People on foot do not pollute: revisiting an old new concept

My column in the May 27, 2012 issue of Cordillera Today 

These days, bring up the idea of pedestrianization and your get violent reactions from various sectors – mostly revolving around revenues that could be lost or unfairly gained by others. The closed, or at least narrow-minded business people along Session Road oppose they believe it would result in significant revenue cuts for them. Other concerned citizens, particularly those who are protesting SM’s expansion plan believe that closing Session Road to vehicular traffic would direct people more to the monstrosity up the hill, and that traffic jams that the Central Business District’s closure might even help justify the mall’s plan to build a parking lot at the expense of 182 trees.

First, let us be reminded that pedestrianization doesn’t necessarily mean the complete closure of the road to motorists. There are so many things we can do to make Session Road more pedestrian-friendly without totally banning cars from passing the road. Our leaders must realize that roads are not only for wheeled contraptions – they are also there to accommodate people on foot.

In the last months, Baguio saw millions and millions being spent for road repairs all over the city for the benefit of motorists. While there nothing wrong with this, except of course when the repairs are done not to improve roads that are in good condition but to feed the pockets of corrupt politicians and contractors, but we hardly see any effort coming from our public works officials to improve the conditions of our sidewalks for the benefit of the walking public. In fact, in Baguio, the government policies when it comes to public roads seem to always benefit those who already have more in life.

Take the closure of the two major pedestrian lanes along Session Road – for whose benefit was this done? The motorists – private motorists mainly as jeeps are banned from using Session Road. This was done to the disadvantage of pedestrians who now have to walk the extra hundreds of meters to get to the other side of the road. The whole bottom part of the road, from Mabini down to People’s Park, is now without a pedestrian lane. The huge crowds that gather at the Mabini intersection to cross the road have made it a convenient excuse for the adventurous to jaywalk, while criminal elements such as pickpockets and snatchers have been given the perfect situation to perpetuate their crimes.

Meanwhile, hardly anything’s done to clear the sidewalks of obstructions, further endangering the public who are at times forced to walk on the road.

And if we do completely ban motor vehicles along Session Road, I don’t really believe that this will result in significant loses for the businesses located there. Turning the road into a beautiful, wide landscaped promenade would encourage people to linger in the area, and it’s people who patronize their businesses, not cars.

And a beautiful, healthful Session Road, if turned into some kind of a public park would make it a top tourist and local community attraction, so I don’t think it will drive people to the mall on Luneta Hill. On the contrary, it might even drive them out of it as this would make Session Road a community of home-grown businesses (with a sprinkling of a few franchises) that would complement each other’s operation instead of what it is now – individual establishments competing against, let’s face it - the convenience that a mall offers.

I’m sure there are even more brilliant ideas out there on how to go about re-inventing Session Road, and we hope that our the businesses along the famed thoroughfare would at least be open-minded about it and explore the possibility before immediately closing the doors on something that could be beneficial not just to them, but to the whole Baguio community.

Session Road is choking to death, it's time to let her breathe - and people on foot do not pollute, unlike carbon spewing cars. Unless they litter (as one netizen commented when I posted the thought on Facebook)... but that's for another column.

Stop the killings

Senator Vicente “Tito” Sotto wants the funding for the country’s tourism ads in CNN pulled out because of a feature the news network aired that portrayed the practice of “pagpag,” or scavenged left-over chicken that are washed, re-cooked and resold. His argument sounded too familiar: since the country poured in a good amount of precious dollars for the airing of “it’s more fun in the Philippines” campaign, CNN should have returned the favor by featuring only flattering stories about the country.

Sotto doesn’t even realize it, but his position on the issue has put to the fore the corruption that prevails even in what a lot of us still consider as the last frontier in the country’s struggle to finally start walking the “daang matuwid” talk of PNoy. He must have forgotten that media has the responsibility to tell stories worth telling, and to tell it the way it is, advertising clients notwithstanding.

I’d like to see how the Philippine media would treat this issue, for I can’t help but be reminded of how not a few of them kept the protest movement to save the 182 trees on Luneta Hill out of prime time and the front pages for some time and the most logical reason for the apparent news blackout was SM’s advertising money. Which begs the question, is it justified when a media outlet kills a story to protect its bottomline?

This is very dangerous, for the message that Sotto is sending to the people is this - public trust be damned, as long as the money keeps rolling in. All the Sys, the Sm’s, Cojuancos, the Luisitas, the Coronas, and yes, even the Ampatuans need to do is pour some money in the form of advertising contracts into the industry to keep their personas untarnished in the public eye. In the meantime, we, the people, will be kept in the dark, or at best shown only a part of a whole picture, and we end up with an uninformed citizenry.

Democracy? Nah. That’s a conjugal dictatorship of the elite and the supposed Fourth Estate.

~~~

While on the subject of murder, the recent Luneta Hill related features in several national papers, particularly in the country’s acknowledged leading broadsheet, seem to be an attempt to shift the focus away from the real issue, which is plain as day: is the killing of 182 trees for the benefit of a single corporate entity that’s already enjoying a lion’s share of the consumer market justified? There was Ramon Tulfo, who cast a doubt on Bishop Carlito Cenzon’s intentions, by postulating that the bishop’s opposition to SM’s expansion plan is all about money for the local diocese owns a mall just a stone’s throw away from SM. What’s this, they’ve given up debating the issue on its merits and have resorted to character assassination. Then there’s Conrado Banal, who headlined his column thus: “Store Wars: Attack of the Clowns,” effectively dismissing the whole protest movement as nothing but an orchestrated attack perpetrated by SM’s business competitors.

As far as I know, Michael Bengwayan, the initiator of the protest movement; nor Attorneys Cheryl Daytec and Chris Donaal, lead counsels of the protesters; nor local artists Bubut Olarte, Bumbo Villanueva and Ethan Andrew Ventura; nor the youthful Richard Dean Basa and Karminn Yangot do not own a mall, nor any other business ventures that’s in direct competition with SM.

I know for sure that I don’t. Pray tell, Mr. Banal, how do I explain to my own children, who have had to sacrifice a lot because of lost opportunities in our collective struggle (yes, they are actually complainants in the case filed against SM, DENR and DPWH) to save those 182 trees that you have called them, and all the rest of us who are protesting against SM City Baguio's expansion plan as clowns with malicious intentions?  My children, who can sit in front of you and defend their principled stand, and tell you about what’s wrong about killing those precious trees for more money, and educate you about the importance of respecting and protecting the environment, how wrong it is to be greedy, and how we, as human beings, must live our life in harmony with our natural environment and not against it.

While you, who have no real knowledge of the culture, history and heritage of this city and these mountain people you so viciously dismissed as clowns; you, who have never experienced having your home buried in mud and garbage in a landslide; you, who do not live your life with the pine trees, the mountains and rolling hills, the healthful climate, the cool, invigorating air of Baguio, have the audacity to judge the citizens of this city, as few as a lot of your kind claim we are, who found it in their hearts to go against a very powerful corporate monster to defend their environment, heritage, history... dignity... their life? You have no idea.

Preventing relevant stories to be told. Character assassinations. The death of a free press not by censorship but by corruption. The mass murder of 182 trees.

Stop the killings!

Every breath you take

As the vendor was putting the bundles of pechay and watercress I bought in plastic bags at the market a few days ago, I told her: “Manang, huwag niyo na pong i-plastic.” Then seeing the bayong I was carrying, she quipped, “ay ayaw niyo ng plastic. Siguro taga Irisan kayo, ‘no?”

And there lies the reason why most of us remain apathetic to environmental issues and concerns – until something affects us directly, personally, that's the only time we start caring.

The vendor was of course referring to the efforts of the residents of Irisan to minimize, if not totally stop the use of disposable plastic bags. This was an offshoot of the trash-slide last year that claimed lives and property when garbage came rushing down the hill at the height of a particularly heavy downpour. Visiting the site of the Irisan tragedy soon after, I can’t help but notice that plastics made up a major part of the debris that buried people and homes.

On my way home, I made quick, basic mental calculations. I bought a kilo of fish, a kilo of beef and a kilo of chicken. What they usually do at the market is to put your meat purchase in a clear plastic bag, then put that bag again in what they call a “plastic sando bag.” By refusing the sando bags, I was able to keep three plastic bags out of our trash bin. I bought a bundle each of pechay and watercress. That’s two plastic bags. A bunch of pandan - one plastic bag. Fruits – one plastic bag.

Not much, one might say. Eight plastic bags. But imagine this: there were thousands of at the market that afternoon. If only one thousand did the same, we could’ve prevented the use of eight thousand plastic bags. Add to that another thousand each durig the morning and lunch rush hours and in one day, that would have been 24,000 plastic bags.

That’s 720,000 plastic bags a month, and 8.64 million plastic bags in one year. That’s just at the city market. And that’s a very conservative estimate.

In one year, a thousand people out of the almost half a million living here in Baguio today could’ve kept 8.64 million plastic bags out of the Irisan dumpsite.

The Irisan tragedy occured because of a combination of several factors, and among these are a corrupt political system and apathy. It was the former that prevented Baguio City from complying with the RA 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2001. And it is that non-compliance that brought us to this crisis. And when the City Government, belatedly, tried to address the problem, people’s apathy reared its ugly head. Not everybody heeded the call, the plea, to reduce, reuse, recycle and segregate whatever garbage is left for the City Government to collect.

Why? Because most of us still believe that our individual actions cannot possibly affect the whole community, the whole city, the whole country – the world. What’s one household that didn’t segregate their trash out of hundreds in the neighborhood? Some of us might think. What’s one smoke-belching car out of the hundreds along Session Road? What’s a couple of plastic bags out of the tens, if not hundreds of thousands used in the city everyday?

And as SM City Baguio’s apologists would like to us to think, what’s 182 trees out of the hundreds of thousands we have in the city?

We can wait for something like the Irisan tragedy to happen before acting, or we can do our share in preventing something like it from happening in the first place. That is what the protest movement against SM City Baguio’s expansion plan is basically about.

We are all part of a bigger community. Every breath we take changes the composition of the whole universe.

To the vendor at the market, I can only reply with, “Hindi po ako taga-Irisan, pero taga-Baguio pa rin po.”


*my column in the May 6, 2012 issue of Cordillera Today

For the love of... home

“These mountain people are the most unconquerable of all the natives of this country” – Fray Juan Medina, a Spaniard declared in 1630, after several failed attempts to subjugate the Igorots. A few decades later, Diego Salcedo, the Spanish Governor General of the Philippines from 1663 to 1668, would say of the enduring freedom of the Igorots – “... a scandal and a mockery, an embarrasment that right in the heart of the colony, in the main island of Luzon, natives remained pagans... and their gold remained unreachable.”



So do not think for one moment that we in the Save 182 movement would give up on our home that easily.



SM City Baguio stepped up its pulic relations efforts in the last couple of weeks – both on print and online. Well, Henry Sy isn’t one of the world’s richest men for nothing - he can afford the luxury of expensive PR firms. As for us in the streets, we can only hope that the media would find our struggle newsworthy at all. And lately, fortunately, suprisingly, after a couple of months of what was begining to feel like a media blackout, the protest finally made it to the pages of both local and national papers, together with ample air time on TV.



So now we are seeing the power of SM’s money at work - typing in the phrases “SM City Baguio,” “Baguio Pine Trees,” and other related words in various online search engines now result in page and pages of SM propganda. In web talk, it’s called SEO writing – Search Engine Optimization. It’s not cheap. Both op-ed and news pages of certain “established and reputable” dailies and weeklies have been churning out praises for SM’s expansion project, and jeers for the protest movement. At times, these press releases border on the ridiculous and outright disinformation.



They ask, why are we focusing only on SM City Baguio when trees, at times entire forests, are being destroyed in other parts of the the city, nay, the whole region... the whole country? The movement is composed of individuals, institutions and organizations who are also involved in addressing various issues affecting Baguio, and as a group we oppose all misdirected efforts that threaten, harm and cause the killing of Baguio's remaining trees – but the 182 trees that SM City Baguio considers as dispensable in the name of crass commercialism is what brought all of us together, and united we will remain saving the lives of those life-giving trees. With this, we remain committed to opposing SM City Baguio’s insatiable greed and their attempt to completely eradicate competition, mostly homegrown small to medium-sized businesses that actually pay their taxes to the city unlike SM; or their wanton disregard for the welfare of their immediate neighbors, the historical value of Luneta Hill and the heritage of this beautiful city.



They ask, what right have we to prevent SM City Baguio to do as it pleases within their private property? Freedom is not absolute, with it comes responsibility. Common people such as us can get arrested for burning a small heap of dried leaves in our own backyard, why should Henry Sy and SM City Baguio get away with putting lives and properties at risk with this expansion project?



They ask, has the movement taken a step back and have agreed to SM City Baguio’s plan to earthball the trees? NOT AT ALL. We oppose the removal of those 182 trees on Luneta Hill by any means – be it earthablling or cutting, for we know for a fact that either of the two methods can result in the death of those trees, the former merely delaying the practically inevitable. And after seeing the way SM City Baguio conducted the earthballing of around 50 of the 182 trees, we are convinced now more than ever that the trees will surely die.



Detractors, spinmeisters, paid hacks would like the public to believe that the protesters are motivated by sinister reasons and other vested interests. Some even forward various ridiculous conspiracy theories to discredit the movement. There’s a new tag for the protesters being circulated online, “the haters.”



Don’t they get it? We’re all here despite the effects of doing all we can to oppose one of the world’s richest men have had on our personal lives, our jobs... we’re all here despite and in spite of the way most of our supposed public servants have become powerless and willing slaves to corporate greed... we’re all here because of one thing – we love our home, Baguio.



And if you have not felt the kind of love we in this movement have for our home, then maybe it’s time you do. For only when all, or at least most of us do will we have real hope for this country.



*My column in the April 29, 2012 issue of Cordillera Today

Earth Day: Revisiting that pale blue dot

As we celebrate Earth Day, I thought I’d revisit an article I wrote on October 2, 2009, as we tried to rise above the destruction caused by typhoon Ondoy, and as Pepeng made its way this time to wreak havoc in the mountains of the Cordilleras and nearby low-lying provinces. Here is that article:

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
Carl Sagan said that. He was talking about a photograph taken by that NASA space probe, Voyager 1. The photograph, perhaps unless explained to its viewer, may not make sense at first glance: a dark background with a scattering of tiny specks and a ray of light that runs vertically through the middle, and barely visible somewhere on that ray of light, is a pale blue dot: Earth. That space probe was launched in 1977, originally with the primary intention of visiting Jupiter and Saturn, but currently on an “extended mission to locate and study the boundaries of the universe.” Upon Sagan’s constant prodding, and after completing its primary mission, on Valentine’s Day, 1990, NASA decided to command the probe to turn around for the last time and take a photograph of our home from 3.7 billion miles away. And there was home… “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

It does put things in a different perspective, doesn’t it? Zoom in on that blue planet, zoom in further on the biggest continent in that planet, and zoom in even more on that collection of roughly 7,000 islands – somewhere in those islands, in a place they call Metro Manila, hundreds died and thousands were left homeless.

A weather disturbance that occurs here and there and every now and then on this pale blue dot brought in so much rain which resulted in unprecedented flooding in the area. It was, on that Saturday, Sept. 26, 2009, a great equalizer. It did not spare anyone, it did not choose between rich and poor, good and bad: powerful politicians, celebrities, common folk, it didn’t matter. Everyone was helpless.

You may think so highly of your position in government, or your popularity as a celebrity, but in the eye of “Ondoy,” you’re just one of billions of this mote of dust’s inhabitants, and in that instant your life mattered just as much as your neighbor’s noisy mongrel. So the next time you are deluded into believing that you are so great and powerful, privileged and untouchable, remember that during that one stormy day, you felt the same way everyone else did: small and powerless against the power of… what? Just a combination of some amount of warm and cold air spinning in one direction and coming your way.

After collecting donations and distributing all those relief goods (go ahead, put a sticker with your name on it if that makes you feel good about yourself), after caring for someone other than yourself for one brief moment, and after getting our lives back together again, remember that just some hundreds of meters above and your face cannot be recognized anymore. A few kilometers away from earth and your home cannot be distinguished from everyone else’s. Just a little beyond the earth’s atmosphere and you’re not even a dot anymore. And from 3.7 billion miles away?

Carl Sagan further said, “The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate… Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand… It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
There’s something, someone, out there that, who, is so much bigger than you are and will ever be. Call it what you want… I believe it’s God. And if there’s one lesson that can be learned from all this, for me it’s this: Remember your place in this universe. There’s so many ways you can make your short visit on this pale blue dot matter.

The night the trees on Luneta Hill fell

We received the news moments before the gathering we scheduled at the U.P. Baguio auditorium yesterday afternoon. “TEPO extended until after the case is resolved.” The text message came from a member of the movement’s legal team, Atty. Chris Donaal.

There were only around six of us at the time, waiting for the other members of the movement to arrive, but our shouts of joy filled up the still empty hall.

It is a temporary victory, but a victory nonetheless. I have said it before, for every day that those trees stay alive is already a vitory for the city.

Whatever remains of the 182 trees since SM City Baguio, a like a thief in the night, proceeded to begin the massacre under cover of darkness and hidden behind walls, on the night of April 9, 2012, despite the issuance of a Temporary Environmental Protection Order by the court.

Moments before receiving the message from Donaal, we were already contemplating what to do in case we lose this struggle. You can’t blame us, almost all of our government institutions have turned their backs on the people and their opposition to the rape of their home’s natural environment. Despite the issuance of a 72-day stay of the execution of trees by the court, SM City Baguio, through devious legal maneuverings, tried to skirt the law claiming that the TEPO must be served to their lawyers in Manila and not here in Baguio. This meant, for them, that “officially,” they have not received the order and therefore it doesn’t exist and that they can go on with their earthablling activities on Luneta Hill. That night, trees started falling on Luneta Hill.

Some young members of the movement went to the Mayor’s residence to plead our case with him – his hands are tied, was essentially his reply. The concerned City Council committee, and the councilors who signed their report,have showed their true color when it all but directly endorsed SM City Baguio’s expansion project. And when we begged the police that same evening to do help enforce the court order, they watched on the sidelines as more than 50 security guards and personnel of SM City Baguio surrounded the roughly one dozen of us who were there to try to stop the crime being committed against the environment, against Baguio. They were there, around 10 or so of them, on the other side of Luneta Road, watching, as guards shoved and pushed us around. This is the same police force that can form a human barricade of police officers complete with shields and truncheons ready to protect SM City Baguio whenever we stage a rally on Luneta Hill. This is the same police personnel whose salaries the people’s taxes pay for.

And this is what it’s all about – clearly, it’s not just about the 182 trees on Luneta Hill, and even if it were so, so what? See, those trees, just like the Jadewell contract and the concrete pine tree, represent all that is wrong in our society, they uncovered a rotten political system that is the true cause of all our woes. They showed us what caused the garbage slide in Irisan, the pollution that envelope Baguio, the slow decay of this beautiful city, the sorry state of our educational system, the poverty all around us.

Congratulations, Baguio, on this temporary victory. It’s not over yet...

(my column in tomorrow's issue of the Cordillera Today)

Boycott SM now!