a BMI on the marginalized workers

The Immersion

I attended the ACLE titled Side Trip: A Basic Masses Integration facilitated by Anakbayan UPD. I with people from the vast universe of UP students went to Quezon Hall. We spotted there the janitors who were having a demonstration against the UP administration. We first had an introduction of the facts and figures and general issues concerning the activity. After that we had the chance to talk with the people, the workers there.

I, together with few students, had a chat with Rey Dayag and few of his former co-workers. He said that there were a lot of displace janitors summing up more than a hundred. Now there are ousted from their jobs replaced and no where to go.

What really happened is that the agency handles the workers. The UP administration pays the agency and the agency gives the salary to the janitors. Every year the agency is being replaced but still use the same workers. The agencies undergo bidding to which is the process in choosing the agency to handle the workers for that year. It was just this year that the agency which was allegedly appointed did not hire or really did not intend to hire the original set of workers but instead they brought a new mob of workers. Now the displaced janitors who served the institution for a long time, for a man in the venue pointed to us to a woman in her 60’s, I presumed, has been or she worked for UP for 20 years – people who have served generations of ‘mga Iskolar ng Bayan.’

Manong Rey told us about the hassles that the agencies were brining to them. One is that every year they changeover into another agency they were required to comply numerous documents, uniforms and other things—which is so taxing on their salaries.

He also shared to us the wisdom beneath these decision of the admin and the agency is to gain more profit from these new workers which are just starting—meaning less offered benefits, lower starting payments, etc.

The Implications

If we could look at it. It is not only about the pity, compassion for the workers and being mushy about the dispersal of the workers in Quezon Hall. What is important also to look at is the text the is waiting to be read in the said events.

Six in the morning on the 11^th of August, the workers were said to violently shooed off the said building. I was informed that it was the SSB who took on the process which is said to have some of its members working for the military. It was said by the workers there that the reason why they were dispersed was that they did not provide a permit to conduct such activity. Huh? Then I came to realize, when was the time people in UP had to comply with a legal permit in conducting demonstration? Based on what I know and what common UP student know, military entities, NBI, Police or any other similar institutions and their operations are not permitted within the campus. But how come rumors say we are being watched by spies from these groups. We are being watched on our activity particularly related to the dissent from the government. These manifestations of irregularity defy of what UP has to be.

Personally, I always feel that many or some of the population of UP students avert these issues. They say that ‘Ah, practically I am not concerned with such and why should I care.’ Often when they see dispersals induce the image of ‘garbage that is needed to be wept of the sights’.

We might not relate or not really obliged to know all the stories of these workers but what happened has to do with all of us, residents and parts of the UPD Comminity. We can not simple be isolated to the things that happen within. How can we make sure these SSBs could still be serving for the welfare of us, the students. How can we make sure our liberties and rights as UP students be not repressed and violated?

The administration has a way to slaughter the dissenting entities. Symbolically, the dispersal of the people in Quezon Hall proved only that external military forces have already won to infiltrate this very institution. They have been are already with us everyday. What is not very acceptable in the dispersal is that the sense of democracy and liberty for expression is suppressed and displaced. The integrity of this institution to foster relatively higher degree of emancipation and freedom for the people is greatly challenged in this event—read as a text.

A Query of Curiosity

Of my previous knowledge, I am aware that UP is suffering from the ‘budget cut’ (shortage of subsidy from the government) and the consequences—deficits. The challenge is how to compensate for these deficits—the sources and strategy. The Janitorial Service Association had submitted a proposal for the UP administration to take the janitors as their employees. The janitors will work directly to UP and will not make use of an agency. They say for a year the strategy could save more or less P13 M of the budget compared when that have worked to an agency.

My question here would be: if the janitors made a proposal to save more money, why did the administration did not consider the proposal in the first place? If it was too desperate to compensate for the deficits and to precarious of its resources that it already proposed a tuition fee rise from P 300 per unit to P1000 per unit or more. Why was the proposal ignored? It was still a lot of money to be saved. Are there other parties the admin is serving for its interest aside solely from the good of the university and its parts.

Politicizing corporate cronies? Let us not speculate – but why not?

On Probe: Political Killings

The military is one of the examples of the repressive state apparatus. The repressive state apparatus’ function is to channel the state’s will and to assert the state itself. Whatever happens, the state will use the repressive state apparatus to crush descent. Descents are deviations or disturbances that are seen as disorganizations to the social order, seen as threat to the leviathan-like government. The leviathan has to assert itself. So it happens… violence.

Contrary to the repressive state apparatus it counterpart called ideological state apparatus which instructions like that family, educational system and the media which shape how we think and what we should think. For me, sometimes, in some cases, it is this kind of state apparatus could critically harm us because it attacks stealthily, without us knowing that we commit ourselves to an ideology without our rational consent.

Fronts

The P 1B-funded anti-insurgency campaign GMA (OPLAN BANTAY-LAYA) was allegedly targeting affiliations of legal organizations which give critique to the current. It includes student activists, peasant unions, workers unions, religious organizations, urban-poor organizations, and other which empower the mass. The government rages a war against it’s political destabilizers—to be put down and to keep the others silent—not to engage in the same act to those who had shed blood. What is wrong here it that these entities are legal organizations and mistakenly or intentionally attacked by the military with the approval of the administration.

Universality of Human Rights

There raised the issue of the universality of human rights. Several political entities strive to protect people from abuse and other forms of violation of the human rights. I was astonished on how the authors and the essays deconstructed human rights. It was said that human rights are only for the whites and should be universalized.

Human rights is something arbitrary. In anthropology, anthropologists’ greatest challenge in their practice of field work is their critical predicament on how to react on the violence they observe on their respondents in their ethnologies. One specific case is in studying Islamic culture, when FGM is seen, in a perspective of an American eye, as something inhumane and irrational. The question goes like this, do we really have the right to intervene and change it? What make us right and what makes us wrong? Is it funny to think that changing a ‘violation’ of human rights a form of violation?

Cultural patterns are not as simple as counting 1-2-3 and guessing what’s next. Thus, there is no such thing as a universal standard of human rights. Simply, the whole idea of it is very ethnocentric. How do we know someone’s culture is wrong? How do we define wrong? People were not raised similarly on the same milieu. What I am trying say, based on the arguments, is that the step of universalizing human rights is simply giving the right for others to violate you. Thus, I believe that imposing universality of human rights would rather be a violation of human rights itself. It would rather annihilate differences since realities don’t work though a same process.

If this would be the core rationality of the urge to universalize human rights—though crushing insurgent entities, democratization of Islamic countries, etc.—something is not right. Why do we have to universalize? I believe that the whole concept is not humanitarian in nature but economic and political. It is to subtly dissolve the walls that divide the different states from being open markets. For me, a political economy does not always work well in all perspectives. They want to globalize the world into a single economic ‘nation’ which only benefit few. If someone’s got to win and someone has got to suffer. Thus it heightens the polarity of the economic classes.

Journalists at Stake

We fill the 2^nd notch, next to Iraq (the first in the list of the most cases violence against and death of journalists. The present administration already includes journalists as its enemy, thinking they are fronts of one of the insurgent groups the CPP-NPA. Now we call our country democratic.

Democracy as Questioned

Democracy! Is it really democracy that we practice? I really agreed on the cohesive antagonistic approaches of the essays to our country’s repressive state criticizing democracy.

Democracy in our context, in globalised 3^rd World Country, our civic liberty as a citizen of the estate is just something floating in the air—just a name we do not really practice. This freedom we mistakenly identify as civic liberty is just freedom to consume goods, but still we are being deprived for the rights that we are legally and legitimately entitled to.

It is said that anybody can run for presidency but how come only those who have possession of capital (may they be economic, cultural or social) are the only ones qualified to be legitimate for candidacy.

Democracy, when we could shift TV channels anytime but does not give us the right to redefine the nature of media.

Democracy, when we have leader incapable of proving that she really was voted by the people. She might lie about fact that she is legit (technically) but what a matter is that he is sadly unwanted.

Democracy, when journalists can bring the hottest gossips about celebrities; however, news that talks about ‘their lives at stake’ does not reach the newsprint.

Democracy, when the government does not practice it and does not even provide social confidence to its people who practice the so-called democracy.

Democracy, when the government turn its back on the economic interest and rights for resources of the populace while serving the interest of transnational corporations, its political allies, including ‘Uncle Sam,’ which helped the leader to be put into office.

If democracy really reins, how do we explain the government’s defiance of public welfare and the irrelevance of its actions to the country’s vision of progress and betterment?

Life surely is paradoxical—an oxymoron.

The Solution

I could not hide the fact the people turn back on me when I pursue that idea that there is still hope to the current political conditions and trends in our country.

Though being aware, not only about the ‘facts & figures’, but also knowing the implications, the meaning, of such we can help. I believe that the self had never been apart from the society, the reality, which he/she is living in. I know that there are many aversions towards mass demonstrations because on how they are portrayed by the media, family or may be educational institutions. They are always associated to violence, with riots, with irrational societal disturbance, which should be corrected.

I knowledge also that all of us have different levels of capacities and it should not be the gap that should segregate us into groups but instead unite us because we belong into a nation (though our nationhood is arguably questioned). Having these invitations presented, we should not consider these present conditions as totally beyond of our control. They seem to be beyond of our control because we are afraid to try to take control—to suspend those people who are in power, who do not embody the vision of our country but instead push for a totalitarian power. All we need is a unified revolution which would withstand the pressures of public stigmatization of the mass, economic constrains and threats that kept us hiding in the dark to urge for a nationalistic unified goal.

It is not important that we know if we belong to the left, the right or the center, but that rationality of the choice that makes a difference.

Donsol is one of the entries in Cinemalaya, an independent film festival held in CCP annualy. Donsol actually is a municipality in Sorsogon, a province in Bicol region just South of Albay (the province of the Mayon Volcano). Sorsogon is my province. Well let us go back to the movie. The movie 'Donsol' was starred by Angel Aquino, who plays a widowed breast cancer patient; Sid Lucero, a tour attendant in Donsol. Did I mention that one of the main feature of the film is the whale sharks (locally known as 'butanding') which annually visit the town's coasts? Ok the answer is no. Donsol have became a tourist spot for people from in and outside of the country to witness the bigest fish in the world, the whale shark.

Location

I can say the locations were generally authentic (as it was really shot there).

Mood

The movie was a sort of 'a-walk-to-remember' type of movie which portrayed a environment isolated to industrial and commercial cities in the country

The Townsfolks

Well they made a great job on portraying the townfolk. You know, I lived with the townsfolks in my father's place during my summer vaction when I was 7 or 8. The feeling the film ellicited was authentic about the people in the community.

Depth

I found it not so very sociological. Well I may not have the license to actually judge the film because I am not a Film maor, I am a Sociology major. Maybe few that could be pointed out there which may be sociological is maybe the tourism & commoditisation of the whale sharks which pratically benefits the locals for the income but somehow raises some environmental issues. Another, social classes could be identified and stressed in the film. Another also, is it is like it was having a propaganda of actually inviting people to pack up and go for a vacation in the province of Sorsogon to witness the sights.

to be continued...