By: The Nightly Crew

Protests erupted across the country last Thursday against a trilateral agreement between the governments of the US, the Philippines, and Japan. As part of this, Philippine dictator Marcos Jr. traveled to Washington DC with hopes of military expansion and peddling the people of the Philippine archipelago off to the US and Japan.

Organizers with Bayan Seattle told The Nightly in a press release last Thursday that their rally aimed “to expose the self-interests of the US” in creating a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” Freedom for whom? Not for the people of the archipelago. Not for indigenous Lumad communities. No. The US wants the region to be free and open for American corporations and military occupation to run amok, endlessly extract labor and natural resources, and project American power in the region.

The agreement would expand US and Japanese military presence on the islands, as well as support the operations of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). According to Bayan Seattle, since the Marcos Jr’s regime has taken power, the AFP has continuously attacked the people, carrying out “87 extrajudicial killings and over 22,000 bombings” in just 16 months.

Foreign militaries are no better. US military operations in the country have caused environmental destruction, violence against women, and many more evils. This current plan to expand American military presence in the Philippines, comes at a time when the US is getting more and more violent on the world stage to maintain its global hegemony. Organizers pointed out that this military expansion is part of the US’ campaign to “further polarize the Asia Pacific region … under the guise of ‘protecting’ the Filipino people against China’s territorial aggression.”

The US is first and foremost a colonizer, both abroad and here within its ‘borders.’ Japan and the US have a long history of colonial aggression against the people of the Philippine Archipelago. The imagery of the son of a former dictator peddling off the Filipino people to these colonizers should be motivation enough to revolt against all parties involved at this point…

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I’ve been struggling to read this book Pangayaw and Decolonizing Resistance: Anarchism in the Philippines for a while now after a friend lent it to me. Not that the book isn’t great or anything against the book, I am just a very slow reader. The book is amazing and dissects the history of struggle in the Philippine Archipelago through a series of interviews and essays. The book looks at anarchists organizing in the archipelago and the diaspora in relation to the larger statist and marxist efforts. Here’s a quick sneak peak with no context to add to the wonder and confusion:

“As human beings, we are part of an infinitely diverse global ecosystem; we are not above it. Creating a system that is advantageous only to a single stakeholder will only end up coercing. Anarchy is a social process in which people directly participate. Conscious efforts can lead to the establishment of systems that are designed to accommodate highly diverse interests, views, conceptions, and identities in a horizontal manner. Anarchy will seek to establish systems for mutual cooperation that facilitate voluntary processes of production, as well as collective management of natural resources. The establishment of a nonhierarchical society in tune with our ecosystem and free from poverty, coercion, slavery, and patriarchy is very hard to achieve. But it is an aspiration based on concrete experiences and practices of many communities around the globe.” Bas Umali: Hopes for anarchist politics. (Page 22)

“For me, Europe is very privileged. This showed in the kind of struggles people were discussing: antifascism, critical whiteness, and other intellectual discourses, be it on labor or gender. Poverty, hunger, and basic rights are not frontline issues. People have more time to engage in intellectual and theoretical analysis compared to what we experience here. We need to think first and foremost about the practical aspects and benefits of each of our initiatives.” - Cris, founder of the Etniko Bandido infoshop in Pasig, Metro Manila. (Page 7)

“Idealism is our only hope. The survival of humanity is connected to the health of the global ecology. Its condition is deteriorating fast. This is due to anthropocentrism and hierarchical relations among human beings… Before the global ecology turns into total waste, the people of the world must find ways to innovate social relations and systems that will replace political hierarchies and the centralization of incentives and benefits streams. We must do it swiftly.” Bas Umali: A Pathology in our Filipino Identity. (Page 60)

More to come soon… (Maybe)