Lubao, Pampanga province: Rice Farms stopover

On the way back to Manila from Subic and Olongapo, one of the KPD-Central Luzon organizers and I stopped in the province of Pampanga for two days and a night. In order for me to better understand the plight of Filipino farmers we stayed with a rice farmer. He leads an organization in his community that is affiliated with the peasant farmer affiliate of KPD. Here’s why you probably wouldn’t want to be a peasant rice farmer in the Philippines:

1) Small peasant rice farmers – those working on plots typically smaller than 3 hectares and usually around 1 hectare or less – are very poor, typically living on no more than $2.50 a day. To add to the difficulty, that income is largely dependent on the weather. Yearly typhoons during the rainy season damage or destroy crops. In the months when there is no crop (usually between March and June), farmers must find other sources of income, such as day-labor construction.

2) Across the country, peasant farmers of all sorts must rent the land they farm, and their plots are tiny. This is a legacy of the Spanish colonial period, and after a few half-hearted attempts at land reform in the past 30 years, land is still owned by a small number of wealthy Filipinos. This means tenants must give a significant chunk of their harvests to the landowner. The value of the rent – paid in rice – is usually equal to about 50% of the farmers’ take home pay after a harvest (i.e., their earnings would be 50% higher if they owned their own land). Needless to say, rent is an enormous burden. Between high rental costs, high input costs, and technological limitations, small farmers are only able to rent between half a hectare and three hectares at the very maximum (while landlords own anywhere from 50 to thousands of hectares).

3) Aside from a small discount on seed they may get if they buy from the local government, they don’t receive any subsidies. This means they rarely own any equipment themselves (e.g., hand-tractors for tilling, threshers for harvesting, water buffalo or caribao(!) for plowing), and that the equipment they rent or share with their neighbors is ancient – both in age and technological advancement (caribao(!)). Because they possess or have access to such limited and ancient equipment, they also have to hire and pay people to help during planting and harvesting. Furthermore, farmers face huge, nearly paralyzing input costs, particularly in imported inorganic fertilizer and pesticides (which are a must if you want anyone to buy your rice) and gas and lubricant for hand-tractors. They also depend mostly on rainfall because they have little or no access to a very old irrigation canal. And finally, an absence of roads and motorized transportation gives farmers a tough time in getting their rice to the buyers.

4) Local rice mill cartels – comprised of the companies which buy the rice harvests from the farmers – collude to drive up seed prices during planting season and drive down rice prices during harvest season. Due to lack of financial resources, farmers are unable to transport their harvests to or bring home seed from more distant mills where prices might be fairer. If somehow they attempt to buy and sell elsewhere, the rice mill cartel can stop them by doing such absurd things as reserving all the rental trucks in the area. It actually happens. Basically, if you’re a farmer, you’re screwed.

Organizing
In case you have forgotten – as I have – I was there with KPD, which means there was some sort of organizing going on (wherever there is KPD there is community organizing!). As I mentioned a long time ago, the farmer with whom we were staying is the head of an organization of 20-some farmers from his community. The organization came into being because of a single, sacred object: a beat down, rusty old hand-tractor which was donated to them about fifteen years ago. A hand-tractor, it turns out, is invaluable for tilling and transporting seed and harvests. The members (membership requires a small one-time fee) have access to the tractor at a low, somewhat affordable rental rate. They coordinate so they can each use the tractor when they need it. If no one needs it – which isn’t often – they rent it to non-members. (After so many years of use, the tractor is finally falling apart. The farmers are getting quite desperate for a new one. I might start a fundraising effort to help them out, so if you are interested….)

With the help of KPD’s farmer organization, the organization also conducts other functions. They hold discussions on various local, national, and even international issues which affect them, and, when possible, they lobby all levels of government for any support they can get. Their ultimate goal is genuine agrarian reform, meaning national land reform (so farmers can own land), the provision of subsidies, and protection against international agreements like the Agreement on Agriculture in the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services which harm small farmers all across the Third/developing world (by restricting governments from protecting local farmers).

Bigger Picture
Instead of supporting small rice farmers like these and developing the agricultural sector to boost dmoestic production and quality of life, the Philippine government continues to neglect the sector and devote more spending for rice imports. Perhaps this would be more acceptable if there was other work for the farmers to go to – if the government was supporting a shift away from agriculture toward another sector like industry. Or if there was enough rice. But there are no such jobs and there is no such shift taking place (industry is totally undeveloped) and there definitely isn’t enough rice. In the truly exceptional case that a job does appear, it is usually in some awful foreign-owned place like the Hanjin shipyard. Or in a call center, if you’ve been fortunate enough to go to college and become a good English speaker (and if you're younger than 25 - in the service sector there is some serious age discrimination in hiring).

This mess of an economy helps to explain why there are 11 million working abroad and another 1 million leaving each year (total population is about 90 million Filipinos); why 20 million Filipinos engage in precarious/informal sector work like street-vending or peddling (about 70% of total employment, according to the Philippine Department of Labor and Employment); and why doctors go back to nursing school and teachers go back to domestic-helper certification schools so they can work overseas. Stuck between the incredible hardships of peasant farming and the inhumanity of exploitative factory work, most people are squeezed out onto the street selling food or onto a plane leaving their families behind.

As demonstrated by its primary focus on a de-facto labor-export economic policy, the Philippine government is more than happy to leave the economy just as it is: export-oriented (garments, electronic parts and semi-conductors, minerals and oil, fruit); dependent on imports (machinery and transport equipment, iron and steel, food, consumer goods) and foreign investment; supported by remittances (12% of GDP and the backbone of consumption, which accounts for 70% of GDP); and incapable of providing livelihoods and food for the majority of Filipinos. The governments of Japan,China, the US, the UK, Germany, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong (the top trading partners and sources of Philippine foreign direct investment) are probably happy that it stays that way, too. As are the governments of lots of other countries, probably. And of course the owners and executives of lots of corporations from all those countries, probably. And the people who own stock in those corporations that are public. And probably all the other people who are employed by those corporations. And all the people around the world who have cheap Filipino domestic helpers/servants. And probably lots of other people from all sorts of countries, who benefit in some way or another, whether they know it or not. Not fun to think about.

Pictures. FINALLY.

Caribao. This is after the harvest, in preparation for planting.

Hand-tractor. Also in preparation for planting. The rice stalks are knocked over/uprooted/killed, then the field will be flooded and they will decompose.

Might as well help with a couple handfuls - someone's got that whole patch behind me to transplant. (Initially, the seeds are scattered in one area, but after a few weeks the new stalks are moved to another area where they are replanted by hand, one-by-one, to have enough space to grow). That will definitely be a lot of aching backs.

Harvesting. The rice grains or palay are separated from the stalks. The farmer that rents this plot had to hire all those people to help out.

Getting the product to market.

One more post. Thanks for reading.

For Yokubari, community development begins with the basics – health. Its primary task is tackling malnutrition among children in urban poor communities through supplementary feeding programs. It has also secured free access to a private hospital for the communities with which it works. But Yokubari seems to do everything else, as well. It supports the schooling of dozens of kids through sponsorship programs, conducts education seminars for parents (covering anything from literacy to women’s rights to national political issues), conducts livelihood trainings for parents (e.g., haircutting and nail-care for extra family income), and guides the communities in organizing and demanding protection from local government against demolitions and environmental hazards (particularly the toxic waste left behind by the US Navy). The foundation “adopts” one or two communities at a time and commits itself for no more than three years, in order to assure the sustainability of their efforts with the communities.

Based on the feedback of community members I met, it was clear that the Yokubari Foundation is doing a whole lot of great and inspiring things. But I have to say, I was little more caught up with the significance of these urban poor slum communities in the context of the Freeport and economic development. Squeezed between the walls of the Freeport, a commercial town-center just outside the Freeport, and a dirty river which floods their homes every year, these communities – communities with the most room for socio-economic improvement – have seen no positive changes since the Freeport was opened. If anything, things have gotten worse. Most notably, many urban poor communities now face threats of demolition, and prostitution has swelled in response persistent poverty and the presence of foreign businessmen. And the one proclaimed benefit of the Freeport – job creation – has largely missed the urban poor communities and has only sucked other desperate Filipino workers into indecent, exploitative work which guarantees no brighter future for their families and communities.

The Subic Bay Freeport is one of the pillars of the national government’s plan to develop central Luzon into a “Global Gateway” that will boost the country’s “international competitiveness and integration into the global economy” (taken from a government brochure). But if the actual developments in Subic and Olongapo are any indicator of what greater “international competitiveness and integration in the global economy” mean, then it seems pretty clear that this isn’t the kind of development that the Philippine economy – or Philippine society, for that mater – needs.

I will give you some brief background on the crisis that is the Philippine economy at the end of the next post, where it will make more sense. It should also help to clarify why this foreign investment/special economic zone-led economic development is such as bad idea, assuming you are not a foreign capitalist or a Philippine government official. The next post will also magically appear on the internet within the next day or two, because I’m still at two weeks ago ahhh!!

Olongapo and Subic, Zambales province

A Special Economic Zone: After a few final days of school visits with ASSERT, I swung around Manila Bay and headed northwest, to the province of Zambales! There I joined the KPD chapter in the municipality of Subic (according to a friend I just asked, a municipality is below certain income and population thresholds which much be surpassed in order to reach “city-status”). Subic and its Subic Bay neighbor, Olongapo City, were home to an enormous and troublesome U.S. naval base until 1992. As part of a national policy handling the fate of the former U.S. bases throughout the country, the Olongapo-Subic base was converted into an equally enormous and troublesome Freeport zone, i.e., a tax and duty-free area of land meant to attract foreign investments. Now host to dozens of foreign multinational corporations, the Freeport plays a central role in the Philippine government’s economic development plans; it is touted by the government as a symbol of the “great” economic “strides” the country has made during President Arroyo’s past nine years in office.

The foreign corporations are here not only because of the tax breaks, but also because of the guarantee of cheap and docile (i.e., exploitable) labor. To make the tax-free investment opportunities additionally attractive, the Philippine government relaxes labor standards in the Freeport and other special economic zones throughout the country. This means that workers face harassment (by management and sometimes the Philippine military) and termination if they try to organize in any way; there is an unwritten “NO union” policy. They receive six-month contracts (“contractualization”, meaning no job security), few to no benefits, and the provincial bare-minimum wage of about $6 a day. Furthermore, almost all workers are employees of subcontracted firms created by the parent corporations; it is quite clear that the function of subcontracting is to protect the corporations from liability in case of any legal trouble – of which there is usually a good amount.

Horrible, Horrible Hanjin: The KPD chapter in Subic focuses primarily on the various worker issues emerging from the Freeport and is particularly occupied with the largest operation in the zone – Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction, the 4th largest and probably most controversial shipbuilding facility in the world. Nearly all 17,000 workers at the Korean firm’s facility are actually employees of over fifty subcontracted companies created by Hanjin that each use Hanjin-owned machines and all have basically the same management (less than half are legally registered). And Hanjin certainly has reason to avoid any legal liability; in addition to the poor conditions faced by Freeport workers which I listed above, Hanjin workers face other mistreatment and hardship. First, working conditions at the shipyard simply aren’t safe: since operations commenced in 2006, there have been over 5000 accidents and 28 deaths at the site. Second, there are frequent cases of physical abuse by the management against the workers. And finally, the workers face forced overtime almost every day with 3-day suspension or termination as the alternative (amounting to 10-hour days, 14 days out of every 15), and occasional forced overnight/overday at only regular pay (two straight days on site at the minimum wage rate).

The KPD office in Subic serves as a walk-in support center for Freeport workers – and especially Hanjin workers– experiencing any job-related problems. It helps workers take legal action if they have experienced abuse or harassment, illegal termination, pay irregularities, or injury. It also serves as a headquarters for the unofficial Hanjin union which has over 3,000 signed members but is unrecognized by both Hanjin and the Philippine Department of Labor and Employment. KPD helps to organize the growing union and to seek its recognition as an official union so that management will be forced to finally listen. It helps that some of the KPD organizers in Subic are actually former Hanjin workers who were terminated after leading the efforts to form a union.

And what did I actually do in Olongapo and Subic?? First, I joined some of the KPD organizers in recruiting more members for the Hanjin union. Every morning and every evening, they go to the bus terminals where Hanjin workers are picked up and dropped off by the thousands. There we handed out flyers and spoke with workers to try to persuade them to join the union. After some time at the terminals, we headed to the worker “barracks”, or housing areas where there are high concentrations of Hanjin workers renting out tiny, dark, over-crowded living spaces. In the barracks, we spoke with workers to collect some information for KPD, and again, tried to recruit more union members. Despite the risks associated with joining the eventually-to-be-official union (i.e., losing your desperately needed job – remember, you are relatively quite lucky if you have a salaried job at all here), most workers who join are not so hesitant. They seem to understand that in organizing and unionizing lie their only chance of receiving more humane treatment, any worker benefits and protections, and more decent pay.

Nagtulong: I also took a quick trip to swing by Hanjin to see the place up close, as well as one of its neighboring fisherfolk communities, Nagtulong. This was my first introduction to the issue of demolition. Before the Hanjin facility was built, the location was home to a number of fisherfolk communities. Technically, these were squatter communities, in that the people were living on public land without government permission. So when the shipyard was built, they were forced off the land and their homes were bulldozed. This would have been legal under Philippine law if the government had assisted them in relocation – but this is the Philippines! So it didn’t. About 300 families were displaced and had to move further down the coast or up into the hills. Nagtulong is one of the displaced communities which is now facing renewed threats of demolition arising from Hanjin’s plans to expand its facilities. Half of the community’s population – about 50 families – has already moved further down the coast in anticipation of another forced removal. KPD and its fisherfolk wing have helped to organize these communities and assist them in protesting the demolitions. The people of Nagtulong, with KPD’s help, have actually filed a legal complaint and their case is currently pending.

This issue of demolition and displacement is not uncommon here in the Philippines. There are squatter communities of fisherfolk to be found in most coastal regions (which, in an archipelago, are all over) and of urban poor people to be found in most cities and municipalities. These communities are frequently threatened by commercial, industrial, and real-estate development, especially in more urban areas. I will write more about this later.

That is enough for this post. I’ll finish up with Olongapo and Subic and an organization called the Yokubari Foundation in the next, and then I’ll just have a week and a half left to cover!

Some of the people from Nagtulong who have already relocated.

Part of the new site where they have resettled.

Some of the men/boys fishing.

Others going out to collect crabs/shellfish/anything eatable.

The entrance to Hanjin. The place is a lot more massive than it looks. Huge cargo ships are being built and repaired beneath those orange things. Not the cones. The orange things in the distance. Their website actually has some pretty nice pictures: http://www.hhic-phil.com/

TWO OTHER MAJOR ACTIVITIES!
• TindigNation launch: The coalition against Charter Change and the convening of a Constituent Assembly (see post #2) held a launch event last weekend, i.e., a mini-carnival, speeches, and musical performances pronouncing its existence. Unsurprisingly, every Filipino was there except the President and the two thirds of Congress who support ChaCha and ConAss. Yeah, no kidding. Actually, it was a relatively small event (maybe a few hundred people) held in an indoor sports complex in Quezon City. In attendance were members from about 80 political and civil society organizations (very impressive!) which was a huge improvement from the twenty-some tally at the planning meeting I attended two weeks ago. Carnival activities included “stick the President’s mole in the right spot on her face, blindfolded” and “chip the golf ball into the President’s mole” (really hard).

Okay, so this wasn’t really “work”, but it still contributed to my understanding of how Filipino civil society organizations and various political interests work together to make things happen. Furthermore, it was a good reminder of the importance of media to civil society and politics. As with the anti-BNPP protest march, media coverage was crucial to the success of the event. It received a couple minutes on the Saturday night local news, as well as an article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. If not for the news and press coverage, the launch would have been largely invisible.

Note: I think I got swept away in some light, premature pessimism during post #2. Right now, it actually looks like pro-ConAss efforts will not succeed because the Senate is just not having it: http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/06/17/09/con-ass-dead-without-senate-law-professors. Also, I forgot to mention that the system of government here is American-style Presidential, with judicial and bicameral legislative branches, thanks to the splendid American colonial period (not splendid at all). There may be a lot less "checking and balancing" here because the three branches act in such remarkable unison, but their actions clearly demonstrate that Philippine government is also of the elite class.

• Days working on a forthcoming paper dealing with the impact of the global financial crisis on local Filipino workers (or, capitalist globalization has made everyone vulnerable, and reliance on exports and remittances only makes things worse, but people are tough): My current writing project for KPD. It has consumed most of my in-office time this past week. I will put up a link once it is complete.

I will be spending this coming with the KPD and ASSERT chapters in the Central Luzon region. The main items on the agenda are: 1) Visit the special economic zones and the workers there who are hoping to organize; 2) Work with a teachers’ association in Bataan; 3) Not get dengue fever. Next time I’ll try to post links more links to articles about the issues I’ve mentioned. And please excuse any type-os or nonsense – I have written in great haste and will proof read in the next few days.

Not me. So that's the lovely President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA). Kind of cute, huh?

Possibly a more accurate depiction of the President. That's GMA, her husband, and one of her sons. It's a throw-garlic-into-their-mouths game.

WEEK AND A HALF WITH ASSERT! (The organization for teachers’ rights and education reform – see blog post #1.)

• Orientation: I had a preliminary discussion with one of the ASSERT national leaders about the state of Philippine education, the situation of public school teachers, and the relationship between the two. In a nutshell:

There are too many students, too few teachers, and too few classrooms. There is also too little funding. Average class size and teacher-pupil ratio for public schools are the worst in Southeast Asia. Officially, those numbers are 44 and 35:1, respectively. (Though after visiting a number of schools, I am questioning the reliability of those figures – see below.) ASSERT characterizes Philippine education as elitist, given public education’s low priority on the national budget and high dropout rates (because many kids – even during elementary years – have to choose work over school). Also troubling is the growing prevalence of private schools and the increasing inaccessibility of public universities due to relatively steep tuition fees. Even if all these problems aren't unique to the Philippines, the fact that the U.S. crafted the country's education system probably explains why much of this sounds like America's education troubles.

So as in the U.S., and probably many other countries, public school teachers here are overworked, underpaid, and among the worst-off government employees. Starting salaries are about 14,000 Philippine pesos per month ($290). Twenty-four years of teaching, or 8 salary steps, would only yield a 2,000 peso ($40) increase in monthly salary. The cost of living may be lower here than in many places, but $10 dollars a day is still just enough to survive and certainly not enough to support a family. It is pretty clear that if you want to be a teacher here, you must have an additional job, relatives working overseas, or a daughter working in a call center.

When teachers try to organize and demand higher wages, better benefits, shorter hours, or any other improvements, they are often threatened by school district officials, and sometimes even harassed by the military. What is frustrating – while also encouraging – is that Philippine laws do grant teachers with a range of rather generous rights and protections. The problems are: 1) The laws are badly abused by the government and Department of Education; 2) Most teachers are not familiar with them; 3) Those teachers who do know their rights are afraid to assert them for fear of harassment and losing their jobs. I have been tasked by ASSERT with writing a paper that summarizes this education mess in nice language before my time here is done. There should be some better data and analysis in there which I can share in a later post.

• Assembly and teacher training in Nueva Ecija province: A 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. marathon of educating local educators about new national legislation affecting their salaries, the GSIS, and their rights. The fifty-plus school teachers and principals in attendance were all members of the Gapan Public School Teachers Association – an association with which ASSERT had never yet met. As it was one of my first real activities with ASSERT, I was limited to observation and PowerPoint operation. I’ll admit that I had grown quite bored by hour three, but fortunately in Filipino culture you must feed your guests every two hours. It also helped that the most interesting part was saved for the final third of the training.

The three hour closing segment was devoted to a lesson on teachers’ rights, as guaranteed by a national law enacted in 1966 known as the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers. The ASSERT Secretary General and unofficial comic (who was suspended from teaching twenty years ago after leading a nationwide teachers strike) went through all 32 sections of the law. While I was captivated by his employment of a 33-letter pneumonic device (MAGNA CARTA FOR PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS) as well as his ability to sustain his charisma, enthusiasm, and highly animated hand/arm gestures for three hours, I was, of course, struck by the significance of what was going on. Most of the teachers were learning of their rights for the first time. Upon hearing some of the sections, the whole room would erupt in muttered disbelief and our speaker would have to assure them that they understood correctly. It really was empowerment – or at least the foundation for empowerment – in action. So now I have a decent understanding of the “E” in “ASSERT” (Action and Solidarity for the Empowerment of Teachers), but I’m still trying to figure out the R and second S.

• School visits: To obtain an initial glimpse into the state of Philippine public education, one of the ASSERT national coordinators took me to visit a handful of public elementary and high schools. Things could be much worse, but they are still pretty bad. Only one of three elementary schools we visited had an average class size under 45 students, and that was because legislation had been passed in the district which limited class size to that number. Most of the high schools averaged between 60 and 70 students per class. Due to a limited number of classrooms, almost all schools are forced to run in two sessions – one batch of students has class in the morning (7 a.m. to noon) and another has class in the afternoon (1 p.m. to 6 p.m. or 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.). Air conditioning is only to be found in the principal’s office, if at all. Classrooms are hot, crowded, and generally terrible environments for any sort of learning. At one school I visited, a number of classes have to be held out on the basketball court due to a shortage of rooms. But again, things could probably be worse. Many schools receive funding to operate feeding programs for underweight and undernourished students and programs to reintegrate students who have previously dropped out.

• “TindigNation” Planning Meeting: This was an impressive gathering of a wide range of political interests all united for one purpose – to prevent President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) from changing the constitution (Charter Change or “ChaCha”). ChaCha is a ridiculously obvious attempt by GMA to: 1) remain in power once her second term expires next year (either by term extension or adoption of a parliamentary system in which she would become Prime Minister); and 2) eliminate most of the 1986 Constitution’s nationalist provisions – such as the guarantee of Filipino ownership of Filipino natural resources – for no reason but to cede to (or perhaps collaborate with) foreign interests.
The interests present at the meeting plan to launch a coalition called TindigNation (an arguably clever fusion of tindig, meaning “stand up”, and indignation). The individuals in attendance represented academics, university student groups, political parties, various progressive groups like KPD, and even local big business (because ChaCha would augment the advantages of foreign corporations over domestic ones).
At the moment, the coalition is focused on preventing current legislative efforts to allow the constitution to be changed by Constituent Assembly (“ConAss”), or the convening of the Senate and House as a joint assembly. If a constituent assembly is held, ChaCha is likely to occur because its wide support in the 238-member House of Representatives would trample the main sources of resistance found in the 23-member Senate. Congress is in recess until July 27 (also the date of the President’s highly-anticipated State of the Nation Address, or SONA!), so KPD and the coalition will be mounting some major organization and mobilization efforts during the next few weeks.

• Creating a brochure for the Anti-Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (anti-BNPP movement). This was my baby for the week. I have to say, it looked and sounded pretty good (though I’m starting to doubt myself because I haven’t seen or heard of it since I passed it on for final approval and printing.) Since I had to become a pro on the issue, here’s the deal:
The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant was a project of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s-80s. It was a disaster. It was built by Westinghouse Electric, an American corporation, at the price of $2.3 billion. It faced strong opposition from the start and became a symbol of the corruption and other assorted evils of Marcos regime. It sits on the edge of a humongous volcano which makes up the whole northern Bataan Peninsula; it is near a couple major fault lines; and, it had a large number of structural defects which were found after it was closed following the topple of Marcos. Furthermore, debts from the BNPP annually comprised about 20% of national debt servicing for over 30 years. Naturally, a push has emerged in Congress to recommision the plant for commercial operation. KPD is working with a coalition (the Nuclear-Free Bataan Movement) set out to prevent what would be a truly remarkable feat – the revival of such a hugely unpopular disaster.

• Anti-BNPP protest: This was a great follow-up to the brochure production and briefings on the BNPP issue. A few days before the protest, I traveled to the province of Bataan with KPD and ASSERT leaders to attend to final preparations (Bataan is about 2 hours from here, across Manila Bay to Mandaluyong’s northwest). The protest, held on Saturday, took the form of a 3,000-person march through the Bataan countryside. It was both a commemoration of a 1985 protest that helped to close down the BNPP in the first place and a protest against the current efforts to revive the plant. The 7-mile march ended in the provincial capital, Balanga, where the protest finished with a program of speeches, song, dance, and short theatrical performance.
The event was a great introduction to - and display of - the capabilities of KPD and its affiliates to work together, organize, and mobilize at the grassroots level. Members of ASSERT, PKMM, KAISAKA, MAKABAYAN and KPD all contributed to the organization and execution of the event. Also impressive was the media coverage which the event secured; it got a sizable write-up on the second page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, one of the country’s major newspapers.

• And one more highlight I must include – Movie about Van Gogh at the French Film Festival with a bunch of KPD and ASSERT people I had met an hour earlier. French film, English subtitles, Tagalog-whispering Filipino audience, and one unwell Dutchman. A pretty confusing evening. And if you’re interested, I’d give the movie a B-.

I hope you enjoyed all the acronyms and abbreviations.

My new understanding of what I am doing here: I will be learning about and helping in the efforts to remedy every major social problem in the Philippines!!!!! Just kidding, sort of. What I mean to say is that it looks like the scope of my work this summer will be broader than just teachers’ rights and education reform. Here’s why: ASSERT is a sectoral affiliate of a broader organization called Kilusan para sa Pambansang Demokrasya (KPD), or Movement for National Democracy. (Other “sectoral” affiliates - as they are called here - include organizations of women, workers, urban poor, peasants, and fisher folk.) Because ASSERT works so closely with KPD (as I hope to clarify further on), I will be working with both organizations.

KPD is an organization with a very large purpose. It aims to help bring about genuine democracy and progressive social change in the Philippines. It strives for political change that will align the Philippine government with the interests of the majority of Filipinos and not just the elite class, the U.S., and foreign capitalists. So when I say ASSERT is a KPD sectoral affiliate, I mean that it is the teachers’-rights-and-education node of a broad network working for more democratic governance and national freedom from restrictive international economic and political forces.

KPD is the center of a national network of sectoral organizations like ASSERT that are united by the principles of nationalism and democracy. And while I joke about solving all the major social problems in the Philippines, it seems that KPD is set out to do just that. Yet as the organization maintains a set of very-long-term goals, it also deeply engages a number of immediate issues, such as Charter Change (ChaCha), the revival of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP), and the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). I’ll explain each of these later. As far as its operation is concerned, KPD is all about mass education and grassroots organization for those campaigns currently on its agenda. KPD and its affiliates each have chapters scattered throughout the country. Right now, I am in the national office where the secretariats of KPD and its affiliates are based. In the next two months, though, I will be dispatched to various regional chapters where I’ll be able to see how these organizations work at the grassroots level.

An explanation of the physical setup here at the national office may help you to understand the relationships between KPD and the sectoral affiliates. Four feet to my left is the desk of one of the KPD national leaders; four feet behind me is the desk of an ASSERT national leader; in the far corner of the room is where a leader from the women’s organization (KAISAKA) works; and also behind me is a smaller converted office where the three leaders share bunks. On the opposite side of the wall in front of me is the bunk of a peasant leader (PKMM), and across the hall is the workers’ organization office (MAKABAYAN). Maybe that was just confusing, but the point is that these organizations constantly interact, and their efforts and aims are all very much intertwined. They simultaneously work on the cross-sector big issues and their individual campaigns and agendas.

This has been more than enough for one post, and I haven’t even gotten to what I actually did this past week! I’ll have to follow this up with a highlights-of-the-week post in the next day or two. Look out for it. It should be more exciting and interesting than this one. It should also help clarify what KPD and ASSERT actually do, since most of this post was just devoted to articulating what they are. Be well and do good!