Pakikinigang Magkapwa
Listening Together to Build RC
Building RC in the Islands of the Pacific continues! Two of us returned to the Philippines in May of this year—following up on last year’s trip, when six of us went. (See July 2018 Present Time.)
We want to get the theory, practice, and tools of RC to as many people as possible in as deep a way as possible. This time we stayed in the Philippines for two weeks and met with ten organizations and more than a hundred individuals—in their homes, in their communities, and on the streets of Metro Manila. What an eye-opening, fulfilling, and challenging trip it was!
BUILDING AN RC COMMUNITY
One of our goals is to build an RC Community in the Philippines. There is already a group of committed Co-Counselors with whom we’ve had contact via an online class. Our trip was a milestone for them. They stretched themselves to take on organizing and leadership roles and worked closely with each other to share RC with people they knew.
They also joined us at our Sustaining All Life and United to End Racism events and got to see that RC is about building relationships with everybody, including the masses of urban poor and working-class people.
Given the harsh, critical parts of the culture and the fears of “doing it wrong” (all effects of colonization and racism), it was a new idea to them that they could be pleased with themselves and that we were pleased with them. Also, that there was no punishment. (For a mostly Catholic population, that is quite a contradiction [to distress]!)
REACHING BROADLY
Another of our goals is to bring RC to people who may not yet be ready to be in a Co-Counseling Community. We want to support people who are leading in their communities (including those who may not yet see themselves as leaders).
This trip was different from our previous ones. We wanted to get a bigger picture of the economic, political, and social landscape. We arrived at an opportune time—two days before International Workers’ Day (an annual celebration that includes thousands of people marching in the streets) and two weeks before the national elections.
We immersed ourselves in people’s day-to-day lives and learned a lot in one-on-one meetings; in small groups (that sometimes turned into impromptu support groups); and in larger groups, like Sustaining All Life workshops and some rallies at the People Power Monument in Manila. We wanted to get the biggest picture possible of what was happening in the Philippines—and we got it!
OUR INTENT AND APPROACH
Both of us have roots in the Philippines. AL was born there, and Teresa’s father was born and raised there. AL’s first language is Tagalog, and we both are fluent English speakers. We are aware that as USers we are from one of the many countries that have colonized the Islands.
Our intent was to have two-way exchanges with people. We wanted to learn from them as well as share about ourselves. We wanted to reclaim our connection with our people, with awareness of how we had been separated by different experiences and conditions.
We also came ready to listen, listen, listen. In our two- to three-hour meetings, we listened ninety percent of the time. We shared RC theory simply and mostly tried to give people the experience of it. We offered mini-sessions and group counseling whenever possible. People seemed to learn the most when we showed them what we were talking about.
Many people in the Philippines carry a deep sense of insignificance because of the oppression and internalized oppression from living in a colonized country. They feel like they don’t matter and like they are not smart. But in every interaction, we saw our people’s intelligence, power, and ability to cooperate.
TWO IDEAS WE SHARED
In addition to basic RC theory, we consistently shared two key ideas:
- There is a connection between the impacts of oppression (in particular colonization, racism, genocide, and sexism) and the climate crisis. The Philippines is a frontline nation. It has been ravaged and forced into being one of the nations that is most vulnerable to the climate crisis. We have to take on [undertake] ending oppression at the same time that we tackle the degradation of the environment. People understood this right away.
- The big challenges we face require building a worldwide movement of people who are working together. This means first building a united movement in the Philippines—an idea most people don’t talk about.
We held out that the people of the Philippines could work together across longstanding lines of division. We heard about people’s personal experiences—with movements that had splintered and how the harshness of colonization, war, racism, and other oppressions had played itself out [been acted out]. People had been brutalized by people they had once worked closely with. Some had even been killed.
We said that it is possible to heal from the hurts and that doing so is essential if we are to move forward. People’s discouragement and hopelessness showed. It was a radical idea to them that unity is possible and there’s no such thing as a human enemy. Talking about the healing work between people and organizations that we ourselves had done provided an opening.
HEARING FROM THE FRONTLINES
Things have moved rapidly in the Islands since our previous trip, and we gained an intimate and detailed understanding of how the climate crisis and economic and political hardship have impacted people’s lives. We got a deeper sense of their ability (and inability) to think under oppressive conditions, and how they are acting to change them.
We met with eight leaders of a national women’s organization that organizes in poor urban communities in Metro Manila. They talked about not having a stable place to live and barely surviving extreme flooding during Typhoon Ondoy, in 2009. They face daily harassment from the police, who threaten to bulldoze their homes as part of the administration’s “reclamation” program. Under the guise of cleaning up Manila Bay as part of a climate change initiative, the administration is forcing poor urban communities to relocate, so it can build malls and internationally themed villages to draw in tourists. This “clean up” is an attack on poor communities. If it keeps moving forward, it will affect over 270,000 people. We listened to the women for two hours and set up a support group in which we introduced mini-sessions and counseled each woman in front of the group.
We had a meeting with the director of a national coalition of a hundred and fifty climate justice organizations. The coalition organizes Indigenous people, women, workers, farmers, fisherfolk, youth, urban poor people, Catholics, and Protestants throughout the country. The need for a coalition had become clear with the increasing frequency of super typhoons and the thousands of people being killed or displaced by the climate crisis. Also, the government has been contracting with foreign investors to build dams on Indigenous lands. If the government can’t pay back the loans, it will give the investors ownership of entire Philippine islands. We shared our theory, tools, and vision with the director. He had been a leader in the progressive movement since the 1970s and witnessed many conflicts within organizations and movements. He supported our vision of unity and encouraged us.
We also returned for a second year to Lobo, Batangas (AL’s hometown), and organized a Sustaining All Life forum for twenty poor rural farmers and fisherfolk who live and work in nearby mga barangay (neighborhoods). We sang songs and played games and then asked them about their living conditions, livelihoods, and what changes they had noticed in their environment.
They opened up a little about the harshness and grind of rural life, including their difficulties in obtaining food and work. They shared how changing wind directions, rising sea levels, and hotter weather during odd times of the year have impacted their families. They also shared hopeful stories—like how the local government is implementing environmental programs, such as building artificial coral reefs that are bringing back fish and helping to supplement people’s incomes and food. As the forum went on, we noticed how coming together was a contradiction to the participants’ feelings of insignificance. We cared about them and were interested in their stories. That meant a lot to them, and to us.
It was good to be in our homeland listening to frontline communities. We saw in people’s eyes the impact of genocide, colonization, imperialism, racism, militarization, sexism, and the climate crisis. We had to discharge multiple times every day to be able to think and to hold on to our vision of full liberation for our people. But at night we slept well—exhausted and pleased that we had shared our love and caring and remembered our people’s significance in the midst of oppressive conditions. In spite of the harshness, they are still fighting, still persisting. They are not defeated.
SUPPORT, AND FUTURE PLANS
Much encouragement and support has come from many local RC Communities in both Asia and the United States. Co-Counselors have been able to tell [see] that it benefits their re-emergence to back [support] efforts like ours.
Our plan is to extend our project throughout the Pacific Islands. We know that it’s a long-term effort, and from what we’ve learned of the changing conditions, we know that we need to move forward as quickly as we can.
We’ll have many opportunities to stay in touch with our contacts. One of them comes to the United States for meetings at the United Nations. Another has invited us to do workshops with women leaders in her national organization when we return to the Philippines. We’ll also see people at climate change conferences—for example, the New York (USA) Climate Action Summit and the yearly United Nations conferences on climate change. And we’ll return to the Islands as regularly as we can.
OUR OWN RE-EMERGENCE
This trip was also about our personal re-emergence. We did things that transformed us. And with two weeks of traveling, meeting, thinking, organizing, counseling, and living together, it was remarkable that we managed not to kill each other! The trip brought out the best in us. We were thoughtful of each other, laughed until our bellies ached, and enjoyed being in good company. Reflecting on it, it looks like our big vision for our people might also apply to ourselves.
Seattle, Washington, USA
and
Elmhurst, Queens, New York, USA