Even though every nook was Wi-Fi ready and one only had to go to the public library (or any public establishment with computers, for that matter) for free internet access, I wasn't able to allot blogging time in Hongkong at all. I had to run to and from the Hongkong University, where the ILPS-Youth (International League of Peoples' Struggle) and ASA (Asian Student Association) Youth and Student Conference was taking place; and Victoria Park, where the Philippine delegation held most of its activities for the People's Action Week.
Our days started really early, and ended up usually by 2-3am after our daily assessments and consultations. Between attending fora and conferences, and preparing and taking part in the monumental street marches, nothing much could be done but maximize the little idle time to rest, connect with international youth delegates, find cheap but satisfactory restos and hop to the Jusco 10-dollar shop in search for thingamajigs for possible gimmicks and prop materials.
Kaya pahabol. Here's my blow-by-blow take of young radicals' short but stout stint in the recently concluded Hongkong anti-WTO protests. December 12 ArrivalAmazing how two places merely 1 hour and 45 minutes away from each other can be worlds apart.
At the Hongkong airport, glaring differences from the Philippines were already all too painfully apparent. We had to take a 10-minute walk from the arrival dock and
board an indoor train just to get to the immigration area. Electronic information desks were scattered all over the place, providing assistance to tourists and visitors in various languages.
Smartly-dressed attendants were waiting for us at the immigration area with the sole purpose of ushering us into the designated waiting lines. Would there have been a piano or some jazzy lounge music playing one would mistake the wall-to-wall carpeted immigration area for a posh hotel.
Queued in line at the immigration, one thing I noticed was that desk officers seemed to hold Filipinas and other Asian women under interrogation longer than the Caucasian women waiting for their turns. 'How long are you staying?', 'Why are you coming back?', 'Where will you be staying?' were asked in none too respectful manners to the two Filipinas in front of me. One of them had with her bags of bibingka and was desperately trying to carry them in one hand while she frantically searched her bag for papers and documents the officer demanded of her. Good thing my brother RJ (who went as a delegate for KARATULA Kabataang Artista para sa Tunay na Kalayaan) was queued before me so when it got to my turn the officer just asked me my name and stamped my passport without any questions. (our reason being to 'visit relatives.' We had to resort to such tactics in light of previous detentions of some of our fellow Filipino activists and leaders days before..)
We were all happy to see the familiar faces of NDFP Negotiating Panel Chair Louie Jalandoni, NDFP panelist Coni Ledesma and NDFP Human Rights Monitoring Committee Chair Fidel Agcaoili at the airport. Other Filipino kasamas were also there to fetch us up. Warm welcomes easily made the terribly cold Hongkong weather (another detail we're not used to) tolerable that night.
December 13 opening protest rally against the WTO M16Was ecstatic to see my dear friend, former CEGP president and present Asian Students' Association Regional Secretariat Rey Asis at the assembly in Victoria Park. It was also there that we got to meet the international delegates for the Youth Conference for the first time:
Sook is a journalist graduate from Malaysia. She is a member of a youth organization there and she sells books for a living. She also writes children's books and has already visited the Philippines. She is one of the most helpful and diligent delegates in the conference.
Mona is a student from India. She is also one of the most articulate delegates in the conference. She is cute and petite but minces no anti-imperialist words in the sessions. She promised to give me her fabulous Indian earrings through Alvin of NUSP (who stayed behind with her for the ASA General Conference).
Aliyah from ILPS-Youth in Turkey is crazy and witty and a true-blue comrade. She kept a journal for the conference on which she never misses to write nightly. She constantly shot pictures and took videos of us too. She told me she also started a 'mean diary' where she documented anecdotes of our bloopers and other trivial stuff. I told her to post everything on a website instead. I think I'll miss her most of all.
Anju is from Mauritius and she knows Viveka Babajee (remember her?). She was our very own Miss Congeniality in the conference. She easily clicked with the Filipino delegates because of the Viveka factor (haha!). She is Indian-looking but speaks perfect French. She already knows what
'pasabog' stands for so she now speaks a little Tagalog as well.
Lao Fong belongs to the Hongkong University Student Union and was all too kind and accommodating. He plays bass in a band and LOVES jazz music. Too bad he wasn't able to participate much in the sessions because he was too busy playing host to us.
Azad is also from Turkey and made us all worried when he wandered off one night to take shots of the Korean protesters. He was officially missing for more than three hours before Aliyah and RJ decided to look for him. He eventually showed up from nowhere and said that 'he just went out for coffee.' Yeah right. :-)
Bhakta from Nepal is one of my group mates in the documentation committee. I was intimidated by him at first because he was a man of few words. But we were later be seen dancing to the Indonesians singing Tagalog march songs at the Migrante cultural night.
Damica is a doctor from Sri Lanka. He looks a lot like Lenin. He is sharp and always straight to the point.
Dave is actually an Australian based in Thailand. He asks a lot of questions and fools around a lot. I always got distracted whenever I talked to him because he had some sort of a rubber thingie up his nose. My guess is that it's supposed to help him breathe
kasi masyadong matangos ang ilong niya. Kai Loon, Madav, Ipang, Carlo and Kawai have all been to the Philippines for exposure trips.
So many other new friends and comrades but I always have had trouble recalling names. Nonetheless, I felt proud to be marching and protesting with them in the opening rally. We were chanting 'Junk WTO' in our respective languages but international solidarity knows no language barriers.
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It was a short march from Victoria Park towards the loading docks (in front of the Hongkong Convention Center where the WTO MC6 was actually taking place). It was a lot different from our marches here because 1.) it was deathly cold, 2.) there was ZERO pollution, 3.) the police were actually ESCORTING AND HELPING us, and 4.) EACH ONE of us had to carry flags and streamers all throughout the march. When we got to the rally site, the Hongkong Peoples' Alliance (HKPA) prepared a short program in which representatives of all organizations who joined the march could deliver their respective speeches.
We were all excited to hear our very own Mong Palatino speak with other youth delegates in the program. But just when he got up the stage, media men were already scrambling to get to the docks' edge. That was when the South Koreans jumped in the water. I saw them myself, my estimate was around 50-60 Koreans bobbing in the water in their orange life vests. More followed suit and I lost count.
After that, nothing much could be expected of the program. The media and protesters' attentions were pretty much focused on what the Koreans' next plan of action was. Some were visibly irked because of the 'un-coordinated' interruption. I personally held no grudge against them/what they did, albeit futile (they were immediately surrounded by police boats. But they weren't arrested, the police were actually there to secure and escort them in their midday swim!), had tremendous political impact. Many protesters and lookers-on were actually cheering them on.
We had to pull out though immediately after that because the Koreans who didn't jump into sea were starting to set fire to their huge effigy (I think it was a coffin but I'm not sure) and was slowly pushing the burning thing towards the police barricade guarding the Convention Center gates. We didn't get to witness them being pepper-sprayed and beaten by the police. We were on our way back to Victoria Park by then.
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December 14 ILPS Forum on Trade and WarAfter opening the People's Action Week with a bang (literally so, for the Koreans), our next great feat was to survive Hongkong's 13-degree cold for the ILPS Forum on Trade and War held outdoors. Smack in the middle of the roofless, windy Victoria Park.
We opened the forum by launching the ILPS hymn. My brother, Gly of ILPS-Youth Philippines and myself were all part of the ILPS Philippines Chorale. The coldest environment I had had to sing in was somewhere in the Cordilleras but it wasn't nearly as cold there as it got in Victoria Park that morning. It was a dread to sing really because our throats were parched and it hurt just to smile because our lips were terribly chapped. Imagine having to sing with mouths open wide (for better voice projection)!
Among the main speakers in the forum were Dr. Jane Kelsey from New Zealand ('Historical Overview of Imperialist Globalization'); Antonio Tujan Jr.of the Asia Pacific Research Network or APRN ('Imperialist Collaboration and Competition in Exploiting Weaker Economies through the WTO'); Dr. Haluk Gerger from Turkey ('Globalization and the New World Order'), Dr. Carol Pagaduan-Araullo, Bayan chairperson and vice-president for external affairs of the ILPS ('The Military Face of Globalization'); Manuel Perez Iturbe, Charge d'Affaires of the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the Philippines ('US Agression and Provocation: The case of Venezuela'); and Luis Jalandoni, ('Advancing the People's Struggle Against Imperialism'). The opening address was by Prof. Jose Maria Sison, chairperson of the ILPS, and the speech was read by Coni Ledesma.
Our ever-enterprising fellow Filipino youth delegates attempted to erect booths for our CDS, pins and other stuff for sale at the makeshift entrance. They were, however, immediately chastised by our kapwa Pinoys lest the police saw them and they had to pay a handsome fine for their 'illegal stall'. It was one of the many no-no's we had to comply with in Hongkong. First was that we couldn't just throw our cigarette butts anywhere; 1,500 HK dollars (Php 10,500) fine for that; and 5,000 HK dollars (Php 35,000) if caught smoking in anti-smoking areas. Good thing the 'elders' were there or else no food allowance for the rest of us, hehe.
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That night, while waiting for the bus to fetch us up from Victoria Park back to the HKU, the Koreans shared with us the kimchi and rice meals they had for dinner. Kimchi became a nightly treat for Filipinos in Victoria Park after that.
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December 15 International Youth Forum on WTO and GlobalizationHongkong University held me in complete awe. Imagine the most prosperous and modern university here in the Philippines, Ateneo or UA&P perhaps, and it's still nothing compared to the HKU.
From the outside, HKU maintained an old-fashioned façade with its brick-red structures and age-old bronze monuments. Inside was a different thing altogether. They had elevators, escalators, electronic touch-activated student assistance kiosks and campus TVs scattered in almost every floor. I'm not so sure if they had a dorm though, the university was so vast that the little time we spent there wasn't enough for us to explore its entirety.
The HKU Student Union had a whole building to themselves
(katumbas ito ng Vinzons Hall Student Center sa UP pero malayong-malayo in terms of laki at availability at pagka-high-tech ng facilities). I was like a kid basking in goodies on my first visit to the HKU-Student Union Office. They had at least a dozen computers, five laser printers, a photocopying and enlarging machine, separate rooms for conferences, hanging out (I assumed, when I saw the super-comfy couch, TV and the stacks of DVDs in one room), and for doing administrative work. Good thing HKU students spoke perfect English because I had to solicit their help in encoding statements and press releases in the Chinese-charactered keyboards. One glitch, I suppose, but negligible considering everything else.
Our first activity for the International Youth and Student Conference on WTO and Globalization ' a forum ' was held in one of the 'classrooms' inside HKU. I say 'classroom' because it actually looked like an undersized cinema, complete with LCD equipment, a screen that appears or vanishes at a touch of a pad, a built-in Wi-Fi ready computer in front and touch-activated mechanisms for light and sound systems. I could tell that our fellow delegates from other third world countries were also hugely impressed. Mona wasn't able to help herself and blurted out that Hongkong was the most prosperous place she has been to.
The classroom was jam packed, a quick count of around 300 participated. The audience consisted of delegates from the four host organizations : ILPS-Youth, ASA, World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) and International Movement of Catholic Students Asia Pacific (IMCS-AP). Among the speakers were: On Education: Ted Murphy, National Tertiary Education Union (Australia); On Employment: Lito Ustares, May First Movement (Philippines); and On Culture: Joel Garduce, Concerned Artists of the Philippines.
As expected, questions and reactions in the open forum were mostly addressed to Ted (he didn't want to be called 'sir'). He raised really good points and presented concrete case studies and analyses of the effects and implications of the GATS on education. He said he wasn't used to preparing papers for his talks but gave me a
website where all his input and more can be accessed.
Next in the agenda was the sharing of country reports. We were grouped into tens (the Filipino delegation had to be distributed to two different groups as there were more than 20 of us) with delegates from different countries. My group consisted of youth and students from Burma, Sri Lanka and Taiwan. We had to present our country reports on education, employment and culture based on the guidelines prepared by the IYSC Secretariat.
What struck me most was the situation in Burma. Burma has a highly-militarized dictatorship government. The youth and student movement had to travel to Thailand or other nearby countries just so they could conduct their meetings. Any gathering of more than 10 people is bound to be dispersed by the police. Locals are required to carry their national IDs all the time or face arrest and detention. It's amazing how youth and student activists manage to sustain their movement in Burma considering their prevailing situation. But they get by and is in fact one of the leading youth and student movements across Asia. I realized then that some countries are still worse off than the Philippines in terms of campus and political repression. We are lucky in the sense that we still have space, however tight, to protest human rights violations and suppression. We are lucky in the sense that we successfully overthrew a similar dictatorship situation because of EDSA People Power 1.
Suppression and political killings in the Philippines are almost as rampant as those in Sri Lanka, where a civil war is going on in the country's city areas. But the Philippines still leads the pack as the most dangerous place for journalists and civil libertarians across Asia.
As in the Philippines, youths from these countries decry the privatization, commercialization and colonial structure of education in favor of profit for superpowers like the US and EU. Tertiary education is mainly profit-oriented and commodified at the expense of poor students who have no means to achieve decent schooling because of high cost impositions. This condition is mainly attributed to governments' continuous subservience to WTO dictates on education and their preparation for the imminent implementation of the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) on education.
Taiwan's situation, on the other hand, is different in that it is a first world country. Like Hongkong, it is still reveling in the tactical gains the WTO provides but education is highly-commercialized and commodified nonetheless. Students are also forced to drop out of college because of high tuition costs.
Synthesis reports of the groups all reflected the WTO's onerous effects on education, employment and culture. Everyone was in high spirits with the extent youth and student movements worldwide have reached in terms of fighting for democratic rights and against imperialist plunder.
Bottomline: GATS in education poses an even graver threat to youth and students in countries where education systems are commodified and mainly profit-oriented. Read more on the
The WTO and the crisis of the Philippine educational system-------
Heard no news about the Koreans that day. I think some of them attended the Peasant Tribunal in Victoria Park.
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December 16Mong, Sinag and I went to Victoria Park in the morning to join our fellow Filipinos in a flag dance/march towards the loading docks. Our other Filipino youth companions stayed behind for the continuation of the conference. My arms still hurt from carrying the Anakbayan flag all through out the march and program but it was well worth it. It was the first all-Filipino activity for the People's Action Week. The kasamas from different sectors were in high morale, chanting in Tagalog, singing, marching and basically wowing the bustling Hongkong crowd.
I saw one of our photographer friends, Bullit Marquez, covering the event though he was assigned to cover the talks inside the Convention Center. Hindi siguro siya nakatiis, he had to be where the real action was.
My congratulatons to Ina and Tonyo for the fabulous anti-imperialist masks (10 HK dollars each from Jusco), undoubtedly the highlight of the march. Galing! Photos of the masks (and the die-in protest at the loading docks) may be viewed on-line (try yahoo news).
Afterwards, Tonyo accompanied me to Jusco to look for any possible thing that could be transformed into gimmicks for our Youth March the next day. After contemplating between graduation toga caps (found none) and fake plastic medals, I finally opted for three inflatable beach balls and 100 pieces of balloons. Tonyo, meanwhile, went ga-ga over a transparent umbrella which he claims to have been searching heaven and earth for. He bought two and was later on reluctant to go back to Victoria Park with me lest he would end up explaining to people why in hell he bought TWO quaint umbrellas in Hongkong, hehe.
In HKU, they conducted workshops on GATS, TRIPS, NAMA, AoA, Environment and Indigenous Peoples. The workshops were through by the time I got back but they told me that everything went well. A little skirmish apparently occurred due to a misunderstanding with one of the invited resource persons for Environment (FOCUS on the Global South. But let?s leave that for another entry..) but all sessions were generally informative and well-delivered.
More importantly, discussions were appropriately raised to a sharper anti-imperialist perspective. This consensus among delegates brought about the formation of the SAY NO to WTO (Student and Youth Network Opposed to the WTO), the first ever anti-WTO international youth alliance in Asia, if not worldwide.
Preparations for the Youth March were well under way when I arrived. I excitedly produced my Jusco goodies and we all went to work until way past midnight.
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The late night local news featured the Koreans in another admirable feat. They stormed and picketed the Office of the US Consulate General, a monstrous steel structure located along one of the major highways. We all watched in awe as they spray-painted the building's façade with "Junk WTO" and "Down with Bush" in bold red letters. While this was transpiring, some elder Koreans proceeded to shave their heads while meditating. Their grand finale: after spray-painting and shaving, they attacked the big brass signage and managed to strip off some of the letters from the wall.
We were clapping our hands off in that distant conference room in HKU. The Koreans once again managed to send tingling adrenalin sensations through us. We vowed to show resolute militancy in the next day's Youth March.
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December 17 International Youth March
Assembly was at 12nn at the Victoria Park. We immediately formed a circle in the middle of the park and slammed our three beach balls around (one ball each to stand for WTO, IMF and WB). We channeled our anger and energies towards those balls so much that one got hopelessly deflated even BEFORE we marched! The balloons were not such a good idea after all. What I got for my 10 dollars' worth were 100 balloons that burst at the slightest contact. But not to worry, we improvised with face-paints and soon enough young by-standers were lining up to get their faces painted AND join us in the march. We had a foto-ops field day at the assembly in Victoria Park that day.
We had to wait for our fellow youth from WSCF and IMCS who were still holding a mass nearby. When they arrived, the Korean peasants were with them, complete with MILLIONS of yellow balloons! Buti na lang pumutok na agad ang mga pitiful-looking balloons
namin kundi mukha lang silang kawawa sa super yellow balloons ng mga Koreano, hehe.
We then proceeded to march towards the loading docks while singing some songs we taught the international delegates. The mood was festive, we were celebrating the impending collapse of the WTO. We were vibrant and youthful in protest. We were happy to be marching and proud of our solidarity. We were fighting for our right to education, employment and livelihood. The G8 would have cowered had they seen us marching towards them that day.
Short program at the loading docks then we had to go straight back to Victoria Park where a bus was waiting to take us back 'home' (Aliyah: 'See, I said 'home' instead of 'the university'. Aww shucks. :-)).
On our march back, Rey got a call from the HKPA. They heard about the success of the Youth March, would we consider doing an about face and march back again to the loading docks with them? We were more than happy to oblige but were stopped in our tracks when word came that the Koreans once again had a confrontation with the police. They were water-cannoned this time (the reason why Azad suddenly 'disappeared.').
Migrante International held a cultural program at the park in commemoration of the International Migrants' Day later that night. We got to perform our songs in the Youth March and were waiting for our bus to fetch us up when news came that the Koreans, and even some members of the media, were cordoned off by the police at the loading docks. Some 900 of them were awaiting arrest. Hundreds were hurt in the earlier confrontation with the police and there were even unconfirmed reports of a Korean peasant who died of internal hemorrhage.
The Philippine delegation (with our international friends) decided to launch a support rally for the Koreans. We marched towards the loading docks to bring them food and water and some dry clothing. It was around 10pm and everything in Hongkong just STOPPED. The MTR (MRT to Pinoys), bus routes, commercial establishments and some major streets were closed. Hongkong people could be seen taking pictures in the middle of the roads and on the islands (according to Rey because it was the first time in a decade that people could walk freely on non-pedestrian lanes. The last time was also because of a huge rally).
As for the support rally, we reached the loading docks and were all surprised when we had to leave immediately. It was really anti-climactic, considering that hoards of Hongkong people were flocking towards us and joining the rally. Some of them also brought food and water; everyone was sympathetic towards the Koreans. But it was really a judgment call for the overall command (kasamas in Hongkong) and we trusted them completely. Later on, they explained that those guarding the Koreans were not the regular police who escorted us earlier but anti-riot and anti-terror police. They were all heavily-armed and in fighting stance. When we arrived, they mistook us for reinforcements for the Koreans and were therefore ready to attack. So our biggest thanks to our kasamas in Hongkong for ensuring our safety above all.
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December 18 closing rally 
Before we even realized it, we were back where we started ? a big, big rally against the WTO in solidarity with other peoples? movements worldwide.
We braved the early morning cold in Victoria Park for the last time that day to mark the closing (and unproductive) WTO MC6. We were again set to march towards the loading docks but some said that the program in Victoria Park that morning was enough to cap our whole week?s protest in Hongkong. Very noticeable was the Hongkong people?s reactions. Gone was the mostly amazed but otherwise apathetic response of bystanders when we first marched in the streets in the opening rally. By then, people were flocking towards our route to await our march. Shouts of ?Junk WTO!? and ?Da Dou Sai Mao!? came not only from the rallyists but from the Hongkong public as well.
For my part, I felt immensely honored and overwhelmed to be one amongst thousands of thousands who were there passionately protesting the WTO as a main instrument for imperialist war and plunder. Despite the terrible cold, long nights and ?lost in translation? episodes, I will always remember the rallies in Hongkong as one of the most monumental international protests in recent history.
The challenge now is to continue promoting awareness to our countrymen and fellow youth on the ill effects of privatization, deregulation and liberalization mandated by the WTO under the guise of ?globalization?. For as long as the WTO exists, underdeveloped countries like the Philippines will always be threatened and trampled upon by imperialist dictates and exploitation.
WTO continues its imperialist dominance over us to this day but its prospects are bleak with the resurgence of the growing anti-imperialist front and peoples? movements worldwide. For this reason alone, the world is ours, the future is ours. ###
___(('Read the whole text of this entry >>'))
(youngradicals: here's a refreshing read..and something worth re-posting)
A reply to Patricia Evangelista's essay of the same title in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, 27 November 2005
by Sarah Raymundo and Bogart Jaime
Opinion columns have become, in our day, one of the most popular signifiers of liberal democratic consensus. It is here where privileged voices, by virtue of their negotiations with the state apparatus are given the opportunity to publicize their studied "idiosyncracies" thus betraying their nouveau riche predispositions and equally newly-acquired free market (read: insipid) ideas which they deploy as capital for further social mobility.
While some columnists do the best they can to produce rigorous analysis of socio-political conditions, others like Ms. Patricia Evangelista of the Philippine Daily Inquirer use the medium haphazardly for her own self-gratification. She does not,in any way negate the observation that opinion columns have become a venue for personal attacks and megalomaniac fantasies. To cite such an instance of harassment we refer the reader to a classroom discussion that's been cropped to a mere recounting in a paragraph (notwithstanding the complexity of the debate and the nuanced approach of those involved in this debate):
"One of my professors said that a student who questions activism is an embarrassment to UP. There is a right, she said, and a wrong (sic). To question that right and wrong is a ridiculous postmodernist concept (sic). She said that those who oppose activism live with a false consciousness of reality. The language she used was harsher but mostly difficult to translate into English.// For someone who lives by the principle that dissent and questioning are vital in a democracy, I find it odd that she finds being questioned offensive."
Ms. Evangelista, defeated in the classroom dialogue, slays her teacher in her column ruthlessly. If she is indeed as liberal as she claims herself to be (as when she preaches that people should refrain from challenging ideas antagonistic to their own) why would she prevent a public debate to ensue by keeping her 'adversaries' unnamed? How else should the classroom discussion be appraised without any proper referencing? Whom she sketches as the totalitarian monster and dogmatic activist is no less than the president of the UP Academic Union, Professor Lani Abad (Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature). Professor Lani Abad is known for her perseverance in forging unity among the faculty, academic representatives, and UP employees in their struggle for economic and democratic rights. She may have been maligned as a raucous, power-tripping demagogue by Ms. Evangelista but we happen to know that a considerable number of students enrolled in that class regard her as ironic, witty, and sophisticated. Too much for Prof. Abad. The point is to critique irresponsible media practice.
When Ms. Evangelista says that "I'm not a political science major. I know very little about the dynamics of politics and will be the first to claim that my reading is limited to the Bestseller section of a bookstore. Maybe, this is the reason I shy away from claiming that my point of view is the only right view..." she is in fact implying that she has mastered a particular field of expertise. For how can one disavow acumen in a particular field without assuming that one is a master in another? Humility, as opposed to this insidious and arrogant stance, consists in a thorough engagement of ideas to the best of one's abilities. In a sense, nobody could be a master of a field if we consider the material force of dynamism and dialectics. It is redundant for people to claim ignorance of a specific field unless they would want to imply mastery of another; since mastery is a formal impossibility. By saying that she is not a political science major and that her literary fare is limited to bestsellers (that she is far from the generic homo academicus), she makes a representation of herself as an open-minded individual as opposed to the alleged self-righteousness of the Left. Her perverted logic purports reading bestsellers and avoiding the political as proof of her open-mindedness. She makes it appear that any posture of criticality is a self-righteous act. Precisely coming from this innocuous position, she goes on to say that "For someone [Prof. Abad] who lives by the principle that dissent and questioning are vital in a democracy, I find it odd that she finds being questioned offensive." Dissent and democracy, in Ms. Evangelista's logic, are reduced to an unmistakable patronizing relativism that strategically contains the practice of dissent and democracy as functions of the much celebrated liberal multiculturalism. In the liberal democratic horizon, the tolerant multiculturalist can only tolerate customs and/acts that hurt no one. In Slavoj Zizek's words "tolerance is tolerance of the Other in so far as this Other is not an 'intolerant fundamentalist'-which simply means: in so far as it is not the real Other. Tolerance is "zero tolerance" for the real Other, the Other is a substantial weight of jouissance. We can see how this liberal tolerance reproduces the elementary "postmodern" operation of having access to the object deprived of its substance: we can enjoy coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, sex without direct bodily contact, right up to Virtual Reality, that is, reality itself deprived of its inert material substance...In other words, the problem with the liberal multiculturalist is that he or she is unable to maintain a true indifference towards the Other's jouissance-this jouissance bothers them, which is why their entire strategy is to keep it at a proper distance (2004:174)."
The starting point of a multiculturalist is a dogmatic faith in pluralism. Pluralism presupposes that discourses have equal status in a given hegemonic order. However, it is precisely the existence of the hegemonic order that negates the very idea of plurality. For a hegemonic order to exist, it has to marginalize certain discourses that challenge it. Antagonism, and not some Miss Universe idea of World Peace, is the condition of possibility of all social formations, including that of "liberal democratic" regimes. Anybody who understands the dynamics of hegemony would therefore be exasperated at Ms. Evangelista's demand that one should remain silent before others whose point of view contradicts one's own. Should we perhaps keep our point of view as if it were some obscene secret? What is at stake here is not some vague term that Ms. Evangelista refers to as "point of view" but the substance of one's interest embodied in a point of view. At this point, let us venture into a hypothetical situation. Let us suspend, for a moment, that what transpired between Prof. Abad and Ms. Evangelista was an ideological clash on account of class interest and replace that antagonism with a racial one. Should we give the same validity between the views of the Ku Klux Clan and the Black Panther? This does not make sense even in the vacuum of multiculturalism where, supposedly, cultures have the same hold. Is the parallelism so haphazard? We do not think so. We cite Ms. Evangelista in support of this "hypothesis":"...I find it strange for people to accuse others that they have a false understanding of reality just because theirs is different. It's just as ridiculous as Muslim Fundamentalists claiming all Christians deserve to die because we believe in the wrong God." George W. Bush would have not phrased his racism and ethnocentrism this way, notwithstanding his all out "war on terror." Just as Ms. Evangelista has a stereotype notion of the activists, she also has a crass notion of the Muslim Fundamentalists.
By speaking commonsensical language, she reduces historical struggles into idiosyncratic preferences as if the difference between historical materialism and pragmatism were the same as the difference between ASAP and SOP*. Ms. Evangelista seems to understand democracy in exactly this way. Democracy in this diluted state is used by liberal democrats as its most potent defense against so-called left-wing totalitarianism, and hence, they find adhering to it as a virtue rather than a symptom of domination. In Zizek, this is what is called the point de capiton, a "quilting" that gives consistency to a given symbolic universe: " The point de capiton is the point to which the subject is 'sewn' to the signifier, and at the same time, the point which interpellates individual into subject by addressing it with the call of a certain master-signifier ('Communism', 'God', 'Freedom', 'America') -- in a word, it is the point of subjectivation of the signifier's chain (1989: 101)." By capitonnage, too, we can account for Ms. Evangelista's position that she is "outside ideology" as when she states that she is in no position to assess the "dynamics of politics," when she is in fact espousing/mouthing the neoliberal agenda. She valorizes the Third Way and the private sector's grand 'gesture' of corporate social responsibility:? In the United Kingdom, in Australia, in America, development did not come from government handouts. It came from the private sector deciding that they need everyone to succeed to enjoy their own success (sic). Here today, we have corporations like HSBC, SMART, GLOBE, AYALA and many more jumping into the wagon of corporate social responsibility (sic). There's a reason to hope and other ways to fight (sic)." Ms. Evangelista affirms this 'gesture' of multinational corporations as though corporate social responsibility is not a strategy of containment used by global monopoly capital to alleviate its crisis and therefore, it is not as if capitalism has suddenly acquired a human face. The discourse of corporate social responsibility is a conjunctural shift and not a permanent "change of heart" among monopoly capitalists.
Suffice it to say that an espousal of such discourse is anything but a position "outside ideology". In fact, Ms. Evangelista clearly adheres to Thatcherism (the independence of the market from the state which privatizes basic social services such as education and health; deregulates key industries such as oil; and liberalizes trade, bombarding neocolonies with surplus products in a dizzying fashion). What makes her a good subject of Thatcherism is her belief that "there is no alternative" to neoliberalism and the capitalist mode of production that it preserves. This is clearly seen in her denigration of activism as impotent. As though a victim of the Stalinist trials, she laments "the activists decry apathy. Rally, they tell us. Fight the system. Don't settle. Don't be one of them.// I think it's a huge assumption to claim that there is only one way to fight." Any UP student who bothered to spend time listening to what the activists really have to say would sense that Ms. Evangelista has not listened to the activists at all. What she is presenting are no real life activists but one-dimensional representations/stereotypes that only the AFP also deploys in order to cast doubt on the integrity of these people. The true activist that she refuses to reckon with is one who does a concrete analysis of concrete conditions; one whose calls to action are a product of thorough social investigation; one who 'always historicizes' (Jameson); one whose tireless persuasion goes beyond a mere injunction to rally. In Ms. Evangelista's consistent anti-leftism (see Evangelista's others essays in Philippine Star) could we perhaps discern an insistent refusal to see initiatives that enjoins musicians, poets, linguists, political scientists, economists, patriotic businessmen and state bureaucrats, church people, sociologists, film makers mathematicians, visual artists, IT people, physicists, chemists educators and so on? Initiatives that result in unprecedented cultural and scientific synthesis that, among other things, pave the way for even bigger mass demonstrations.
So what could perhaps be the 'master-signifier' (Lacan) in Ms. Evangelista's symbolic universe? NEOLIBERALISM. Neoliberalism or the free market ideology purports free competition as the highest form of virtue when in fact the free market has spawned the uneven development of nations. The free market harps on the equality of subjects while it maintains the gap between classes. The free market continues to foster oppressive forms of stratification while it profits from the commodification of gender identities and indigenous cultures. The free market presupposes autonomy from the State while denying the latter's active intervention in the export of warm bodies (read: cheap labor) leaving Filipino families restless and anxious on account of separation. The emotional costs of which has been the burden of social scientists and is left uncalculated until recently.
Celebratory discourses on migration have reached the point of utter absurdity as when it is asserted that women's unpaid labor in the household gets compensated upon export. Never mind that these are professionals at home. Never mind that they are maltreated, that they suffer undiagnosed depression, that their salaries are usually put on hold, that some are sexually molested and that many come home dead. Yet the logic of the free market declares them heroes. Indeed, state deregulation as espoused by the UP School of Economics is really the deregulation of the market's social evils. This is anything but close to the so-called autonomy of the market from the state.
Despite this, Ms. Evangelista continues to be lured by the discourse of neoliberalism. It may be difficult to resist the seductive 'synergy of the global village.' The difficulty doubles up when one, like Ms. Evangelista, does not yet see any need for partisan politics: "[W]hen I believe the cause is great enough, and that there is no other means, I expect I'll be out there in the streets, too." Could this same aversion towards activism prompted Ms. Evangelista's insidious attack on the faculty and staff of the College of Arts and Letters who mobilized themselves in the fight for the COLA back pay? She says: "Two days ago, as I was rushing up to class, I met one of my professors facing the hallway (sic). He said the academic staff was in front of the Oblation rallying for ten years of backpay (sic). Yet my professor was there in front of our classroom, a solitary old gentleman in a baseball cap, reporting for duty because he promised us a lecture (emphasis ours)." The implications of this statement on the professors who participated in the said demonstration are enormous.
Ms. Evangelista's functionalism makes her think that teachers should just teach, that students should just attend their classes and leave social responsibility to the well-funded NGOs and support organizations like the GAWAD KALINGA. She lauds the GAWAD KALINGA thus: "Everywhere, there are organizations that work from the grassroots to uplift conditions in the face of political turmoil (sic). Take GAWAD KALINGA (sic). House after house, slum after slum, it changes lives and gives opportunities to people who would otherwise be mired in poverty. Thousands of volunteers from Mindanao to Luzon have picked up either shovel or wallet to help in the war against poverty."
Even Robert Owen, a Utopian Socialist of the esrly 19th century realized that the logical conclusion of charity is a rupture in the social relations of production. In his well-meaning experiments on charity he found himself bankrupt. This goes to show that genuine charity entails the loss of profit, something that the corporations she alludes to would never consciously give up. Although Ms. Evangelista invokes ideas resembling that of a Utopian Socialist like Owen, her ego-ideal (read: how one views oneself in order to appear likeable to oneself) seems to be closer to that of a socialite. But the ego- ideal in the context of Lacan's mirror stage is always illusory and deceiving. One would have to reckon with the rock of castration (rendered here in terms of habitus) for there is no escape from the symbolic, save for psychosis. Habitus consists in enduring dispositions; like symptoms these signifiers can be gleaned from dreams, speech, writing, comportment and habits of mind.
Ms. Evangelista's metaphor for the activists is a noisy cat that has made her "become deaf to the noise." The same cat she wishes to serve as "cat soup for dinner." Should we take that as a fascist urge to kill all that is bothering her? Another symptom, another essay.
*SOP and ASAP are competing Sunday variety-shows aired on GMA-7 and ABS-CBN.
**Sarah Raymundo and Bogart Jaime are orgmates from the Center for Nationalist Studies in the late 90s. Sarah is now a faculty member of the Department of Sociology and Spokesperson of CONTEND (Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy). Bogart is now knocking on the doors of call centers and calls this a function of social ageing. They spend their free time scouting for scoundrels and gossiping on the scandalous practices of academics, whether political or sexual. They are, in the last instance, national democrats.
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