My Heroic Action at the Barricades (Or: Was I Keeping Watch on the Barricades or Were the Barricades Keeping Watch Over Me?)

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was supposed to be in my neck of the woods today—the University of the Philippines, Diliman campus. So I decided to uphold a sacred campus tradition---I joined a rally. The more dignified members of our group would call it a protest. Personally, I just wanted to razz the woman. Call it my version of a protracted struggle. Someday she will be brought to justice. In the meantime, let's just try to irritate her as much as she irritates us.

I was determined to enjoy myself, and so I did. Speaker after speaker cursed her. I did my creative best to add to the general grouchiness.

We warmed up at the lawn of the building nearest the one she was supposed to inaugurate then attempted to move closer. We made it only to the curb across the street from the site she would have inaugurated. Initially we were face-to-face with unarmed cops. It was not too pleasant looking at them, but it was ok. We had some more great speeches to listen to. The Student Regent was a revelation. Big explosive rhetoric from such a petite youth. When I grow up, I wanna be like her.

Unfortunately, the unarmed cops soon got replaced by men with batons and riot shields. Bummer! We had some serious pushing and shoving. Really bad stuff. For one thing, the riot police were not our local UP police. We have fought long and hard to keep our campus free from that kind of interference. For another thing they were pushing at my friend, the Faculty Regent; my other friend, our former Dean; and some other friends from the College of Science and College of Arts and Letters. Normally unconvinced about the need to push-and-shove, I felt I had to at least talk to one of the policemen doing the shoving. As a scholar, I felt I must rise to the defense of our multidisciplinary act of expressing sentiments of deep disgust.

The cops then brought in metal barricades. This for me was the highlight moment. The minute the police tried to put the barricades in place, some brilliant and strong kids pulled them away towards the lawn we had just left. This is was the opportunity for my most heroic moment. I decided to leave the frontlines and command the rear. I watched the discarded barricades.

Those barricades are dangerous things. When they give way during stampedes, the people on one side get pinned down and the people on the other side get hurt by the stampede too. So I was pleased as an anarchist in a free-for-all, when the kids managed to frustrate the attempt to place them.

So there I was, manning (womanning?) the barricades by lying along one of them. Expressing my heroism, by cooling it in the shade. The police tried to make me give up my post by pretending they were going to take the barricades back to their station. BUT I STOOD UPON THE BARRICADES by lying down on them all the more. NO PASARAN, fascists!

As I always say, when your position is righteous (and kinda comfy and shady), you will have many allies. Soon, most of my colleagues in the College of Social Work and Community Development joined me on the barricades.

Having frustrated the policeman who, because he was from the campus police force, did not want to argue about barricades with Dr. Sylvia Estrada Claudio, Director of the University Center for Women's Studies (he did ask, so I did say), I wandered off every so often. Also of course, the barricades were well-guarded by then.

My wanderings were quite satisfactory. Some intrepid students attempted to get closer by taking a side route. I hear they had with them the tomatoes purchased earlier, so that we could talk about vegetables wit her alleged Excellency. The police caught them, beat some and handcuffed several. The Staff Regent and our UP lawyers led by their Dean, prevented their arrest and led them to safety.

I came upon the President of our workers union, a former Dean of the College of Social Science and Philosophy and a few others, razzing a policeman who had stepped out of his car with an armalite. The armalite was back in his car by the time I came. Having missed the main issue, I decided to become incensed to make up for my bad timing. I had barely started to lecture when the police car drove off to to a spot 2 meters away. It was a very good lecture on human rights actually, and they should have stayed to hear it all. Pearls after FASCIST swine.

And so it was. Them cats were trying to have their way, but us mice would not let them. The fascist pigs could not wallow in the mud of their authoritarian ways. (I know, I know, my metaphors are all over the place, but I think they sound nice.)

We broke up when it was announced that her alleged Excellency would not come after all.

I could give a lot of advice to our UP Diliman officials and our local police about how to best deal with the preservation of the sacred UP tradition of protest actions. For one thing, they could have negotiated the conduct of the affair with the 3 sectoral Regents. They could have deployed only our pussycat UP police to be in our faces. They should have kept the tigers of the Quezon City Police Force back, only to intervene if we broke the negotiated space. They should have also ensured that, having decided to invite the Quezon City police into the campus, that no weapons of deadly force like an armalite be part of their gear. (Good heavens what were they thinking?) Some of the better rallies I have attended in my long years of rallying have been like that.

But I digress. Far be it for me to give unsolicited advice. This morning I had great fun. On a cool December morning, at the dawn of UP's second century, in the Diliman campus where I grew up and now teach.

It said in the news that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo only managed to come to UP Diliman once in her 9 years as alleged President. Shucks. I hope she comes before her term ends. I had hoped that we could have stayed at that corner for a week and begin a new, improved, Diliman Commune for the 21st Century. I can see it all now...

Coming Home Part 2

They put me on their blogroll these Filipino Free Thinkers---- deists, secular humanists, agnostics and atheists.

So now, I need to ensure that the blogpost you get when you click on the link at their website at http://filipinofreethinkers.org/, is about freethinking. My last one had nothing to do with my agnosticism.

So I might as well write up what I have been blabbing to all my friends about.

It all begins with a link my eldest son sent me. It leads to a site where I applied to join the egroup of the Filipino Freethinkers. I sign up after repeatedly having to edit my short description. I tried to put too many justifications because I thought they needed much convincing about: 1) my worthiness; 2) my not being a security threat.

I feel like a spy the first week or two after I am accepted into the egroup. I have been an agnostic all my life so I should feel right at home. But I am silent because for one thing, I noticed most of the group is young(er). It is also not a grassroots organization (yet). This is not a criticism as much as self-reflexivity about what my comfort zones are when it comes to issue-based groups.

But I am thrilled because: 1)FINALLY there is a group I can relate to; 2) I am learning a new method of organizing. I am as a happy as a vampire who as found her coven. I learn that there will be a first-ever forum. I wanna go, I wanna go. Should I? Shouldn't I?

Then, someone starts a thread about the reproductive health bill and I cannot help myself. I answer. For that, I get invited to do a 10 minute talk about practical freethinking in politics and particularly about the reproductive health bill. I cancel everything for that Saturday afternoon and commit to go.

I am like a kid in a candy shop with this group. When my turn to speak comes, I need to ask something I have been asking now for decades: "Are my sister and I the only two Filipinas who were born into a household where both parents were agnostic (or atheist)? Could we possibly be the only 2 who did not have a religious education with our baby bottle? Amazingly, a young man says he too is like us. More amazingly, instead of getting the awkward or curious responses---they clap! Here I do not have to explain myself or justify my upbringing or defend my parents.

I had learned not to bring my beliefs up because, growing up in the 60's and 70's, people reacted to me as if I was insulting their religion for not having one. I had learned to just be quiet when in government and other secular events I am not told there will be a mass before the actual forum or I am asked to "stand for an invocation". I have learned because no matter how hard I try to explain, seek a little sensitivity or have a civilized debate--I get nothing. At most I get, "its ok, its ecumenical." When I answer "but I don't pray. It is against my spirituality to pray," I get no further answers.

Those of us who have felt any form of marginalization on the basis of our sexual orientation, race, class, ethnicity, religion or disability, know what it is like to have to deal with repeated and unwitting slights. It wears you down. It does not help when those who are not discriminated against trivialize these things (e.g. "the invocation is only for 10 minutes"; "she did not mean to be insensitive"). Sometimes too, being misunderstood is not about day-to-day slights but major hurts. My mother-in-law, a truly wonderful Catholic woman of profound faith, died without learning about my agnosticism because I loved her too much to upset her.


So this group, just being there--I did not care if I was the older-one-flowing-over-at the-mouth. I was home again, in a group of 60 or so people I had just met.

What is more, I am happy with how these young people are using the internet to fight their struggles. I am elated to find people who are a natural constituency for the RH bill. I am thrilled at the thought that one does not have to come from my socialist background to care about the rights of people.I am over-the-moon at seeing their committment to reaching out to the marginalized. I am overjoyed that they are committed to a better country (and world).

I am also glad to meet such a bright set of people. No anti-intellectualism here--unleash your inner geek or nerd. And, despite my teasing at the forum, not all of us geeks or nerds are socially inept.

In my political circles and with my NGOs, I have long suggested that we start a "coalition against moral tyranny". No takers. Perhaps I was talking to the wrong set of people. Perhaps my words were too negative. Anyway, I think I will stop nagging now.

I have a new place to be when I want sanctuary from the mindless religiosity of the insensitive majority or the sanctimonious malice of the moral police.