You don’t do that to me

What does it say about our society that rewards Willy Revillame with so much money and power and drives one college freshman to take her own life because she couldn’t afford to pay her obligations to the country’s State University?

One of the most viewed clips on the video-sharing website, YouTube, is the “you don’t do that to me” tirade of Revillame directed at an actress named, ready? Ethel Booba. He humiliated her on air, she confronted him backstage after, and Revillame, in all his arrogant glory, thought his comeback is worth being viewed by the whole country on a major network during prime time. This isn’t the first time he’s done something like this. He once stopped his show in mid-mediocrity to direct the network to remove an inset on the screen showing live footage of the ongoing funeral of former Pres. Cory Aquino.

He can do all that because he is one of the most popular and highest-paid game-show hosts in the country today. That’s the show where people lining up to get in the studio died in a stampede years ago. Where scantily-clad women gyrate for hours on end to Revillame’s off-key and often off-color singing.

And our society rewards that show with high-ratings and millions in the bank for one Willy Revillame.

The 16-year old college freshman, reportedly the daughter of a part-time taxi driver and an unemployed mother, was forced to file a leave of absence with the country’s state university due to unpaid school fees. The University of the Philippines has a socialized tuition fee system: basically those who have more pay more and those who have less pay less. Students’ financial standings are categorized, and the freshman belonged to Bracket “D” which placed her tuition fee rate at 300-900 per unit. She has not fully paid her tuition for this semester, and U.P. has a “no late payment” policy. She wouldn’t be able to attend school next semester.

She tried applying for a student loan but was denied. No surprise here because any lending institution would like would-be borrowers to show proof first that they don’t need the loan before they approve it. What has a part-time taxi driver got to show for anyway?

She took her own life. But wait, before we start training our guns at Malacañang, at the "establishment," let’s take a look at ourselves first. We are the people who put those people in power. We may be among those who scoff at protesting farmers for tying up traffic forcing you to get stuck in the middle of the road in your air-conditioned car. We’re the ones who shake our heads at students who storm out of classrooms to fight for their right to education and express their sentiments against an oppressive and abusive political system. We may even be among those who laugh at the efforts of a bunch of people doing all they can to save a mere 182 trees.

And we’re also the ones who tune in on a show called Wowowillie religiously every day.

The real reason behind the young woman’s suicide may be debatable – but she represents the millions of our youth today who have got hardly anything to look forward to in this social epoch we’ve laid out for them.

We did this to her.

Power Failure

Nobody’s above or beneath you, here we work hand and in hand and not under a hierarchy. Your position is not one of power, but of responsibility. We merely have different responsibilities.

That’s how it is in our theatre group, Open Space, where the bottom line has always been the artwork and how best to communicate that to our audiences. All efforts are focused on delivering that story in the best possible way we can – directors, designers, stage managers, technicians, crew and cast, we all recognize and respect our respective positions and recognize that how we perform our responsibilities affect the way our colleagues perform theirs.

A stage hand must know why he’s there, what his responsibilities are, and perform them with as much passion, commitment and dedication as the actor on centerstage. A hand prop or costume in the right place at the right time enables the actor to perform his responsibilities well, in the same way that a responsible actor who comes to rehearsals and performances on time, commit themselves to the role they’re playing and respects the work that the others in a production do helps the stage hand to be able to set that hand prop or costume in the right place at the right time. Once that stage hand or actor see their position as power to make or break a show, the whole thing falls apart. In theatre, we know we depend on each other.

Our people have been enslaved for centuries – by colonizers for hundreds of years, and by each other since becoming a free nation. The Spaniards recognized their power to conquer this nation and enslave a people whom they believed were beneath them, inferior to them. They came, they saw and they conquered these islands, and they only recognized the power of their position, and abused it for more than three hundred years. The Americans, while trumpeting the concept Manifest Destiny, that it is their responsibility to teach these economically, militarily, culturally and intellectually inferior little brown people to govern themselves, did exactly as our previous colonizers did – abuse the power they had to serve their own interests. The Japanese came under the pretence of freeing us from Western domination and influence, and ended up doing the same as first two.

And since July, 1946, the leaders of this country fared no better than the colonizers. They too began regarding their fellowmen as subjects, powerless individuals they can enslave, a nation, province, a city, a barangay, even neighborhood homeowners’ association they can abuse. What good is it if the slaves of today become the tyrants of tomorrow? Rizal asked more than a century ago, and that’s exactly what’s become of our people. Slaves of yesterday, tyrants of today.

It’s about the policeman who has stopped recognizing his responsibility to keep a community safe and only see his position as an opportunity to extort money from the people; or the barangay captain, the councilor, the mayor or congressman who take advantage of their respective offices to enrich themselves at the expense of the welfare of the man on the street. And unless tomorrow's policeman, security guard, businessman or mayor has the heart to break the vicious cycle, we will all remain slaves.

It’s not about power, it’s about responsibility. Until we realize that, all of us will always be slaves.

Baguio, Inc.

Welcome to Baguio, Inc., a rapidly progressing city that they say is inevitable. And they want us to grin and bear it, welcome it with open arms and embrace it. In today's Baguio, Inc. corporate interest reigns supreme, and the people are merely a market.

Progress is what they call getting caught in heavy traffic in smog and noise-filled city streets; when we buy our food in cling wrap and bar-coded instead of fresh off the ground at the market; having less earth space and more man-made structures; more money yet a poorer quality of life. It is progress when we lose our sense of community and we walk down streets filled with indifferent strangers.

In today’s Baguio, Inc., they trumpet the building of a parking building and a commercial complex, and muffle the sound of trees being felled and the risks that a denuded and concreted hillside posts on lives and property. In Baguio, Inc., we are supposed to celebrate the sprouting of high-rise condominiums and franchise restaurants all around us. In Baguio, Inc., they highlight the number of jobs created every time a concrete box is erected, and are blind to or intentionally gloss over the fact that we as a community become less and less happy living in a slowly decaying city.

They flaunt the prospect of more money going around and they want us to want that money very badly. And sadly, many of us have gone for the carrot on their one hand, without knowing that there’s a stick on the other. Enjoy the windfall now, and imagine the kind of city you’re passing on to your children.

And you buy it. In Baguio, Inc., your business may be earning a bit more these days because of this supposed progress, but they don’t want you to realize that you are also actually spending way more for everything. You spend more money for food bought from refrigerated shelves. You spend more time getting from here to there because the streets are clogged and they all lead to monuments to crass commercialism, shameless materialism. You now spend for recreation – tokens at the arcade, tickets to the movies, parking fees, entrance fees. You go to the park and you rent a bike, a boat, a pair of skates or buy tickets for a couple of minutes in a bumper car. And for a whole month every year, you go to the park to buy inferior mass-produced plastic crap and eat dirty food.

Is this really progress?

To progress is to develop, to improve, become better. Progress is for a once clean and green city to become cleaner and greener. Progress is for a once beautiful city to become even more beautiful. If you were sad before, to progress is to become happy. If you were already happy before, to progress is to become happier.

Again, in today’s Baguio, Inc., are we really progressing as a community, as a people, as a city?

A tale of two lakes

The multi-million-peso project that was the dredging of Burnham Lake is done, all that’s needed now is more water to bring back the nature-initiated, man-made lake’s water level to its usual depth. It reminded me of a similar project we did with fellow artists in Manila long ago.

Actor Ronnie Lazaro gathered us in his studio in 1996 to discuss a project he dubbed “Bayang Ginigiliw” – the clean up of the relief Philippine map at the Rizal Park. There was no money involved, all we had was the permission of the local government to go ahead with it.

On the first day, there were tens of us – theater actors, visual artists, ballet dancers, videographers, photographers, filmmakers, etc. armed with nothing more than shovels, walis tingting and other improvised implements and the determination to clean up the submerged relief map. The area is a bit smaller than the Burnham Lake. We watched as the water slowly drained revealing the stories of people part of whose lives were reflected in, told to, depended on that lake.

As the last of the water was released, years of neglect became apparent. The silt was up to our knees, in some parts waist deep. What we thought was going to be a two-day project ended up being almost a week-long labor of love. We started digging in – picking up coins thrown by people who wished for a better life, and other objects of some value, necklaces, rings, earrings, a watch or two, wallets with washed out photographs, which we later donated to an orphanage. There were guns thrown into the lake by lawless elements being pursued by law enforcers, which we surrendered to the police.

In the days that followed, despite the noticeable decrease in the number of volunteers - by the third day there were only a less than ten os uf left, we toiled from sun up to sun down for days, prodded by the sight of the Philippine map becoming cleaner and cleaner. A lot of passersby, job seekers, stopped to ask how much were getting paid for the job, and were shocked upon learning that we were doing it for free.

We chipped in for food – one day I cooked a huge batch of pasta, another day we ate at some nearby karinderya, once we cooked with an improvised wooden stove right there in the water-less lake.

As the last dust-pan full of silt was swept away, we watched as the lake was slowly filled again with water which played the role of the Philippine seas that cradle this archipelago. It was a beautiful sight, it was a very beautiful feeling.

The dredging of Burnham Lake cost the people twenty million pesos.

Then a man in a top hat comes

I agree with the message, but not with the delivery. I agree that the punishment of imprisonment is too harsh, but the deed must not go unpunished – in this case, the means just can’t justify whatever end was aimed for.

The issue: at an ecumenical service, some say it was a mass, at the Manila Cathedral last Sept. 30, 2010, Carlos Celdran entered the cathedral dressed in a suit and a top hat carrying a placard that simply said, “Damaso,” in reference to Jose Rizal's infamous character. He was protesting the Catholic Church’s stand against the RH Bill and the way it has been forwarding that stand. The bill has since been signed into law.

The church filed a case against Celdran, using a provision in the Revised Penal Code that deals with “offending religious feelings.” He was recently found guilty, and sentenced to a minimum of a couple of months to a maximum of a little over a year in jail, despite Celdran’s written apology to the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) and their ensuing issuance of a pardon.

Citizens and netizens are divided – some say the sentence was way too harsh, others say Celdran deserved it. Some say Celdran shouldn’t be punished at all, others say otherwise. Some are calling for the abolition of the provision pertaining to “offending religious feelings,” some are threatening to use the same to sue the bishops for offending their religious feelings.

To me, it doesn’t matter whether there was an actual mass ongoing at the time, or “merely” an ecumenical service, as some of Celdran’s apologists said of that afternoon. The Manila Cathedral is still a place of worship – sacred to the church’s followers, as it should be even to non-Catholics, even non-Christians. A lot of the people lambasting the guilty verdict now are the same people who speak out for our right to freedom of information, freedom of choice, freedom of religion - and the right to practice that faith freely, without fear, without being mocked, molested, disrespected.

There are some in the Catholic hierarchy who have acted offensively, true. But that shouldn’t be justification enough for anyone to insult the whole church. It certainly isn’t reason enough to attack the whole religion. We cannot condemn Islam for Bin Laden’s actions, just as we cannot condemn all Germans for the holocaust perpetuated by Hitler and the Nazis, and for that matter, all Australians, or all actors?, all action stars?, for Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-Jewish rants.

It’s definitely not right to subject its followers, some of whom actually support what Celdran was advocating, to disrespect. Celdran’s action during a legitimate religious rite in a legitimate place of worship is offensive, no matter how noble his advocacy was, which I fully support, by the way.

Whatever your belief is, whether you believe at all or not, to others, their whole lives revolve around their faith. It is a matter of life and death, as history has shown us. How about those people in that church that afternoon who were there not to preach about the supposed evils of the RH bill but to commune with their God? Pray. Pray for salvation, a miracle, food on their table tomorrow, for a dying loved one to be saved, for their own lives to be saved. Then a man with a top hat disrupts that solemn, sacred moment because they happen to be in the same place with someone who has offended Carlos Celdran.

Free Carlos Celdran. Amend that vague provision on “offending religious feelings.” But let’s not tolerate nor glorify disrespect and arrogance, too.

Remember Luneta Hill

My 14-year old son just finished reading A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez yesterday, and it was the main topic of conversation during the drive from their school to our house. He had so many questions, and was particularly disturbed by the scene where the striking banana plantation workers, protesting unfair and inhumane working conditions, were all killed.

In that scene, one Jose Arcadio Segundo survived, and returned home to Macondo to tell the story.

The scene was based on a true story. In 1928, the Colombian government sent the army to Santa Marta to quell the ongoing strike against the American-owned United Fruit Company. The United States was said to have threatened to invade the South American country if the government did not protect the interests of the capitalist. The workers weren’t asking for heaven and earth, their demands were simple: written contracts for each of the workers, 8-hour working days, 6-day work weeks. After closing off access to the streets and surrounding the striking workers with machine guns, at the end of the day, fathers, mothers and children lay dead on the streets.

The government placed the death toll at a maximum of 47, another official even went as far as saying that there were only 9. But survivors of the massacre say there were at least 2,000 who were killed. They did not refer to them as workers, they were subversives, troublemakers.

In the Marquez novel, Jose Arcadio Segundo lived the rest of his life as a pariah, his voice and with it his story was discredited and drowned out by the lies of the powers-that-be. The story that the authorities forced on the people was that it never happened. And it rained in Macondo for five straight years erasing any memory of the dark, chilling episode.

A year ago, thousands marched down Session Road to express their opposition to the removal of 182 trees on Luneta Hill for a parking building. There must have been at least 5,000 people that day, but the powerful capitalists placed the number at merely hundreds, at most a thousand.

That’s what the headlines of the powerful and credible media said, so it must be true.

In court, during the hearing of the case that was filed against the proponents of the massacre of trees, their expensive lawyers in their expensive business suits and toting expensive leather bags with wheels, denied that there’s opposition to their expansion project from the community. They successfully prevented the presentation of proof belying their claim – videos and photos of the numerous rallies held against SM in Baguio and in different parts of the country. In the verdict handed down by the court dismissing the case, there was hardly any mention of the opposition, the tens of thousands of petition signatures, the numerous protest actions held, etc.

That’s what the honorable court said, so it must be so.

Today, the protesters are referred to by self-proclaimed pundits not as concerned citizens - they are called subversives, troublemakers, hippies and good-for-nothing gigolos.

But the Jose Arcadio Segundos of Baguio still stand, and they were there when 49 of the 182 trees were violently removed and condemned to die a slow painful death. They were there when SM tried to cover the truth with entertaining high-definition audio-visual presentations on LCD screens. They were there when the government said that the removal of those trees will not cause irreparable damage on the environment. And if it does, they were there too when the local government said that it cannot do anything about it. They were there every time the police lined up to protect the interests of the greedy capitalist with anti-riot shields, truncheons and guns from fathers, mothers, children who want nothing more than for the lives of the trees to be spared.

And we will continue to be there to tell the story of the massacre on Luneta Hill.

Salamat. At minsan pa, salamat

It's been a particularly exhausting year, not that the previous ones have been much easier - the life of an artist is never easy. Most artists anyway. For the last two and a half decades, theater ate me up spending most months filled with late night rehearsals and early morning setups. But not last year. See, 2012 stood out above the rest for it has been a year of awakening for me and my family, and there are people to thank for that.

One Michael Bengwayan, whom I have never met nor even heard of before, brought to my attention the one thing that elbowed theater out for a good part of the year for the first time since I can remember. From him, I learned of SM City Baguio's plan to remove 182 trees on one side of a hill for a parking facility. This sparked an emotional response so strong it kept on burning a full year since and would set the stage for a life on the streets in a battle against men and women in business suits. There was no need to go into the details of the issue: the biggest commercial mall in Baguio owned by the richest family in the country wants to become even bigger at the expense of the environment and the welfare of a whole community. So on January 20, 2012, we shouted at the rally led by Bengwayan, "it's not what you'll build, it's what you'll kill!"

Thank you, Michael Bengwayan, for creating that spark.

The weeks that followed saw the whole family, and here by family I mean both immediate and extended for with members of the art group I founded, Open Space, have become an inseparable part of my life, setting up platforms, lights and sound equipment in various open spaces in Baguio to sing out the sentiments of a city. We would be seen carrying speakers and light stands and laying down cables at the Pine Trees of the World Park, at the Igorot Garden and Malcolm Square, all of us - men, women, children.

We were there the night we heard the felling of the first 49 trees, the painful sound of branches and tree trunks cracking. We cried together, held each other's hands, and strengthened each other's resolve not to let our guard down for we knew that what's at stake here isn't only the life of 182 of God creations, but the future of this beautiful city.

Thank you, co-actors, co-musicians, co-directors, co-writers, co-storytellers, kindred souls in Open Space, for sharing the passion to tell stories that must be told and to be more than just spectators in the brutal rape of this city.

My already extended family was extended much further, our circle of friends got much bigger. We sat with them at cafes, cramped apartments, park benches to exchange ideas about how to stop the monster that is corporate greed from forever defacing the beautiful face of our beloved city. There were the lawyers Christopher Donaal and Cheryl Yangot along with their equally dedicated colleagues; the indefatigable energies of the likes of Gideon Omero, Glo Abaeo, Marie Balangue, Andrea Cosalan and Sonn Fernandez and others more; the promises that the likes of one Calypso, this long-haired Richard, the gentle Anjoy, the fiery Ivy, and the passionate Jarlaw, among others; the guiding wisdom of and encouraging examples set by  the likes of Rico and Sumitra Gutierrez, Guia Limpin, Mike Arvisu, Vangie Ram, Willy Alangui, Abbie Angonos, Ellen Lao, Nelson Alabanza, together with all the others who have come to be collectively known as Save 182.

Thank you, my family in Save 182, for making me a part of a noble struggle to defend all that is good about Baguio from the evils of corporate greed and a rotten political system.

And finally yet most importantly, I thank my wife whom I am very fortunate and very happy to live this life with, my children who I know now will be way better persons than I ever have been or ever wish to be, along with the rest whose same blood flows in my and my children's veins - all of whom define me as a human being.

As I venture to live my 40th year, I am grateful for all the new things I learned last year, the new connections made, the new way ways I now see the world around me, and I sincerely hope to make all you have given to and done for me worth your while.

So to all of you... salamat. At minsan pa, salamat.