From Filipino Congressman Mong Palatino…

In 1995 I joined a protest action to condemn the decision of the French government to conduct nuclear tests in the Pacific. I was only a high school student at that time. We relied on mainstream journalists to document and report the rally.

In 2001 I was part of the historic Edsa Dos uprising which toppled the Estrada regime in the Philippines. Aside from mobilizing students and youth groups in Edsa, we also launched information brigades on the Internet. We sent rally updates through e-mail and e-groups. For the first time, texting became an important tool in organizing protest activities. Text jokes were used to undermine the credibility of the president.

Today, rallies are virtual, mobile and real. Street rallies are announced through various social networking sites. Photos of protest actions are instantly uploaded on the web through mobile phones. Blogging and micro-blogging allow ordinary citizens to express dissidence in the comfort of their homes.

Despite the limited Internet penetration rate in the Philippines, web activists have proven that cyberspace can be the terrain of political struggle. In the past decade, activist groups have been successful in maximizing new technologies to advance their advocacy. These tools are essential in reaching a broader audience.

Activists have learned that campaign strategies are more effective if offline activities are linked to online solidarity actions. On the other hand, cyber activism becomes a potent force only if it is fused with grassroots activism.

The majority of Internet activists recognize the limitations of online campaigning. But there are individuals who worship the amazing power of virtual rallies without acknowledging the disadvantages of Internet activism. This is quite disturbing since it distorts the meaning of activism: activism that truly empowers the oppressed.

Virtual activism can discourage people from participating in collective actions. Today we have students and idealist young citizens who believe that they can change the world by adding causes on Facebook or if they sign online petitions. There is a new breed of activists who spend their productive time sitting in front of a computer. Instead of organizing communities, they build virtual communities.

Online activism minus the essential offline component is impressive and creative but politically impotent. It gives a false impression that change is possible by being aggressive and passionate only in the virtual world. It prevents the educated segment of the population from developing a genuine link with the working masses.

This kind of activism does not frighten the evildoers in society. Politicians in the Philippines don’t read blogs. They don’t open their e-mail. They hire people to handle their social media accounts. They can tolerate a virtual revolution.

Activism demands sacrifice. Struggling for change is difficult because its aim is to dismantle the exploitative structures of the status quo. Those who wield power would not easily surrender their hegemony. It is important for change crusaders to learn these “inconvenient truths” about activism.

Activists who prefer traditional modes of campaigning should not worry if they are perceived as uncool and unfashionable. Their priority should be to come up with a magic formula that effectively combines elements of online and offline activism.

Activists should not be asked how many members they recruited on Facebook or Friendster. They must be more concerned about the number of people they are able to recruit in the real world.

Activists must continue to use their mobile phones, mp3 players and laptops if they want their campaigns to succeed. But to achieve their long-term goals, activists must turn off their gadgets from time to time and concentrate on the rigorous task of talking to people about the need to support and join popular and even unpopular campaigns.

Activism in the 21st century features new action words like texting, retweeting, clicking, chatting and social networking. But 20th century action words are still more persuasive and powerful – like talking, organizing, marching, pushing and rallying.

From the time of Marcos to the Home of the Brave, comes a story of a cultural transplantation; a young boy taken from an unstable homeland in the Philippnes to the tough streets of Chicago. Below we are taken on the global journey that changed Staff Writer Dr. Ron Villejo forever.

Jap. Chink.  I was 9 years old and newly arrived in Chicago.  Jap.  Chink.  Racial slurs for Japanese and Chinese, that’s what some kids at school called me.  Something to do with my squinty eyes. 

∞

America was a virtual Shangri La for a Filipino boy. The Land of Milk and Honey,   America was flowing white and brown.  I also understood the figurative meaning of the phrase.  I set about to list all the toys and clothes I wanted, because in America I could have whatever I wanted to have – heady stuff, for a little boy.  I tried to get my sisters (6 and 4 years old) and brother (5 years old) to create their own list, but they noted only a handful of things.  “You can have more, you can have more,” I urged them. 

By most accounts, we had a good life in the Philippines.  Both professionals – Mechanical Engineer and Pharmacist – my parents had a house built in Parañaque, southwest of Manila.  We lived a middle-class suburban life and accordingly, I went to the nearby well-to-do Catholic all-boys school of St. John Don Bosco.  What’s more, we had two housemaids taking care of us. 

My parents, though, had a sense of a future not looking so bright. The 1960s was the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos, and they each felt that trouble was afoot.  I never knew how or when they began to plan our departure from the Philippines, but in 1968 my father’s two sisters and their families left from America in May.  We followed suit in September.  In 1972, President Marcos declared martial law.  Foresight on the part of my parents? Surely.

∞

I was a shy but playful boy on the Westside of Chicago, where there were many more Latinos than Filipinos.  An autumn cool was already in the air, and there seemed to be more cloudy days than I remembered seeing in the Philippines.  It was ideal weather for recess in the playground. 

What goes on in the playground was a microcosm of what was to come for us children.  All that made living delightful was there – the running, the climbing, and the jumping.  In fact, play was an entire language for us; the groan from exerting on the monkey bars; the screaming laughter from some sort of chase; the soft thud of falling down. No need for words, really.

Jap.  Chink.  In the playground, I soon learned to retort, “I’m gonna kick your ass!”

My older cousins taught me that, as they, too, were subjected to such slurs.  “I’m gonna kick your ass!” 

I kept saying it, until it stopped feeling awkward and stupid to say. 

∞

Life in Chicago was a far cry from our spacious home in Parañaque.  For the first few months, we were amongst three families living in a three-bedroom flat.  The three sets of parents – mine, my two aunts and their husbands – each staked out a bedroom.  We children – a total of 14 in the household, with a wide range in age – mostly slept on the living and dining room floor. 

It was fun for a while, but the cramped quarters led the cousins to fight amongst ourselves; never mind the other kids at school. 

“I’m gonna kick your ass!” 

Remarkably, it must’ve worked.  Soon thereafter, I heard Jap and Chink very little.  Shy or not, I saw clearly that there was value in being tough. 

              ∞

 Better than being tough, I found that the real ticket into social circles and the approval that comes with it was my academics.  I was a smart boy.  I came to learn that Philippine curriculum was more advanced than that of America.  There, children go from elementary school to high school – that is, from 6th grade to high school.  In America, there were 7th and 8th grades to navigate, before high school.  So, instead of 18 years old, many Filipinos are in the university at 16 years old.  So the curriculum, from early on, was geared along such a timeline.

Cool, totally cool. 

∞

I remember a boy named, Raul, a Puerto Rican.  A smallish boy – a gangbanger – he had a clutch of boys in the neighborhood.  Thankfully, I was never part of this. Curiously, he took a liking for me.  He sort of came into my circle. (Well, not really, as I had no circle.)  For instance, I’d go home for lunch after which he’d come by our apartment building and wait outside for me, so that he could walk me back to school.  Somehow, I felt safe and proud to be friends with him.

Raul wasn’t a very bright boy.  This, mixed with a troublesome nature, made him the butt of even the teacher’s awful jokes and derisions in class.  “Raul, you have no class!” 

So, there it was, I understood it.  Without his ever demanding anything of me, I helped him with his schoolwork – the stuff of friendship.  I got the protection that probably helped me stay out of trouble, in countless, unknown instances.  He got a better footing with his academics.         

Again, not much talking about it, Raul and I learned lessons for a lifetime. 

∞

 “I’m gonna kick your ass!” was so effective, yet so ineffective at the same time. 

 More than 40 years have passed, and since those fateful first months in Chicago I have very rarely been slurred upon by others.  Maybe it has to do with the toughness and confidence I’ve kept building up over years.  Maybe it has to do with the several relationships and circles I’ve chosen to put myself in.  Maybe it has to do with my smarts.  Who knows?

You see, here’s the thing.  Jap and Chink still reverberate within me.  Why?

Filipinos, by and large, don’t have very strong self-esteem.  Today we’re spread around the world, but more often than not, you’ll find us to be more deferential than assertive, more serving than commanding, more friendly than tough-ass.  Why?

For centuries, the Philippines were under colonial rule – by the Spaniards largely, but the Chinese and Americans figure prominently into this.  The northern part of the Philippines was their stronghold, and they came in when the economic and social fiber of development was still in its nascent stages.  More than just neglect to build the economic foundation of the local people, they actually dismantled it!  For example, Chinese merchants got small-time farmers to sell rice, below its value.  Then, in turn, they sold it at above this value.  

Imagine cutting off a baby’s feet, before he can even walk!

That’s what happened.  We were duly servants in our own home.  Invisible, in a similar vein as author Ralph Ellison posed the Black American.   

Yes, by the late 1800s, the ongoing stirrings of rebellion in the country led to the formation of a national identity (albeit roughshod and patchwork).  The Philippines gained its independence.

But still, why is our self-esteem generally still low, more than a hundred years later? 

My take on this:  This bit about independence is a pipe dream.  The 1900s was the era of the Americans.  Their sheep’s clothing was liberator, which hid the wolf of oppressor underneath.  More powerful than the Spaniards, I believe, the Americans entered our brain (e.g., through books and television) – and planted themselves within our tongue (i.e., through language, Filipinos became one of the best English-speaking Asians in the world). 

The Americans more or less just left, but I argue that we’re still an oppressed lot.  By whom?  By the longtime wealthy, powerful families in politics and business.  One learns not to mess around with them, because if someone does, they’ll see that corruption is the least of your worries.  One will literally put their life in danger.  My parents must’ve known this.  

I challenge any of my kababayan (fellow Filipino) to win me over with the notion that Filipinos are independent.  He or she will fail.  Today we are still under colonial rule. 

∞

Shame is a powerful social, behavioral tool in Philippine culture.  It’s a way to command obedience from children by parents and teachers – and from everyday citizens by those in power.

In fact, oddly enough, to feel shame was a sort of badge of honor amongst Filipinos.  So much so that for a child to be scolded with walang hiya (shameless) was doubly shaming! 

For a non-Filipino, this can be a maddening, twisted thing.  I’d agree.

Jap.  Chink.  This made me profoundly ashamed. 

The slur wasn’t even the fucking right nationality!  How odd and cruel can children be!  Damn it, didn’t they know I was not Japanese or Chinese.  It was as if I didn’t deserve the honor of being kicked in the gut with my own nationality.  Instead, it was like having my gut ripped out of me!  More than just invisible, I was now hollow. 

Talk about self-esteem.  Walang hiya.  Talk about shame.  How deep can you go with your nth power? 

∞

Jap.  Chink.  Oh, I can forgive.  But never, ever forget. 

Born in the Philippines in the capital city of Manila, Staff Writer Dr. Ron Villejo moved with his family to the United States while still a boy and  was raised in the storied city of Chicago. He received his PhD in Clinical Psychology from Chicago’s Northwestern University Medical School and has nearly three decades of experience in consulting, coaching, and counseling, working with thousands of people from all walks off life, throughout the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. He has since parlayed his experiences into a career in business psychology and management consulting, working with a number of companies to discover and develop leaders, and presenting at a variety of conferences around the world. Villejo offers RELATIVTY OnLine an academic and unique international take on individual perspective and self-elevation, and we are priviledged to have him with us.