Thoughts from the Vigil for the New Bataan 5

Terrorist. Activist. Martyr. Such big words, I think, such heavy labels, for people who were really just people, nervous but determined, going from one decision to the next the best they could. Just people, like everyone, gathered around a little tent and table in UW’s Red Square – reading speeches off notecards, fumbling with an unwieldy megaphone, handing out Filipino snacks, lighting tiny tea candles that barely stand up to the wind, singing songs on a ukulele, cobbling together a ritual in the face of uncertainty and absurdity.

It’s a chilly, iron-gray afternoon on Friday, March 4th, and I am at Anakbayan’s Vigil for the New Bataan 5. The wind cutting through my thin hoodie matches the cold cutting at my heart as I come to understand who the 5 are: young Filipino activists murdered by the Philippine government out in the rural countryside. Philippine President Duterte has long accumulated power by opening up indigenous Lumad land to extractive industries – to all that which cuts and drills and splits and sells – and defines terrorism as anything in his way. So for the crime of standing with the Lumad… Tirso, Robert, Elgyn, Jurain, and Chad were gunned down.

Some members of Anakbayan, the organization putting on this event, present a poem that Chad Booc wrote about what he wanted to do with his computer science degree. They read it in sections, Tagalog and then English, off his Facebook page. And 26-year-old Chad speaks to me from beyond death – tells me he came to college wanting to do something good and necessary with his life, doubted whether he could do it under his heavy class workload, came so close to dismissing it as a dream, and just taking a nice title and salary after graduation, but ultimately decided to become a volunteer math teacher in the rolling, forested mountains of Mindanao, where the Lumad live and oppression runs rampant. He likes it there, he says. It’s quieter than the city.

Terrorist. Activist. Martyr. Such big words, such heavy labels. And yet there’s nothing particularly special or holy or out-of-reach about people who do so much good that a dictatorship takes an interest in killing them. The New Bataan 5 were not Chosen Ones – and if they were, then they were the ones doing the choosing.

The small flame of a tea candle and a rose placed gently on a photograph of the dead, are beautiful things. But we can honor the New Bataan 5 in other ways as well. Peruse the career fairs with a critical, thoughtful eye. Think deeply about why you’re on the path you’re on, in the major you’re in, and what futures you see as realistic or responsible. Uncover purposes and convictions of yours that might be buried deep. You are not so different from Chad Booc – if you so choose.

Published April 12th 2022