REPOST: Sa Pagpanaw ng dating Pangulong Noynoy Aquino - Ka Leody de Guzman

Sharing this very well-written post from BMP chair Leody de Guzman, one of the best on P-Noy's recent passing. The original post is here. 

Hindi madaling magsulat ng "eulogy" sa mga kontrobersyal na personalidad sa kasaysayan, laluna sa lipunang may nagtutunggaling mga interes at mga uri.

Sa pagpanaw ng mga natatanging mga indibidwal mula sa kampo ng naghaharing uri o mga kilusang lumalaban sa kanilang paghahari, tiyak na anumang salita para sa yumao ay aani ng reaksyon (kundi man mariing pagtutol) sa anumang kampo.

Ganunpaman, kailangang sabihin ang dapat sabihin bilang tanda ng pagkilala (at respeto) sa isang kababayang nagmarka sa ating kasaysayan. Igawad ang rekognisyon sa ilang piling mga indibidwal na naregaluhan ng pambihirang mga istorikal na oportunidad na kanilang yinakap at sinunggaban.

Sa pamilya Aquino, ipinaabot ng Bukluran ang taos-pusong pakikiramay sa pagpanaw ng dating pangulong Noynoy. Anuman ang ating mga pinagdaanang mga hidwaan (at gaano man ito kalalim), hindi kami nakalilimot sa pinagdaanang sakripisyo ng inyong pamilya sa ilalim ng diktadurang Marcos.

Maging sa aking personal na karanasan, bilang bahagi ng henerasyon ng manggagawa na unang nagising sa mga politikal na katotohanan sa kasagsagan ng diktadurang Marcos, humanga ako sa katatagan ng inyong pamilya sa kabila ng inyong pinagdaanan sa mga kampon ng pasistang rehimen. Sariwa pa sa aking isipan ang unang protesta na aking nadaluhan - ang martsa mula Tarlac to Tarmac - bilang kondemnasyon sa asasinasyon ni Ninoy noong 1983.

Ngayon, kung inyo pong mamarapatin, hinihiling po naming maunawaan ninyo ang mga bumabatikos kay Noynoy (at marahil ay nauungkat pa ang mga isyu't usapin sa termino ng kanyang inang si Ginang Cory) sa panahong ito ng inyong pagluluksa at pagdadalamhati.

Hindi hinihingi ng ating mga kababayan na maging perpekto si Noynoy. Iyan po ay imposible. Lahat tayo ay may bahid, may kahinaan, may pagkukulang, may kamalian at may kasalanan.

Nagpapaalala lamang ang ating mga kababayan na huwag malilimutan ang mga kamalian. Hindi pa ni Noynoy bilang indibidwal kundi ng mga kontra-manggagawa't kontra-mamamayang interes at patakaran ng kanyang itinaguyod noong maluklok siya bilang pinakamakapangyarihang tao sa bansa.

Kung karakter at pagkatao, malayong-malayo si Noynoy sa ibang mga pangulo laluna kay Marcos at Duterte, mga personaheng sakim sa absolutong kapangyarihan. Subalit siya ay hindi naiiba sa lahat ng mga presidente ng bansa na ang kinikilingan ay ang interes ng mga kapitalista, asendero, bangkero, at negosyante kumpara sa manggagawa't maralita sa lungsod at kanayunan. Tulad ng iba, si Noynoy ay pabor din sa kontraktwalisasyon, liberalisasyon, deregulasyon, pribatisasyon, di-pagpapatupad sa repormang agraryo, regresibong pagbubuwis, atbp.

Ang malubhang mga epekto ng mga maling desisyong ito ang siyang ginatungan nila Duterte-Marcos-GMA, ang pinakareaksyonaryo at pinakaatrasadong seksyon ng naghaharing uri sa bansa, kaya nila naagaw ang estado power noong halalang 2016.

Huwag niyo sanang masamain ang pagpapahayag ng ating mga kababayan sa naturang mga kritisismo. Tulad lamang ito ng sinasabi natin noon sa mga Marcos, na kung obligahin man tayo ng ating mga paniniwala na magpatawad, hindi po ito nangangahulugang tayo ay makakalimot. Ito ang diwa ng panawagang sabay nating sinasagot sa pamilya ng yumaong diktador: "Never forget, never again".

Ang pagkilala sa kamalian at kahinaan ang unang hakbang ng pagwawasto't pagbabago; at aplikable ito kaninuman, hindi lamang sa pamilya Marcos at Aquino kundi maging sa mga rebolusyonaryong kilusan, para makintal ang mga aral sa kolektibong memorya ng buong mamamayang Pilipino.

At ngayong nahaharap ang ating bansa sa klase ng pamumuno na tila nanunumbalik (at sa ibang mga aspeto'y hindi lang bumabalik kundi sumasahol pa nga) ang otoritaryanismo at tahasang diktadura, makakaasa ang inyong pamilya, na kung sinuman sa inyo ang tatahak muli sa landas ng pagtatanggol sa ating mga demokratikong karapatan at kalayaang sibil, maluwag sa loob silang tatanggapin ng kilusang manggagawa at ng kilusang masa sa ilalim ng iisang bandera para sa demokrasya't kalayaan ng sambayanang Pilipino.

Hindi lamang sa nagkakaisang hanay laban sa bulok at palpak na rehimeng Duterte kundi sa pinakamalapad na alyansa (gaya ng orihinal na Lakas ng Bayan o LABAN) para sa ating pambansang kaligtasan mula sa krisis sa kalusugan at kabuhayan, mga suliraning sadyang mahirap na lutasin hangga't nakaluklok ang kasalukuyang inutil na administrasyon.

Sapagkat, sa huling pagsusuri, ang ating kaligtasan ay nasa lakas ng pagkakaisa't pakikibaka ng manggagawa't mamamayan. Wala sa mga pekeng tagapaligtas na tiyak na magsusulputan para sa darating na halalan. #

Ka Leody de Guzman

Tagapangulo, Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP)

ika-25 ng Hunyo 2021

The risks of giving

Let's start off with a basic point: Community Pantries are obviously a good thing. No one has yet come up with a solid argument saying CPs should be stopped. Even the DILG has issued guidelines on how to properly conduct CPs, not to prohibit them, despite the efforts by some in the Left to organize CPs with a clear anti-Duterte message.

There are lingering doubts about just how long the phenomenon will last. Like how long will CPs be "sustainable." And yet even if it does fizzle out, even those small past moments when it concretely helped people, providing them food to eat, would have been worth it. 

One wonders though whether, through the opening provided by Community Pantries, there is now an opportunity to ask the more difficult questions in our societies: Why does poverty exist? What kind of society is this that we live in in the first place that allows large members of the community to experience hunger? What are the solutions to it? 

Why, really, did we have to come up with Community Pantries? 

It is important to ask these questions because sometimes, in the conduct of the Community Pantries themselves, certain features get highlighted over others that bear directly on how we would answer them. Chief of these is the idea of "human kindness." 

The kindness stories emphasize the ability of people in Community Pantries to be generous, to not think of oneself first. Indeed to make little sacrifices that benefit the community as a whole. 

We need a kinder society, there's no doubt about that. In fact maybe we can argue that precisely the vision of Socialism is based on the fundamental capacity of individuals to give primacy to the larger whole, so that everyone benefits from everyone else's actions and no one is left behind.  

The point though is that it is not necessarily the lack of kindness of our societies that make poverty thrive. It is not the lack of kindness that causes hunger. People are not hungry because society is unkind.

Let us consider now for a moment the societies we have built: It is, of course, this present society -- this highly unequal, inhumane contrivance of our times. A society where the vast numbers of people are in fact poor. A society with very little social safety nets. A society where personal advancement is directly correlated with how much wealth one owns to begin with. And a society, indeed, where all this is happening amid the immense, unreasonable wealth of a small privileged class. 

Poverty is a logical feature of Capitalist society, the dominant economic/social system of our world today. Capitalism is a system that emphasizes uncontrolled private ownership, even to the detriment of society as a whole. 

Poverty, then, is systemic. And no amount of kindness under the present economic system will be able to change this. 

So now there is a risk that the same 1% (and their 20% first cousins) who we can be sure were barely affected by this pandemic, can reposition themselves as benefactors of Community Pantries -- with little real effort on their part except their parting from their own surplus resources. (This I think is one of the reasons why the Community Pantry movement are right in ensuring that givers draw as little attention to themselves -- an advice that unfortunately is lost on some celebrities.) 

Because the richest members of Philippine society too can be kind -- without necessarily ceasing to be the richest, and losing their privileged positions. Note that all sorts of ugly elite moralizing and justification of the status quo can follow from this. An un-critiqued elite known for being kind can find their current positions justified – for as long as they can also engage in the act of giving. What will then prevent some of the supposed benevolent givers to say even just once: Maybe the problem with you people is that you don't work hard enough. Or pray hard enough. 

Another, word that some writers have associated with Community Pantries that also has something to say about how we might reeimagine our future societies is the word Socialism. 

The moment Ana Patricia Non's Maginhawa Community Pantry gained momentum, among the first ones who took to the idea were organized groups of the Left. It's really not hard to see why. 

First off, Non's effort aside, the basic idea of community sharing did not originate from Non, both in theory and practice. Other groups, notably from the Philippine's anarchist traditions, have done this before. The only difference is that they were not picked up by media when they did. 

So who else, apart from the Left, will appreciate a movement whose sole aim is to help the masses? The very the slogan, “Get what you need, give what you can” is a direct descendant of Socialist movements that existed even before Marx's Communist Manifesto. 

Hence the Community Pantry's Socialist connection. But left to its current form, there is actually little in Community Pantries that will help people appreciate Socialism more deeply. 

A while back, Socialism was defined as a social/economic system where society's wealth is commonly/publicly owned. It is a system where private property loses favor to public ownership. It is because of these characteristics that a Socialist society is able to take care of its members -- the basic productive forces that produce material goods are owned by all, so that everyone can commonly benefit from them. 

It shouldn't be controversial to say that Community Pantries do not feature these traits. There is no abolition of private property going on here. There are no calls for common ownership. There is no movement for a system-enshrined guarantee of material goods for everyone. 

In simple terms, Community Pantries can be seen as logistical systems of the reallocation of existing community surpluses. These surpluses, much like the base resource from which they came from, are/were privately owned, but their owners decided to share them with everyone else. To be sure, this is revolutionary in itself. But that's not exactly how Socialism operates. 

Community Pantry recipients are members of society who, one way or another, were unfortunate enough to have been excluded from the guarantee of the material provisioning they would otherwise be readily afforded, and entitled, to under a Socialist society. 

So perhaps it is important to be reminded of what any serious Socialist project would entail whenever we superimpose the image of Community Pantries alongside Socialism. The hope is that Community Pantries will allow us to reimagine the boundaries of what's possible in our societies. This goes way beyond the current ideas revolving around these efforts. 

I am not making the argument that Community Pantries, in their current form, indeed cannot somehow morph into larger movements that are more sustained and whose aspirations are more ambitious. Who really knows? Maybe CPs get sustained way post-pandemic. Maybe the CPs result in a widespread rethinking within our societies of our social classes' relationship to wealth and privilege. 

And again there is value in Community Pantries even just in their current form. CP organizers were clear from the start that they were not meant to solve poverty anyway, but rather to provide temporary relieve to those most in need. 

But we still have to be careful with the messaging. If its anti-poverty commitment is deep, Community Pantries should help raise awareness of the class divide, not hide this under favored narratives. CPs should come with the reminder that ultimately, what would end the cycle of despair in the vast majority of the peoples of the world who are poor is the common ownership of society's wealth, not just parts of that wealth. 

Community Pantries should serve as a reminder: people are going hungry because we live under a system steeped in poverty and inequality. The long lines in Community Pantries should serve as a reminder that this current system, not just the governments that protect it, have failed.