It dutifully served the role of an opposition force guided by its principles and program of action while bridging the agenda of the other parliament, the parliament of the streets.
Two decades of the Left in Congress
Category: Question Everything
The books I read in 2020
Bookworm, activist and former legislator Mong Palatino shares with us the books he read in 2020.
How ‘ako chamber’ diminishes us all, including our activism
The internet has many uses and one thing it conveniently offers is the boosting of individualism while rebranding it as a platform of empowerment. It poses unique challenges for community building and the pursuit of activism.
Who is Dennise Velasco?
Prior to his arrest, Dennise was coordinating relief efforts in Marikina. He planned to use proceeds from his small coffee business to procure relief goods and offer livelihood opportunities in the neighborhood.
Activism as cure to information disorder
Activism is our fact-checking initiative against so-called “fake news.” We cannot engage in politics without a proper social investigation. Mao Zedong has a succinct quote for it: “No investigation, no right to speak”. Our statements must be grounded on the reality that affects the masses. We articulate the social condition based on verifiable facts.
Victim blaming the people’s resistance
Politicians are experts in articulating this unscientific argument. They blame the people’s resistance for causing social ills as if the system were just and equitable before the Left conspired to destroy it. They insinuate that the people’s struggle is instigating terror. It is convenient for them to scapegoat activism instead of acknowledging their criminal liability in perpetuating a state of mass poverty.
In praise of the community organizer
Working tirelessly on the ground are community organizers who turned a particular issue into a political question and mobilized the people to discuss, decide, and determine the proper course of action. They are immersed in full-time political work even if this does not yield any pecuniary benefit.
Politics and resistance under a lockdown regime
The pandemic is forcing us to be more critical of the repressive state even as we reexamine our methods and ideas about doing politics under the so-called new normal. Citizens started to wear protective face masks at almost the same time when the state’s authoritarian identity is laid bare with little or no effort to…
Pedagogy of the digitally oppressed
Education is under threat of being reduced into a mastery of prepackaged learning materials that are stored in downloadable files in the web cloud. Discovery of the new in the near future could simply refer to a browsing experience.
What it means to be a lockdown protester in the Philippines
Our hope lies in how we will face the pandemic not as mask-wearing individuals but as a group promoting medical measures, social reforms, and democratic rights. The pandemic demands medical attention, the crisis requires collective political action.
Love and life lessons from watching Korean TV dramas
If the internet is a weapon of mass distraction, media streaming is the precision missile targeting citizens in search of escape and lazy fun. This is the extra dose supplied by the media industry after lockdowns have been enforced across the world as we battle a pandemic and an economic recession.