still a pleasure to hear a man acknowledge a woman’s strength, capability and accomplishment. This is rare, happening mostly at funerals, underscoring society’s implicit message that the only good woman is … well, you know the rest.
Of course, right after, everyone jumps on Hillary for not having instantly conceded, rolled in the dust in abnegation, thrown ashes on her head for having had the temerity to contest a male’s right to head a major political party… She is "ungracious" for not instantly falling to her knees. I’m sorry but I find this illogical; the defeated is not expected to be gracious, the victor is. The undertone of this caviling is fear about what she might do, and guilt over another frustration of a woman’s and women’s attempt at achieving even a surface equality. Enough already; she lost; leave her alone.
It’s been a bad season for women, underscored by that raid on the compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ’s Latter Day Saints (FLDS) where some 400 children/minors were removed over allegations of abuse and forced/manipulated weddings. As details of the polygamous sect’s lifestyle unfolded over the air waves, one couldn’t help thinking of the reign of Hammurabi. Likely this was an insult to him, considering he had created an empire from the proto-slave societies on the plains of Babylon, Mesopotamia, Nineveh… And of course, he was first to codify laws, enshrining the principle of assumption of innocence in the juridical system. So apologies to him, but the similarities between the FLDS and Hammurabi’s milieu became more and more palpable with each revealed detail.
When the “moms” appeared on television, the affinity of their hair-do and clothes with the android Rachel in Blade Runner was striking. Rachel was given a false memory to render her closer to human, as it were.
The discourse on the FLDS was disquieting. Because it focused so much on the issues of the abuse of children and of child-brides (which are important), what underlay so much of this cruelty was lost: the relentless oppression of women within this absurdly patriarchal society. The oppression of women enabled the oppression of others: the young men whose unpaid labor was used to fulfill contracts with the Pentagon, the children who were kept in ignorance of the world, the girls who were raised to believe that their ultimate destiny was no more than becoming an adjunct of the patriarch… On top of this was the relentless concentration of property (including women and children) in the hands of men adjudged worthy of becoming patriarchs, on the say-so of a (yet another) clique of men, testifying to the truth that power-cliques self-replicate… Gerda Lerner must be chuckling over her breakfast tea, over this virtual dramatization of her book Creation of the Patriarchy on the plains of Texas.
I was inclined to dismiss the FLDS lifestyle as an aberration, until a friend from Switzerland said, for the umpteenth time that she couldn’t understand why, in a city that jumps out of its skin 24/7, television producers chose to feature some vacuous women in a reality show. I’d managed to ignore her remarks until she said: “the only interesting character there is the housemaid; I bet she’s from your country.” That sent me scurrying to watch re-runs of the The Real Housewives of New York City. Yup, vacuous as vacuum cleaners; yup, the housekeeper is from my country, I’d recognize that accent anytime, anywhere. Swiss friend added that she couldn’t see any great essential difference between the New York City housewives and the FLDS wives. That gave me great chill.
In an interview, Nepal's Hisila Yami gave a capsule description of what the problem was: “Women were the first to be oppressed, and will be the last to be liberated when class oppression ceases. So the test of whether class oppression still exists is if women’s oppression still exists or not.” That, in effect, acknowledged that all of class societies rests on women’s oppression.
The one ray of sunshine in the FLDS gloom came from women as well. Former child-brides, who broke through their conditioning and who took their children out of that hierarchy of oppression. Escape was not sufficient for them; they continue to speak out, warning others and trying to reach other women, calling on them to free their minds from the constructs of oppression, asking them not to be complicit in their own powerlessness. Perhaps, after all. women may not be the "last to be liberated."
And in keeping with the dawn-of-history ambience of this whole affair, I will end with an injunction that comes from those times as well: Go and do likewise. -- ##
Note to mostbeau, who's been denouncing me: this is the only place where I post; so I have no idea what you're referring to.
Of course, right after, everyone jumps on Hillary for not having instantly conceded, rolled in the dust in abnegation, thrown ashes on her head for having had the temerity to contest a male’s right to head a major political party… She is "ungracious" for not instantly falling to her knees. I’m sorry but I find this illogical; the defeated is not expected to be gracious, the victor is. The undertone of this caviling is fear about what she might do, and guilt over another frustration of a woman’s and women’s attempt at achieving even a surface equality. Enough already; she lost; leave her alone.
It’s been a bad season for women, underscored by that raid on the compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ’s Latter Day Saints (FLDS) where some 400 children/minors were removed over allegations of abuse and forced/manipulated weddings. As details of the polygamous sect’s lifestyle unfolded over the air waves, one couldn’t help thinking of the reign of Hammurabi. Likely this was an insult to him, considering he had created an empire from the proto-slave societies on the plains of Babylon, Mesopotamia, Nineveh… And of course, he was first to codify laws, enshrining the principle of assumption of innocence in the juridical system. So apologies to him, but the similarities between the FLDS and Hammurabi’s milieu became more and more palpable with each revealed detail.
When the “moms” appeared on television, the affinity of their hair-do and clothes with the android Rachel in Blade Runner was striking. Rachel was given a false memory to render her closer to human, as it were.
The discourse on the FLDS was disquieting. Because it focused so much on the issues of the abuse of children and of child-brides (which are important), what underlay so much of this cruelty was lost: the relentless oppression of women within this absurdly patriarchal society. The oppression of women enabled the oppression of others: the young men whose unpaid labor was used to fulfill contracts with the Pentagon, the children who were kept in ignorance of the world, the girls who were raised to believe that their ultimate destiny was no more than becoming an adjunct of the patriarch… On top of this was the relentless concentration of property (including women and children) in the hands of men adjudged worthy of becoming patriarchs, on the say-so of a (yet another) clique of men, testifying to the truth that power-cliques self-replicate… Gerda Lerner must be chuckling over her breakfast tea, over this virtual dramatization of her book Creation of the Patriarchy on the plains of Texas.
I was inclined to dismiss the FLDS lifestyle as an aberration, until a friend from Switzerland said, for the umpteenth time that she couldn’t understand why, in a city that jumps out of its skin 24/7, television producers chose to feature some vacuous women in a reality show. I’d managed to ignore her remarks until she said: “the only interesting character there is the housemaid; I bet she’s from your country.” That sent me scurrying to watch re-runs of the The Real Housewives of New York City. Yup, vacuous as vacuum cleaners; yup, the housekeeper is from my country, I’d recognize that accent anytime, anywhere. Swiss friend added that she couldn’t see any great essential difference between the New York City housewives and the FLDS wives. That gave me great chill.
In an interview, Nepal's Hisila Yami gave a capsule description of what the problem was: “Women were the first to be oppressed, and will be the last to be liberated when class oppression ceases. So the test of whether class oppression still exists is if women’s oppression still exists or not.” That, in effect, acknowledged that all of class societies rests on women’s oppression.
The one ray of sunshine in the FLDS gloom came from women as well. Former child-brides, who broke through their conditioning and who took their children out of that hierarchy of oppression. Escape was not sufficient for them; they continue to speak out, warning others and trying to reach other women, calling on them to free their minds from the constructs of oppression, asking them not to be complicit in their own powerlessness. Perhaps, after all. women may not be the "last to be liberated."
And in keeping with the dawn-of-history ambience of this whole affair, I will end with an injunction that comes from those times as well: Go and do likewise. -- ##
Note to mostbeau, who's been denouncing me: this is the only place where I post; so I have no idea what you're referring to.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
additional postscript
Results in Nepal Constitutional Assembly election, with 240 constituencies declared: Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) 120; Nepali Congress 37; Communist Party UML 33; Madheshi People's Rights Forum 30; Terai Madhesh Democratic Party; Sadbhavana Party 4; Nepal Workers' and Peasants' Party 2; People's Front Nepal 2; Independent 2; National People's Front 1.
Results from the proportional representation election may still change the Assembly's make-up. More women -- over 3,000 -- are running under party banners in this election.
Results from the proportional representation election may still change the Assembly's make-up. More women -- over 3,000 -- are running under party banners in this election.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Postscript on Nepal
Hisila Yami won. CPN(M) has thus far won in 61 of 115 constituencies. Let's see what happens next.
Breaking the Box in Nepal
Four days after the elections for the Constitutional Assembly in Nepal, ten women, including a 77-year-old, will climb Mt. Qomolangma in the Himalayas. That seems a strange way to commemorate a new political development but in this tiny country wedged between India and China, it is characteristic of the way Nepali women are breaking centuries-old traditions and pushing their way toward the 21st century.
Last week, parliament revoked a law that gave men the right to divorce their wives if they don’t bear children in ten years, never mind if the cause is male infertility. Some time ago, Nepal recognized the gender designation M/F, neither male nor female, for the transgendered. And in the coming Constitutional Assembly, Dalits (who used to be called untouchables) will sit with higher caste representatives to write the Constitution that will formally end the 269-year Shah dynasty.
The ten mountain-climbing women come from different castes and ethnicities, thus symbolizing the hoped-for national unity, in the face of a disintegrating kingdom. Already, its interim government has stripped King Gyanendra of his powers, canceled his annual $3.1 million allowance and taken away 10 of the royal palaces. Royal wealth seems excessive in a country where the literacy rate runs between 35-40%, and where the poorest of the poor, mostly women, own literally nothing.
Gyanendra, a businessman, ascended the throne following the murder of his brother, the old king, and eight other members of the immediate royal family, allegedly by a prince, over a thwarted romance. This story was, of course, widely disbelieved. Gyanendra assumed the throne in the midst of a burgeoning people’s war waged primarily by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) or the CPN (M), with the twin political call to end the monarchy and liberate women. I confess that when I was first made aware of the latter, I nearly jumped out of my skin, having been engaged in debate for 20 years over class, gender and liberation.
Sometime in the early ‘90s, I was introduced by a mountain-climbing friend to a Nepali man who seemed terribly – and to me, inordinately -- interested in discussing women’s rights, issues and women’s struggles. I can’t remember his name now but this was at the time when the first pro-democracy movement was occurring in the country. Because I was chair of a national women’s organization then, he wanted me to meet a visiting delegation from an all-women’s association of Nepal. I begged off, knowing very little about Nepal and afraid I would say something stupid. But also because my mind simply couldn’t wrap itself around why a man would be interested in women's rights; I'd never met one before.
The call for emancipation appeared to have inspired a dash among Nepali women to join the revolution. From various accounts, women comprise anywhere between 36% to 50% of the armed fighters of the CPN(M), with the aggregate membership of women’s organizations numbering 600,000. This was dizzying, indeed. Then from the turmoil came one woman's clear and strong voice. an essay on women’s leadership in Nepal’s people’s war, written by Comrade Parvati, head of the CPN(M) Women’s Department.
Parvati is running in the Kathmandu Valley, under her real name Hisila Yami. She’s one of only 373 women among 4,000 candidates contesting the 240 seats to be determined by direct vote. Under the proportional representation system, though, over 3,000 women are contesting some 5,998 seats, carrying their political parties’ banners. Nearly 10,000 candidates in total are running in these elections.
By mandate, women are supposed to occupy 30% of the Constitutional Assembly. But political parties have fielded very few women for the direct elections or have them running in areas where they’re sure to lose. The CPN(M) has the largest percentage – 20%; it’s second-in-command said that the Party wanted 50% but couldn’t find enough women. That sounded like the usual excuse but with women’s literacy running to only about 26%, not finding enough to meet eligibility requirements seems plausible. Indeed, Nepal’s Election Commission threatens to disqualify 49 women candidates for lack of documentation.
In a move that resonates, CPN(M) fielded 100 candidates who each had lost a family member in the course of the 13-year people’s war. 80 are women, widowed in the struggle for Nepal’s national liberation. What better way to honor the dead of a movement than to give their kith and kin the right to have a say in governance?
That a Maoist party finds women’s emancipation to be of major interest is explained by Parvati thus:
It is interesting to observe that revolutionary communist women have always been on the offensive when they are fighting against the revisionists. The reason may be because they are painfully aware that revisionism breeds bureaucratization, which in turn strengthens patriarchal values, ultimately negating women in politics.
It should be noted that in third world county like Nepal, where class differentiation is not sharp enough, inner-party struggle may often appear in the form of gender, ethnic, regional struggle. Hence the gender issue becomes quite an important component of the class issue. In such a case dismissing the gender issue as an alien force will ultimately affect class struggle.
True, one large box – feudalism -- has to be broken in Nepal but that box contains many little boxes in which women are held captive. Officially, 80,000 Nepali women work in 65 countries, mostly as domestics, contributing roughly 10% of total remittances to the country but many more work in clandestine situations, especially in the Gulf countries. 10,000 are (sex) trafficked annually to India, creating some 200,000 women exiles. Among the Dalits, 60% are married before the age of 16. And while widows are no longer automatically immolated at their husbands’ funeral pyre, they are not allowed to re-marry. Property rights are also by male lineage, leaving widows and daughters impoverished. Nepal's women have a shorter lifespan than men --an anomaly in this world.
A civil war may seem a drastic way to break traditional boxes but as one woman fighter put it, being engaged in an actual liberation movement has brought about more political, cultural and ideological changes than “if universities had taught equality for a hundred years.” - ##
Last week, parliament revoked a law that gave men the right to divorce their wives if they don’t bear children in ten years, never mind if the cause is male infertility. Some time ago, Nepal recognized the gender designation M/F, neither male nor female, for the transgendered. And in the coming Constitutional Assembly, Dalits (who used to be called untouchables) will sit with higher caste representatives to write the Constitution that will formally end the 269-year Shah dynasty.
The ten mountain-climbing women come from different castes and ethnicities, thus symbolizing the hoped-for national unity, in the face of a disintegrating kingdom. Already, its interim government has stripped King Gyanendra of his powers, canceled his annual $3.1 million allowance and taken away 10 of the royal palaces. Royal wealth seems excessive in a country where the literacy rate runs between 35-40%, and where the poorest of the poor, mostly women, own literally nothing.
Gyanendra, a businessman, ascended the throne following the murder of his brother, the old king, and eight other members of the immediate royal family, allegedly by a prince, over a thwarted romance. This story was, of course, widely disbelieved. Gyanendra assumed the throne in the midst of a burgeoning people’s war waged primarily by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) or the CPN (M), with the twin political call to end the monarchy and liberate women. I confess that when I was first made aware of the latter, I nearly jumped out of my skin, having been engaged in debate for 20 years over class, gender and liberation.
Sometime in the early ‘90s, I was introduced by a mountain-climbing friend to a Nepali man who seemed terribly – and to me, inordinately -- interested in discussing women’s rights, issues and women’s struggles. I can’t remember his name now but this was at the time when the first pro-democracy movement was occurring in the country. Because I was chair of a national women’s organization then, he wanted me to meet a visiting delegation from an all-women’s association of Nepal. I begged off, knowing very little about Nepal and afraid I would say something stupid. But also because my mind simply couldn’t wrap itself around why a man would be interested in women's rights; I'd never met one before.
The call for emancipation appeared to have inspired a dash among Nepali women to join the revolution. From various accounts, women comprise anywhere between 36% to 50% of the armed fighters of the CPN(M), with the aggregate membership of women’s organizations numbering 600,000. This was dizzying, indeed. Then from the turmoil came one woman's clear and strong voice. an essay on women’s leadership in Nepal’s people’s war, written by Comrade Parvati, head of the CPN(M) Women’s Department.
Parvati is running in the Kathmandu Valley, under her real name Hisila Yami. She’s one of only 373 women among 4,000 candidates contesting the 240 seats to be determined by direct vote. Under the proportional representation system, though, over 3,000 women are contesting some 5,998 seats, carrying their political parties’ banners. Nearly 10,000 candidates in total are running in these elections.
By mandate, women are supposed to occupy 30% of the Constitutional Assembly. But political parties have fielded very few women for the direct elections or have them running in areas where they’re sure to lose. The CPN(M) has the largest percentage – 20%; it’s second-in-command said that the Party wanted 50% but couldn’t find enough women. That sounded like the usual excuse but with women’s literacy running to only about 26%, not finding enough to meet eligibility requirements seems plausible. Indeed, Nepal’s Election Commission threatens to disqualify 49 women candidates for lack of documentation.
In a move that resonates, CPN(M) fielded 100 candidates who each had lost a family member in the course of the 13-year people’s war. 80 are women, widowed in the struggle for Nepal’s national liberation. What better way to honor the dead of a movement than to give their kith and kin the right to have a say in governance?
That a Maoist party finds women’s emancipation to be of major interest is explained by Parvati thus:
It is interesting to observe that revolutionary communist women have always been on the offensive when they are fighting against the revisionists. The reason may be because they are painfully aware that revisionism breeds bureaucratization, which in turn strengthens patriarchal values, ultimately negating women in politics.
It should be noted that in third world county like Nepal, where class differentiation is not sharp enough, inner-party struggle may often appear in the form of gender, ethnic, regional struggle. Hence the gender issue becomes quite an important component of the class issue. In such a case dismissing the gender issue as an alien force will ultimately affect class struggle.
True, one large box – feudalism -- has to be broken in Nepal but that box contains many little boxes in which women are held captive. Officially, 80,000 Nepali women work in 65 countries, mostly as domestics, contributing roughly 10% of total remittances to the country but many more work in clandestine situations, especially in the Gulf countries. 10,000 are (sex) trafficked annually to India, creating some 200,000 women exiles. Among the Dalits, 60% are married before the age of 16. And while widows are no longer automatically immolated at their husbands’ funeral pyre, they are not allowed to re-marry. Property rights are also by male lineage, leaving widows and daughters impoverished. Nepal's women have a shorter lifespan than men --an anomaly in this world.
A civil war may seem a drastic way to break traditional boxes but as one woman fighter put it, being engaged in an actual liberation movement has brought about more political, cultural and ideological changes than “if universities had taught equality for a hundred years.” - ##
Sunday, March 30, 2008
post-script to arrests
Thanks to the many, many people who expressed concern for Mirk and Gemma. It was most heartwarming to know that, though many didn't know the two GABNet members, it was enough that they were of this sovereign sisterhood.
What's the probability ratio that of the 200 arrested at the latest anti-war actions, two would come from GABNet? It seems to me that that says something about the mettle of this organization.
The two are out and will likely face court hearings. I hope the charges are dismissed.
What's the probability ratio that of the 200 arrested at the latest anti-war actions, two would come from GABNet? It seems to me that that says something about the mettle of this organization.
The two are out and will likely face court hearings. I hope the charges are dismissed.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
2 GABNet Members Arrested
Mirk and Gemma were arrested at the anti-war march in San Francisco on the 19th of March.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Sex, Lies & The Gender of Power
New York lost its governor, he who rode to victory on 70% of state votes. Eliot Spitzer, who was reputed to be the scrubber – he would clean corruption out of every aspect of state politics – resigned after revelations of sex trysts with (a) prostitute(s) which reportedly cost him as much as $80,000. Shocked New Yorkers went around for a day or two asking “what was he thinking?” Friend Mirk and I agreed, over phone lines stretched between New York and San Francisco, that it would be more correct to ask “with what was he thinking?”
Actually, when the news first broke out, my immediate reaction was to say “stupid!” Why’d he use his cell phone? Why not a prepaid disposal one? Why not ask his aide to make the arrangements? In other words, my shock came from his inability to finesse the illicit act – in other words, to get away with it, not to get caught. Goes to show that even someone like me who examines her thoughts constantly for “constructs” falls prey to the assumption that among the accouterments of power is sexual access to the object(s) of one’s desire; that a rampant libido is part and parcel of leadership.
The roots of this assumption lie in history, of course, leading back to over 10,000 years ago when sexual dominance over women began humankind’s experiment with large-scale marginalization of portions of itself, and preemption of community resources (including women) based on strength, eventually institutionalized into class divisions based on property. This is one of the basic reasons why power has had a male gender in class society. We can posit as well that power became synonymous with strength, since the idea of dominance was embedded in the hierarchical and quasi-military formations at the beginning of human history. Thus leadership equals power equals dominance, strength and an enhanced libido.
New Yorker shock lasted only a few days and then, former Governor Spitzer became fodder for the worst jokes ever in the political scene. The song Love Potion Number 9 was rewritten to become Client Number 9 – the pseudonym by which Spitzer was identified in court papers when the management of the high-class prostitution ring was sued. Speculation was that “Kristen,” the woman given over $4,000 by Client Number 9, had to take the train instead of flying from New York to Washington D.C. because she was carrying toys. Uh. She’s reportedly making a lot of money from the scandal – underscoring the message of U.S, pop culture to young women: you can have it all by selling yourself.
Despite huge advances in concepts of women’s equality and women’s rights, we still can’t seem to end the view of women and sexual indulgence as accessories of power. Solomon’s harem of hundreds of women was written up as kingly virtue; the emperors of Rome gathered women, men and children for their sexual proclivities, as did the emperors of China. In more recent times, there were the Kennedys, Bill Clinton and that guy who was soliciting congressional pages via text messaging. The irony is that political leaders are brought down by sex scandals in this bourgeois society where women are as much a commodity as anything else. I can’t remember any similar event happening in the socialist bloc, when it still existed. Chiang Ching, the wife of Chairman Mao, allegedly indulged in orgies of drinking and watching Western films with her colleagues in the Gang of Four – but that was mostly rumor. She committed suicide after decades in prison in China.
Some supporters of Hillary Clinton floated the opinion that the Spitzer scandal underlies the importance of gender in the selection of leadership. I tried to recall if there ever was a woman leader who linked power with sex as much as men often do. Catherine The Great, if accounts are to be believed, could fall into that category. But by and large, women of power were more linked to cruelty and excess in spending than anything else. Like Imelda Marcos, who’s just been cleared of money salting, while 10,000 human rights victims of her husband’s dictatorship remain bereft of compensation. The Philippines, it seems, has a long history of allowing injustice to go un-redressed, like the peasants killed at Hacienda Luisita, the thousand activists murdered since 2001, the union leaders killed at various factories…
I would agree to some extent with Hillary’s supporters but for different reasons. First and foremost is the need to de-genderize power. For over 10,000 years, the gender of power has been male; decisive work has to be done to end that. Second reason would be to end the assumption that women are accessories of power and wealth – an assumption that continues the historical objectification of women as possessions or as objects to be conquered. Third reason is that, despite all good intentions, the highest representation of women in government has only been 26% -- and that was in former Soviet Union, China and various governments of the former Eastern bloc. This view that women are to be governed, not to govern, is linked to our historical and social definition of woman. We cannot leave that view unchallenged; part of the struggle for women’s emancipation is the need to redefine what a woman is, should be; indeed to redefine what gender is, socially. Otherwise, we accept the proposition that a woman is she who works for the interests of profit-makers, exploiters and oppressors. The new definition, which we need to uphold in all our actions and pronouncements, must come from the women’s struggle and women’s movement toward their emancipation and the people’s liberation. -- ##
Actually, when the news first broke out, my immediate reaction was to say “stupid!” Why’d he use his cell phone? Why not a prepaid disposal one? Why not ask his aide to make the arrangements? In other words, my shock came from his inability to finesse the illicit act – in other words, to get away with it, not to get caught. Goes to show that even someone like me who examines her thoughts constantly for “constructs” falls prey to the assumption that among the accouterments of power is sexual access to the object(s) of one’s desire; that a rampant libido is part and parcel of leadership.
The roots of this assumption lie in history, of course, leading back to over 10,000 years ago when sexual dominance over women began humankind’s experiment with large-scale marginalization of portions of itself, and preemption of community resources (including women) based on strength, eventually institutionalized into class divisions based on property. This is one of the basic reasons why power has had a male gender in class society. We can posit as well that power became synonymous with strength, since the idea of dominance was embedded in the hierarchical and quasi-military formations at the beginning of human history. Thus leadership equals power equals dominance, strength and an enhanced libido.
New Yorker shock lasted only a few days and then, former Governor Spitzer became fodder for the worst jokes ever in the political scene. The song Love Potion Number 9 was rewritten to become Client Number 9 – the pseudonym by which Spitzer was identified in court papers when the management of the high-class prostitution ring was sued. Speculation was that “Kristen,” the woman given over $4,000 by Client Number 9, had to take the train instead of flying from New York to Washington D.C. because she was carrying toys. Uh. She’s reportedly making a lot of money from the scandal – underscoring the message of U.S, pop culture to young women: you can have it all by selling yourself.
Despite huge advances in concepts of women’s equality and women’s rights, we still can’t seem to end the view of women and sexual indulgence as accessories of power. Solomon’s harem of hundreds of women was written up as kingly virtue; the emperors of Rome gathered women, men and children for their sexual proclivities, as did the emperors of China. In more recent times, there were the Kennedys, Bill Clinton and that guy who was soliciting congressional pages via text messaging. The irony is that political leaders are brought down by sex scandals in this bourgeois society where women are as much a commodity as anything else. I can’t remember any similar event happening in the socialist bloc, when it still existed. Chiang Ching, the wife of Chairman Mao, allegedly indulged in orgies of drinking and watching Western films with her colleagues in the Gang of Four – but that was mostly rumor. She committed suicide after decades in prison in China.
Some supporters of Hillary Clinton floated the opinion that the Spitzer scandal underlies the importance of gender in the selection of leadership. I tried to recall if there ever was a woman leader who linked power with sex as much as men often do. Catherine The Great, if accounts are to be believed, could fall into that category. But by and large, women of power were more linked to cruelty and excess in spending than anything else. Like Imelda Marcos, who’s just been cleared of money salting, while 10,000 human rights victims of her husband’s dictatorship remain bereft of compensation. The Philippines, it seems, has a long history of allowing injustice to go un-redressed, like the peasants killed at Hacienda Luisita, the thousand activists murdered since 2001, the union leaders killed at various factories…
I would agree to some extent with Hillary’s supporters but for different reasons. First and foremost is the need to de-genderize power. For over 10,000 years, the gender of power has been male; decisive work has to be done to end that. Second reason would be to end the assumption that women are accessories of power and wealth – an assumption that continues the historical objectification of women as possessions or as objects to be conquered. Third reason is that, despite all good intentions, the highest representation of women in government has only been 26% -- and that was in former Soviet Union, China and various governments of the former Eastern bloc. This view that women are to be governed, not to govern, is linked to our historical and social definition of woman. We cannot leave that view unchallenged; part of the struggle for women’s emancipation is the need to redefine what a woman is, should be; indeed to redefine what gender is, socially. Otherwise, we accept the proposition that a woman is she who works for the interests of profit-makers, exploiters and oppressors. The new definition, which we need to uphold in all our actions and pronouncements, must come from the women’s struggle and women’s movement toward their emancipation and the people’s liberation. -- ##
Monday, March 10, 2008
Mystic at the Los Angeles IWD
Grammy-nominated artist/rapper Mystic whip up the crowd at the 8th March against the War rally in Los Angeles.
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Fil-Am Women Lead Historic Los Angeles March
from Dr. Annaliza Enrile, national chairperson, GABNet; initiating committee, Mariposa Alliance:
City of West Hollywood Endorses 8th March Against The War rally
LOS ANGELES: Thousands of women are expected to march under the butterfly insignia of the Mariposa Alliance and the purple standard of GABNet as the City Council of West Hollywood passed a resolution endorsing this Saturday's anti-war gathering. It will be a historic event for Los Angeles where no women's march on International Women's Day has been held since 1994.
Said GABNet National Chair Dr. Annalisa Enrile: "that women of Philippine ancestry are taking the lead on this makes our community and organizations proud. As Filipino-Americans, we are taking our rightful place in the political discourse of the United States, on issues that impact our lives on a daily basis." The GABNet chair thanked the member organizations of the Mariposa Alliance for their staunch and unwavering support. She also thanked the City Council of West Hollywood and Mayor John L. Duran for "confirming the validity" of women's actions and women's voices on "the burning issues of the day."
The West Hollywood City Council Resolution # 08-3644 is entitled Resolution In Support of International Women's Day: March 8th Against The War Rally." It notes that: "March 8th Against The War Rally serves to unite female activists and groups that usually work on different issues for a common cause." Declaring that the City Council of West Hollywood "has been a vocal opponent against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has a history of supporting community programming for women's rights," the Council duly passed its resolution of support for the 8th March rally against the war. (see text below)
Among the participating organizations are the Association of Raza Educators, Somos Raza, Bienestar, CHIRLA Home Health Care Workers, University of Southern California student groups, California State University LA, ELAC, Pomona and Long Beach student groups, Kappa Psi Epsilon, Chapinas Unidas, CODEPINK, ANSWER, Global Strike for Women, INCITE, MIWON, US Labor Against the War and others.
GABNet members from Los Angeles, Irvine, San Diego and Santa Barbara will be busing to the rally. They are calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Philippines and the prosecution of military rapists, sex abuses and traffickers. "We march for Nicole. We march for the bansamoro women. We march for the Filipina raped in Japan by a U.S. soldier. We march for all women victims of U.S. occupation all over the world," declared Jollene Levid, GABNet national organizing director.
-------------------------------------------------------------
RESOLUTION NO. 08-3644
A RESOLUTION BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF WEST HOLLYWOOD IN SUPPORT OF
"INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY: MARCH 8TH AGAINST THE WAR" RALLY
THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF WEST HOLLYWOOD DOES HEREBY RESOLVE AS FOLLOWS:
WHEREAS, nearly 4,000 Americans and 1 million Iraqis have been killed since the Iraq War began in 2003; and
WHEREAS, the majority of these victims are, disproportionately, women and children; and
WHEREAS, the "International Women's Day: March 8th Against the War" rally serves as an opportunity to unite female activists and groups that usually work on different issues for a common cause; and
WHEREAS, the march will mark the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War and call for an end to the war and victimization of women in war-stricken countries; and
WHEREAS, no large mobilization of women activists on International Women's Day in Los Angeles has taken place since 1994; and
WHEREAS, West Hollywood has been a vocal opponent of the recent wars in Afganistan and Iraq, and has a history of supporting community programming for women's rights;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the City Council of the City of West Hollywood hereby supports "International Women's Day: March 8th Against the War" rally on March 8th, 2008 in Los Angeles.
PASSED, APPROVED AND ADOPTED by the City Council of the City of West Hollywood at a regular meeting held this 3rd day of March, 2008, by the following vote:
AYES: Councilmember Guarriello, Heilman, Land, Mayor Pro Tempre Prang and Mayor Duran
NOES: None
ABSENT: None
ABSTAIN: None
Signed by Mayor John Duran; Attested to by City Clerk Thomas R. West.
-------------------------
Comment from NR: FIERCE! Morph to Liberation!
City of West Hollywood Endorses 8th March Against The War rally
LOS ANGELES: Thousands of women are expected to march under the butterfly insignia of the Mariposa Alliance and the purple standard of GABNet as the City Council of West Hollywood passed a resolution endorsing this Saturday's anti-war gathering. It will be a historic event for Los Angeles where no women's march on International Women's Day has been held since 1994.
Said GABNet National Chair Dr. Annalisa Enrile: "that women of Philippine ancestry are taking the lead on this makes our community and organizations proud. As Filipino-Americans, we are taking our rightful place in the political discourse of the United States, on issues that impact our lives on a daily basis." The GABNet chair thanked the member organizations of the Mariposa Alliance for their staunch and unwavering support. She also thanked the City Council of West Hollywood and Mayor John L. Duran for "confirming the validity" of women's actions and women's voices on "the burning issues of the day."
The West Hollywood City Council Resolution # 08-3644 is entitled Resolution In Support of International Women's Day: March 8th Against The War Rally." It notes that: "March 8th Against The War Rally serves to unite female activists and groups that usually work on different issues for a common cause." Declaring that the City Council of West Hollywood "has been a vocal opponent against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has a history of supporting community programming for women's rights," the Council duly passed its resolution of support for the 8th March rally against the war. (see text below)
Among the participating organizations are the Association of Raza Educators, Somos Raza, Bienestar, CHIRLA Home Health Care Workers, University of Southern California student groups, California State University LA, ELAC, Pomona and Long Beach student groups, Kappa Psi Epsilon, Chapinas Unidas, CODEPINK, ANSWER, Global Strike for Women, INCITE, MIWON, US Labor Against the War and others.
GABNet members from Los Angeles, Irvine, San Diego and Santa Barbara will be busing to the rally. They are calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Philippines and the prosecution of military rapists, sex abuses and traffickers. "We march for Nicole. We march for the bansamoro women. We march for the Filipina raped in Japan by a U.S. soldier. We march for all women victims of U.S. occupation all over the world," declared Jollene Levid, GABNet national organizing director.
-------------------------------------------------------------
RESOLUTION NO. 08-3644
A RESOLUTION BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF WEST HOLLYWOOD IN SUPPORT OF
"INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY: MARCH 8TH AGAINST THE WAR" RALLY
THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF WEST HOLLYWOOD DOES HEREBY RESOLVE AS FOLLOWS:
WHEREAS, nearly 4,000 Americans and 1 million Iraqis have been killed since the Iraq War began in 2003; and
WHEREAS, the majority of these victims are, disproportionately, women and children; and
WHEREAS, the "International Women's Day: March 8th Against the War" rally serves as an opportunity to unite female activists and groups that usually work on different issues for a common cause; and
WHEREAS, the march will mark the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War and call for an end to the war and victimization of women in war-stricken countries; and
WHEREAS, no large mobilization of women activists on International Women's Day in Los Angeles has taken place since 1994; and
WHEREAS, West Hollywood has been a vocal opponent of the recent wars in Afganistan and Iraq, and has a history of supporting community programming for women's rights;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the City Council of the City of West Hollywood hereby supports "International Women's Day: March 8th Against the War" rally on March 8th, 2008 in Los Angeles.
PASSED, APPROVED AND ADOPTED by the City Council of the City of West Hollywood at a regular meeting held this 3rd day of March, 2008, by the following vote:
AYES: Councilmember Guarriello, Heilman, Land, Mayor Pro Tempre Prang and Mayor Duran
NOES: None
ABSENT: None
ABSTAIN: None
Signed by Mayor John Duran; Attested to by City Clerk Thomas R. West.
-------------------------
Comment from NR: FIERCE! Morph to Liberation!
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Election Iconography 2
The day Hillary Clinton lost eight primaries in a row I suffered acute distress – which was really insane. I can’t vote. I’m one of the million backlogged at the INS; it’s likely I will be forever backlogged and will have to retire in Antarctica, since I take democracy seriously and practice it whenever I can – something power structures don’t like. I watch U.S. elections as intensely as any citizen nevertheless, because I have to live under the term of office of the successful, as much affected as any citizen. Once in a while, I think of the Boston Tea Partygoers who dumped tea leaves into the harbor, with the battle cry “no taxation without representation.” This election, with the opportunity to have either the first African-American or female president, my interest is ten fold. Hillary losing despite the great wave of female pride that greeted her candidacy was a bad nightmare. Has The Cause died, who/what did it in? The last two weeks I’ve kept eye and ear on her, fascinated by the on-going malversation of a huge political capital. She was, after all, the double-digit lead; unstoppable, possessing a war chest of $100 million and anointed by the party hierarchy when the primaries started.
The more I watch and listen, the more I am at a loss to get a handle on her. Her speeches are thematically all over the place, without structure (writers know how important structure is to message), though full of specificities; her replies to critical questions fudging and verbose. The contrast was vivid when she and Obama were asked whether undocumented aliens should be allowed to have driver’s licenses. She took what seemed a minute to reply and I still don’t know what her position is. Obama said one word: “Yes.” On the Iraq issue, there she went again, round and round the mulberry tree. “If I had known then what I know now” doesn’t wash – because you are supposed to know, then and now. Hey, the vote for war was wrong; say it, say it, say it.
What happened to the feisty woman who took on, during her husband’s first term of office, the health care behemoth of an industry? Was she pummeled too much, did the scaffolding of risk-taking and derring-do give way? Or did she, after such a brutal treatment, submit to have her personality calibrated, to avoid the accusation of being divisive, to get the approval of those in the party hierarchy? Oh hey, I could’ve told her that no matter what, strong, intelligent women with ideas of their own will always be called divisive. The whole women’s liberation movement has been called divisive time and again.
The first part of this blog (see below) brought me responses, which can be grouped into a) you gender traitor; b) it’s not the candidates, it’s the issues; and c) it doesn’t matter because what’s needed is radical change.
When the candidates’ positions regarding issues are not too far apart (or as they say, not much daylight in between), one is forced to look at other reasons for choosing: what they represent and their style. Choosing between the first African-American and the first female candidate for the presidency is difficult, since both belong to the same class stratum. One is left with style. Hillary speaks in specifics but her message isn’t consolidated; I get the impression she’s making it up as she goes along. Obama speaks in general phrases, some resonating strongly (“We are who we have been waiting for!”). In the matter of organization, Olivia of GABNet NY, told me of this guy who went to volunteer at the Obama campaign center. He could write, he said, and could issue an endorsement. No, he was told; he should visit every building in his neighborhood and find one person within who would endorse Obama. And he did, door to door, turning his neighborhood into a virtual Obama campaign center. For Hillary, I get an emailed letter from probably the richest Filipina around.
So, the first African-American president or the first woman president? Is it fair to use candidates as objective correlatives? I have no idea and am thankful I will not have to resolve this quandary, which drives some of my friends into a tizzy. Truth to tell, what fascinates me with the primaries is how Obama grows, how Clinton becomes more elegiac, and how, as Obama gains delegates, I feel like a character in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, specifically Chronicle of a Death Foretold. I am poised between the certainty of the story’s ending and the unfolding of that end, and yet hoping that there will an intervention somewhere, so it doesn't end the way one suspects it will end. Now I read that the Nobel Prize laureate Doris Lessing has reached the same conclusion, which probably underscores the depth of cynicism this culture has bred in those of us who are not of it. -- #
The more I watch and listen, the more I am at a loss to get a handle on her. Her speeches are thematically all over the place, without structure (writers know how important structure is to message), though full of specificities; her replies to critical questions fudging and verbose. The contrast was vivid when she and Obama were asked whether undocumented aliens should be allowed to have driver’s licenses. She took what seemed a minute to reply and I still don’t know what her position is. Obama said one word: “Yes.” On the Iraq issue, there she went again, round and round the mulberry tree. “If I had known then what I know now” doesn’t wash – because you are supposed to know, then and now. Hey, the vote for war was wrong; say it, say it, say it.
What happened to the feisty woman who took on, during her husband’s first term of office, the health care behemoth of an industry? Was she pummeled too much, did the scaffolding of risk-taking and derring-do give way? Or did she, after such a brutal treatment, submit to have her personality calibrated, to avoid the accusation of being divisive, to get the approval of those in the party hierarchy? Oh hey, I could’ve told her that no matter what, strong, intelligent women with ideas of their own will always be called divisive. The whole women’s liberation movement has been called divisive time and again.
The first part of this blog (see below) brought me responses, which can be grouped into a) you gender traitor; b) it’s not the candidates, it’s the issues; and c) it doesn’t matter because what’s needed is radical change.
When the candidates’ positions regarding issues are not too far apart (or as they say, not much daylight in between), one is forced to look at other reasons for choosing: what they represent and their style. Choosing between the first African-American and the first female candidate for the presidency is difficult, since both belong to the same class stratum. One is left with style. Hillary speaks in specifics but her message isn’t consolidated; I get the impression she’s making it up as she goes along. Obama speaks in general phrases, some resonating strongly (“We are who we have been waiting for!”). In the matter of organization, Olivia of GABNet NY, told me of this guy who went to volunteer at the Obama campaign center. He could write, he said, and could issue an endorsement. No, he was told; he should visit every building in his neighborhood and find one person within who would endorse Obama. And he did, door to door, turning his neighborhood into a virtual Obama campaign center. For Hillary, I get an emailed letter from probably the richest Filipina around.
So, the first African-American president or the first woman president? Is it fair to use candidates as objective correlatives? I have no idea and am thankful I will not have to resolve this quandary, which drives some of my friends into a tizzy. Truth to tell, what fascinates me with the primaries is how Obama grows, how Clinton becomes more elegiac, and how, as Obama gains delegates, I feel like a character in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, specifically Chronicle of a Death Foretold. I am poised between the certainty of the story’s ending and the unfolding of that end, and yet hoping that there will an intervention somewhere, so it doesn't end the way one suspects it will end. Now I read that the Nobel Prize laureate Doris Lessing has reached the same conclusion, which probably underscores the depth of cynicism this culture has bred in those of us who are not of it. -- #
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Election Iconography
The temptation is great: put one’s self behind one candidate and explain the choice with a simple but incontrovertible truth: she’s a woman; he’s African-American; I want someone different. That he couldn’t be summed up in a simplistic tag-line made for much, I think, of John Edwards’ difficulties. I was sorry to see him go; he kind of completed the Democratic Party’s election iconography, being the social analyst to Hillary Clinton’s number-crunching intellection and Barack Obama’s visionary approach. Edwards evoked this desire in me to mount the ramparts; Clinton, to mount the Library of Congress and dive into facts and figures; Obama, to mount the mount in search of enlightenment.
Perfect if all three could’ve been rolled up into one.
The Republicans, with their cookie-cutter candidates (all hair-sprayed straight white males in dark blue suits, you gotta be kidding, in this day and age!), simply put me to sleep, from which I occasionally awoke laughing to ask of Ron Paul, “dude, you sure you’re in the right party?” or screaming at the words “I have always been for the rights of the unborn,” “the Constitution must conform to the laws of God.” You gotta be kidding, in this day and age! That what you learned from 9/11?
Curious as to how an anointed star would spin defeat, I started watching the night Barack Obama lost the New Hampshire primary on the heels of an Iowa victory. I haven’t stopped. Work pile up on my desk; the computer turns cold. I swear he can hold the attention of even the worst ADD-afflicted. The hand of fate was palpable on his forehead; karma-marked, like Achilles, for a life exceptionally triumphant or tragic or both. Destiny, he clearly had.
The adjectives applied to him by commentators are rarely applied to politicians: transcendental, luminous, memorable, a phenomenon. A CNN “expert” said the Dems should enjoy him, as what Obama had was something one couldn’t buy at a store. Clearly, from the great enthusiasm of his meetings and the amount of money rolling in, considering he’s really a neophyte, everyone feels it. I am beginning to wonder if, in the 21st Century, this would be our archetypal dramatic figure: tall, lean, lanky young man embarking on a quest. Who does that evoke in your mind? Under the Bo tree, on the shores of Galilee, on the rocks of Aghanistan, Shiva dancing creation and destruction.
Dems and Reps agree on a narrative for this election: that somewhere along the way, governance has taken a wrong turn and needs to be restored to its proper place, in defense, as it were, of that amorphous group called “the middle class.” The Dems call for change; the Reps chant about a broken government. But what’s wrong exactly remained unspecified; perhaps, it is too frightening. Edwards was the most forthcoming: corporate power, which had secured too strong a foothold in Washington, had to be reined in. He was both right and wrong; corporate power had become too overt, true, but it has always held Washington in its grip. Remember Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex.
The candidates also seem to have agreed on a laundry list of “major concerns”: border security, immigration, health care, tax cuts, Iraq occupation – pieces and patches on which one can articulate an equally patchwork. Yeah, we don’t like the war but I’d like to know what a democratic foreign policy is and the role of war, invasion and occupation in that policy. Sure, deprive the undocumented of a way to legalize their stay in this country but what do the Reps plan to do with the 12 million undocumented? Deport them all? Impossible. Let them remain undocumented, so they can be paid wages below the minimum? I’d like clear policies on phone taps, mail and email security, and the right to travel. Of course, I am pro-choice but I’d also like to see the buying and selling of women, in whatever form, eradicated. The candidates’ answers leave me with many more unanswered questions.
One day at a Staples branch, I asked an African-American woman for whom she was batting and she said, “Hillary.” I said I thought Barack seemed preferable and she said it was a conundrum. She liked Obama but her experience as a woman, especially in the workplace, made her decide that it was time for a woman to be chief executive. “Otherwise, we’ll never make that breakthrough.”
I then asked a Caucasian woman who was supporting and she said “Obama.” That surprised me as well but she explained that Hillary was too embedded in the established system and she wanted an outsider. In this day and age, she said, ethnic minorities seemed the only viable outsiders to everything. She added wryly that had Hillary been of mixed bloodlines or Obama female…
Having seen elections galore which produced little change (I tend to look at them as huge manipulative ordered chaos that delude everyone into thinking they matter), I am tempted to be cynical and ask, does it really matter who wins? That being a dialectical question, the answer is both yes and no. Consider the proliferating checkpoints, the ever stringent rules on travel, the phone taps, the email taps, the growing acuteness of xenophobia and I realize that, to some extent, who will wield White House power will affect the amount of democratic space we will have. That space is important, in the coming recession, as the unemployment rate climbs to the 13% that is the hallmark of a stagnant economy, as multinational corporations siphon wealth from the ordinary folks through such schemes as the mortgage and credit bubbles now threatening to blow up, as states lose their tax base and cut government jobs, social welfare and public projects… We will need that space to make known, through mass action, how the steadily worsening economic crisis affects us on a day-to-day basis… We will need it, now that all mass communications are owned and controlled by multinationals.
That said, while I can barely stop watching Barack Obama, the spectacle of male politicians/commentators/pundits ganging up on Hillary Clinton angers and saddens me. That the two are at dead heat in this contest attests to how deep and profound and in many ways equal, marginalization is, whether based on gender or based on race. Being ethnic and female, I waver back and forth, forth and back, but realize ultimately that my choice must be made on who will mean a larger and more profound democracy. Do ethnic men oppress/exploit women to a lesser/greater degree? Or do white women, by virtue of their class privilege, oppress/exploit ethnic people to a lesser/greater degree? Send me your answer. -- ###
Perfect if all three could’ve been rolled up into one.
The Republicans, with their cookie-cutter candidates (all hair-sprayed straight white males in dark blue suits, you gotta be kidding, in this day and age!), simply put me to sleep, from which I occasionally awoke laughing to ask of Ron Paul, “dude, you sure you’re in the right party?” or screaming at the words “I have always been for the rights of the unborn,” “the Constitution must conform to the laws of God.” You gotta be kidding, in this day and age! That what you learned from 9/11?
Curious as to how an anointed star would spin defeat, I started watching the night Barack Obama lost the New Hampshire primary on the heels of an Iowa victory. I haven’t stopped. Work pile up on my desk; the computer turns cold. I swear he can hold the attention of even the worst ADD-afflicted. The hand of fate was palpable on his forehead; karma-marked, like Achilles, for a life exceptionally triumphant or tragic or both. Destiny, he clearly had.
The adjectives applied to him by commentators are rarely applied to politicians: transcendental, luminous, memorable, a phenomenon. A CNN “expert” said the Dems should enjoy him, as what Obama had was something one couldn’t buy at a store. Clearly, from the great enthusiasm of his meetings and the amount of money rolling in, considering he’s really a neophyte, everyone feels it. I am beginning to wonder if, in the 21st Century, this would be our archetypal dramatic figure: tall, lean, lanky young man embarking on a quest. Who does that evoke in your mind? Under the Bo tree, on the shores of Galilee, on the rocks of Aghanistan, Shiva dancing creation and destruction.
Dems and Reps agree on a narrative for this election: that somewhere along the way, governance has taken a wrong turn and needs to be restored to its proper place, in defense, as it were, of that amorphous group called “the middle class.” The Dems call for change; the Reps chant about a broken government. But what’s wrong exactly remained unspecified; perhaps, it is too frightening. Edwards was the most forthcoming: corporate power, which had secured too strong a foothold in Washington, had to be reined in. He was both right and wrong; corporate power had become too overt, true, but it has always held Washington in its grip. Remember Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex.
The candidates also seem to have agreed on a laundry list of “major concerns”: border security, immigration, health care, tax cuts, Iraq occupation – pieces and patches on which one can articulate an equally patchwork. Yeah, we don’t like the war but I’d like to know what a democratic foreign policy is and the role of war, invasion and occupation in that policy. Sure, deprive the undocumented of a way to legalize their stay in this country but what do the Reps plan to do with the 12 million undocumented? Deport them all? Impossible. Let them remain undocumented, so they can be paid wages below the minimum? I’d like clear policies on phone taps, mail and email security, and the right to travel. Of course, I am pro-choice but I’d also like to see the buying and selling of women, in whatever form, eradicated. The candidates’ answers leave me with many more unanswered questions.
One day at a Staples branch, I asked an African-American woman for whom she was batting and she said, “Hillary.” I said I thought Barack seemed preferable and she said it was a conundrum. She liked Obama but her experience as a woman, especially in the workplace, made her decide that it was time for a woman to be chief executive. “Otherwise, we’ll never make that breakthrough.”
I then asked a Caucasian woman who was supporting and she said “Obama.” That surprised me as well but she explained that Hillary was too embedded in the established system and she wanted an outsider. In this day and age, she said, ethnic minorities seemed the only viable outsiders to everything. She added wryly that had Hillary been of mixed bloodlines or Obama female…
Having seen elections galore which produced little change (I tend to look at them as huge manipulative ordered chaos that delude everyone into thinking they matter), I am tempted to be cynical and ask, does it really matter who wins? That being a dialectical question, the answer is both yes and no. Consider the proliferating checkpoints, the ever stringent rules on travel, the phone taps, the email taps, the growing acuteness of xenophobia and I realize that, to some extent, who will wield White House power will affect the amount of democratic space we will have. That space is important, in the coming recession, as the unemployment rate climbs to the 13% that is the hallmark of a stagnant economy, as multinational corporations siphon wealth from the ordinary folks through such schemes as the mortgage and credit bubbles now threatening to blow up, as states lose their tax base and cut government jobs, social welfare and public projects… We will need that space to make known, through mass action, how the steadily worsening economic crisis affects us on a day-to-day basis… We will need it, now that all mass communications are owned and controlled by multinationals.
That said, while I can barely stop watching Barack Obama, the spectacle of male politicians/commentators/pundits ganging up on Hillary Clinton angers and saddens me. That the two are at dead heat in this contest attests to how deep and profound and in many ways equal, marginalization is, whether based on gender or based on race. Being ethnic and female, I waver back and forth, forth and back, but realize ultimately that my choice must be made on who will mean a larger and more profound democracy. Do ethnic men oppress/exploit women to a lesser/greater degree? Or do white women, by virtue of their class privilege, oppress/exploit ethnic people to a lesser/greater degree? Send me your answer. -- ###
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Gunning For the Perfect Flan
Making leche flan was a skill I picked up over two decades ago in Honolulu, Hawaii, where the potluck was common practice. My sister gave me a round aluminum pan (cost $0.70 in Chinatown), some instructions and let me loose. Years later, having done with the chores of another marriage, I threw the pan away, declaring ala-Scarlet O’Hara, “as God is my witness, I will never make flan again!”
I’d learned how to make leche flan out of guilt, recalling how, while under military detention, Princess Nemenzo had jabbed a forefinger in my direction and told Roz Galang (RIP): “That woman doesn’t know anything about women’s craft.” We were surrounded by women knitting, crocheting, sewing, etc., and there I was, smoking my lungs away.
New York being a place where dining out is de rigueur, I had no occasion to make leche flan for the next forever. But since inflation never stops, in due time, parties in New York started getting pot lucked as well, and the leche flan made its comeback in the universe of my mind. I was tired of bringing the wine.
I found a rectangular aluminum pan and a recipe from a Reynaldo Alejandro cookbook, and proceeded in the attempt to wow some dinner guests. The recipe said to add water to the sugar to caramelize it. That didn’t sound right. But he had the repute for cookery. The sugar refused to turn brown. The flan was very pale. Ana Liza Caballes, who had created a three-mushroom soup and baked salmon, was highly critical. “You made a Caucasian flan,” she said. I ignored her. She threatened to give me a list of must-have basic spices for my “museum kitchen” but I developed instant tinnitus.
Each year, I join journalist friends at a Christmas dinner, hosted by Cielo Buenaventura and Nick Fox, usually bringing store-bought ice cream (ube and macapuno). This time, in addition to ice cream, I volunteered to make flan. I am prone to self-destruction. I thought I could use a really big rectangular aluminum foil pan. Bad karma – which translated itself to the disappearance of ube ice cream from grocery stores. In desperation, I pawed at cans deep inside the upright freezer, sending cans crashing out to roll down the aisle. Two Chinese men had to chase them down and bring them back. I found one can of ube ice cream tucked in a corner of the freezer’s cavernous interior. Ube ice cream and flan -- perfect!
I couldn’t invert the flan, as the recipe demanded. It looked very fragile, with tiny cracks like old marble. We scooped it up and buried it under ice cream. Lina Mappala, who makes the perfect pansit Malabon in the whole of Queens, NY, said, on the way home, “the flavor was fine; the consistency was good. It was only its firmness. It was very delicate, that’s why there were cracks.” I snapped back: “It was your husband’s fault; I told him to drive carefully.” Lina delivered the ultimate condemnation: “The pan was too big.”
Appalling, I tell you. Who said a flan had to be inverted anyway? Who said it had to be brown at the top? And why do Filipinos like flan? Why couldn’t they like fortune cookies?
Peace, the guru sitting in the middle of my head chakra said; be at peace; life is a lost cause; no one escapes from it alive.
But the political commissar who stands behind the guru thrust her face forward and said, we must subject this to dialectical analysis.
Huh?
Consider the colors of the flan. At the very bottom is the caramelized sugar which stains the portion of the custard it contacts with a deep brown tan. As you know, race and class correlate in the Philippines. So this brown layer symbolizes the peasant and workers. Then you have the mixed races representing various segments of the petite bourgeoisie. At the very top is this thin pale layer, indicating the white relics of colonialism who now conspire with imperialism to oppress the rest of society.
Good lord!
So, when you invert the flan unto a plate, what happens to this arrangement?
The brown comes to the top!
Exactly. That is the revolutionary process.
Anything for the revolution.
So I was off to the Latino part of my neighborhood in search of the perfect mold. Oich veh! I found one, quite elaborate, costing a minor fortune. Feeling better, I hiked to the grocery to look for dip. Humus, I said to the grocery man; you know, to sawsaw chips. He thought I was insane, looking for humus at a Latin grocery store.
At check out, the cashier said something in rapid Spanish and I went “Sorry?” Then, these hands snaked forward from behind me and pushed my merchandise toward the cashier. It was the man next in line.
Young man: “she said the machine isn’t working so you have to bring the items near her.” Oh, thank you. “Happy new year.” “To you, too, or at least a better one than this terrible old year.” “Old is not terrible. Can I help you with the bag?” “Oh, no, I couldn’t impose…” I could, I could… “Perhaps just to the corner…” “You’re having a party?” “I’m making flan!” “I love flan. Can I come to the party?” Temptation.
The commissar steps forward and brays: HINDE! (No!)
So I make flan in solitude. Caramelize the sugar (no water); separate the egg yolks (only organic), beat them lightly; mix evap milk, condensed milk, orange and vanilla extracts and add a pinch of saffron which costs half my monthly surplus value, place the filled mold into another pan with an inch of water, bake at 325 degrees. And wait. And wait. And wait – through three episodes of the TV show Battlestar Galactica. It won’t solidify! Wrong mold! I tore hair off my scalp. At 4 a.m., it finally settled down to a golden gelatinous solidity. Place it in the fridge.
The next day, having barely wiped sleep off my face, I placed a plate carefully over the mold, held plate firmly, slipped a hand under the mold and inverted the flan.
Perfect.
Vive la revolucion!
I’d learned how to make leche flan out of guilt, recalling how, while under military detention, Princess Nemenzo had jabbed a forefinger in my direction and told Roz Galang (RIP): “That woman doesn’t know anything about women’s craft.” We were surrounded by women knitting, crocheting, sewing, etc., and there I was, smoking my lungs away.
New York being a place where dining out is de rigueur, I had no occasion to make leche flan for the next forever. But since inflation never stops, in due time, parties in New York started getting pot lucked as well, and the leche flan made its comeback in the universe of my mind. I was tired of bringing the wine.
I found a rectangular aluminum pan and a recipe from a Reynaldo Alejandro cookbook, and proceeded in the attempt to wow some dinner guests. The recipe said to add water to the sugar to caramelize it. That didn’t sound right. But he had the repute for cookery. The sugar refused to turn brown. The flan was very pale. Ana Liza Caballes, who had created a three-mushroom soup and baked salmon, was highly critical. “You made a Caucasian flan,” she said. I ignored her. She threatened to give me a list of must-have basic spices for my “museum kitchen” but I developed instant tinnitus.
Each year, I join journalist friends at a Christmas dinner, hosted by Cielo Buenaventura and Nick Fox, usually bringing store-bought ice cream (ube and macapuno). This time, in addition to ice cream, I volunteered to make flan. I am prone to self-destruction. I thought I could use a really big rectangular aluminum foil pan. Bad karma – which translated itself to the disappearance of ube ice cream from grocery stores. In desperation, I pawed at cans deep inside the upright freezer, sending cans crashing out to roll down the aisle. Two Chinese men had to chase them down and bring them back. I found one can of ube ice cream tucked in a corner of the freezer’s cavernous interior. Ube ice cream and flan -- perfect!
I couldn’t invert the flan, as the recipe demanded. It looked very fragile, with tiny cracks like old marble. We scooped it up and buried it under ice cream. Lina Mappala, who makes the perfect pansit Malabon in the whole of Queens, NY, said, on the way home, “the flavor was fine; the consistency was good. It was only its firmness. It was very delicate, that’s why there were cracks.” I snapped back: “It was your husband’s fault; I told him to drive carefully.” Lina delivered the ultimate condemnation: “The pan was too big.”
Appalling, I tell you. Who said a flan had to be inverted anyway? Who said it had to be brown at the top? And why do Filipinos like flan? Why couldn’t they like fortune cookies?
Peace, the guru sitting in the middle of my head chakra said; be at peace; life is a lost cause; no one escapes from it alive.
But the political commissar who stands behind the guru thrust her face forward and said, we must subject this to dialectical analysis.
Huh?
Consider the colors of the flan. At the very bottom is the caramelized sugar which stains the portion of the custard it contacts with a deep brown tan. As you know, race and class correlate in the Philippines. So this brown layer symbolizes the peasant and workers. Then you have the mixed races representing various segments of the petite bourgeoisie. At the very top is this thin pale layer, indicating the white relics of colonialism who now conspire with imperialism to oppress the rest of society.
Good lord!
So, when you invert the flan unto a plate, what happens to this arrangement?
The brown comes to the top!
Exactly. That is the revolutionary process.
Anything for the revolution.
So I was off to the Latino part of my neighborhood in search of the perfect mold. Oich veh! I found one, quite elaborate, costing a minor fortune. Feeling better, I hiked to the grocery to look for dip. Humus, I said to the grocery man; you know, to sawsaw chips. He thought I was insane, looking for humus at a Latin grocery store.
At check out, the cashier said something in rapid Spanish and I went “Sorry?” Then, these hands snaked forward from behind me and pushed my merchandise toward the cashier. It was the man next in line.
Young man: “she said the machine isn’t working so you have to bring the items near her.” Oh, thank you. “Happy new year.” “To you, too, or at least a better one than this terrible old year.” “Old is not terrible. Can I help you with the bag?” “Oh, no, I couldn’t impose…” I could, I could… “Perhaps just to the corner…” “You’re having a party?” “I’m making flan!” “I love flan. Can I come to the party?” Temptation.
The commissar steps forward and brays: HINDE! (No!)
So I make flan in solitude. Caramelize the sugar (no water); separate the egg yolks (only organic), beat them lightly; mix evap milk, condensed milk, orange and vanilla extracts and add a pinch of saffron which costs half my monthly surplus value, place the filled mold into another pan with an inch of water, bake at 325 degrees. And wait. And wait. And wait – through three episodes of the TV show Battlestar Galactica. It won’t solidify! Wrong mold! I tore hair off my scalp. At 4 a.m., it finally settled down to a golden gelatinous solidity. Place it in the fridge.
The next day, having barely wiped sleep off my face, I placed a plate carefully over the mold, held plate firmly, slipped a hand under the mold and inverted the flan.
Perfect.
Vive la revolucion!
Friday, November 23, 2007
Life In The A-List
Holiday and year-end greetings to everyone.
The last month has been difficult, what with the deluge of emails, text and video messages, letters and phone calls, asking how a woman’s organization could contend with closed-doorism threatening the very reason for which 500 women were engaged in political activism. In the midst of this was a discordant note of one, demanding to be part of the national directorate, so surprising in a gathering where women have to be strong-armed into accepting titles, the usual answer being “I’ll just do the work, give the title to someone else,” so surprising that for a moment there, we were non-plus.
Later, in New York, someone explained: “It’s always been the goal; she wants to be in the A-list.”
This past Sunday, Doris and I reached Times Square from Boston at 4 in the morning, on the coldest weekend yet; this wasn't the right place nor the right time for a woman, I can tell you. We had helped open the Greater Boston chapter of Gabriela Network. She had taken the trip out on Friday; I had to leave a day later because of another obligation and thus had to manage 8 hours on the bus out of 24, not a wink of sleep in 48. We lighted a cigarette apiece, debating whether cabs were justified instead of the subway and the long walks home. It wasn't idle debate. In this organization, paying one woman's conference fee can mean another will have to subsist on pizza slices for a week. I was the first to give up; my knees were knocking together and four of five tries the cigarette missed my lips, I was shivering that hard. Bleah! Life on the A-list, indeed.
This demand for promotion came at the end of a sequence of non-sequiturs, during which we tried to clarify or thought we were clarifying concepts/definitions of a proposed new campaign, tried to convey that interpretation was not factual history, that political categories must have objective criteria, that mere assertion of discrimination wasn't fact, that one needed concrete analysis of concrete conditions, and that if one were to ascribe machismo to imperialism, one better be able to show that link clearly, because capital’s tendency was to homogenize all into wage slavery; which meant ferreting out the contradictions that that tendency creates, and how profit maximization links gender and sexuality based oppression to class exploitation; in other words, what were the historical and material roots of the distinct category of oppression the campaign would be addressing.
Sounds complicated but NOT, since domestic workers readily understood this interplay between historical and material causes of gender exploitation. Perhaps it was too abstract when one experienced it academically, because suddenly, in an act of misdirection, the discourse was centered on why someone wasn’t taken to meet certain groups and power persons in the archipelago, who said what and why. At which point, one realized this wasn’t a discourse for clarity; either a homeland security tape recorder was hooked up to a phone line, or a hooded posse bearing rope nooses was at the other end, since an accidental immigrant with a funny accent couldn't presume to discuss political concepts with Americans.
As Roseanne Rossana-Danna would say, “it’s always something. If it’s not a toenail in a hamburger, it’s a piece of toilet paper sticking to a shoe.” Roseanne was Gilda Radner’s journalist character of non-sequiturs in Saturday Night Live; the shoe referenced her utter loss at how to tell a princess about a piece of toilet paper stuck to her heel.
Which was exactly how some of us felt this past month: at utter loss as to how to say that betrayal was the foundation of conspiracies, that already one had been vilified by gossip about some allegedly unpaid plane tickets; and that the demand to discuss things "at a higher level," rather than work on the basics of a campaign, was leading to this wish to join the alleged A-List, the trade-off being abandonment of the very cause for which National was being pilloried.
Actually, it’s easy and simple to be part of the national work team. Many without titles work on national projects as the need arises. The criteria are a steady commitment, a willingness to learn and a spirit generous enough to volunteer time, ability and sometimes, material resources. Those qualities are first displayed within the chapter, which evaluates and recommends to the national, which also evaluates and then finds a suitable task for the recommended. It is not foolproof but it is the procedure. Special project teams come and go. But no one gets to National without chapter recommendation. So if one messes up with one's chapter or if the chapter is walled off like a political harem, then no winnowing process takes place.
Some members value their commitment so much they humble us old-timers; they work without need for validation. Just a month recruited, Khara carried a heavy banner without a single word of recrimination through 50 blocks of marching; Emelyn and Carisma lugged 120 t-shirts across an ocean without a word of recrimination; Catherine, barely 20 years old, overcame extreme nervousness to give a solidarity message at a demonstration in an island she had never visited before; Ollie, last week, had to face down some right-wing Christians by herself; Vivian searches for housing, for legal, psychological and financial help for battered and sex-trafficked Filipinas; Monica does whatever she is asked to do, has done so for 11 years without even the expectation of rubbing elbows with “power women,” though she goes annually to the Philippines.
Actually, Monica is special. As she says in an open letter, she is a Caucasian trans-sexual woman, challenged about her identity by society at every step of the way. “Challenged” is a mild word; last year was a record year for attacks – as in murderous attempts, bodily harm, physical assaults, -- on her person, by men in her neighborhood, by strangers in the subway, by anyone really. Everyday, she teaches us an invaluable lesson about intersectionality, or as I prefer it, the interconnection of phenomena. On the basis of her color, she would seem to be, as the current parlance goes, “privileged;” but coming from an economic underclass deepens all risks inherent in her situation and deprives her of protection. I once rode the subway with her; the other passengers’ reaction to her presence left me badly shaken. Yet, she has never demanded we share her burden though she has always shared ours.
None of these women ever say, “if I don’t get want I want, I am taking my marbles home and kicking your sandbox as well.” Kicking sandboxes is one cause of the periodic crash-and-burn of Filipino organizations over here, a factor in our continuing "invisibility" despite a hundred years plus of activism. It's a lot less work to demolish than to build. Believe me, I know.
There is a common quality to the women who stay in GABNet, and I ascribe it to the fact that this is as well the most palpable quality of the women in the National. Consider the following:
• Annalisa shoved to the floor and cracking her knee in Venezuela to which she had flown to support a Philippine women’s delegation, her knee swollen football size but despite no medical attention, finishing the five-day conference without a word of recrimination;
• Mirk organizing a lawyers' team, lugging 5 CPUs across an ocean, despite being chronically ill, without a word of recrimination;
• Milady making thousands of copies of newsletters, brochures, statements and what-nots, without a word of recrimination;
• Jollene returning to a city again and again, relentless in her goal to see a chapter established, appearing at a meeting the day after her car turned over five times on the freeway, all without a word of recrimination;
• Agnes, chauffeuring everyone around, making sure that appointments were kept, and not wanting to impose, driving herself home from the hospital after a heart attack, again without a word of recrimination;
• Doris doing street theater for five hours during the state of national emergency,, in front of the Philippine consulate, on a Manhattan sidewalk thronged by hundreds of thousands, in the company of only one other member, without a word of recrimination.
One could go on, listing a hundred or more instances; point is, in politics, one meets all kinds, even she-hyenas which, I learned from the Animal Planet channel, make themselves attractive by rolling in their own regurgitation. So one is filled with gratitude for the selfless and quiet courage of the members, old and new, who form the gestalt of this 18-year-old organization.
Me? I think the worst for me was when, because of an impossible schedule, I had to give up Guapo, the little cocker spaniel. That wasn't much, but bursting into tears and embarrassing myself and the friend who had driven us to the animal shelter was.
Not much, really. As we say in the organization, for liberation, others have given up more. Much, much, much, much, much, much more…
Have a good one, y’all. -- ###
The last month has been difficult, what with the deluge of emails, text and video messages, letters and phone calls, asking how a woman’s organization could contend with closed-doorism threatening the very reason for which 500 women were engaged in political activism. In the midst of this was a discordant note of one, demanding to be part of the national directorate, so surprising in a gathering where women have to be strong-armed into accepting titles, the usual answer being “I’ll just do the work, give the title to someone else,” so surprising that for a moment there, we were non-plus.
Later, in New York, someone explained: “It’s always been the goal; she wants to be in the A-list.”
This past Sunday, Doris and I reached Times Square from Boston at 4 in the morning, on the coldest weekend yet; this wasn't the right place nor the right time for a woman, I can tell you. We had helped open the Greater Boston chapter of Gabriela Network. She had taken the trip out on Friday; I had to leave a day later because of another obligation and thus had to manage 8 hours on the bus out of 24, not a wink of sleep in 48. We lighted a cigarette apiece, debating whether cabs were justified instead of the subway and the long walks home. It wasn't idle debate. In this organization, paying one woman's conference fee can mean another will have to subsist on pizza slices for a week. I was the first to give up; my knees were knocking together and four of five tries the cigarette missed my lips, I was shivering that hard. Bleah! Life on the A-list, indeed.
This demand for promotion came at the end of a sequence of non-sequiturs, during which we tried to clarify or thought we were clarifying concepts/definitions of a proposed new campaign, tried to convey that interpretation was not factual history, that political categories must have objective criteria, that mere assertion of discrimination wasn't fact, that one needed concrete analysis of concrete conditions, and that if one were to ascribe machismo to imperialism, one better be able to show that link clearly, because capital’s tendency was to homogenize all into wage slavery; which meant ferreting out the contradictions that that tendency creates, and how profit maximization links gender and sexuality based oppression to class exploitation; in other words, what were the historical and material roots of the distinct category of oppression the campaign would be addressing.
Sounds complicated but NOT, since domestic workers readily understood this interplay between historical and material causes of gender exploitation. Perhaps it was too abstract when one experienced it academically, because suddenly, in an act of misdirection, the discourse was centered on why someone wasn’t taken to meet certain groups and power persons in the archipelago, who said what and why. At which point, one realized this wasn’t a discourse for clarity; either a homeland security tape recorder was hooked up to a phone line, or a hooded posse bearing rope nooses was at the other end, since an accidental immigrant with a funny accent couldn't presume to discuss political concepts with Americans.
As Roseanne Rossana-Danna would say, “it’s always something. If it’s not a toenail in a hamburger, it’s a piece of toilet paper sticking to a shoe.” Roseanne was Gilda Radner’s journalist character of non-sequiturs in Saturday Night Live; the shoe referenced her utter loss at how to tell a princess about a piece of toilet paper stuck to her heel.
Which was exactly how some of us felt this past month: at utter loss as to how to say that betrayal was the foundation of conspiracies, that already one had been vilified by gossip about some allegedly unpaid plane tickets; and that the demand to discuss things "at a higher level," rather than work on the basics of a campaign, was leading to this wish to join the alleged A-List, the trade-off being abandonment of the very cause for which National was being pilloried.
Actually, it’s easy and simple to be part of the national work team. Many without titles work on national projects as the need arises. The criteria are a steady commitment, a willingness to learn and a spirit generous enough to volunteer time, ability and sometimes, material resources. Those qualities are first displayed within the chapter, which evaluates and recommends to the national, which also evaluates and then finds a suitable task for the recommended. It is not foolproof but it is the procedure. Special project teams come and go. But no one gets to National without chapter recommendation. So if one messes up with one's chapter or if the chapter is walled off like a political harem, then no winnowing process takes place.
Some members value their commitment so much they humble us old-timers; they work without need for validation. Just a month recruited, Khara carried a heavy banner without a single word of recrimination through 50 blocks of marching; Emelyn and Carisma lugged 120 t-shirts across an ocean without a word of recrimination; Catherine, barely 20 years old, overcame extreme nervousness to give a solidarity message at a demonstration in an island she had never visited before; Ollie, last week, had to face down some right-wing Christians by herself; Vivian searches for housing, for legal, psychological and financial help for battered and sex-trafficked Filipinas; Monica does whatever she is asked to do, has done so for 11 years without even the expectation of rubbing elbows with “power women,” though she goes annually to the Philippines.
Actually, Monica is special. As she says in an open letter, she is a Caucasian trans-sexual woman, challenged about her identity by society at every step of the way. “Challenged” is a mild word; last year was a record year for attacks – as in murderous attempts, bodily harm, physical assaults, -- on her person, by men in her neighborhood, by strangers in the subway, by anyone really. Everyday, she teaches us an invaluable lesson about intersectionality, or as I prefer it, the interconnection of phenomena. On the basis of her color, she would seem to be, as the current parlance goes, “privileged;” but coming from an economic underclass deepens all risks inherent in her situation and deprives her of protection. I once rode the subway with her; the other passengers’ reaction to her presence left me badly shaken. Yet, she has never demanded we share her burden though she has always shared ours.
None of these women ever say, “if I don’t get want I want, I am taking my marbles home and kicking your sandbox as well.” Kicking sandboxes is one cause of the periodic crash-and-burn of Filipino organizations over here, a factor in our continuing "invisibility" despite a hundred years plus of activism. It's a lot less work to demolish than to build. Believe me, I know.
There is a common quality to the women who stay in GABNet, and I ascribe it to the fact that this is as well the most palpable quality of the women in the National. Consider the following:
• Annalisa shoved to the floor and cracking her knee in Venezuela to which she had flown to support a Philippine women’s delegation, her knee swollen football size but despite no medical attention, finishing the five-day conference without a word of recrimination;
• Mirk organizing a lawyers' team, lugging 5 CPUs across an ocean, despite being chronically ill, without a word of recrimination;
• Milady making thousands of copies of newsletters, brochures, statements and what-nots, without a word of recrimination;
• Jollene returning to a city again and again, relentless in her goal to see a chapter established, appearing at a meeting the day after her car turned over five times on the freeway, all without a word of recrimination;
• Agnes, chauffeuring everyone around, making sure that appointments were kept, and not wanting to impose, driving herself home from the hospital after a heart attack, again without a word of recrimination;
• Doris doing street theater for five hours during the state of national emergency,, in front of the Philippine consulate, on a Manhattan sidewalk thronged by hundreds of thousands, in the company of only one other member, without a word of recrimination.
One could go on, listing a hundred or more instances; point is, in politics, one meets all kinds, even she-hyenas which, I learned from the Animal Planet channel, make themselves attractive by rolling in their own regurgitation. So one is filled with gratitude for the selfless and quiet courage of the members, old and new, who form the gestalt of this 18-year-old organization.
Me? I think the worst for me was when, because of an impossible schedule, I had to give up Guapo, the little cocker spaniel. That wasn't much, but bursting into tears and embarrassing myself and the friend who had driven us to the animal shelter was.
Not much, really. As we say in the organization, for liberation, others have given up more. Much, much, much, much, much, much more…
Have a good one, y’all. -- ###
Thursday, November 22, 2007
a watershed
Today, for the first time, someone finally connected the name of this blog to the military term for new US bases "with small footprints" -- the cooperative security location. The concept for a new type of base came out two years ago, when the closure of several bases were being discussed in the US congress.
While I'd received many chuckles over the pun in the name -- it's close to the Tagalog word lilipad, which means "will soar" or "will fly" -- I've been waiting for someone to recognize its actual reference.
So congratulations to R, who made the connection. It is a flag as to the method of "layering" I use in writing. The name has another layer but I'll wait for its discovery.
While I'd received many chuckles over the pun in the name -- it's close to the Tagalog word lilipad, which means "will soar" or "will fly" -- I've been waiting for someone to recognize its actual reference.
So congratulations to R, who made the connection. It is a flag as to the method of "layering" I use in writing. The name has another layer but I'll wait for its discovery.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
need your vote
I was asked to post this, from the women's organization GABNet:
The Philippine television station ABS-CBN is asking people to vote on the 2007 newsmaker of the year. The GABNet 3 has been nominated. In this post-911 era of watchlists, terror lists, blacklists and hold-order lists, it is imperative that we send a strong protest against this form of state terrorism. Remember the McCarthy Blacklists; remember how Code Pink's Medea Benjamin was refused entry into Canada because of a blacklist. The GABNet 3 was in full frontal attack against this method of intimidation and harassment used by the Philippines government, ostensibly as part of the "war on terror." The GABNet 3 were 2 women of Philippine ancestry and one Jewish-American, all activists working for genuine women's equality, rights and liberation; they were suddenly accused, WITHOUT ANY BASIS IN FACT OR FICTION, by the Philippine government of being linked to the fundamentalist Taliban.
So protest the insanity of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime! email the words "GABNET 3 is my newsmaker of the year" to balitangamerica@abs-cbni.com. or use your cellphone and text the words "GABNet 3" to 650-766-1557.
Only 15 days left to make a difference. So DO IT NOW.
Thank you.
The Philippine television station ABS-CBN is asking people to vote on the 2007 newsmaker of the year. The GABNet 3 has been nominated. In this post-911 era of watchlists, terror lists, blacklists and hold-order lists, it is imperative that we send a strong protest against this form of state terrorism. Remember the McCarthy Blacklists; remember how Code Pink's Medea Benjamin was refused entry into Canada because of a blacklist. The GABNet 3 was in full frontal attack against this method of intimidation and harassment used by the Philippines government, ostensibly as part of the "war on terror." The GABNet 3 were 2 women of Philippine ancestry and one Jewish-American, all activists working for genuine women's equality, rights and liberation; they were suddenly accused, WITHOUT ANY BASIS IN FACT OR FICTION, by the Philippine government of being linked to the fundamentalist Taliban.
So protest the insanity of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime! email the words "GABNET 3 is my newsmaker of the year" to balitangamerica@abs-cbni.com. or use your cellphone and text the words "GABNet 3" to 650-766-1557.
Only 15 days left to make a difference. So DO IT NOW.
Thank you.
Davao Triste
A 12-year-old girl hangs herself (allegedly) and suddenly, she is the face of a city, a province, an island, an archipelago, a country. Her death is followed by screams and yowls of denial: she couldn't have killed herself just because she was poor; she had been abused (perhaps), raped (perhaps), depressed (certainly). . . None of the latter precludes the first contention. Though all women, across the class spectrum, suffer gender violence, the risks triple when one is poor, helpless, the family subject to such tremendous economic pressure that it gets to a point members no longer see one another as human. And depression is chronic among the (unwilling) poor.
It brought back those thoughts the first time I went with some friends on an organizing foray into an urban poor area in the city of Manila. There was this girl who looked ten years old but perhaps was 12, like Davao's Mariannet Amper, hunkered down on the slat-floor of a patchwork house built over a black sewage canal, holding her brother swaddled in a blanket thin and gray with use. She looked at me with eyes so dark, so deep, they were unfathomable. It occurred to me then that were I in her position -- no possibility of escape from a poverty that was really beastly -- I would kill myself, rather than go on day after day in absolute misery.
Very strange thoughts for an activist, one could say, but I was young then and an absolutist. Jesus supposedly said: “the poor ye shall always have with you.“ He was, I think, being bitterly ironic. Mariannet, whose name so echoes the word marionette, a thing dangling powerless at the end of a preordained fate, put the lie to his words. She didn't want to be "always with you." So what happens if the poor all killed themselves? Who then will the rich exploit and brutalize? Think of how much of a huge holocaust that would be, turning cities, towns, villages, mountains and seas uninhabitable? Who would bury them? I can see why the rich and powerful are outraged.
Davao City is the largest in the archipelago in land area, a territory with soil so fertile that outside downtown proper and the bedroom communities, the terrain turns so green it brings a pang of angst over the unhappy fate of Laguna, which used to be called the emerald province, now a hodge-podge of subdivisions, choked traffic and an over-fished and polluted lake. The term emerald must now be applied to Davao; from childhood, I had known of this place as Laguna‘s competitor for the source of sweet lanzones, fabulous mangosteen (which remains my favorite), and of course, the incomparable pomelo.. Aboard a jeep traversing first the paved roads, then the dirt roads and then the mud roads, I keep thinking "emerald" as mile after mile of green unfolds, an occasional reddish-brown earth surfacing, like a gash of blood. Deng, one doesn’t see this in New York.
The air was very moist, likely 99% humidity, which explained the 360 degree riot of foliage. The place was so obviously fertile one felt sorry for it, especially at the sight of the banana plantations, sudden monochromes of dark-green, carved out of the brighter chaos of untamed wilderness. The plantations were like a huge army of Nazi soldiers, shoulder-to-shoulder, huddled in assault formation against what was natural in the landscape. I thought: multinational corporations certainly wouldn’t be able to resist destroying the province’s biodiversity, just as the biodiversity of Laguna, Negros and other locations had been destroyed for the sake of export crops. Not couldn’t, I should correct myself; are not, aren't.
Spend a night or two in the marginalized communities of this area and the idea that poverty can inspire suicide does not seem unreasonable. The communities move and move, edged out by the metastasizing banana plantations, mostly owned by internal migrants from Visayan and Tagalog provinces, who cooperate with multinationals at the despoliation of the archipelago's resources, all for just a few dollars more. They are good Christians, of course, making sure that the poor remained with us. Despite this, the residents of the marginalized communities (I won't name them, since the Philippine military tends to pour into areas where people are nice), majority of them Muslim and Moros, are generous. The conflict here is not religious, they assure me, but rather over resources, over property, over a way of life.
Bananas constitute Davao’s principal export, 60-70% going to Japan which also gobbles up 15% of banana chips. Japan has repeatedly pressured the Philippines into signing one treaty of amity, trade, navigation, etc., after another, to position itself as the country's economic overlord, in partnership with the political and military over-lordship exercised by the U.S.; Japan loves Philippine food, with the same intensity as the US love for Philippine women and labor.
You can't go any bigger business than bananas, where seven-figure amounts are mere bribes to corrupt officials. Three multinationals practically own and control the global trade: Chiquita International (formerly United Fruit, formerly United Brands), Dole (formerly Standard Fruit) and Del Monte. Entire countries, especially in Latin America, serve as the backyard gardens and greenhouses of these companies, rendering them susceptible to pressure, threats and manipulations, in accordance with the corporate profit interests. The outrage such multinationals inspire is epic, enough even to fuel great literature, like Pablo Neruda's Canto and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ A Hundred Years of Solitude.
Nothing seems to be able to stop the multinationals, except nature itself, which created the black and yellow sigatoka fungus that often cuts a banana tree’s yield by 50% to 70%. Sigatoka is endemic to banana plantations, largely because as some Indian scientists pointed out, they are “monoclonal” -- i.e., of one variety only, in contrast to the natural state of growth, which is “polyclonal” -- i.e., diverse. To control sigatoka, for instance, banana plantations have to spray as often as 40 times a year; India, which is polyclonal, sprays only four times a year.
Some 26 chemicals are used to kill sigatoka, or at least try to control it. These chemicals belong to such WHO categories as Class 1-A (extremely hazardous), Class 1-B (hazardous) and Class 2 (moderately hazardous). Mancozeb, one of these chemicals, is listed in California’s Prop 65 carcinogenic list and is suspected to be an endocrine disruptor. These data and others are available on the Internet, with some digging, so please don’t email me asking for sources. You should know what's in the food you eat and how it is grown.
The communities which were kind enough to host friends and myself seemed under tremendous economic and social pressure. The madrasahs were little more than sheds -- corrugated iron sheets over naked posts. In-house running water was mostly absent; only darkness spared me from becoming a public spectacle when I simply had to take a bath in the rain. That means, there were no street lights either, and barely enough electricity in houses. This outward crudeness hid an inner sophistication; my first night’s host was a woman who spoke to me in English and Tagalog and Arabic to another guest, all the while swinging back and forth on a cloth hammock, flip-flops on her feet . And under the lambent twilight, a traditional kulintang band played music, the various instruments handled only by women. All spoke knowingly of social, economic and political complexities, and of course, of history, of a past deliberately obscured. They told me the story of 450 hectares of Moro land paid for in tobacco and trinkets and minimal cash, now a sprawling golf course where Koreans and other foreigners play, accompanied by girl caddies. I asked why girl caddies? The women smile.
Davao has a major prostitution and sex trafficking problem, because of the ships that dock, the business people who come, the US troops who appear occasionally, the tourists on predator trips, the Philippine troops who are not adverse to exploiting the women of what supposedly was their own people, etc., etc., and of course, because the poor is always with us, even in this region where a few (very few) are rapidly enriching themselves by selling the Moro patrimony to multinationals.
These villages nestle among bananas, some wild ones, some native ones, unlike the Cavendish single-variety of the plantations. Cavendish only became popular in the 1950s, when it replaced the Gros Michel (fat michael), which was done in the Panama fungus. And just in case you don't know, commercial banana is mutant, sterile and seedless, reproducing only through cuttings. It can be wiped out (as in extinct!) with one infestation, hence the heavy use of pesticides. The communities are in the path of the aerial spraying conducted over the plantations; the communities use ground water likely contaminated with pesticide run-offs. Asthma has become common; there are reports of birth defects as well.
The poverty is palpable and explainable, really not pre-ordained, but stemming from historical and continuing theft. Only 17 cents of every dollar consumers spend on bananas go to producing countries.
Much of the rest -- as in hundreds of billions of dollars -- is used to sustain lifestyles of greed, self-indulgence and power-madness. If you doubt the latter, check out the history of Dole; at one point, this guy "bought" the whole island of Lahaina in Hawaii, as though it were unpopulated.
At any poor community, children are ubiquitous. A teacher from the US had to point this out to me, so used was I to the sight. "Children everywhere, at all hours of the day," she said, "meaning, they are not in school."
In Compostela Valley, Davao, a nine-year-old who WAS going to school was shot dead by the Philippine military, a murder later justified by the canard that she was a "child soldier."
This is one fate for poor children in this land.
Mariannet's response to her fate was to hang herself.
This is one choice for children in this land.
Someone should work to create other fates, other choices. -- ##
It brought back those thoughts the first time I went with some friends on an organizing foray into an urban poor area in the city of Manila. There was this girl who looked ten years old but perhaps was 12, like Davao's Mariannet Amper, hunkered down on the slat-floor of a patchwork house built over a black sewage canal, holding her brother swaddled in a blanket thin and gray with use. She looked at me with eyes so dark, so deep, they were unfathomable. It occurred to me then that were I in her position -- no possibility of escape from a poverty that was really beastly -- I would kill myself, rather than go on day after day in absolute misery.
Very strange thoughts for an activist, one could say, but I was young then and an absolutist. Jesus supposedly said: “the poor ye shall always have with you.“ He was, I think, being bitterly ironic. Mariannet, whose name so echoes the word marionette, a thing dangling powerless at the end of a preordained fate, put the lie to his words. She didn't want to be "always with you." So what happens if the poor all killed themselves? Who then will the rich exploit and brutalize? Think of how much of a huge holocaust that would be, turning cities, towns, villages, mountains and seas uninhabitable? Who would bury them? I can see why the rich and powerful are outraged.
Davao City is the largest in the archipelago in land area, a territory with soil so fertile that outside downtown proper and the bedroom communities, the terrain turns so green it brings a pang of angst over the unhappy fate of Laguna, which used to be called the emerald province, now a hodge-podge of subdivisions, choked traffic and an over-fished and polluted lake. The term emerald must now be applied to Davao; from childhood, I had known of this place as Laguna‘s competitor for the source of sweet lanzones, fabulous mangosteen (which remains my favorite), and of course, the incomparable pomelo.. Aboard a jeep traversing first the paved roads, then the dirt roads and then the mud roads, I keep thinking "emerald" as mile after mile of green unfolds, an occasional reddish-brown earth surfacing, like a gash of blood. Deng, one doesn’t see this in New York.
The air was very moist, likely 99% humidity, which explained the 360 degree riot of foliage. The place was so obviously fertile one felt sorry for it, especially at the sight of the banana plantations, sudden monochromes of dark-green, carved out of the brighter chaos of untamed wilderness. The plantations were like a huge army of Nazi soldiers, shoulder-to-shoulder, huddled in assault formation against what was natural in the landscape. I thought: multinational corporations certainly wouldn’t be able to resist destroying the province’s biodiversity, just as the biodiversity of Laguna, Negros and other locations had been destroyed for the sake of export crops. Not couldn’t, I should correct myself; are not, aren't.
Spend a night or two in the marginalized communities of this area and the idea that poverty can inspire suicide does not seem unreasonable. The communities move and move, edged out by the metastasizing banana plantations, mostly owned by internal migrants from Visayan and Tagalog provinces, who cooperate with multinationals at the despoliation of the archipelago's resources, all for just a few dollars more. They are good Christians, of course, making sure that the poor remained with us. Despite this, the residents of the marginalized communities (I won't name them, since the Philippine military tends to pour into areas where people are nice), majority of them Muslim and Moros, are generous. The conflict here is not religious, they assure me, but rather over resources, over property, over a way of life.
Bananas constitute Davao’s principal export, 60-70% going to Japan which also gobbles up 15% of banana chips. Japan has repeatedly pressured the Philippines into signing one treaty of amity, trade, navigation, etc., after another, to position itself as the country's economic overlord, in partnership with the political and military over-lordship exercised by the U.S.; Japan loves Philippine food, with the same intensity as the US love for Philippine women and labor.
You can't go any bigger business than bananas, where seven-figure amounts are mere bribes to corrupt officials. Three multinationals practically own and control the global trade: Chiquita International (formerly United Fruit, formerly United Brands), Dole (formerly Standard Fruit) and Del Monte. Entire countries, especially in Latin America, serve as the backyard gardens and greenhouses of these companies, rendering them susceptible to pressure, threats and manipulations, in accordance with the corporate profit interests. The outrage such multinationals inspire is epic, enough even to fuel great literature, like Pablo Neruda's Canto and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ A Hundred Years of Solitude.
Nothing seems to be able to stop the multinationals, except nature itself, which created the black and yellow sigatoka fungus that often cuts a banana tree’s yield by 50% to 70%. Sigatoka is endemic to banana plantations, largely because as some Indian scientists pointed out, they are “monoclonal” -- i.e., of one variety only, in contrast to the natural state of growth, which is “polyclonal” -- i.e., diverse. To control sigatoka, for instance, banana plantations have to spray as often as 40 times a year; India, which is polyclonal, sprays only four times a year.
Some 26 chemicals are used to kill sigatoka, or at least try to control it. These chemicals belong to such WHO categories as Class 1-A (extremely hazardous), Class 1-B (hazardous) and Class 2 (moderately hazardous). Mancozeb, one of these chemicals, is listed in California’s Prop 65 carcinogenic list and is suspected to be an endocrine disruptor. These data and others are available on the Internet, with some digging, so please don’t email me asking for sources. You should know what's in the food you eat and how it is grown.
The communities which were kind enough to host friends and myself seemed under tremendous economic and social pressure. The madrasahs were little more than sheds -- corrugated iron sheets over naked posts. In-house running water was mostly absent; only darkness spared me from becoming a public spectacle when I simply had to take a bath in the rain. That means, there were no street lights either, and barely enough electricity in houses. This outward crudeness hid an inner sophistication; my first night’s host was a woman who spoke to me in English and Tagalog and Arabic to another guest, all the while swinging back and forth on a cloth hammock, flip-flops on her feet . And under the lambent twilight, a traditional kulintang band played music, the various instruments handled only by women. All spoke knowingly of social, economic and political complexities, and of course, of history, of a past deliberately obscured. They told me the story of 450 hectares of Moro land paid for in tobacco and trinkets and minimal cash, now a sprawling golf course where Koreans and other foreigners play, accompanied by girl caddies. I asked why girl caddies? The women smile.
Davao has a major prostitution and sex trafficking problem, because of the ships that dock, the business people who come, the US troops who appear occasionally, the tourists on predator trips, the Philippine troops who are not adverse to exploiting the women of what supposedly was their own people, etc., etc., and of course, because the poor is always with us, even in this region where a few (very few) are rapidly enriching themselves by selling the Moro patrimony to multinationals.
These villages nestle among bananas, some wild ones, some native ones, unlike the Cavendish single-variety of the plantations. Cavendish only became popular in the 1950s, when it replaced the Gros Michel (fat michael), which was done in the Panama fungus. And just in case you don't know, commercial banana is mutant, sterile and seedless, reproducing only through cuttings. It can be wiped out (as in extinct!) with one infestation, hence the heavy use of pesticides. The communities are in the path of the aerial spraying conducted over the plantations; the communities use ground water likely contaminated with pesticide run-offs. Asthma has become common; there are reports of birth defects as well.
The poverty is palpable and explainable, really not pre-ordained, but stemming from historical and continuing theft. Only 17 cents of every dollar consumers spend on bananas go to producing countries.
Much of the rest -- as in hundreds of billions of dollars -- is used to sustain lifestyles of greed, self-indulgence and power-madness. If you doubt the latter, check out the history of Dole; at one point, this guy "bought" the whole island of Lahaina in Hawaii, as though it were unpopulated.
At any poor community, children are ubiquitous. A teacher from the US had to point this out to me, so used was I to the sight. "Children everywhere, at all hours of the day," she said, "meaning, they are not in school."
In Compostela Valley, Davao, a nine-year-old who WAS going to school was shot dead by the Philippine military, a murder later justified by the canard that she was a "child soldier."
This is one fate for poor children in this land.
Mariannet's response to her fate was to hang herself.
This is one choice for children in this land.
Someone should work to create other fates, other choices. -- ##
Friday, October 05, 2007
Young Man in Travail, Young Woman In Revolt
Alan, 22 years old, writes: “I made a vow to devote my next ten years to political activism. My (ex-) girlfriend was cynical about my decision, saying I would just carry my sexism to politics. Can you give examples of political sexism, so that I can try, at least, to avoid it? Becoming a non-sexist activist seems to me the best way to honor my mother who alone raised me and continues to support me on her earnings as a hotel chambermaid in Chicago.”
Maryanne, 23 years old, writes: “I was very distressed to be told I should ignore your writings and all your works. I wanted to attend your talk here in Boston but was told No, that that would be breaking discipline, that you’re not a proper representative of Filipinas. Since I was 15 years old, I’d been reading about you and wanted to become like you. What is a model activist woman?”
As I read these two pieces of email, I have an ear cocked to news about Anucha Browne Sanders, whose sexual harassment lawsuit against the Madison Square Garden has been resolved in her favor, to the tune of $11.6 million. She said she had engaged in the legal fight “for all working women…” Certain elements would dismiss this as a bourgeois-feminist triumph, ignoring the link between quantitative-qualitative changes in the process of social transformation. My view is that whatever expands democratic rights, especially for the poor and marginalized, for the discriminated, is a good thing.
The case underscores what remains unresolved in the activist world: finding the means and process by which collective political sexism can be addressed. Such individual acts of sexual harassment and discrimination as had been visited on Browne-Sanders are far easier to resolve: here’s the act; there’s the culprit; here’s the victim; here’s the intent; these are the repercussions and here’s the law. But rectifying the collective grievance of womankind would require a massive change in how we look at the world, in our value systems and in our power relationships. So much of political sexism is standard practice it is barely recognized even by the well-intentioned. Rather, women’s struggles for equality within progressive circles are often met with cynicism and a consistent devaluation of the issues with which they have to contend. In contrast, meeting a half-dozen former mail-order-brides with varying experience of domestic violence in Maryanne’s Boston, drove home the truth that when women’s issues are not addressed with immediacy, the outcome is often a dead woman or one crippled for life in one sense or the other.
The most pernicious and the most grievous of political sexism is that which disallows women the right to effect historical signification, which has led, through 7,000 years, to the loss of women’s history and social amnesia regarding women's ability to effect social change. This is part and parcel of the overall social and economic denigration of the value of women’s work, of women’s actions – a requirement in class society which has perpetrated the largest thievery in the whole of human history: the theft from women of the value of labor characterized as “necessary.” Through such necessary labor, for which women go unpaid and unacknowledged, corporations and class societies are ensured the daily and generational replenishment of labor for their profit-making activities. Currently, with capital’s push to transform women into wage laborers, the “nurture” gap, as some refer to it, is made up by the devalued household work of Third World women. Hence, the push as well to deprive women of color of the right to historical signification.
Let us be more concise. In recent discourses about the Philippine government’s black list, watch list and hold-order list, the full-frontal attack against those travesties of human rights launched by three women’s organizations – two in the Philippines and one in the US – has been studiously ignored, for the sole purpose of raising the testosterone profile of certain entities. Cong. Liza Maza’s blistering congressional speech, Atty. Alnie Foja’s legal moves – none of these appear to be of the same value as words emanating from predominantly male, often white quarters. Since the three organizations are comprised largely of women of color, sexism is thus compounded by racism.
This should not be surprising. The “lost” history of women is replete with the “unmentionable” roles they played at moments of historic juncture. The Petrograd uprising of women in 1917 is one; the Chinese women’s role in the May 4th movement is another; the 1984 October women’s march in Manila which triggered end-game convulsions that ousted the Marcos dictatorship… The list would be long and stretch back through time. Even such a datum as women being the original holders of the key to the kaaba in Mecca has been hidden by acts of long-standing historical censorship.
Political sexism is a reflection of class society’s need to keep women suppressed and oppressed, so that they may be alienated from the value of the work that they do. To stop the theft of the value of their labor, including necessary labor, women will have to opt to end society’s stratification into classes. Hence, no matter who does it or from what direction it comes, denying women the right to historical signification is reactionary. It echoes globalization’s treatment of women as a valueless and hence disposable population, as goods to be bought and sold, etc. Alan can tack on what other negative values he might perceive, should he examine the conditions of his mother’s life. What, for instance, happened to his father?
On the question of models, which Maryanne raises, I can only say that women’s liberation being a work-in-progress, there are no models. Or perhaps there are many models. Occasionally, I’ve heard admiring remarks about women who have “three children but (remain) politically active.” Never have I heard admiration expressed for one who says “I can’t have a child this year because it’s WISAP time; nor next year, because it’s general assembly time.” So which is right and which is wrong? Accommodating one’s self to women’s double or triple burdens or removing one’s self from the dynamics of that “karmic” wheel? I have no answer. Suffice it to say that motherhood, the consecration of it, is part of the arsenal of the right-wing effort to push back women’s freedoms.
Being works-in-progress, liberated women create themselves as they go along, negotiating between duty and vision, forging, out of the old, their new selves. As for discipline, that which arises from a system of punishment and reward is a fear-based one, more religious than political. Discipline in the latter sphere should arise from one’s understanding and acceptance of what needs to be done, in our diverse historic roles, and doing it. Knowing, understanding and comprehending – these are key words to me, creating a sustainable political activism that is consistent and enduring, much better than power-and-punishment words like those used to threaten Maryanne: being iced out, being shunned, being labeled, etc.
Erich Fromm wrote that “freedom from traditional bonds… though giving the individual a new feeling of independence, at the same time made him feel alone and isolated, filled him with doubt and anxiety, and drove him into new submission and into a compulsive and irrational activity.” In other words, when we leave our traditional comfort zone to embark upon a different way of living, the anxiety can be such that some among us will accept even the loss of the freedom to think in order to belong. Or be deemed “to belong” by those who construct models. Understanding this weakness, Alan and Maryanne, may over time help make you model activists. -- ##
Maryanne, 23 years old, writes: “I was very distressed to be told I should ignore your writings and all your works. I wanted to attend your talk here in Boston but was told No, that that would be breaking discipline, that you’re not a proper representative of Filipinas. Since I was 15 years old, I’d been reading about you and wanted to become like you. What is a model activist woman?”
As I read these two pieces of email, I have an ear cocked to news about Anucha Browne Sanders, whose sexual harassment lawsuit against the Madison Square Garden has been resolved in her favor, to the tune of $11.6 million. She said she had engaged in the legal fight “for all working women…” Certain elements would dismiss this as a bourgeois-feminist triumph, ignoring the link between quantitative-qualitative changes in the process of social transformation. My view is that whatever expands democratic rights, especially for the poor and marginalized, for the discriminated, is a good thing.
The case underscores what remains unresolved in the activist world: finding the means and process by which collective political sexism can be addressed. Such individual acts of sexual harassment and discrimination as had been visited on Browne-Sanders are far easier to resolve: here’s the act; there’s the culprit; here’s the victim; here’s the intent; these are the repercussions and here’s the law. But rectifying the collective grievance of womankind would require a massive change in how we look at the world, in our value systems and in our power relationships. So much of political sexism is standard practice it is barely recognized even by the well-intentioned. Rather, women’s struggles for equality within progressive circles are often met with cynicism and a consistent devaluation of the issues with which they have to contend. In contrast, meeting a half-dozen former mail-order-brides with varying experience of domestic violence in Maryanne’s Boston, drove home the truth that when women’s issues are not addressed with immediacy, the outcome is often a dead woman or one crippled for life in one sense or the other.
The most pernicious and the most grievous of political sexism is that which disallows women the right to effect historical signification, which has led, through 7,000 years, to the loss of women’s history and social amnesia regarding women's ability to effect social change. This is part and parcel of the overall social and economic denigration of the value of women’s work, of women’s actions – a requirement in class society which has perpetrated the largest thievery in the whole of human history: the theft from women of the value of labor characterized as “necessary.” Through such necessary labor, for which women go unpaid and unacknowledged, corporations and class societies are ensured the daily and generational replenishment of labor for their profit-making activities. Currently, with capital’s push to transform women into wage laborers, the “nurture” gap, as some refer to it, is made up by the devalued household work of Third World women. Hence, the push as well to deprive women of color of the right to historical signification.
Let us be more concise. In recent discourses about the Philippine government’s black list, watch list and hold-order list, the full-frontal attack against those travesties of human rights launched by three women’s organizations – two in the Philippines and one in the US – has been studiously ignored, for the sole purpose of raising the testosterone profile of certain entities. Cong. Liza Maza’s blistering congressional speech, Atty. Alnie Foja’s legal moves – none of these appear to be of the same value as words emanating from predominantly male, often white quarters. Since the three organizations are comprised largely of women of color, sexism is thus compounded by racism.
This should not be surprising. The “lost” history of women is replete with the “unmentionable” roles they played at moments of historic juncture. The Petrograd uprising of women in 1917 is one; the Chinese women’s role in the May 4th movement is another; the 1984 October women’s march in Manila which triggered end-game convulsions that ousted the Marcos dictatorship… The list would be long and stretch back through time. Even such a datum as women being the original holders of the key to the kaaba in Mecca has been hidden by acts of long-standing historical censorship.
Political sexism is a reflection of class society’s need to keep women suppressed and oppressed, so that they may be alienated from the value of the work that they do. To stop the theft of the value of their labor, including necessary labor, women will have to opt to end society’s stratification into classes. Hence, no matter who does it or from what direction it comes, denying women the right to historical signification is reactionary. It echoes globalization’s treatment of women as a valueless and hence disposable population, as goods to be bought and sold, etc. Alan can tack on what other negative values he might perceive, should he examine the conditions of his mother’s life. What, for instance, happened to his father?
On the question of models, which Maryanne raises, I can only say that women’s liberation being a work-in-progress, there are no models. Or perhaps there are many models. Occasionally, I’ve heard admiring remarks about women who have “three children but (remain) politically active.” Never have I heard admiration expressed for one who says “I can’t have a child this year because it’s WISAP time; nor next year, because it’s general assembly time.” So which is right and which is wrong? Accommodating one’s self to women’s double or triple burdens or removing one’s self from the dynamics of that “karmic” wheel? I have no answer. Suffice it to say that motherhood, the consecration of it, is part of the arsenal of the right-wing effort to push back women’s freedoms.
Being works-in-progress, liberated women create themselves as they go along, negotiating between duty and vision, forging, out of the old, their new selves. As for discipline, that which arises from a system of punishment and reward is a fear-based one, more religious than political. Discipline in the latter sphere should arise from one’s understanding and acceptance of what needs to be done, in our diverse historic roles, and doing it. Knowing, understanding and comprehending – these are key words to me, creating a sustainable political activism that is consistent and enduring, much better than power-and-punishment words like those used to threaten Maryanne: being iced out, being shunned, being labeled, etc.
Erich Fromm wrote that “freedom from traditional bonds… though giving the individual a new feeling of independence, at the same time made him feel alone and isolated, filled him with doubt and anxiety, and drove him into new submission and into a compulsive and irrational activity.” In other words, when we leave our traditional comfort zone to embark upon a different way of living, the anxiety can be such that some among us will accept even the loss of the freedom to think in order to belong. Or be deemed “to belong” by those who construct models. Understanding this weakness, Alan and Maryanne, may over time help make you model activists. -- ##
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