Accents
Looking back (2)
Oakland, California - Ring out the old, ring in the new...English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson tells us to ring out the old - one laden with false pride, grief, feud. Indeed, but of course, the good in the old we must not ring out. In fact, I will ring in year after incoming year the same ethical yardstick applied on the ideas, beliefs, principles fleshed out in my columns in 2005. I continue to look back in the hope that more of the same - call them advocacies - will be pursued even with more punch and grit, and always with fortitude.
DEFEND LIFE AND FAMILY is the title of my column I picked up from the obtrusive streamers of the Archdiocese of Jaro, catching my attention on arrival June of last year in Bayan Ko. I took umbrage on the archdiocese's brazen pronouncements: "NO TO LIGTAS BUNTIS, NO TO CONTRACEPTIVES." This I wrote in my own defense of life and family: "The use of contraceptives is obedience to No. 5 of the Earth's Ten Commandments: You shall limit your offspring for multitudes of people are a burden unto the earth. Contraceptives do just that: limit the number of mouths to be fed, thus unburdening Mother Earth. As the term implies, contraceptives prevent conception. They do not kill. Instead, they halt the exploding population. If we cannot stop the population from exploding, the competition for scarce resources would be so keen, at times erupting in violence as what is happening now in some areas of the Third World. Yes, I am all for artificial birth control - all the way - including the use of condoms, the pill, and other forms of contraceptives. However, I put my thumbs down on abortifacients which are justified only when the life of the mother is in danger."
On UP's Golden Jubilarians that include this writer: "For this retiree, doing the write thing is no longer primarily earning a living. Nevertheless, ever ready to hit it hard with words when events demand action even now as it was then during the years of living dangerously that was the Marcos' regime. We were in hot pursuit for the ideal, answering the call for action bannered by the Philippine Collegian (UP's official organ): Kung hindi tayo kikilos, sino ang kikilos? Kung hindi ngayon, kailan pa? (If we will not move into action, who will? If not now, when?) Idealism plus activism - thus was the dictatorship toppled. And very soon, because tayo ay kumikilos, it would be sic transit Gloria mundi [capital G intended] for the questionable occupant in Malacanang."
The dimension of anti-Arroyo protest abroad can be gauged from a manifesto e-mailed by my friend and former classmate, Prof. Delia D. Aguilar. Fifty-eight heads of various organizations signed up asking Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to step down. Among the signatories is Iloilo's own Dr. Benjamen Marte, Co-Chair of the Pilipino-American Network Advocacy. Excerpts: "We, the undersigned Filipinos in the United States, call on your sense of patriotism and humility and heed the call of the majority of the Filipino people to step down from the presidency. We ask you to spare the country from further political divisiveness and confusion that aggravate economic hardships and uncertainty. Your obsession to cling to the trappings of power does not help the broad masses of the Filipino people at all. You cannot invoke [upholding the legal process and the Constitution] when you yourself violated the fundamental law of the land..."
On the provincial jail to visit innocent Romeo Capalla, Panay Fair Trade Center Manager: "In the zoo where you gaze in admiration at the lion's mane or the plumage of the birds, here you looked at the people inside like they were one mass in orange, the color of their prison attire. Much like a bold stroke of a paintbrush, here were no recognizable individuals. Eye contact was to be avoided, else a fellow would catch your attention and call for cigarettes, money, etc. or to drop whatever you could share in the plastic container tied to a long pole dangled by eager hands. What is a jail but a wretched menagerie peopled by our brothers and sisters in the human family, and you think it is here where the priests, the nuns, and the Mother Theresas of the world should spend some missionary time. It is a pathetic place where only a prisoner with an extraordinary mind can think, like the poet, that ‘Stone walls do not a prison make/Nor iron bars a cage.'" Let's hope the so-called "dream jail" now under construction will end this inhuman condition.
A quote from the manifesto of the Iloilo Legal Assistance Center (ILAC) on the murder of Samar's Bayan Muna chair Atty. Norman Bocar: "The dastardly, cowardly and treacherous murder of Atty. Bocar is a clear manifestation of the State's unleashing its dogs of war against the individuals who are critical of the present exploitative and oppressive system and are in the forefront of the legal struggle against said system. ILAC calls on all progressive and patriotic lawyers to strengthen their resolve to continue serving the poor and the oppressed, and to uphold and protect human rights."
ILAC is an Iloilo-based group of concerned lawyers committed to the advocacy for the poor, deprived, oppressed and marginalized sectors in society. It handles cases for the underprivileged in the defense of their rights: workers, farmers, indigenous people, the urban poor, women and children, youth and students. ILAC offers legal consultations and other forms of legal assistance such as providing information that would empower its beneficiaries in the struggle for their rights and interests. In their high spirit to serve the people, gratefully acknowledged here are Attys. Janne Baterna, Steve Cercado, Sol Gamosa, Elay Guiloreza, Rudy Lagoc, Jojo Lutero, and Pet Melliza.
On the 33rd anniversary of the imposition of Martial Law that detained my husband Rudy in the stockade: "I say NEVER AGAIN! should Filipinos be subjected to another Martial Rule. The horrors of the Marcos years stay intact in the mind. The pain and sacrifice, tears and blood of the victims of Martial Law are ‘too deep for tears,' to use a line from poetry. Hard though it be, we tried to invoke forgiveness, to soften the heart, and even to cast off resentment for those who figured in one dark episode of our life. Nevertheless, forget we won't, because forgetting is to lose the courage to confront, challenge, resist, defy the imposition of another Martial Law. That is what we have to do, what we must do if life is to be worth it."
Three columns I devoted to exposing e-mail scams. Scammers provide great enticements to wheedle you to e-mail them your bank account number and other confidential personal information before they con you to fork over start-up money for a bogus business proposition.
Some columns were meant to tickle the funny bone - nothing heavy, nothing serious. Some were extra light - mild remembrances one could carry during a walk in the park. Some remind of promises to be fulfilled like writing to my friend Terry from this great continent of the U.S. of A. A high school graduate, she is the Ati I befriended during the Indigenous Peoples' Week at the Museo Iloilo. For one final look back, this last paragraph on Terry:
"I will write Terry, among many things, to ask for her thoughts on several questions: How far have the indigenous peoples risen from the adversities enumerated in the exhibit at the Museo: poverty, poor health, lack of education, loss of ancestral lands, and destruction of their environment? How far has the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) accomplished toward solving these problems? Do prejudices, superstitions, distortions, inequalities continue to intrude in the lives of indigenous peoples or have they melted away? Civilization and morality demand answers."
(Comments to lagoc@hargray.com)