The Daily Urban Poor

New plans, old mistakes?

2012-02-27T23:29:00.000-08:00

Commentary
By Denis Murphy
2:31 am | Monday, February 27th, 2012

Government has received from the World Bank a $1.5-million grant to plan ways of combating flooding in Metro Manila, and a $250-million loan to implement the plan, according to a story in this and other papers on Feb. 13. Readers might think such news would delight the poor families living along the region’s waterways, since it could mean their fears of flooding are at an end, and government would now have the funding to help them build a more prosperous life. Instead, the poor who know of the plan are shaking in their boots. The poor regularly lose out when government talks of flood control. In the past it has meant the demolition of their homes and painful relocation to far off, economically barren places where there are no jobs.

Not so this time, the government will say. The poor would like to be reassured, and might be so assured if three matters were taken care of. One, that the planners meet with the poor and their professional allies (architects and urban planners) before the plan is put together—that is, early on in the process—so their thinking and their experience will have a place in the preparation of the plan. They hope the government won’t wait till the plan is finished and then meet with the poor to inform them only of what has been decided. They want to have a voice in this major decision that affects their lives.

Second, the poor would have more hope of good planning results if they knew the government had already secured the land needed for decent relocation of those families whose eviction cannot be avoided. By decent relocation they mean the norms agreed to by President Aquino in his Covenant with the Urban Poor of March 6, 2010. He promised in the covenant to work to limit relocation to on-site, in-city or near-city areas. He said he would oppose any government plan that would lead to a separation between wage earners who remain in the cities (because they cannot afford to commute daily to their work from distant relocation areas) and their families. These workers return only on weekends or less often to their families. Such separation can injure and even end family life. The President said: “We will not tolerate a situation where wage earners have to stay in the city to work, while the other members of the family stay in distant relocation centers. This separation weakens and often fractures family life. We will not institutionalize such situations by building sites in the city where they will live apart from their families. As the workforce in the cities, the poor, up to the extent possible, should be given the opportunity to stay in the cities.”

Has government acquired such in-city and near-city land for the families who may be evicted? If getting the good land is left to the end game, it will not work out very well, history shows.

Thirdly, the poor and their allies would like to hear that the planners have junked the simplistic tenet, often heard in government offices, that all families living in “danger zones” as defined in the Urban Development and Housing Act (RA 7279) must be evicted if they live next to water. This opinion is not supported by reality. There has been no flooding in the esteros or river communities of the Pasig River since 1970, even during Tropical Storm “Ondoy.” These are the esteros and river communities in Manila and Makati. We should ask instead how we can improve housing in these areas so that if there ever were a once-in-a-hundred-year monster flood, the people would not be injured, nor would the flow of the flood waters be impeded.

A similar disdain of facts is shown in the statements of government people including leading environmentalists that the poor people along the banks of waterways create the bulk of pollution in the water through their human waste. They put the percentage of the poor people’s contribution as high as 70 percent. Other sources say the figure is closer to 4 percent and the real major source of pollution comes from the untreated liquid waste that pours from the toilets of nearly everyone in Metro Manila, untreated into the river and esteros. The real need is for treatment plants, not eviction.

If the contribution of the poor to pollution in the waterways is only 4 percent, it seems the Supreme Court’s willingness in 2008 to remove all the homes of poor people from the banks of waterways to clean up Manila Bay may be too grievous. Is there parity between being only 4 percent of the problem and losing your home?

The press notice of the planning grant said the plan would be presented to government in one or two months. It hardly seems possible to finish such a plan in a few months, so we should probably presume it has been largely finished already by a small group. If so, we can keep these suggestions of the people until the next time a plan is discussed. By then, there will most likely be more bad experiences to learn from.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates.

Advice also for Aquino

2012-02-12T22:19:00.000-08:00

Commentary

by: Denis Murphy

February 12, 2012

Three years ago former US President Bill Clinton wrotean article in Time Magazine

(June 24, 2009) advisingnewly elected President Barack Obama to follow the priorities of America’sDepression era President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Whether Obama followed theadvice or not, the readers can judge for themselves. May I suggest that theadvice Clinton offered Obama may also be of use to President Aquino.

At the beginning of the article, Clinton talks of the bondRoosevelt created between the ordinary working men and women and himself.

“My grandfather was a dirt farmer with only a sixth-gradeeducation. During the Depression, he eked out a living selling blocks of ice.But in those days, even though he was poor, he knew someone special: fromlistening to the fireside chats on the radio, he knew FranklinRoosevelt. And he believed that Roosevelt knew what his life was like – andcared about it too.

“I grew up listening to my grandfather’s tales of what it was liketo live through the Depression and the war and what Roosevelt meant to him.When I was President, in another time of change and uncertainty, I often lookedat the portrait of FDR in the Roosevelt Room and remembered my grandfather’sstories. Roosevelt had a deep personal connection to ordinary citizens.”

When Roosevelt died in 1945, ordinary people in tears lined therailroad tracks that led back to his home in Hyde Park, New York to watch thetrain carrying his body pass by.

I have only one personal memory of President Roosevelt. On a cold and overcast daymany years ago in the Bronx, we were playing in the Church schoolyard whensomeone shouted, “The President’s coming down the Concourse (the main road ofthe Bronx).” We ran up the hill just in time to see the flashing lights ofmotorcycles and police cars coming toward us. Franklin D. Roosevelt had been our president all our lives, but we had neverseen him. We heard cheering, but it rose and fell in a strange way. The carcame slowly because the president was campaigning. Then it was in front of us.We pushed toward the car and had a good look at the old man inside. He lookedmuch older than his pictures in the papers or newsreels. His face was drawn andgray and he sat back in the chair like a man on his sick bed, all alone in theback seat of the limousine. We waved and shouted. He seemed to see our groupand he waved at us. Even as young boys we knew he was dying. People had grownsilent along the way when they saw how sick he looked.

Clinton claims Roosevelt “got the big things right.” When he cameinto office during the Depression, he saw that the ills of the country couldnot be addressed without more aggressive involvement by the government. He ran for president as a fiscalconservative, promising to balance the budget. But unlike his predecessor, hequickly realized that, with prices collapsing and unemployment exploding, onlythe federal government could step into the breach and restart the economy.

Clinton recalls that Roosevelt surrounded himself with brilliantpeople, people who may have been far smarter than he was himself. He quotesOliver Wendell Holmes to remind us that sheer intellectual brilliance is noteverything: “Roosevelt had a second-class mind, but a first-class temperament.”This gave Roosevelt, Clinton says, the power to inspire others with his passionand to form a team that could work together.

Finally, according to Clinton, Roosevelt had the confidence togive up on projects that weren’t working, admit his failure and begin inanother direction. He believed in experimentation, but he didn’t deny theevidence of failure when it came in. A president, claims Clinton, needs an appetite forexperimentation and the determination to keep what works and scrap whatdoesn’t.

Do these suggestions of Bill Clinton have some usefulness forPresident Aquino?

Can and should President Aquino follow Roosevelt’s example andbond closely with the ordinary poor and middle-class people of the country?Should he build his political power base, as Roosevelt did, on this union ofordinary people and the president? Is there any other firm foundation forPresident Aquino on which to build? Will the poor and middle-class support givehim the ability to make the basic reforms needed in the country? Will such aunion allow him to escape from the limitations of our elite-dominatedbureaucracy?

Has President Aquino decided on all the “big things” that must bedone in his term of office? It’s clear he wants to eliminate corruption. Whatelse are his goals? After corruption, what are the next three crucial thingsthat need to be done?

Has the present government experimented sufficiently with newsolutions? Have we taken a fresh look at old problems in the hope of findingnew workable solutions? Perhaps we should be more creative. There are no magicformulas, but new situations call for at least a look at new solutions.

Finally, does the President have the most qualified and unifiedstaff possible? Even ordinary people now talk about political skirmishes insidethe administration’s top people. This isn’t supposed to happen in apresidential system of government where the President is free to choose thestaff he wants.

Franklin D. Roosevelt entered the White House in 1933 which was agrim time for his country.

Unemployment had reached 33 percent. Hoovervilles, the settlementsof the poor and unemployed were, like our urban poor areas, growing everywhere.They were named scornfully after former President Herbert Hoover. Farmers like theJody family of “Grapes of Wrath” lost their land to bad weather and venalbanks. A popular song of the day was “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?”Roosevelt’s portrait is fittingly on the dime coin now as if to remind us hegave the poor what they most needed, that is, his comradeship.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates.

2011 Eviction Report

2012-02-12T20:25:00.000-08:00

1February 2012. Theyear 2011 had the highest number of documented cases of eviction since 1994,according to a study of Urban Poor Associates’ (UPA), a housing rights advocate.

FromJanuary to December 2011, 14, 744 families or 73,780 individuals were evictedin 39 demolition incidents. 92 percentof evictions are considered illegal as they lack requirements called for in theUrban Development and Housing Act. Seven demolitions turned violent.

Familiesin Corazon De Jesus, San Juan, had experienced eviction several times in thepast. People’s resistance had stopped the evictions. On Jan 11 2012, they facedagain the city government-led demolition team, using Molotov bombs, stones andbottles. The police managed to break their barricades, using water cannon,bulldozers and teargas. The residents, mostly women, could only run away tosave their belongings.

Accordingto some residents from Corazon De Jesus, the land had been awarded to them byformer president Corazon Aquino through Proclamation No. 164, which was amended by Proclamation No. 54issued by former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The San Juan Citygovernment ignored these decrees to make way for a new City Hall.

Violentdemolitions also occured in Brgy. San Roque, North Triangle, Quezon City and inBernardino St., Laperal Cmpd., Brgy. Guadalupe Viejo, Makati, thousands offamilies were removed.

Outof 39 eviction incidents, 28 cases happened in Quezon City. Navotas, Manila and Paranaque were next withtwo cases each. Some 74 percent of allcases were ordered by local government units.

NationalHousing Authority (NHA) which owns the North Triangle chose to lease the areafor business purposes rather than provide shelter for informal settlers.

Sadly,2,453 families or 17 percent of the total number of evicted families receivednothing from government.

Theseeviction incidents are considered high compared to those of former PresidentGloria Macapagal-Arroyo during her first and second years. Also she had signeda number of presidential proclamations making government lands available forsocialized housing sites for the poor, while president Aquino has not issuedany proclamations. On December 10, 2002, President GMA issued Executive OrderNo. 152 demanding government agencies secure certificates of compliance beforeimplementing demolitions. This helped lessen the number of evictions for atime, but they still increased towards the end of her term.

AliciaMurphy, Field Director of UPA said, “President Benigno Aquino’s record onevictions, including illegal and violent evictions is, sad to say, not betterthan that of former Presidents. He must take action as promised in the Covenantof the Urban Poor.”

“Weare thankful to the formation of the Technical Working Group under SecretaryJesse Robredo and its efforts to relocate poor families on-site or in-city.There have been many obstacles and delays. TWG is controversial, as are mostimportant new works,” Murphy added.

Inparting, Murphy said, “Families living in Estero De San Miguel, Manila, havehigh hopes that on-site housing will be implemented in their area. Thepresident on December 21 mentioned that groundbreaking would soon be done there.We will hold on to his promises.”

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Front Row: Takipsilim at Bukang Liwayway

2012-02-06T02:00:00.000-08:00

This is a story about the Manila bay and the people living along it. Residents of Isla Puting Bato was featured cleaning a portion of Manila bay.

2012-01-31T01:49:00.000-08:00

Women Leaders' Bangkok Presentation

Death—one or one thousand

2012-01-30T20:12:00.000-08:00

Commentary
By: Denis Murphy
12:56 am | Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Last week I went to the wake of a young man and later to Cagayan de Oro where 1,000 people are dead. There are bitter lessons in both tragedies. However, whether it is one or a thousand, death is more sorrowful among the poor.

Can the loss of an only son, for example, be felt more deeply in a poor home than in the home of wealthy family? It seems it can. A poor woman who lost her only son, a boy of 15 after a severe asthmatic attack, asked God, “Was I not a good mother and so you took away my only son?” This near pagan cry of pain will be heard in urban poor areas, among sugar worker families and among tribal people, but probably not in Forbes Park. There, people will have been fortunate enough to go to Catholic schools and understand that God doesn’t punish children for the sins of the parents. This is clear in Scripture from the time of the Prophet Ezekiel.

The poor lack money and decent houses and many lack knowledge of the Lord’s ineffable love and mercy. The poor can be poor in ways we rarely consider. I don’t mean to say there are better Christians in Forbes Park, only better informed Christians.

We went to Kasiglahan Village I, a relocation site for families removed from the Pasig River in 2000, to condole with Vangie Pangilinan who lost her only son. The families there live in long rows of sturdy one-story houses that seem ready made for the wakes of the poor. Simply push all the furniture toward the rear of the house, put up the white divider the funeral parlor provides and arrange the coffin and candles.

There is a picture of the boy over the coffin. He is a good-looking young man with the smokey eyes often seen in actors and singers.

“What will you do now, Vangie?” a friend asks. She laughs sadly. “I will go to more meetings.”

She has been a dynamic leader of the people for 12 years or more. In fact, she is one of the 10 most effective and brave leaders of the urban poor in all of Metro Manila. Whatever the people of Kasiglahan have by way of schools and water and other services are due to the hard work of Vangie and the other members of the people’s organization. It is rueful humor that makes believe meetings will take the place of her son.

There is little anyone can do for Vangie, so the women of the relocation area and the women with me don’t try. They simply sit with her and let her talk. We are all too dependent on those we love.

A few days later my wife, Alice, and I were in Cagayan de Oro in meetings at the archbishop’s house among government, Church and civilian agencies. More than 1,000 people are dead, Archbishop Antonio Ledesma told us. At least 8,000 families are homeless. Everything seems to be in competent hands, everything from easing the trauma in children caused by the horrible experience they had in the dark, rushing waters of the river to finding 80 hectares of land for relocation and the funds for housing.

It is the poor in their shanties who have suffered the most. They are the families in the many emergency relocation centers and they are the ones who will be relocated far from their work. The rich have resources they can fall back on. They have relatives who will take them into their homes.

There has been a remarkable surge of generosity from the people of the city and people from all islands of the country and nearly every country in the world. It is heartwarming, but the somber thought soon occurs that this money and land that are offered could have been made available a year ago, long before the December floods. The problems of people living in other flood-prone areas could also be well on the way to solution by now. The resources exist. A good beginning to such a program might be a call from our bishops and other religious leaders to the persons who own the land or control its use to make it available now, so we can avert the death of thousands and the homelessness of thousands of others. If we begin now, we can look into alternative suggestions. Maybe it’s possible to rebuild homes in the flood-prone areas in flood-proof ways, for example.

From a bridge just outside the city we could see upstream on the Cagayan de Oro River to where there had once been a village at a bend in the river. The storm waters that night had rushed around the bend and, mounting the bank of the river, had swept the village away in a matter of seconds, like a man brushes dishes and food off a table with one angry sweep of his arm.

We went with Archbishop Ledesma to look at possible sites for a relocation project to be organized and funded by the Church. High up in Lumbia, we looked at land on a hillside overlooking endless hills and valleys. The breeze blew soft and warm across our faces. We had to listen deeply for any sound. Finally we heard the hum of the far-off city. We had the smell of planted fields, wild flowers and weeds. I hope the children who live on that spot someday will breathe the same air and silences.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates.

Grace and courage

2012-01-03T19:40:00.000-08:00

Commentary
By: Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Ernest Hemingway took his life 50 years ago in 1961. “The Old Man and the Sea” (1952) was the last of his great works. He lived another nine years, but his creative gifts seem to have left him, and that in some way probably led to his suicide.

“The Old Man and the Sea” is a rare story for Hemingway in that the hero is a poor man, a subsistence fisherman. He usually wrote about more glamorous figures—warriors, bull fighters, white hunters and sophisticated men and women of the Paris night. Hemingway didn’t focus on the poverty of his fisherman, however, but on the same virtues he found in all his heroes, namely, courage, competence, resolve, and as he put it, the ability to show “grace under pressure.” When we talk about poor people, we often get trapped in statistics and the overt misery of their lives, and fail to notice the great virtues that they have.

At Christmas we are helped to appreciate the virtues of the poor when we see in the Belen how God chose the way of poverty to save the world. The world is saved through the virtues of the poor.

Hemingway’s fisherman, Santiago, hadn’t caught a fish in several months. He wondered if he would survive much longer and if he would ever regain the respect of the younger fishermen who had began to treat him as a joke. He vowed to catch a great fish and one night went out in his small skiff the size of the bancas Filipino fishermen use. Out on the high sea, farther out than he had ever been, with only a small lamp for company, he caught a truly mighty fish, an 18-foot marlin. After a long battle, Santiago killed the marlin and tied it to the side of his boat since it was too big to bring aboard.

Soon the sharks came. Santiago managed to kill five, but still they came. To kill five sharks from a banca type boat, Santiago had to be leaning out just over the thrusting jaws of the sharks; he was practically in the water with them. The sharks ripped away chunks of the marlin’s flesh. The small boat rocked with the force of the attacks.

Santiago headed for home, but the sharks followed. Day and night they ravaged the marlin until there was nothing left but the skeleton. Still, Santiago didn’t cut it loose. At least he could show the other fishermen he remained a great fisherman. When he arrived at his beach, he left his boat and the marlin’s skeleton on the shore for everyone to see and staggered off to his hut.

Such courage and determination have many other faces. Take, for example, the poor men and women of Tondo, where even everyday tasks require courage.

It must take great courage, for example, for the mothers in the urban poor areas just to get up in the mornings, and face the daily round of children crying for lack of food, irritable husbands, the deafening noise of the slum, and the bad smell, violence within and without the homes, and the absence of any sign that matters will get better. They do this day after day and still manage to show a great love for their children and a care for their neighbors. This combination of courage and love can stand as a definition of grace under pressure.

Sometimes poor women, in order to have the city remove garbage piles, or supply water, have to march to City Hall to see the mayor, though they fear they will be embarrassed and that people there will laugh at them. It takes courage for them to start out on that march. In these simple actions of the poor are found the basic building blocks of our democracy.

Another form of bravery is exhibited by poor men making charcoal in the Ulingan dump area of Tondo. All day the men stand over their smoking pugons stoking fires and adding driftwood to feed the flames. The noxious smoke blows up into their faces. People nearby can hear the coughing; it comes with a harsh roar from deep in their chests. Sometimes the men stumble away from their position by the pugon to take a breath of fresh air. The coughing doubles then over in pain, yet they go back and take their places once again at the uling smoke, as soldiers take their place in the firing line, or bull fighters take their stand before the charging bull. They earn P200 a day, just enough to keep their families alive and together.

There are plans to replace the old-style pugon with a smokeless pugon with help from the Archdiocese of Manila and general manager of the National Housing Authority, Chito Cruz. Until this happens the ulingan men are sacrificing their health for their families. I think Hemingway would appreciate this courage, and the fact that they don’t think they are doing anything special.

Heroic actions surely took place among the poor the night of the recent floods in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan. We will never know all the details. The poor give their lives easily for their loved ones.Happy New Year to all, young and old, rich and poor, saints and sinners.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates.

Our Old People

2011-11-22T19:32:00.001-08:00

Commentary

By: Denis Murphy

We see the signs of poverty everywhere in Manila, especially when it is nighttime and raining. There are the little girls selling sampaguita flowers in the traffic. In the rain, their faces float up to the windows of our cars as mermaids did long ago bewitching old sailors. (Are the little girls safe from predators?) Five or six-year old boys hang on to the back of racing jeepneys, so they can beg from passengers when the jeepneys stop. There are 12- and 13-year-old prostitutes in the North Harbor area of Tondo waiting for customers each night. We see whole families pushing karitons of junk or camping out along the side of roads at night, with just a small fire to cook their rice. Stone Age people may have had more of this world’s goods than our scavengers.

The saddest sights of all, however, are the old people begging in the traffic. At the car window is an old woman’s arthritic hand asking for help. Despite her problems her face is warm and maternal. She should be in a dry and comfortable home taking care of babies and telling stories. It’s sad that a government must prioritize either its children or its aged and doesn’t have enough funds to do both.

The above images are just snapshots of poverty, while the Coalition of Services of the Elderly, an NGO, has made a survey of the elderly poor conducted by the elderly poor themselves that shows the very wide extent of poverty among our elderly people.

It wasn’t intended to be a scientific, academic study, but it offers scale—about 4,000 elderly poor people in Metro Manila were interviewed—and it guarantees that the elderly speak their minds since they are talking to their friends and neighbors. The number of responses to each question varies. There may be three slightly different responses to a question that are basically the same answer.

The survey was intended to investigate the situation of the “poorest of the elderly poor,” a phrase used in the law granting the elderly a monthly pension. It is estimated that there are 900,000 to 1,000,000 “poorest of the elderly poor” nationwide. If the elderly poor throughout the country have the same problems as those in Metro Manila, we have a very sad human situation. Will our old poor people live out their lives in poverty?

Food. Some 90 percent or 1,863 of the 2,000 elderly who answered this question said they got their food from their families, but it was never enough. Another 10 percent said they must beg each day for food, or they got their food daily from garbage cans.

There are thousands of elderly people in the country eating out of garbage cans. We might wonder how 60 members of Congress from such a poor country can attend a fight in Las Vegas.

Health. A plurality of answers (1,362 persons) said they had checkups, but could not afford the medicines prescribed; 728 said they were sick, but could not afford the medicines they think they needed for their sickness; 428 others said they were sick, but could not do anything about it.

They are all saying the same thing: they cannot afford the medicines they need.

Support. Some 1,153 elderly people answered that they had no pension; 950 said they had no means of support; 115 said they were dependent on others, or they had to beg and scavenge each day to survive.

This last group included people in their 70s and 80s. The majority (1,643) lived with their families, but they said this is not adequate; 40 said they lived alone. In addition, 94 said they had been abused by their families and 70 said they had been abandoned by their families.

It is clear that big majorities of our poor elderly persons in Metro Manila eat poorly, cannot afford the medicines they need, lack cash in any form, and are not happy with their living quarters.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His e-mail address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

‘Occupy Wall Street’

2011-11-08T22:06:00.000-08:00

Commentary
By: Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

My sister and I went to Wall Street toward the end of September on an overcast day that threatened rain. I wanted to show her the building where I worked for a summer after my freshman year of high school. When we arrived at the head of that narrow street, where the sun seldom shines because it is very narrow and bordered by skyscrapers, we noticed that the police had prepared for a protest march. They had divided the street into squares with portable metal fences resembling the cattle pens seen in the old Westerns, the wooden corrals where cowboys left their steers after the long drives across the plains.

Steam poured from a consolidated Edison street pipe and drifted in front of the New York Stock Exchange, lending it a sinister appearance. A white police van stood at the intersection of Nassau and Wall Streets to carry off any protesters that might be arrested. There were about 200 gloomy, bored policemen standing around. A big man in a plaid shirt and jeans preached about the need of showing kindness to one another. No one listened to him, except my sister and me. Afterwards he came over and shook hands and wished us a good day.

Then, all at once, the rain and the protesters arrived. Between 200 and 300 people marched along the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. Almost as many policemen and policewomen walked with them. They went a few blocks toward the East River and then came back along the sidewalk where we stood. They had drums and shouted slogans, but it was hard to make much noise in such a cavernous and disinterested place. The marchers were mostly young, white males and they looked somewhat scruffy, I thought. They looked, to be honest, like the unemployed young men you might see playing basketball in the parks on weekday afternoons, while most of the city was at work. This was our first glimpse of the Occupy Wall Street group. It was one of their first marches.

The slogans they had on their banners and those they shouted were simplistic: “Close all the Banks,” “The Banks are Paid to Steal Your Money,” “Join us,” “Occupy Wall Street for a Day, for a Week,” “Wake Up.” The police led them back toward Broadway and Trinity Church and then they were gone. Wall Street went about its business as usual.

The next day the New York Times reported that the Dow Jones and Standard and Poor indices showed gains.

A month later the “Occupy Wall Street” group had mushroomed into a worldwide phenomenon. On Oct. 15 I went with my wife Alicia to the park where the protesters stay which is adjacent to Ground Zero. The new memorial building towers over the park which is about the size of a football field. It was packed with 2,000 to 3,000 men and women, young and old, rich and poor, Afro-Americans, Hispanics, Caucasians and others and college and non-college educated people. Another Occupy Wall Street group was protesting in Times Square. The policemen were no longer bored. There were similar protests in 70 American cities, Asia, Europe and Australia.

We met a Hispanic woman who described herself as an “ordinary worker,” who told us she came to the park every day to watch over her 17-year-old daughter who spent day and night at the park when she wasn’t in school. The message of the Occupy Wall Street people was abstract, she said, about banks and mortgages, but it was repeated in anger and that helped her to understand she was being cheated. “We are being treated unfairly. The poor get poorer, the rich get richer. We need to come together to have a voice in how decisions are made.” A recent poll shows 67 percent of Americans agree with her.

The Occupy Wall Street people are able to focus people’s attention on issues that transcend race, class and education. In this case it is the wrongdoing of the finance industry which affects nearly America’s poor or middle class. Secondly, there is a great deal of basic political and economic education in the meetings and actions of the movement. People meet people of other backgrounds; they talk and come to appreciate one another’s problems. They hear different solutions and are free to agree or disagree.

The mood in the park on Oct. 15 was upbeat. People debated, sang and danced. Some walked around holding signs. The group seemed open to many solutions, including credit unions, that old staple of Church social action in the Philippines. We heard people debate the pros and cons of climate change, the relationship between unions and capitalism, and the usefulness of Che Guevarra for the Occupy Wall Street group.

Young Afro-Americans were often the voice of moderation in these discussions. One of them, for example, told the Guevarra admirer, “We will deal with our problems with the people we have here and now and with the institutions we have. We don’t need Che.” We didn’t hear anyone talk about changing the system, but of making it work for the good of all.

We found the building where I had worked years ago. There is still no marker recalling my summer there. I operated a ditto machine which was the size and shape of the bulky body scan machines used in our hospitals. Now the same work is done by personal copiers the size of a shoe.

Whether Occupy Wall Street is needed or not in the Philippines remains to be seen. We surely need its ability to bring the very poor workers and better-off middle class people together. We can also use its great emphasis on education.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

Choosing someone for canonization

2011-09-21T20:11:00.000-07:00

CommentaryBy: Denis MurphyPhilippine Daily Inquirer9:03 pm | Tuesday, September 20th, 2011Most often we don’t know why the Church chooses one holy person for canonization and not another. We don’t know why Pope John Paul II was beatified and not Pope John XXIII whom all the world loved or the wise and humble Paul VI. Most people would probably say anyone of the three could have been chosen. Choices are made for strategic and political (Church politics) reasons, in addition to heroic personal sanctity. There are many people today living truly saintly lives, but only a handful from each generation are set on the road to sainthood.To be canonized a person must have personal sanctity and fit in with the Church’s strategies and priorities for evangelization. The person must be seen as relevant to the problems of the people of the day.To appreciate how this process works let us attempt to choose someone for canonization. But first, it should be clear we are not talking about a person’s face-to-face relationship with God. This relationship at its highest is described in Deuteronomy as being God’s “intimate friend.” We are talking, instead, about the person’s public work in our society. We are talking of a lay person, because for the Church this is the age of the laity. This current policy is due not only to the dwindling numbers of priests, but to the demands of the age that were apparent even before the great outflow of priests in the 1960s-1980s.Our candidate will be a man, not a woman. I apologize to our women, but they are still problematic for many Churchmen. The man chosen will symbolize the laity’s mission to transform the world. He will show in his life how lay people can, in the eyes of the Church, transform the world’s politics, economics, science, practice of justice, educational systems and the other institutions that govern us. The person is not under the authority of the Church, but he recognizes the need for the help of the historical wisdom of the Church to enrich and purify the institutions of the world. He is open to the Gospel, especially to its concerns for the poor, women and the downtrodden. He will not be seen as someone worried about internal Church matters, but rather one who is totally concerned with the transformation of society.Where in Philippine society is such a man? If pushed to respond many might point to Nandy Pacheco. Remember we are not choosing here the man we think is best suited for sainthood, but rather the one we think the Church might choose as an example of the lay people it seeks for its work in the world. The Church might select Nandy because of his work on the Gunless Society and Ang Kapatiran Political Party.The Social Teaching of the Church is the foundation of Ang Kapatiran’s platform. The party was publicly supported by some bishops, though Nandy was disappointed that more bishops didn’t do so. The party didn’t do well in the last presidential election, but Nandy is not giving up. The Church doesn’t necessarily look for winners in society. It has in fact a fondness for losers.Ang Kapatiran’s relatively poor showing in the election may reflect the Church’s loss of esteem among ordinary people in recent years due to its perceived over-closeness to former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the sex scandals around the world and the Church’s absence from the main justice struggles. It hasn’t been seen lately as a crusading force in society. Individual bishops and dioceses have been so seen, but not most. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword: those lay people who have success in their reform role in the world because of the esteem the ordinary people have for the Church may suffer if that support weakens.Lay people will have to learn to live and work with a Church that is increasingly cautious, and less in tune with the younger generation. The lay people may be seen in the role of grown children looking after their elderly parents. They will need patience and understanding in that role.Nandy has not stopped because of setbacks. Neither has his Ang Kapatiran Party. He has, however, shown an inclination to put his efforts into a radical conversion of the human heart, since that is required before people can accept the reforms that are demanded in politics and other arenas of secular life.Nandy is now organizing a movement that, he hopes, will change the hearts of Filipinos and enable them to accept the needed changes in the country’s socio-economic and political structures. This movement urges people to accept Jesus’ peace.This is the peace Jesus entrusted to his Apostles on the evening of his Resurrection. “Peace be with you,” Jesus said twice to them (John 20:19-23). These words were the polite greeting Jewish people offered one another in older days, but his use of the phrase carried much more than a simple greeting. In it Jesus conveyed to the Apostles all the blessings of His Kingdom—all the wisdom, humor, courage, perseverance and simple kindness they would need in spreading His message throughout the world. This peace is ours, Nandy points out, if we accept it wholeheartedly. We should “accept” this peace of Jesus rather than “seek it,” since Jesus has already offered it to us in the Gospel.Knowing Nandy, I think he might prefer a big victory for his party at the polls to canonization.Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

UPA Study Says Evictions Lessen

2011-09-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

News ReleaseSeptember 12, 2011In the first eight months of 2011 the number of urban poor families who experienced eviction lessened somewhat, according to a study of Urban Poor Associates’ (UPA). From January to August 2010, 8201 families were evicted in 29 demolition incidents. In the same period for this year, 7060 families in 14 demolition incidents lost their homes. Eight of this year’s evictions were on government lands, three were privately owned while the others were on lots along esteros.All 14 of the 2011 eviction incidents were considered illegal because they did not meet the legal requirements for evictions of the Urban Development and Housing Act. Evictions in San Juan, Navotas, Makati and Pasig turned violent. The number of cases in 2011 went down to 14, compared to 29 demolition incidents in 2010, but larger urban poor areas were demolished.UPA pointed out that if we compared President Noy-Noy Aquino’s first complete year in office, June 2010- June 2011, we find he had many more evictions than former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had on average per year in her term.These eviction episodes are considered high because President Aquino signed a covenant with the urban poor during the election campaign at Del Pan Sports Complex, Tondo, Manila, March 6. The Covenant promised an end to illegal forced evictions and showed a bias for in-city relocation. Such in city-relocations have not been implemented yet. Instead demolitions have been increasing. The government’s reasons for demolitions were the cleaning of esteros and expansion of government facilities.Fire From January to May 2011, a total of 12 fires broke out in urban poor areas which affected 9,849 families. Three out of twelve fires were believed by the people to have been done intentionally to force them out of places where they have lived for more than 15 years. They thought the government used fire because it is the easiest way to remove people. The majority of families who lost their homes were not allowed to return.Most of the fire sites were privately owned. Five of the communities were on government land. A total of 6,114 families or 62 percent of the total number of affected families were not allowed to return to their homes while communities in Satima, Las pinas, Brgy. Culiat, Quezon City and Malabon City are now negotiating with the private owners to purchase the land they lived on before the fires through the Community Mortgage Program (CMP).Navotas, Quezon City and Makati declared fire areas as danger zones. This prevents the people from going back to the fire site. Navotas passed a Resolution No.2011-36 on March 4, 2011 that the area in that city is a danger zone. Quezon City declared an area a danger zone because of “congestion and condition of structures.” The Makati government can pronounce an area a danger zone if the area has a minimum of five fires blaze. The areas were cleared of all residents.These moves of the City governments were strongly opposed by the fire victims. In Laperal Compound, Makati, the clearing operation turned violent. Molotov bombs and rocks were thrown by residents at Task Force Laperal. Makati was criticized by residents for enforcing a demolition though the lot is privately owned and there had been no court order. A child died in the staging area because of pneumonia. Only 25% of the 2700 families who lost their homes were relocated to Montalban.Families in Navotas and Quezon City also resisted clearing operations. Most of them chose to stay in their original places than be relocated far from their jobs. Government InterventionSecretary of Interior and Local Government Jesse Robredo put holds on demolitions in San Juan and Makati, which were not respected.UPA Spiritual Director Fr. Robert Reyes said, “The president should do more to stop illegal evictions or else eviction will continue to rise.”Data gathered by UPA shows that there are 300,000 families still threatened with eviction in Metro Manila and the surrounding area. “The government must find win-win solutions that will uphold the interest and rights of the poor and allow the necessary infrastructure of the city to be built,” Fr. Reyes concluded. -30-

‘All are responsible’

2011-09-06T01:38:00.000-07:00

CommentaryBy: Denis Murphy3:12 am | Tuesday, September 6th, 2011For decades our social research has dealt predominantly with poor people, namely, farmers, urban poor, tribal people, street children and others. We sought to know why they failed to progress more rapidly in society. We have learned many lessons no doubt, of which the most important is that in order to have a more equal sharing of wealth and a decent life for all, we must allow for poor people’s participation in the decision-making that affects their lives. Programs were started based on this insight and had some success, but there have been few substantial changes in income distribution and equality.We know more about the urban poor now than we did 40 years ago when systematic organizing of poor people began in Tondo. We know more, but the people there now have the same problems as people had back then. They still need decent jobs and housing. We have come to realize more clearly that lack of progress by the poor is not primarily their fault, but rather it is because their efforts to shape their future run smack into the interests of the rich and powerful. The fault is not in the poor, but in the elite, that they are underlings, if we may be allowed to mangle a line of Shakespeare.Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel said when asked who was responsible for the Holocaust: “A few are guilty; all are responsible.” Do the rich see themselves simply responsible as others in the country or do they see themselves as guilty?We know how much poor families spend for recreation, including beer and cigarettes—only about P400-P500 per month—but we have no idea how much a rich family spends on its recreation. We know from research a great deal about poor people’s hopes, fears and goals in life, but almost nothing about those of rich people. As a result we are far from understanding our society. If Bill Clinton were a sociologist working here in Metro Manila, he’d be repealing in that inelegant way he has, “It’s the elite, stupid!”Before interviewers flood the rich subdivisions, I want to ask some general questions that have been with me for years. First, I would like to know how our well-off people react when they see old women begging or small girls tapping on their car windows to sell sampaguita flowers late at night. I am sure they feel the compassion all humans feel at such sights, but do they feel responsible as rich and influential persons for what is wrong in the society that they and their co-wealthy peers control? Do they feel responsible when they read that among Southeast Asian countries the greatest income inequality is in the Philippines? (Stratbase, Inquirer, July 22)Another question concerns our very slow rate of economic growth as a nation. Why has economic growth trailed far behind that of Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore? Corruption is not the answer. Corruption exists everywhere, but other elites have been able to manage their countries’ economic affairs far better than ours. We would like, therefore, to ask the elite why this is so. Other elites may take care of themselves in shady ways, but they still find ways to benefit all the people of their countries. Why can’t our elite do the same?I’m sure many people would like to know how it is that a Christian country is the most unjust among Southeast Asian countries, judged by its very poor distribution of wealth. Is Catholicism a less powerful influence to acting justly and caring for one another than Buddhism, Islam, or even Marxist ideology? Catholicism has the most carefully worked out social teaching among all the religions, yet it seems less effective in moving the rich and powerful to act justly. A country where 80 percent of the population is Catholic should be doing better in matters of social justice.The word “elite” is an abstraction. Do our powerful people see themselves as an elite, that is, as a governing group or class, or do they see themselves simply as fragmented and competing rich families? Are these families opponents in day to day matters, but able to come together in times of crises to protect their common interests? Is there hope that they will see that inequality of income can lead to political instability? Maybe research among the very rich will provide answers. Let’s hope so.Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

Do we have to learn to live with slums?

2011-08-24T02:44:00.000-07:00

Do we have to learn to live with slums? Watch Paul Mason's film from the Philippines in full
Manila, Philippines: The rich elite in cities across the world want to clear the slums which are now home to a billion people. But many of those who live in shanty towns like that which lines the banks of the San Miguel canal, do not want to leave. Why?

I had come to the Philippines to explore a theory but, as always, reality got in the way.

I was standing on the bridge over the Estero de San Miguel, a slum in the capital Manila.

My host was architect Felino Palafox and he had spread his blueprints across the parapet of the bridge and we were poring over them, with some street kids clambering around us. Palafox was making a big splash with the locals his Star Trek-style traditional Philippines shirt.

Find out more

Slums 101 will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 16 August 2011 at 20:00 BST
You can watch Paul's film for Newsnight in full on BBC Two that evening at 22:30 BST
More about Slums 101
More from Newsnight
The sweep of the slum was pretty horrible - a curve of water, shacks on both sides, multicoloured plastic rubbish inches deep in the water, and now and then the sound of something hitting the water as somebody used the "wrap and throw" method of sewage disposal into the Estero itself.

I needed the bathroom myself, so somebody guided me into a shop - a kiosk really - on the bridge. I clambered down a ladder and then, suddenly, I was in a place whose existence had not really occurred to me. Because if the slum is built right up to the waterway, on stilts, how do you get through it?

The answer was a tunnel. Four feet (1.2m) wide, about 5ft 7in (170cm) high (I learned this painfully as I am 5ft 7.5in (171.4cm)) and 600m (1968ft) long.

Twelve hundred families live off that tunnel - about 6,000 people. Such is the population density that I realised immediately what the women cradling their kids and swaying absentmindedly in the half light were doing - the same as me, waiting for the toilet.

Lack of hope
When I came out I was, as Dennis Murphy said to me afterwards, "stoked". Dennis is an ex-Jesuit priest who runs an NGO in Estero de San Miguel that has helped the slum-dwellers organise themselves.

"You were hyper, manic," he told me later.

That was because whenever you enter a slum your spirits do not so much droop as plummet. A fall, with a long "aargh" such as that emitted by the Wily Coyote when The Road Runner gets him to go over a cliff.

The Balderas family live in a single 8ft square room
You suddenly become aware physically - even though you have seen this stuff many times before - of that thing no modern human being wants, limitation, boundedness, a lack of hope.

After two minutes down the tunnel I stormed up the ladder and told my crew to stop filming Palafox. Nice though his scheme development plan was, it was on paper. Down in the tunnel was a reality that, despite being in Manila's slums for days, we had not properly seen.

Mena Cinco, the barangay captain - a kind of local councillor with the authority of a tribal chieftain - led me down again.

We met Rotsi and her family - mum, dad "a driver for a Chinese family", an unspecified family guest, a daughter doing her homework and a toddler. Five people in one-and-a-half rooms.

"We've been here 20 years," Rotsi told me.

Population explosion
Next door Oliver Balderas was snoozing with his kids, who were eating ice cream. There was a cartoon on the television and mum was also having a nap - it was about 32C and heavy with humidity.

Click to play

Why Philippines slum clearance is creating new problems
They came to the door. Mr Balderas is a construction worker earning about $3.50 (£2.13) a day. The family moved to Estero de San Miguel from a conflict area 10 years ago.

The room - about 8ft (2.4m) square, and like all of the Estero, built of wood and floored with lino - is their entire dwelling space.

Manila is undergoing a population explosion. Of the around 60 people-an-hour estimated to be arriving here, about half are coming as migrants from the collapsing agriculture sector, and half are born here - so there are kids everywhere.

These kids sing a song about the inevitability of poverty and their determination to overcome it.

Total rethink
With the sky glowering when I got out of the tunnel, I was no longer in any mood to go on giving the theory the benefit of the doubt.

My instant reaction was this: "There's a theory that says basically slums are here to stay, that they're cohesive, sustainable - green even.

"I can see the social cohesion bit, but as for green, well, (my nostrils flare at the river smell).

"And I can't help thinking the whole theory is a bit of a cop out because why - when in the 19th Century they cleared out places like this in one generation do we, in an era of globalisation, tolerate them?"

Mena Cinco is one of the slums' official leaders
If I came out of the Estero de San Miguel "stoked", it was because it challenged my trendy notions, learned from the 2003 UN Habitat report and interviews with various experts, and re-awakened the inner Edwardian-era social reform nostrums my grandparents taught me about slums, which is that they have to be cleared.

But then I went back into the San Miguel by night, with Mena still trying to educate me about the social cohesion, and I was forced to rethink it all again.

I met business graduates, found an internet cafe, met the volunteer police force and got offered the chance to eat a boiled egg with a chicken embryo. I said I would rather jump in the canal naked, and the local women invite me to do just that.

Then, over a beer with ex-Father Dennis, discussing our mutual experiences with the Salesians and the Jesuits, I discovered what one billion people on the planet have discovered - slums are not so bad.

They have changed from the Dickensian hell holes of our imagination. Through education and communications technology people are making life bearable for themselves - and of course providing the modern mega-city with an indispensable workforce of cheap labour.

The result is we have to confront a question that would have appalled the 19th Century pioneers of city design - do we have to live with slums forever?

I do not know the answer to that question - but I now understand the question.

Somewhere between the theories of the architects and NGOs and the rigid clearance doctrines of Prada-clad Filipino millionaires, and the night on the streets with the local cops and the day in the countryside with people whose main ambition in life is to live in a Manila slum… I have gone beyond the theory and experienced the reality.

Join Paul Mason on Tuesday 16 August at 20:00 BST on BBC Radio Four, on Newsnight at 22:30BST on BBC Two, and on BBC World TV's Our World slot on 26/27 August, and on the BBC World Service's One Planet on 19 and 26 August to experience it for yourself.

And for more background read Paul's New Statesman article here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-14544034

Want to know what to do about slum dwellers? Try listening to them

2011-08-24T02:38:00.000-07:00

Poverty Matters Blog
Guardian.co.uk
The Filipino government wants to move half a million Manila slum dwellers back to the countryside. Yet they left for a reason

The Filipino government claims it would cost about a third of the national budget to rehouse Manila's slum dwellers. Photograph: Jay Directo/AFP/Getty Images
If you have access to BBC output, I strongly recommend a programme and article about slums, aired on radio and television last week. You will be taken on a tour of a slum in Manila, learn about some of the people who live there, and hear what experts think about the future of slums.

Slums are without doubt a huge development issue. According to the programme, as many as a billion people live in them today, a number set to double by 2050. Manila is growing by 60 people an hour, making it the fastest growing city on the planet. In comparison, Indian cities are growing by about 40 people an hour, while London's rate is seven people an hour.

Anyone who has worked with people living in slums will recognise the vivacity and can-do attitude that pervades the programme (which is not to romanticise very difficult, dirty and often violent conditions).

Their programme offered many lessons, but I particularly heeded the one my colleague Claire Melamed constantly highlights – the importance of listening to poor people about what they want. It is unusual to get such a long look at the lives of slum dwellers from their own perspective.

The main issue is the insecurity of land – they have no right to be where they are. The Filipino government wants to move half a million slum dwellers back to the countryside.

But there are good reasons people have left the land they have lived on for generations to seek a better life in precarious wooden shacks next to rubbish tips. A combination of conflict, climate change (slum dwellers claim there are more typhoons and floods in rural areas) and chronic poverty makes life in the countryside unbearable. There are no jobs. Meanwhile, in the slum, we hear of people graduating from university and seeing real prospects for the next generation.

The only sustainable way to repopulate the countryside is to provide opportunities there. In the programme, we hear of guards being placed around evicted slums to prevent previous occupants returning. Rather than move people on, the slums can be slowly formalised, with public goods provided. This has happened in many cities. In others, the slums were just demolished.

There are always reasons to move people off their land, and usually "development", that most treacherous of terms, is one of them. But there is a rule I apply to these kinds of actions: if the solution prescribed by a politician or "philanthropist" also happens to be in their own private interest, be sceptical. (Which does not mean some solutions are not win-win, especially in the long term.)

Housing aside, it is the intangibles associated with a life built up over decades that are lost when people leave their land, whether in cities or countryside. Remove them to another part of the country and they are dependent on others, with no political voice or organisation.

The Filipino government estimates the cost of rehousing slum dwellers in Manila at about a third of the national budget; it is cheaper to ship them off to the countryside. This coming from a government that, the UNDP suggested in 2007, loses $2 billion of its budget to corruption annually. Those creaming off this money are the same hypocrites claiming it is too expensive to house poor people better.

Slum dwellers are organising themselves to defend against government aggression and what they believe is the threat of arson. "We will barricade, we will fight for our freedom and security of tenures," says one community leader.

Their fight has strong precedents. All over the world, as urbanisation has gathered pace, country people have arrived in cities. They have set up their shacks (black plastic bags strung up on sticks) and slowly converted them into more acceptable living quarters, buying a few bricks every month, volunteering at the school, pressuring the local council to provide running water. With the international media spotlight on them, they have a greater chance of success. Governments can get away with less than they used to now.

It is a hopeful story, but one curious aspect of humanity seems to be its ability to pull together in a crisis, only to fall apart when things become more comfortable. I remember a visit I made to families in the south of Bogota who had lived through the process of urbanisation. They looked back on that period of coping and difficulty with nostalgia. That was when there was a community, they said – not like now. Today, all the kids are out for themselves and drugs have become a problem. It was the struggle for better living conditions that brought them together.

Paul Mason, the reporter on the BBC programme, ended on a more optimistic note. Citing British slum history as a precedent, he suggested that the generation of kids sloshing around the wet slum may one day take what they have learned about organisation and cohesion into the wider world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/aug/23/what-to-do-about-slum-dwellers

A trip to Cavite

2011-08-22T22:22:00.000-07:00

Commentary
By: Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

We left Project 4, Quezon City, very early that Sunday morning to attend a funeral in Cavite. We saw many impressive infrastructure projects along the way, but they left us wondering about their long-range usefulness and their skewed sense of the common good.

We were on Edsa just before dawn when the flyovers, elevated railroad and underpasses began emerging from the night. They were more impressive than ever as they loomed up. It was easy to be awed by their size and the great engineering skill it took to weave railroad, flyovers and tunnels into smooth working harmonies.

The trouble is, however, that such infrastructure doesn’t work. It will never end our traffic problems, because there are simply too many vehicles and not enough road space. We will continue to use our money unwisely unless we find a way to limit the number of cars.

We drove to the end of Edsa and on to the reclaimed land area off Pasay and Parañaque. Turning left to Macapagal Boulevard (which already has potholes that can injure a car’s chassis), we headed south.
The sheer size of the reclaimed area is breathtaking when compared with the size of our urban poor homes. In one survey done of 800 families in Parola, Manila, we found the average floor area for a family was 13 sq m, but many families had only 8 sq m. Here the idle reclaimed land stretches away as far as the eye can see.

The buildings now standing include the Mall of Asia and clusters of condos. There is a Catholic church and a mosque with poor families camped around it. The newspapers report that hundreds of hectares of this land will be given to gambling casinos and support services. Society must ask: Are Pagcor’s gambling casinos, and more malls and condos the best use our society can find for one of Metro Manila’s last truly large and empty areas? What of the poor? Is there no place for them on this reclaimed land? It would seem so. Government has tried to remove the only poor people on the land at present, the Muslim families around the mosque.

Why can’t some hectares be devoted to fields where poor children can run and play on grass, something most poor children have never experienced? Can 10 percent of the idle land be given to housing the poor? People should ask if gambling casinos are a good way to lessen corruption. They would seem to guarantee that corruption increases in society.

We drove on to the Coastal Road and eventually came to the latest section of the road that is built over water. It is over the water because fishermen and their wives with the help of Urban Poor Associates protested to the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank that the road they were then planning would run straight through the fishing villages. The IFC agreed.
The resulting road is first class. There is a beautiful view of Manila Bay, but there is no place for people to walk, jog or ride a bike alongside the road. Why not? Would it have cost so much more to give the people a chance to feel the breezes, see the lovely sunsets, breathe the fresh air?

When we looked to the left from the road some 100 or so meters to the shoreline, we saw that the houses of the fishermen were as miserable as ever. To the right we could admire the beauty of the bay, but to our left was the same old squalor of the fishermen and their families. The money to upgrade the homes could have been part of the World Bank-IFC loan.
We drove through Maragondon where Andres Bonifacio was tried and found guilty. On a previous trip to Maragondon and the trial house we heard Prof. Xiao Chua of La Salle University claim that Bonifacio’s critics have turned him into a man of violence with few thoughts for the full development of his people. Not so, Chua said, and he talked of his several writings. Along with land and housing, the poor, it seems, have been stripped of their prophets.

The country has had some sad experiences recently in its infrastructure building efforts in addition to its failure to end traffic problems. There were the North and South Rail projects. Some 90,000 families were evicted and relocated, but nothing has apparently been done in the North, and in the South. Five years after relocation began, there is only a commuter train that runs on the old tracks to Alabang and back. Many, if not most of the public-private partnership projects, submitted now to the government for approval are for infrastructure and will involve evictions and relocation. Such proposals should be closely scrutinized.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

Do we have to learn to live with slums?

2011-08-18T01:45:00.000-07:00

August 18, 2011

Last May, we accompanied BBC in Manila esteros. Here is the 15 minute film aired yesterday. Paul Mason, economics editor of BBC newsnight said, "Without the slum dwellers global mega cities could not function at all."
We are hoping that the government will build on site housing for the estero people using the Palafox housing designs

Pls. Click the Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/9566838.stm

Jesuit superior general in Tondo slum

2011-08-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

Commentary
By: Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

FORTY YEARS ago the late Jesuit Fr. Joe Blanco and I had the honor of taking Fr. Pedro Arrupe, then the Jesuit superior general, to Tondo. We met the Zone One Tondo Organization leaders and Fr. Arrupe and the poor people discussed, among other matters, Marxism, armed struggle and the role of the Church in fighting poverty.

At that time in the Zone One area there were four priests helping the poor to organize their own people’s group. There was also a small convent of the Religious of the Good Shepherd who helped the organizing and took care of most other problems of the people. Now there are no priests or sisters in the urban poor area, except perhaps for Mass on Sundays.

We met Fr. Arrupe at the old Institute of Social Order on Padre Faura. Two Jesuits were sent with him by the Jesuit provincial, who, it seems, didn’t quite trust Fr. Blanco and me. We asked the two to wait at the ISO. Fr. Arrupe was excited as a boy on a picnic. He had been in meetings since he arrived in the country and was happy to be free to move around the city. He even enjoyed our mad dash to Tondo down Roxas Boulevard behind a careening bus that spouted so much foul exhaust it finally disappeared altogether in a black cloud.

Fr. Blanco arranged things in the ZOTO office while I took Fr. Arrupe around the area: Slip Zero, Pier Dos, Isla Puting Bato and Bonifacio Village (now called Parola). Some 30,000 poor families lived in Tondo at that time. I felt I was with a TV superstar, though few people had any idea of who Fr. Arrupe was, or what a Jesuit was for that matter. They saw a jolly man in his 60s, his thinning gray hair flying in the harbor breeze, with one of the most radiant, joyful smile anyone had ever seen. They crowded around, especially the children. He stopped to talk to people and was able to communicate with them in a mixture of Spanish and English. He held on to their hands while he talked to them. He had been a medical student in Madrid before he entered the Jesuits, so he took notice of the malnourished children, stagnant pools of water, the garbage everywhere—all speaking of disease.

He asked them about their incomes and other problems and their hopes in life for their children. He wasn’t shocked by the terrible poverty. Earlier in his life he was one of the first people to go to Hiroshima after the A-bomb attack. He had been stationed outside Hiroshima in the Jesuit novitiate. I thought I saw deep in his eyes traces of the horror he saw that day and the huge act of faith it took to believe God would someday renew this world.

I had some business in a nearby area, so I missed the beginning of the meeting with the ZOTO leaders, Trining Herrera, David Balondo, Pedro Timbolero and others. Fr. Blanco introduced Fr. Arrupe as a close friend of Pope Paul VI. The people met the Pope a year earlier in another part of Tondo. Later whenever the people wrote President Marcos about their problems, they sent the Pope a copy (“Copy furnished the pope,” they wrote at the bottom of their letters). Sometimes when Malacañang responded, they also added “copy furnished to pope.” Somewhere in the Vatican these old letters in Tagalog are filed away. Did anyone ever know what to do with them?

When I arrived in the ZOTO office, I found Fr. Arrupe and the ZOTO people discussing revolution and armed struggle. He wanted to know what ordinary urban poor people thought of these matters. He wanted to know what kind of world the poor people wanted. He gave the people his full attention and told stories of people he had met in other countries, especially in Latin America. The Tondo folk said they were open to armed struggle since nothing else seemed to work. They admired young people who joined the rebels.

When the people asked about Pope Paul, Fr. Arrupe was full of praise for him, though a gap was already opening between Pope Paul and himself (and later between him and Pope John Paul II). Some Vatican officials thought Fr. Arrupe and the Jesuits were going beyond Church orthodoxy in several matters—for example, in their openness to the use of Marxist analysis.

We ate food the people brought from the local turo-turo and then a big crowd walked us out of the area. Fr. Arrupe shook every hand and kissed the children. We took him back to the ISO where the father provincial’s car was waiting.

Fr. Blanco and I arrived late at the airport on the day he left the country. When he saw us, he left the circle of Jesuit superiors and bishops he was with to hurry down to us. He told us to keep doing what we were doing in Tondo.

Fr. Blanco is dead. I am still working in the very same streets I walked with Fr. Arrupe that day. I sometimes think he is walking along with me, with his gracious smile for everyone we meet.

Fr. Arrupe had a stroke in 1981 and resigned as Jesuit superior general. He was able to speak until 1983, but the last eight years of his life were spent in silence.

His name is not mentioned often now. Perhaps 50 years from now, Fr. Arrupe’s memory will be revived and also the spirit of optimism and openness to change of Vatican II. Some consider him the very image of a Vatican II priest. They see in him the essential spirit of Vatican II.

Fr. Arrupe’s visit was in 1971. After that came martial law and 25 years of democratic government.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

Out with the car

2011-06-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

Commentary
By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
June 13, 2011

Older people in Manila can remember the acacia trees that lined Taft Avenue before the cars and elevated train took over. They can remember, if they are somewhat older, the trolleys that ran through Sta. Ana, with bells tinkling gently like those of ice cream vendors. Jesuits, including Bishop Federico Escaler, remember the Pasig River when you could see clear to the sandy bottom and could swim with schools of colored fish. Behn Cervantes, writing in BusinessWorld, recalls the beauty of Quiapo. He remembers “the stately homes beside the streams that connected to the Pasig.” Now these streams are called esteros and no one wants to live near them. “Quiapo was a verdant area described in vintage poems,” Cervantes tells us. Most Asian cities had similar areas.

Such were Asian cities before they committed themselves uncritically to the automobile and to the flyovers, underpasses, tunnels, superhighways and parking lots the automobile demands. There were problems back then, but there were also quiet, gracious places people would remember all their lives. Who will remember Taft Avenue as it is now or Quiapo? Our passion for the car may in the end prove to have been a huge and costly mistake.

Asian cities, after having spent billions of baht, won, pesos and rupees on transportation infrastructure, are still clogged with traffic. In addition to traffic jams, the automobile has proven to be the No. 1 cause of pollution in Manila and other Asian cities.

Bangkok has done everything possible to accommodate the car. It has denied resources to its impoverished Northeast region in order to care for the needs of the car. In Bangkok drivers can go from one end of the city non-stop to the other in great comfort on elevated roads, but when they come down to ground level, as they must, they run into the same old traffic jams.

People in the Philippines should ask themselves: Would we be better off today if the government had improved irrigation and developed first-class health and education systems over the past years instead of building all those flyovers, etc.? Food would be cheaper surely, with enough for everyone. Our children would be among Asia’s wisest and healthiest.

Is there an alternative to cars? People who can go to the moon and Mars should be able to find one. The following suggestion may not be exactly what we are looking for, but it is only a start. Thomas Edison experimented with hundreds of materials before he found the proper filament for his electric light. It is important to start discussing solutions. If we discuss and search diligently, a realistic alternative will be found. Remember the movie “Field of Dreams” with Kevin Costner, and the heavenly voice that said, “Build the field and they [the old players] will come.” If we search for a good alternative, we have a very good chance of finding it.

This alternative begins by limiting the number of car owners to 25,000, instead of the hundreds of thousands who now have cars. This relatively small number will include our business, political and cultural elite. It is unfair, perhaps, but if we insist on the elite giving up their cars, there will be no progress. These 25,000 persons are able to block any effort to limit car use, if they are adversely affected, like they have limited wages, land reform legislation, urban poor housing and other social justice matters. On the other hand, if the 25,000 are not affected, but are able to keep their cars and have near-traffic-free streets to zip back and forth to work and recreation, they will support the alternative.

There will be special cars set aside for the emergency needs of ordinary people.

For car owners who are not part of the 25,000, we can offer a package of benefits. They can keep their cars for use out of town or in their own neighborhoods. They will not be allowed on Edsa or on major roads. Instead they will be given free rides for five years in a new fleet of air-conditioned buses that will take the workers home from Makati to Cubao, Marikina and Alabang in less than 20 minutes. They can nap or read the papers on the way.

Car owners on average can save up to P150,000 a year on gas and maintenance. In 10 years or less without the use of cars they will be millionaires.

The country can save the money designated for flyovers and highways and put it to much better use. Do we need C-6 or C-10 if there are only 25,000 cars? The money can be used for investments that benefit all of the people. We need irrigation, inexpensive energy, better and affordable medical services and better salaried teachers. We must give our poor a better chance in life. Just think of the money that will be saved on gasoline alone and the improved services such money can provide.

With fewer cars on the streets, it will be attractive to use bicycles. For those who want to mix their travel and exercise this alternative will be attractive. They can have their own lane. We’ll be the healthiest people in Asia.

We must keep looking for alternatives. Someone among us has the answer.

Finally, every person in the Metro Manila area will breathe clean and healthy air once again if we can limit the number of cars.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

God is not doing His job

2011-06-05T10:23:00.000-07:00

Commentary
By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
June 5, 2011

Sayra has lived all her life on a small patch of sidewalk in downtown Calcutta, now called Kolkata. I interviewed her 23 years ago for a book on Asia’s urban poor. I looked for her in the intervening years, but I could never find her until just last April. She still lives on that patch of sidewalk, as her mother and father had before her. She was born there and had her first child there. We had a long conversation, while her neighbors joined in, and at the end of it I asked, if she believed in God despite all her problems.

“I believe in God,” she said, “but He’s not doing His job now. He is supposed to take care of us, but look around and you’ll see He is not doing that.” She swept her arm in a gesture over the people’s sleeping mats and the dirty street.

About 30 families live on the sidewalk with Sayra. All are from Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, and most are from the same village. They have come to Calcutta for work. The main work the men find is as rickshaw pullers. This corner of Calcutta is one of the few places in the world where one person sits at comfort in a carriage and another person, like a beast of burden, pulls him through the streets. The rickshaw pullers run and walk on the boiling hot asphalt, in the middle of some of the world’s most chaotic traffic. Their faces are expressionless and they never look anyone in the eye. The pressures of those streets drive dogs racing madly through the traffic barking insanely.

The people are Muslim. They help each other like the poor do everywhere to survive, but they are at the bottom of Indian society. A year ago the police came, beat the people, abused the women and set their household things on fire, in order to drive them out. A hotel owner on the same street thought they were bad for his business. But they are determined to stay there until some better place for living and raising their families is offered them.

The rickshaw pullers earn 50-100 rupees a day. (The rupee has the same value more or less as the peso.) Sayra’s son, a rickshaw puller, stood beside while she talked. He was lean as a leather belt and laughed good naturedly at his mother’s comments.

The people have water pumps from the government, but little less. As in Manila they can bring their sick to public hospitals, but have to pay for any medicine they use. The education arrangements weren’t clear. The women seemed to say most children didn’t go to school, but some were adopted by foreign foundations and raised in boarding schools outside the city. The women earn about 1,200-1,500 rupees per month making blankets for the government. They also earn from talking to tourists about their lives. They are not complaining: in fact there is much laughter and good feeling. They are happy to be together. Sayra is chubby, but the other women are thin as women can be.

The pavement dwellers live across the street from two very old Protestant churches dating back to the 1860s, the American Civil War and the glory days of the British Empire. The museum is almost as old. If it were possible to remove the cars, we could have been back in 19th-century London. The red brick museum with its barred windows could be part of a movie set for a retelling of the Jack the Ripper serial killings.

After our talk with Sayra, I came in the mornings to sit by the churches and watch the people rise and get ready for the day. They do it slowly giving each person their chance at the facilities. It’s ballet-like in a way, very peaceful.

The Communist Party ruled Calcutta and all of West Bengal for 32 years, before losing the recent statewide election. A veteran communist leader A.B. Bardham said in the May 16 issue of the Times of India that the defeat was due to the arrogance of the party leaders who lost touch with the poor people.

There are, as is obvious, many similarities with life in Metro Manila. Tens of thousands of our poor brothers and sisters curl up at night on mats or newspaper along our streets or in the parks. At six in the evening you see them cooking their rice and by seven or eight, they are in bed. Government treatment of these poor people is pretty much the same as it is in India. It is an open question whether the government here will also lose touch with its people.

* * *

The British Broadcasting Company spent a whole day filming along Estero de San Miguel, which flows near Malacañang. Paul Mason who headed the team was fascinated by the cohesive organization of the estero people and their determination to join with Palafox Associates to build permanent houses on the esteros. He told the people, “I am honored to be here with you.”

We admire the ordinary people of Egypt, Libya and Syria who hunger for freedom and a dignified life to the extent they risk their lives in revolt. Our poor possess the same God-given instincts. They want freedom, dignity and justice just as deeply.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

A Well-Known Housing Right Advocate Died

2011-05-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

NEWS RELEASE
June 1, 2011

Teodoro “Ted” Añana, a well-known housing right advocate and one of the founders of Urban Poor Associates (UPA), died on May 29 in the Philippine Lung Center, Quezon City. He suffered for several years from emphysema and other lung problems.

Ted served 40 years of his life in organizing the urban poor in the Philippines and Asia to attain land tenure, housing and basic services including jobs, health and education.

Denis Murphy, executive director of UPA said, “When he began working with the poor, there were no statistics about eviction and very few people were interested in studying the phenomenon. With Ted’s hard work he made evictions and demolitions a major issue in the country. Since 1992, a total of 600 stories about evictions were published by the Manila dailies through the work of Ted Añana and others at UPA.”

Also Ted with other UPA members helped educate 300,000 families about their housing rights, and assisted 510 communities in eviction crises. He is the main author of “What To Do If There Is A Demolition.” Some 10,000 copies of this pamphlet were printed over the year.

Somsook Boonyabancha, Secretary General of Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) said in a statement, “It is very sad to learn that Ted has passed away. He has been one of the key persons in the region working actively as a regional coordinator managing ACHR’s Regional Eviction Watch program for so many years. He fought for the housing rights of the poor and searched for ways to solve the problems of the poor. He got the attention and assistance from the government and larger development organizations with his patience and persistent manner.”

Ted is survived by his wife Connie, three sons and a daughter, Margarita.

Urban poor groups and NGOs will hold a vigil on the first day of Ted’s wake and the mass will be officiated by the running priest, Fr. Robert Reyes. At the vigil people groups will symbolize Ted’s dream of decent houses for the poor.

The 3-day wake will start on June 2, Thursday, 10 AM at Timothy Chapel, St. Peter Memorial Chapel, Tandang Sora, Quezon City. -30-

Ted's Photo Slideshow:

Below are recorded excerpts of past interviews with Ted Añana on a radio program called "Karitas at Maralita" (hosted by Jing Manipulanzona)-produced by Urban Poor Associates which upholds housing rights. The radio program airs every Saturday, 1:30PM to 2:30PM on Veritas 846.

2006, January -part 1 of 2

2006, January -part 2 of 2

2007, July 28 -reaction to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's SONA (at 1:47)

2007, September 29 -with international guests, excerpt 1 of 2 (at 01:05)

2007, September 29 -with international guests, excerpt 2 of 2 (at 07:44)

2008, March 4 -on World Habitat Day, excerpt 1 of 4 (at 09:35)

2008, March 4 -on World Habitat Day, excerpt 2 of 4 (at 11:28)

2008, March 4 -on World Habitat Day, excerpt 3 of 4 (at 03:10)

2008, March 4 -on World Habitat Day, excerpt 4 of 4 (0:00)

2011, January 29 interview

2011, March 3 -on proposed anti-squatting law

*To watch the video footage/photos of Teodoro Añana's funeral, click here.

Fires and violence

2011-05-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

Commentary
By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:15:00 05/16/2011

TV VIEWERS had good reason to be shocked last month when they saw on their screens a pitched battle between government people and urban poor youth in Guadalupe Viejo, Makati. Nineteen people were injured, traffic on Edsa was partially stopped. The young people threw rocks the size of mangoes. They manufactured Molotov cocktails under the camera’s eye and fired them at the police. “How did we come to this?” the viewers might well say. “Isn’t this the country’s business center? It’s not Libya or Yemen.”

Such violence often begins with fires in urban poor areas that the government, national or local, wants cleared of poor families. Some observers of urban poor life claim they see a positive correlation between government desire to clear land and the fires, especially if the government’s efforts to remove families legally are stymied one way or another. I have heard ordinary people as far back as the martial law years in Tondo state they believed the government set the fires.

Fires are becoming as dangerous as evictions for poor people. Can the Commission on Human Rights or the Department of Justice look into the origins of these fires? It might also lead to better fire prevention.

Often the next step is that the government declares the burned-out site a “danger area,” to justify a demand that all families be removed from the area, whether their houses were burned or not. The government sometimes offers distant relocation as far off as Calauan, Laguna, 100 km from Makati.

The description of the burned-out site as a “danger area” has no legal implications. The words do not have the same meaning as they do in the Urban Development and Housing Act (RA 7279). The post-fire usage of the phrase simply states there is danger living in or near houses that have been weakened by fire. It does not do away with the need for the legal requirements of a thoroughgoing consultation with the people involved.

There is a great deal of cynicism involved in offering poor families a place in Calauan, Laguna. Gina Lopez of the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission poured resources and her imagination into making Calauan a successful relocation area, but as of last year she admitted she was unable to provide the jobs needed. The cycle of urban poor life is all about work. They come to Manila to work. They live as near as they can to work. They resist relocation that is far from their work, and if they wind up without jobs in distant relocation centers, they will return to the city to work. There are not near enough jobs in Calauan. Is it fair to send poor families there?

If the government tries to bypass legal steps and force the issue of eviction there is liable to be violence. Violence has short-term advantages: it may stop eviction efforts, but it is doubtful it serves the good of the poor in the long run.

It doesn’t help the country’s image either. Investors may think if such trouble can happen in the prime business district of the country, what must it be like in far-off Mindanao or Visayas?

When it comes to discussions of violence, some measure of understanding should be given to ordinary men and women when they feel that the government instead of working to help them in a realistic way is harassing them. They may wonder what goals drive government and they may suspect the worst. What are they to think when the city gives them P3,000-P5,000 provided the family waives its legal rights to relocation?

Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo seems to have been able to help work out a peaceful and reasonable plan with the people. It can be done. The ordinary poor people are realistic and rarely seek more than fair treatment.

There are signs that local governments are more and more taking eviction matters into their own hands and departing from the law as explained in the Urban Development and Housing Act. Can the Commission on Human Rights on its own initiative look into this matter of fires and violence? Can the Department of Justice investigate?

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

Past and Present Suffering

2011-05-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:19:00 05/11/2011

PHNOM PENH—Despite its tragic past, Phnom Penh remains a lovely city with wide, tree-lined streets, non-invasive traffic, pastel-colored homes, and the small birds that fill the city with their chatter and song in the early mornings. Very much a part of this peaceful setting are the elderly monks walking along under the trees, barefoot and holding their umbrellas against the sun. The traffic moves at 20 kilometers per hour and there are no horns. I asked a Filipina living there, why the traffic went so slowly and she said it’s because of all the motorbikes: the car drivers’ fear they will injure the bikers if they go faster. In return, it seems, for this kindness the passenger tricycles run almost silently and the young women move along gracefully on their motor bikes. All such beauty goes unnoticed in Edsa’s chaos.

It might seem as if this city, which suffered terribly during the Pol Pot regime, had vowed to have a deep compassion for all its people, including the bikers and the poor. If we are compassionate in small things, we may learn to be compassionate in large matters, the people of Phnom Penh might have thought.

Many seem to have learned that lesson, but not all. The last of 4,000 poor families are now being forcibly ejected by the government and Chinese and local business interests from their homes around Boeungkak Lake. This lake, once a favorite recreation area, is filled now with dirt and sand. There will soon be luxury homes there. Right now it looks like the desolate areas near the ruined reactors of Japan.

Recently we met five women from the lake who will be evicted. They have 19 children among them and are indistinguishable from the women of Metro Manila who are also threatened with eviction—along the R-10 Road, the esteros, Manggahan Floodway, Lupang Arenda and other sites. The Cambodian women have the same fears as the Filipino women about their children’s schooling and family jobs. They don’t know for sure what will happen. It is not a pleasant sight to see real fear for their families in these mature hardworking women’s faces. Eviction brings back too easily the fears of the Pol Pot era.

Those were terrible times in Phnom Penh. I may have met the parents of these women in 1980 when I was able to visit Phnom Penh after the Vietnamese army in 1979 drove Pol Pot out of power. When I was there with Fr. Jorge Anzorena and Francisco “Bimbo” Fernandez the people were returning from the rural areas, “the killing fields” of Cambodia. They had been driven there by Pol Pot, and had suffered terribly. Many were traumatized by their experience. We were told not to talk to people about development, even about cooperatives, since such words sounded like words Pol Pot had used. It seemed the people were half afraid that the hated dictator might just be sitting just around the corner listening to their conversations.

Manila has had its own share of suffering. Some 100,000 Filipinos died in the last battle for Intramuros. A small shrine dedicated to the memory of these people stands within easy walking distance of the Manila Cathedral. Compassion for the poor is very often absent; the government still evicts families in an illegal and often violent manner.

Compassion is an Asian virtue. It is cultivated in a special way by Buddhism, but is also at the heart of Christianity.

People who have suffered greatly like the people of Hiroshima, Warsaw, Rwanda, Intramuros or Cambodia should be respected and allowed to get on with their lives in peace. They have suffered enough. To continue to treat them poorly is a form of profanity, for God has taken its place among them in their suffering.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl. net.

PRESS STATEMENT: Demolitions and forced evictions in Laperal, Makati, appear to constitute breaches of international law

2011-05-11T06:39:00.000-07:00

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) strongly condemns the violence that marred recent attempts to demolish the homes of about 1,000 families situated within the Laperal Compound of Makati City, Manila, on 28th April, 2011. The demolitions were ordered by the Mayor of Makati after the Makati City Government classified the informal settlement a danger zone following a fire that occurred in the area 8 days previously. Residents who attempted to resist the demolitions were met with force. The practice of forced eviction constitutes a gross violation of human rights, in particular the right to adequate housing. COHRE is deeply concerned about reports that State officials and the police may be responsible for such serious human rights abuses.

The situation is reflective of an alarming trend whereby residents of urban poor areas affected by fires are subsequently prevented from returning to their homes and forcibly evicted, without provision of alternative housing or sufficient compensation, further aggravating the losses already encountered. COHRE calls for an urgent and independent investigation to be conducted into all attempts at forced evictions following fires in urban poor areas in Manila to ensure that all those responsible for human rights violations are held fully accountable.

Based on the information COHRE received, the demolitions of April 28th were in violation of numerous national and international human rights obligations of the Government of the Philippines. No court order was issued sanctioning the demolitions and evictions, and no consultation, negotiation, or advance warning was provided to affected residents. Residents attempting to resist eviction to protect their homes were met with a violent response. Government resources were used to forcibly evict residents living on privately owned land. Adequate housing has not been provided to those who were forced to leave the area, and compensation provided was not sufficient to enable those affected to live in adequate housing elsewhere in the city.

Where those affected by evictions are unable to provide for themselves, the Government is obliged to take all appropriate measures, to the maximum of its available resources, to ensure that adequate alternative housing, resettlement or access to productive land, as the case may be, is available. COHRE calls for an on-site socialized housing scheme to be provided for affected residents of the fire and subsequent demolitions in Laperal, and for alternative adequate housing to be provided to those families who volunteer to be relocated.

COHRE strongly condemns the use of violence against residents and particularly against women. Violence against persons who try to protect their homes against illegal forced evictions breaches a number of international human rights standards the Philippines are obliged to follow, including the right to security of the person guaranteed under Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
As a State Party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the Government of the Philippines, including all State organs, is obliged to respect, protect and fulfill the right to adequate housing, as guaranteed under Article 11(1) ICESCR and to refrain from the practice of forced evictions. Forced evictions can only be justified in exceptional circumstances, after genuine consultation with those affected, provision of legal redress, and must never cause homelessness. Such exceptional circumstances generally only exist where evictions are necessary in the public interest, but not where land is sought by private developers. Even in those rare cases where eviction is considered justified, it must be carried out in strict compliance with international human rights law and in accordance with general principles of reasonableness and proportionality.
Authorities are obliged to give options for adequate alternative accommodation or sufficient compensation that enable those affected to find adequate accommodation elsewhere. Adequate alternative accommodation or compensation must enable those affected to live in adequate housing conditions and to continue their livelihoods with as little disruption as possible.

These provisions were not adhered to. The actions of April 28th in Makati therefore appear to constitute violations of international law.

The Urban Development and Housing Act of 1992 (RA 7279) lays down conditions which must be fulfilled before evictions and/or demolitions are carried out. The rehabilitation and development of Makati, or any other area of Manila should not proceed unless and until the basic human rights accorded to the urban poor guaranteed by the 1987 Constitution are protected. RA 7279 states that eviction or demolition may only be allowed under the following exceptional situations: when persons or entities occupy danger areas such as esteros, railroad tracks, garbage dumps, riverbanks, shorelines, waterways, and other public places such as sidewalks, roads, parks, and playgrounds. This provision is clearly directed at publicly owned spaces. Privately owned property such as Laperal cannot be designated as a danger zone area under this provision.

RA 7279 also states that there must be a court order for eviction and demolition. RA 7279 requires that those whose houses are subject to demolition should be notified in advance of eviction. It also compels consultation with and relocation of the affected citizens. Without compliance, there must be no evictions or demolitions. Evictions should not result in individuals being rendered homeless or vulnerable to the violation of other human rights.

These provisions were not adhered to. The actions carried out on April 28th in Makati therefore appear to constitute breaches of national law, including the 1987 Constitution and RA 7279.

Everyone has a right to the city, thus demolition of informal settlements in the city must either be stopped, or the poor provided adequate housing in the city. The poor living in the city must be given security of land tenure or, at least, a secure and affordable humane housing. Urban development planning should consider the right of the urban poor to live in the city. This includes long term renters, who must not be deprived of their human rights and who must not be excluded from accessing restitution to housing rights violations, including the right to adequate housing at relocation sites.

Constitutional limits on power, a key feature of democracy, requires adherence to the rule of law. When exceptional circumstances dictate that evictions should take place, due process must be followed. The Constitution of the Philippines, Republic Act No. 7279 and a number of binding international treaties all provide for minimum standards regarding evictions and relocations that must be adhered to.

The rule of law is the supreme check on political power used against people's rights. In light of the above, COHRE urges the Government of the Philippines to ensure that any future evictions are carried out only in exceptional circumstances, only when absolutely necessary, and in full accordance with national and international law.

For further details, please contact: Ben Rutledge, Ben@cohre.org ,

Manila, Philippines
May 10th, 2011

International Housing Rights Group to Conduct Investigation on the Laperal Eviction

2011-05-10T05:45:00.000-07:00

MEDIA ADVISORY

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) an international human rights organization based in Geneva, Switzerland sent legal officer Ben Rutledge to conduct investigation on the violent eviction that happened in Laperal Compound last April 28.

The fact finding will start tomorrow, May 11 at 10:00 AM. COHRE Legal Officer Ben Rutledge will be accompanied by Urban Poor Associates’ Task Force Anti-Eviction team.

COHRE says, “The use of violence against residents and particularly against women, who try to protect their homes against illegal forced evictions breaches a number of international human rights standards the Philippines are obliged to follow, including the right to security of the person guaranteed under Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).”

Date: MAY 11, 2011 (WEDNESDAY)

Time: 10:00 AM

Venue: 4050 Bernardino st. Guadalupe Viejo, Makati City (LAPERAL COMPOUND)

Please Cover.

Commentary : The ‘Pact of the Catacombs’

2011-04-25T00:50:00.000-07:00

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: April 20, 2011

AS VATICAN Council II drew to a close in 1965, 40 bishops met at night in the St. Domitilla Catacombs outside Rome. In that holy place of Christian dead they celebrated the Eucharist and signed a document that expressed their personal commitments as bishops to the ideals of the Council. Later another 500 bishops signed the document. Forty six years later, Google knows about this Pact of the Catacombs. But most Catholics I talked to, including Jesuits and a person working in a religious news agency, knew nothing about it.

The bishops were led by Archbishop Helder Camara of Recife, Brazil, one of the widely respected 20th-century

champions of justice and peace. Cardinal Roger Etchagaray, who later served as honorary president of the Pontifical Council, Justice and Peace, also signed.

The content of the Pact is not as dramatic as its setting in the catacombs. It spells out in some concrete detail how the bishops intended to live Vatican II as bishops.
The bishops promised to live as ordinary people in matters of housing, food and means of transport. They will avoid any appearance of being rich men, especially in matters of dress. They will not own real estate or bank accounts in their own name, but will place everything in the name of the diocese or of charities and social works.
They asked to be addressed simply as Father, and not with titles which signify prestige, such as, Eminence, Excellency or Monsignor.

They will, whenever possible, entrust the financial and material administration of their dioceses to competent lay people. “We wish to become less administrators and more pastors and apostles.” They promised they will not pamper the rich in order to get their donations.

“We will dedicate whatever is necessary of our time, reflection, heart, means etc. to the apostolic and pastoral service of people and groups of workers and of the economically weak and underdeveloped, without prejudice to the other people and groups in the diocese.”

They promised to do their utmost so that “those responsible for government and public services make, and put into practice, laws, structures and social institutions required by justice and charity, equality and the harmonic and holistic development of all men and women, and by this means bring about the advent of another social order, worthy of the sons and daughters of mankind and of God.”

They promised to help poor dioceses around the world and “will demand that the plans of international organizations no longer manufacture proletarian (poor) nations in an ever richer world, but permit the poor to overcome their misery.”

They committed themselves to share their lives with their brothers and sisters in Christ and to re-examine their lives with them. They will try to be more present and welcoming, and to be open to all whatever their religion. The bishops promised to publicize this Pact on returning home and asked for the people’s understanding, collaboration and prayer.

* * *

When I showed the Pact to others, there were different reactions. One man wondered why the document wasn’t more widely discussed over the last 46 years. He thought someone must have blocked the distribution of the Pact. “It was too radical. It would have upset the Church,” he said.

Another man thought that many bishops had tried to observe the Pact. He had noticed a difference.

A woman, a former sister, thought the bishops promised too much. She said they should have just promised to get out of their residences, walk the streets of their dioceses and talk to the ordinary people. Everything else would have followed, she said.

What do readers think of this long hidden document?

The Catacomb Pact against pomp and ceremony in the Church

On November 16, 1965, close to the end of Vatican II, around 40 conciliar Bishops met at the

Catacombs of St. Domitila to sign a semi-secret pact intended to do away with the richness, pomp, and

ceremony in the Catholic Church. The names of the Bishops present are not known.

References to this pact were made here and there in works on the conciliar "Poor Church," under the suggestive title of thePact of the Catacombs. The only place we have found its complete text transcribed is in the Chronicle of Vatican II by Boaventura Kloppenburg, O.F.M. He titled the document Pact of the Servant and Poor Church.

We select the highlighted parts in the original to bring to our readers' attention.

At right is a picture of the frontispiece of volume V of Kloppenburg's Second Vatican Council; at right below, photocopies

of the Portuguese original text. At left below, we present our translation.
We, Bishops meeting at Vatican Council II, being aware of the deficiencies of our life of poverty according to the Gospel, encouraged by one another in this initiative in which each one wants to avoid singularity and presumption [that is to say, each one wants to be anonymous], .... commit ourselves to the following:

1. Regarding housing, foodand means of transportationand everything concerning these things, we will seek to live in accordance with the common average level of our people.

2. We renounce forever wealth and its appearance, especially in clothing (expensive materials and brilliant colors), and insignia of precious metals (such things should, in effect, be evangelical).

3. We will not possess either movable or immovable properties, or bank accounts in our names. If it is necessary to possess some property we will place it under the name of our diocese or other social or charitable works.

4. Whenever it is possible we will confide the financial and material administration of our diocese to a commission of competent laymen conscious of their apostolic role, given that we should be pastors and apostles rather than administrators.

5. We refuse to be called in speech or writing by names or titles that signify grandeur and power (Your Eminence, Your Excellency, Monsignor ...). We prefer to be called by the evangelical name of Father.

6. In our comportment and social relations, we will avoid everything that can appear to confer privileges, priorities, or even a preference whatsoever to the rich and powerful (for example: banquets given or received, special places in religious services) ....

9. Conscious of the demands of justice and charity and their mutual relations, we will seek to transform the works of "beneficence" into social works based on charity and justice to assist all [that is, not just Catholics] in all their exigencies, as a humble servant of the proper public facilities ....

(Boaventura Kloppenburg, "Pact of the Servant and Poor Church," in Concilio Vaticano II, Petropolis: Vozes, 1966 pp. 526-527).

President Benigno Aquino III Asked to End the Calvary of the poor

2011-04-19T01:37:00.000-07:00

19 April 2011. Women carrying a heavy wooden 30 feet cross led five thousand crowd from Plaza Miranda to Mendiola to ask President Benigno Aquino III to end their calvary as they re-enacted today the passion and death of Jesus Christ. With them were members of Task Force Anti-Eviction (TFAE) including Urban Poor Associates (UPA), Community Organizers Multiversity (COM), and Community Organization of the Philippine Enterprise Foundation (COPE).

Photo Slide-show:

This Lenten season marked the 25th year of Kalbaryo ng Maralitang Tagalungsod. “Kalbaryo” shows that the sufferings and death of Jesus are repeated in the sufferings of the poor, and his resurrection is repeated in the efforts of the poor to free themselves from the scourge of poverty.

VIDEOS:

PART 1 OF 2

PART 2 OF 2

(Videos of the Calvary were also posted on Maypaki's blog. Just click here.)

Felomina Cinco, president of Nagkakaisang Mamamayan ng Legarda said, “25 years of Kalbaryo we are still poor. We are still threatened with demolitions. We are still victims of injustices. We are still struggling to get the support of the government to give us land security.”

“We carry this huge cross even if it pains us because it is nothing compared to our day to day sufferings and nothing compared to the thought of losing our homes. This suffering is what we want the president to see because we believe he has the power to change our lives and so that he will realize that this is the time to act and solve the issues of the poor. ”

This year’s theme “Homes free from demolitions and resilient to disasters with secure livelihood and sustainable future,” reflects UPA’s 2009 study that every hour two urban poor families lost their homes and in a week 277 families were evicted from their community. In the same year, thousands of urban poor lost their homes due to typhoon Ondoy. Recently a series of fires broke out in urban poor areas.

TFAE said the government is just finding more and more ways to evict people or drive them away from the city, including the clean up of Manila Bay which will displace 129, 606 families. But the spirit of the urban poor never wavers because they know that the president just like a mother will play a big role to provide them with decent housing and a sustainable future.

Around 10 AM the group had their contemporary prayer, children performed manong pawikan, and the highlight was the reading of Kalatas which contains the results of the technical working group created by the president to study the concerns and proposals of the urban poor.

Written in the Kalatas are urban poor issues with specific solutions like the revocation of Executive Order 854 in Lupang Arenda; Building of Medium Rise Buildings to house informal settlers in Navotas Fishport; Implementation of a proposed development plan in Baseco; and implementation of the housing design by Palafox Architects in 5 esteros in Manila.

In the Kalatas the group asked the President to continue the moratorium on evictions and to issue an Executive Order about the covenant he signed during the campaign period on March 6, 2010 and the promises he gave in a meeting with urban poor and housing rights group last December 23, 2010.

In parting Jose Morales, President of Ugnayang Lakas ng Apektadong Pamilya (ULAP) said, “We utter everything through our prayer. All together we kneel and pause for a 2 minutes silence for our personal requests to the Lord. But all of us only want two things: a happy family and a place free of demolitions.”

Kalbaryo as a tradition has united the urban and rural poor in seeking to build a society of justice and prosperity for all. Anti-poor policies and strategies are still in existence, hence the continuous creation of slums in urban areas. If no serious action is taken, such tragedy will mean the poorest are getting poorer. The urban poor want a stop to government unjust actions. The Kalbaryo is a gentle way of reminding us of our obligations to our brothers and sisters. -30-

Kalatas (click image below to enlarge):

MEDIA ADVISORY: Kalbaryo ng Maralitang Taga-Lungsod 2011

2011-04-12T05:41:00.000-07:00

Attention: News Editor, News Desk, Reporters and Photojournalists

This Lenten season will mark the 25th year of Kalbaryo ng Maralitang Tagalungsod on April 19, Holy Tuesday with the theme “Homes free from demolitions and resilient to disasters with secure livelihood and sustainable future.”

Some 5000 or more urban poor people and others from all over Metro Manila are expected to gather at Plaza Miranda beginning at 8:00 AM.

Around 9:00 AM, the urban poor will start the march from Plaza Miranda to Mendiola This will be led by 50 women carrying a 30 feet cross as women carry the biggest burden in times of eviction. The procession will have a trail of crowd following the seven men wearing Christ mask and carrying small crosses that symbolize the Passion of Christ, but each corresponds to the issues of the poor, in particular their housing rights.

There will be a program of contemporary prayer, children performances and the reading of Kalatas which contains the results of the technical working group created by President Benigno Aquino III to study the concerns and proposals of the urban poor.

“Kalbaryo” shows that the sufferings and death of Jesus on his journey to Calvary are repeated in the sufferings of the poor, and his resurrection is repeated in the efforts of the poor to free themselves from poverty.

Urban Poor say, “We will be bringing clocks to signify that this is the time ‘Oras na!’ that the government must act on the calvary of the poor.”

Photo ops: During the procession, urban poor women will carry a cross measuring 30 feet. The Via Crucis, Children’s performances, and the big crowd bringing placards and clocks.

Date: April 19, 2011 (HOLY TUESDAY)

Time: 8:30 to 11:00 AM

Venue: Plaza Miranda to Mendiola

Please Cover.

Commentary : It’s up to the President

2011-04-05T03:34:00.000-07:00

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: April 04, 2011

“THE BEST laid plans of mice and men often go astray,” wrote the Scottish poet Robert Burns. He had spent the afternoon plowing his fields and by accident had destroyed the home of a small mouse and its family. He watched them flee in terror. In the poem he shows compassion for the poor mice who must now spend their winter in the cold, instead of in the warm underground home the mouse had planned for them. With just a few small changes the poem can be understood to be about poor people evicted from their homes and about all poor people and their plans.

A plan was made last Dec. 23 by the powerful (including President Aquino and his Cabinet members) and the weak (the urban poor and their allies) to bring together the best minds in the country, in order to solve one of its main problems, namely, the increasing number and pauperization of our urban poor people. By mid-March the plan was slowly unraveling.

The plan had started with a moratorium on all evictions declared by the President, in order to give time for the parties to the agreement to study the strengths and weaknesses of several land and housing proposals of the poor. The results would be discussed by a panel of experts appointed by the President from government, civil society (such as Mapua Institute of Technology), the Church, independent experts (architect Felino “Jun” Palafox, Dr. Esteban Godilano and Mary Racelis) and urban poor leaders. The panel would recommend to the President the actions they thought he should take on the proposals.

In brief, the poor asked that the families living on Manila esteros, Lupang Arenda, R-10 Road, Manggahan Floodway, Laguna Lake, Navotas Fishport, Baseco and Parola be allowed to stay where they are and that the communities be upgraded and the people be housed in a decent fashion. The plan would benefit 280,000 poor families who are living in these areas, well over one million men, women and children. The plan harms no one.

Why is the plan not working? There is more than enough guilt to go around. The failure of the appointed committee to play a key role is one reason. The committee never met. The members were never notified of their appointments. Perhaps, due to the absence of this prestigious body, agency heads and others didn’t come to meetings when invited. The best minds never met together and never had a chance to cut to the heart of the problems faced.

Also as often happens in governments and other bodies the people in charge are reluctant to give up old ways of doing things, even when these ways have proved ineffective. They are guilty of what can be called “intellectual laziness.” Albert Einstein wrote, “the greatest inconvenience of peoples and nations is the laziness with which they attempt to find the solutions to their problems.”

A good example of this laziness at work can be seen in the government’s ways of relocating evicted families to far distant sites, in the case of Calauan, Laguna, up to 100 kilometers away. There are no jobs, so regularly 30-40 percent of the families return to the city and to slum areas. Also the government never recovers the money spent on these distant housing efforts, because the people don’t want to be there, don’t have much money and don’t care to use the little money they have to amortize the lots and houses they received. Billions of pesos have been lost. The government cannot create thousands of jobs in wilderness places. By contrast poor families who found a solution through the Community Mortgage Program, a solution they chose, repay government at a rate of over 70 percent. Why does government insist on following its thoughtlessly cruel and fiscally unwise practice of distant relocation? As in so many things Einstein may be right: the great obstacle to development is intellectual laziness. The old ways haven’t worked. Let’s try new ways, the people suggest.

The people themselves are part of the problem. Sometimes they are stubborn; sometimes they are not sure what they want, and they aren’t well organized. The Department of Interior and Local Government which was asked by the President to coordinate the whole work has been caught in a political whirlpool of intrigue and suspicion.
Some people felt that guilt for the program’s seeming failure reached even to the President, because he didn’t appear to back the program with the power of his office.
But then the tide seemed to turn, slowly at first but in a determined way, thanks to the efforts of many inside and outside government who see value in the people’s plans.

Among its first recommendations to the President, the study group (TWG or Technical Working Group) advised the government to give 1,000 families in the Navotas Fishport the land they live on. It recommended that an executive order of a former president be scrapped, paving the way for families along the Manggahan Floodway and in Lupang Arenda to enjoy land tenure security and upgrading. It recommended Baseco be fully developed for the people living there. This is in line with the President’s promise to the poor to upgrade all the lands proclaimed.

More recently the TWG has recommended that buildings designed by Palafox Associates architects be built on certain Manila esteros, provided it is physically possible to do so. Private architects say such construction is very possible. People are optimistic.

It is up to the President. It would be of tremendous significance if President Aquino backed the plans suggested by the poor people, especially since many powerful persons do not want him to support such plans. It might become the norm.
(Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.)

Urban Poor Ask Supreme Court to Order Compliance of RA 7279 in Manila Bay Clean Up

2011-03-31T01:23:00.000-07:00

Press Release

March 31, 2011

Urban Poor Associates (UPA) filed on Thursday before the Supreme Court a motion to issue order for compliance with Republic Act 7279 prior to demolition and/or eviction of informal settlers. This is an appeal on the high court’s decision on the implementation of the Manila Bay clean up rendered last February 15.

The Court orders Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to come up with the lists of informal settlers living along the Pasig-Marikina-San Juan Rivers, the NCR (Parañaque-Zapote, Las Piñas) rivers and the Navotas-Malabon-Tullahan-Tenejeros Rivers and the LGUs outside Metro Manila for the list of informal settlers along Meycauayan-Marilao-Obando (Bulacan) rivers, the Talisay (Bataan) River, the Imus (Cavite) river, the Laguna De Bay and Connecting waterways.

The high Court even set a timeline up to December 31, 2012 and 2015 for the full implementation of the demolition of houses and removal of the informal settlers.

However, UPA and other other movants Community Organizers Multiversity (COM), Community Organization of the Philippine Enterprise (COPE), Kabalikat sa Pagpapaunlad ng Baseco (KABALIKAT), Ugnayan Lakas ng mga Apektadong Pamilya sa Baybaying Ilog Pasig (ULAP) and residents along Radial 10 (R10) Boulevard in Tondo, Manila, found the court’s resolution silent as to the observance and compliance of the Urban Development and Housing Act of 1992 (RA 7279) which lays down requisites before eviction and/or demolition is enforced.

In a fifteen-page motion, the urban poor group through their lawyer, Ritche Esponilla, stressed that the effort in the rehabilitation of the Manila Bay should not be at loggerheads with the basic [human] rights accorded to the underprivileged and homeless citizens guaranteed by the 1987 Constitution itself.

RA 7279 requires that urban poor whose houses are subject to demolition should be notified 30 days before. It also compels consultation and relocation to the affected underprivileged citizens, and without such compliance there must be no evictions or demolitions.

UPA said with the SC decision shanties of 129,606 urban poor families surrounding Manila Bay are in danger of being demolished without relocation.

"There is an urgent need that the Court issues an order for compliance of requisites set out by RA 7279 prior to demolition and/or eviction to protect the housing rights of the poor. While the clean up is valuable it must not come at the expense of displacing thousands of urban poor families already marginalized by society,” Atty. Esponilla said.

“We must also remember that the high Court already recognized that this endeavor (preservation of Manila Bay) cannot go against the right of those whose dwellings are in danger of being torn down. In its ruling on October 2009, it emphasized that it does not give the MMDA and other concerned government agencies the power to evict any individual from his or her home without first giving notice,” he added.

UPA said President Benigno Aquino III tasked Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to form a technical working group (TWG) that would study issues/concerns of the urban poor. This TWG is already working.

UPA field director Alicia Murphy concluded, “The waterways dwellers are working hard to implement their dream of on-site housing through the TWG. We even came up with a housing proposal along waterways designed by Palafox architects that would not interfere with the cleaning of Manila Bay and the Pasig river. We believe that efforts on restoring the beauty of Manila Bay must be equipped with a comprehensive and decent housing program for the welfare of the poor. In this way, we will be able to preserve lives – the life of the poor and the life of the Bay. -30-

Commentary : The girl with a dirty face

2011-03-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: March 25, 2011

THE CLOSER we got to the Ulingan area of Tondo, the worse it looked. This awful area is near the Temporary Housing site along R-10. When we were within 100 meters of the area we could see the dark smoke rising from the 100 charcoal kilns. When we moved a little closer, the smoke grabbed at our throats, as tear gas does. Still closer we could see men laboring in the dark wooden shacks that house the kilns, and we could hear their coughing. Finally we were in among the kilns and stacks of fuel wood and there were small children all around us in the darkness, gleaning for bits of charcoal and rusted nails, breathing in that smoke.

There are many truly inhumane living places in Metro Manila, but Ulingan is as bad as any and can serve as a symbol of slums and as a symbol of the efforts of poor people in the slums to have a better life.

We met a group of young girls who were leaving the kilns after scavenging there. Our eyes fell on one young girl whose name is Jennifer, 10 years old and still in Grade 1. She is short and thin, but what catches one’s attention is the greasy black dirt from the charcoal and smoke on her young face. On impulse I reached out to wipe away the filth. Her skin was cool and smooth as a baby’s skin, but I couldn’t remove the dirt. She earns P70 for half a sack of charcoal pieces and P17 for a kilo of nails. The girls seemed wary of us. This is the general area where GMA-7’s “Reporter’s Notebook” found 12- and 13-year-old prostitutes.

The Ulingan area and the land around it is leased to Reghis Romero by the National Housing Authority, we were told by the residents. No one there has seen the lease, so no one knows what its purpose and terms are. Why are such leases offered? Was there notice in the media of the granting of such leases? What responsibilities does the lessee incur for the poor people living on the land? The lessee appears to feel free to move the people around as he wishes, but is that power granted in the lease?
The people asked us to help, so we told them to write to the NHA to ask for a copy of the lease. Our lawyer at Urban Poor Associates, Ritche Esponilla, wrote a cover letter asking NHA general manager Chito Cruz to respond within the time allotted in law. Insecurity on the land, such as that of the people of Ulingan, is a major problem faced in all the slums. The kiln workers went to the NHA recently to follow up on their letter.

Ulingan is also a symbol of the bare survival economy the people are trapped in. The jobs they have are really unsuitable for human beings. The men laboring in the kilns are trading the health of their lungs for a few years’ employment. In the dump nearby they sort and package for sale to middlemen the recyclable garbage of Manila. They live and work among piles of sorted garbage.

Men, women and children should have better jobs. Working with charcoal and garbage can poison not only the body, but also the soul, killing all sense that there can be a better world.

We have worked there for several years along with NGOs and churches, but we have achieved little. We have tried several initiatives and we are experimenting now, we and the workers, with a modern, four-unit kiln that will replace the old kilns and produce charcoal of finer quality, using inexpensive coconut husks rather than costly wood, and which will trap the smoke in pipes where it condenses into a liquid used in fertilizers, soaps and perfumes, which, we were told, is even more valuable than charcoal.

Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales has promised to help us. It is a small step toward a better life for the people. The children will be safe from lung diseases and little girls won’t have dirty faces any more. Jobs are the way out of poverty, but they should not destroy the health of the workers or their hope in a better future.
Ulingan is a symbol also of the lack of basic necessities in the slums. The people are denied access to electricity by the NHA simply because they are illegal occupiers of the land, or squatters. Probably it is illegal to do so. Water and light are basic human needs and cannot be denied to men, women and children. The people of the area will meet and discuss what to do about the electricity.

The people of Ulingan have no security on this government land where they live. They are moved around like chess pawns by the lessee. Their houses are indistinguishable from the dirty shacks in which the kilns are located. They have degrading work. One thing that might rescue the men and women from despair would be to see that their children have a better life, but they see little hope of that.

The children should be in school. The families should have enough clean, inexpensive water so that women and men can bathe every day and clean the children well and wash away the foul smell of charcoal and makeshift toilets. They need light so that the children can study at night and so that the houses are safe from thieves and so that the families can have fans to drive away the mosquitoes.

Most tragic of all are the children like Jennifer. What chance does a small, thin child have in this world with only a year of schooling and a dirty face?

Save Boeung Kak Lake Residents from Eviction

2011-03-24T22:46:00.000-07:00

Press Release

March 25, 2011

“Save Cambodia’s Boeung Kak Lake Residents from eviction,” chanted a group of urban poor protesting in front of Cambodia Embassy on Friday. These groups belong to LOCOA (Leaders and Organizers of Community Organizations in Asia), an Asian regional network of urban poor organizations.

This mobilization is a show of solidarity with the people of Boeung Kak Lake amid mounting criticisms over forced displacements in Cambodia. Through LOCOA, Task Force Anti-Eviction (TFAE) in the Philippines and other Asian country members, were able to monitor evictions in Boeung Kak Lake, Phnom Penh, Cambodia since it started in 2009.

(Task Force Anti-Eviction (TFAE) is composed of various people’s organizations and NGOs such as Urban Poor Associates (UPA), Community Organizers Multiversity (COM), and Community Organization of the Philippine Enterprise (COPE))

UPA deputy coordinator Ted Añana said, “We were informed that the remaining lake residents were harassed to leave their homes to make way for high rise buildings and shopping centers.”

LOCOA’s research show that under the 2001 Cambodian Land Law, the Boeung Kak Lake residents have a legitimate claim on the land they have been occupying since the early 1980s. The people are also proposing a land sharing scheme that will allow them to use less than 12 percent of the entire 133 hectares of the project. The lake residents view this as a win-win solution.

In a letter to Governor Kep Chuktema of Phnom Penh, TFAE member Jose Morales said, “We ask you then as Governor of Phnom Penh, to put an end to the threats of eviction and intimidation of residents who have been asserting their rights and resisting evictions. Please recognize the Boeung Kak Lake people’s proposed land sharing scheme and let them participate in the development planning process of the Boeung Kak Lake project.”

On March 21, Monday, LOCOA members in Bangkok, Thailand staged protest demonstrations at the Cambodian and Chinese embassies. But to their dismay, no representatives from the two embassies accepted their letters. They ended up stapling their letters on one of their banners with messages “Listen to the People!” “Open negotiations on land sharing on Boeung Kak Lake!” and hanged them in the embassies’ entrance.

On March 23, a group of urban poor in Dhaka, Bangladesh also showed their solidarity with the Boeung Kak Lake residents by rallying in front of Cambodian embassy. Other Locoa members in Korea, Indonesia, and Mumbai are preparing mass actions in support of Boeung Kak Lake residents.

Añana concluded, “Massive evictions are happening in Asian countries and we believe that if the people of Asia unite to stop eviction, there is a great possibility that Asian governments will observe the housing rights of the poor.” -30-

MANILA ESTEROS BRIEFING PAPER

2011-03-18T01:56:00.000-07:00

Data by Urban Poor Associates

Background

Five Esteros surrounding Malacanang are due for immediate demolition, namely, San Miguel, San Sebastian, Quiapo, Uli-Uli and Aviles, according to oral or written notices given the people. This is to prevent devastation, such as, was wrought by Typhoon Ondoy, which submerged a big portion of Metro Manila in 2009. President Noynoy Aquino is concerned about saving lives when calamities happen. However the residents of these esteros who have lived long years in the area, when interviewed, denied they have experienced damaging loss of lives and properties, even during Typhoon Ondoy.

If floods hit Manila, the esteros are not the only areas endangered; no area will be spared, according to the people. What is needed, they said, are precautionary measures to evacuate the residents in areas prone to flooding immediately. Round the clock advisory of rainfall by PAG-ASA can be instituted, and an immediate warning can be given when the water from the dams is going to be released. A ready site for evacuation is needed. These are the people’s suggested solutions. For the estero residents, removing them and transferring them to a distant place outside their work area is not an option that will help them survive socially and economically. From the interviews the following are cited as the compelling reasons to allow them to stay where they are.

First are the social reasons. The older generation of estero settlers was born on the esteros and they have brought up their families there. So, too, the second generation who have just begun their married lives. For all of them the estero has provided the safety nets they needed both financially and emotionally. Social relations have been established among them that help them understand one another. In times of emergencies, such as, sickness, accidents, family problems, deaths, security issues, etc. the neighbors are the first to offer help. Their proximity to religious and charity institutions, schools, hospitals, markets, and transportation facilities, also helps them to survive the hardship of poverty by offering quick access to these institutions. Their ability to earn a living is the most important factor cited in explaining why they have to stay in the city. The tables below show what people do for work and where they do it, and how much they earn.

Estero de Quiapo, 118 Households

N.B. We interviewed all 118 families. Percentages for “Place of Work” and “Total Income” total 100%. However, under “Source of Income” some respondents who didn’t work told the interviewer they didn’t work, but didn’t add that their husbands or others in the family worked. In Estero de Quiapo only 70.6% of respondents reported on their “source of income” or that of others in the family. This situation is repeated in the other esteros.

Source of Income	Total Monthly Income		Place of Work
24.5 % are vending or peddling (newspapers, cigarettes, food items, DVDs, accessories, etc 7.8% are in the service sector (as service crews, clerks, sales representative, etc.) 4.9% are in the transport sector (driver-operators of different jeepneys, tricycles, pedicabs, heavy equipments, delivery vehicles, etc.) 13.2% are skilled workers 5.4% are unskilled workers 2.9% are in security sector (security guards, bouncers, barangay tanod, etc.) 1.0% are professionals (police, military, teacher, nurse, medical technologist, engineer, etc.) 1.5% are in government (barangay captain, kagawad, barangay tanod, etc.) 2.0% are OFWs 5.9% are pensioners 1.5% other jobs	Php 0-3,000	22%	51.7% are working within their community/barangay 23.8% are working outside their community but still within the city 18.9% are working outside the city of Manila but still within Metro Manila 2.1% outside Metro Manila/other provinces 3.5% outside of the country
	3,001-6,000	31.4%
	6,001-9,000	22%
	9,001-12,000	11%
	12,001-15,000	3.4%
	15,001-18,000	3.4%
	18,001-21,000	3.4%
	above 21,000	3.4%

ABILITY TO PAY, NEARNESS TO WORK The above data shows 46.6% of households in Estero de Quiapo have incomes of PhP6,000 and above. If 10% of income is allocated to rental expense, each family in this bracket can afford to pay a rental fee of Php600 per month; 31.4% can afford Php300 per month and 22% will need a subsidy or the government can lengthen the amortization period, or give a long grace period to start payment. 75.5% are working within their community/barangay and within the city. Only a small number, 5.6%, are working outside Metro Manila and outside the country. A majority of families live within walking distance of their jobs. Nearness to job sites is a big advantage for the types of work the people have, for example, a woman who cooks food for sale.

Estero de San Sebastian, 79 Households

Source of Income	Total Income		Place of Work
29% of the households are vending (newpapers, cigarettes, fish, meat, fruits, vegetables, drinks, viands, rice cakes, cooked food, jewelries, DVDs, sari-sari store and carinderia). 9.4% are in the service sector (sales, merchandiser, salesgirl, salesboy, recruitment agent, cashier, teller, clerk, service crew, bar tender, etc.) 5.8% are in the transport sector (drivers or operators of pedicab, tricycle, jeepney, taxi, delivery vehicle, truck, heavy equipment, etc.) 12.3% are skilled laborers (mason, carpenter, welder, electrician, plumber, steelman, house painter, foreman, supervisor, etc.) 5.8% are unskilled laborers (kargador, labandera, baby sitter, janitor, janitress, foreman, supervisor, etc.) 1.4% are employed in the security sector (security guard, bouncer, barangay tanod, traffic enforcer); professionals (police, military, teacher, nurse, medical technologist, engineer and OFWs.) 1.4% are professionals (police, military, teacher, medical technologist, engineer) 3.6% are pensioners 1.4% are OFWs. 0.7% are government officials (barangay captain and kagawad)	Php 0-3,000	13.9%	22.4% are working within the community/barangay 49.0% are working outside the community but within the city 21.4% are working outside the city but within Metro Manila 5.1% are working outside Metro Manila/other province 2.0% are working in other countries
	3,001-6,000	8.9%
	6,001-9,000	26.6%
	9,001-12,000	21.5%
	12,001-15,000	11.4%
	15,001-18,000	2.5%
	18,001-21,000	6.3%
	above 21,000	8.9%
ABILITY TO PAY, NEARNESS TO WORK Estero de San Sebastian has a higher number of household—77.2% who can pay a rental fee of P600/month. Some 8.9% can pay P300 per month. A lower number of families 13.9% will need a subsidy or easier terms of payments. San Sebastian is better-off economically than the other esteros studied. 92.8% are working within their community/barangay and within the city. 7.1% are working outside Metro Manila and outside the country. The jobs of the estero people are tied to the area where they live. If relocated far away they will not be able to find work easily.

Estero de Aviles, 129 Households

Source of Income	Total Income		Place of Work
38.6% of the households are vending (newpapers, cigarettes, fish, meat, fruits, vegetables, drinks, viands, rice cakes, cooked food, jewelries, DVDs, sari-sari store and carinderia). 2.6% are in the service sector (sales, merchandiser, salesgirl, salesboy, recruitment agent, cashier, teller, clerk, service crew, bar tender, etc.) 3.4% are in the transport sector (drivers or operators of pedicab, tricycle, jeepney, taxi, delivery vehicle, truck, heavy equipment, etc.) 6.0% are skilled laborers (mason, carpenter, welder, electrician, plumber, steelman, house painter, foreman, supervisor, etc.) 5.2% are unskilled laborers (kargador, labandera, baby sitter, janitor, janitress, foreman, supervisor, etc.) 1.3% are employed in the security sector (security guard, bouncer, barangay tanod, traffic enforcer); 3.4% are professionals (police, military, teacher, nurse, medical technologist, and engineer) 0.9% are OFWs 0.4%% are pensioners 6% Others	P 0-3,000	20.6%	25.2% are working within the community/barangay 45.9% are working outside the community but within the city 23.9% outside the city but within Metro Manila 1.9% outside Metro Manila/other province 3.1% other countries
	3,001-6,000	22.2%
	6,001-9,000	19.0%
	9,001-12,000	20.6%
	12,001-15,000	7.1%
	15,001-18,000	0.8%
	18,001-21,000	4.0%
	21,000 above	5.6%

ABILITY TO PAY, NEARNESS TO WORK 57.1% families can pay a rental fee of P600/month; 22.2% (P300/mo.). Some 20.6% of families need a subsidy or easier terms of payments. 95% are working within the barangay/community and within the city. Only 5% are working outside Metro Manila and other countries.

Estero de San Miguel, 410 Households

Source of Income	Total Income		Place of Work
20% of the households are vending (newpapers, cigarettes, fish, meat, fruits, vegetables, drinks, viands, rice cakes, cooked food, jewelries, DVDs, sari-sari store and carinderia). 7.5% are in the service sector (sales, merchandiser, salesgirl, salesboy, recruitment agent, cashier, teller, clerk, service crew, bar tender, etc.) 10.6% are in the transport sector (drivers or operators of pedicab, tricycle, jeepney, taxi, delivery vehicle, truck, heavy equipment, etc.) 10% are skilled laborers (mason, carpenter, welder, electrician, plumber, steelman, house painter, foreman, supervisor, etc.) 7.8% are unskilled laborers (kargador, labandera, baby sitter, janitor, janitress, foreman, supervisor, etc.) 3.8% are employed in the security sector (security guard, bouncer, barangay tanod, traffic enforcer); 1.2% are professionals (police, military, teacher, nurse, medical technologist, and engineer) 0.8% are government officials (barangay captain and kagawad) 2.6% are OFWs 2.1% are pensioners 1.4% Others	P 0-3,000	11.6%	22.3% are working within the community/barangay 53.5% are working outside the community but within the city 18.4% are working outside the city but within Metro Manila 1.4% are working outside Metro Manila/other provinces. 4.5% are working overseas.
	3,001-6,000	19.0%
	6,001-9,000	17.8%
	9,001-12,000	24.7%
	12,001-15,000	8.4%
	15,001-18,000	5.4%
	18,001-21,000	4.0%
	21,000 above	9.1%
ABILITY TO PAY, NEARNESS TO WORK 69.4% can pay a rental fee of P600/month; 19% (P300/mo.). A lower number of families, 11.6%, need a subsidy or easier terms of payments. 94.2% are working in their community/barangay and in Metro Manila. 1.4% are working outside Metro Manila and 4.5% are working outside the country.

CONCLUSIONS. Some 74.4% of the people on the esteros studied or worked within their community/barangay and within the city. Another 14.4% work outside Metro Manila and outside the country. A big majority of the household earners are in the informal sector, very dependent on the economic infrastructures that the city provides, such as schools, offices, restaurants, churches and construction activities.

Relocating the Estero residents outside the City of Manila will adversely affect their economic capability. First to suffer because of the loss of jobs will be the education of children and food for the family, which will lead to malnutrition. The ability to pay monthly amortization for on-site upgrading is sure; government will recover its investment. An average percentage of 62% of families in the esteros can pay P600 per month. In distant relocation sites which the people do not choose and do not like the government recovers very little of its investment, maybe as low as 10%. However, if people like what the government does, they repay, for example, in the Community Mortgage Program.

To dislocate all the households on the esteros in effect will add to the already increasing number of poor people nationwide who are hungry and malnourished.

It is easier for a family with a monthly income of PhP6,000 to survive in the city where they are now, because the cost of living is cheaper compared to that in the resettlement areas, according to resettled families interviewed. Transportation costs are minimal in the city, schoolchildren walk to their schools; workers also walk. Basic commodities such as fish, vegetables, meat, etc. are cheaper, according to people we interviewed from the resettlement areas. When one gets sick in the city, hospitals are nearby reducing medical costs, they said.

The receiving municipalities have no capacity to provide mass employment to the relocatees. A massive employment scheme would be needed to accommodate the families to be resettled, who runs into the thousands. Addressing employment problems should be the priority before uprooting families. Slum upgrading is a better development scheme for the urban settlers. Both the government and informal settlers will save an enormous sum of money from this.

The buildings designed by Palafox Associates are meant to make people on the esteros safe from flooding. Families will not be living on ground levels. They will be able, if there is flooding, to move to the second floor of their houses. If even this doesn’t save them, they can be evacuated as the people said on page 1 of this paper.

The buildings will have toilets and liquid waste treatment so the people will not pollute the river, an accusation often made by critics of the urban poor. There will be no families living on stilts in the water of the esteros that could block the flow of water that creates flooding. Also the families have already in some esteros (in parts of San Miguel Estero, for example) begun to clean the esteros.

The buildings designed by Palafox can be combined with gardens, mini parks, and tea and coffee shops that will make the community very attractive and a place tourists will like to visit.

The people in the esteros say they have not suffered much from flooding in the past, even during Ondoy. If the welfare of the poor is our aim, there is no need to move them for their health’s sake. If the reason for moving people is because their communities are not nice looking, then help the people improve their housing as Palafox Associates does.

If we all try to make the esteros a safe and beautiful site for families we can do that. As planned by Palafox Associates there is provision made for all the concerns of government, such as, water flow, dredging, toilets, and care for the waters of the estero.

Our old distant relocation methods did not solve the problem: 30%-40% of the families returned to the city and the slums. Government didn’t get its money back. Why don’t we try this new approach that is already successfully done in other Asian cities, such as, Bangkok and Surabaya.

Urban Poor Oppose Restoration of Anti-Squatting Law

2011-03-09T19:40:00.000-08:00

9 March 2011. Urban poor gathered before Congress at Batasan Road today to oppose House Bill 2145, This is a bill amending Republic Act no. 8368, otherwise known as the “Anti-Squatting Law Repeal Act of 1997.” With them were the Task Force Anti-Eviction group composed of Urban Poor Associates (UPA), Community Organization of the Philippine Enterprise (COPE), Community Organizers Multiversity (COM) and Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Pangligal (SALIGAN).

Urban poor groups portrayed Occidental Mindoro Rep. Amelita Calimbas-Villarosa, the author of HB 2145, as a grim reaper. Urban poor people believe that HB 2145 is like Death, because it kills the housing rights of urban poor.

Jose Morales, president of ULAP said, “We don’t understand why she wants to restore the anti-squatting law. Does she hate the poor so much that she wants to pass a bill that would jail millions of poor people living in Metro Manila and other urban areas?”

“We don’t want a repeat of what happened during the Marcos regime, when he issued and implemented Presidential Decree 772 that sent to jail thousands of urban poor and their housing rights were suppressed. It took us years to nullify PD 772, so we will not allow the reinstatement of this law.” he added.

SALIGAN study of HB 2145, finds that the bill is an attempt to change the definition of “professional squatters.”

Atty. Jing Gaddi, urban poor unit coordinator of SALIGAN said, “The bill is trying to say that it will strengthen the protection for private land owners. However, it overlooks the fact that the social justice provisions of the 1987 Constitution limit and define such right to private ownership. Moreover, the bill says that if the occupants refuse to vacate a property within 90 days upon receiving a written demand, the occupants shall be considered professional squatters. This provision underhandedly broadens the UDHA’s definition of what a professional squatter is. What’s even more strange is H.B. 2145 does not prescribe any clear legal remedy for evicting said professional squatters.”

“HB 2145 has no basis in law for broadening the definition of ‘professional squatters’. In so doing, all urban poor will fall within the category of professional squatters and hence, automatically will be considered criminal. This bill also violates international covenants on economic, social, and cultural rights in which the Philippines is one of the signatories. We condemn, the attempt to criminalize again the situation of the poor through a blanket definition of professional squatter,” Gaddi concluded.

In a statement, UPA deputy coordinator Ted Anana said, “There are many efforts being done by the new Aquino government to provide decent housing to informal settlers. These will all be erased once this bill becomes law. We are just starting to plan the future of the poor and the poor are working closely with the government to reach the goals of providing decent housing for the urban poor as mandated by the 1987 Constitution and the Urban Development and Housing Act. Let us all be reminded that this kind of measure was proven to be a failure under Marcos. The number of urban poor increased. Jailing the urban poor because they are poor is not the way to solve poverty.” -30-

The Badjaos of R10

2011-03-01T00:45:00.001-08:00

Youngblood
By Princess L. Asuncion
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:12:00 03/01/2011

Filed Under: Local authorities, People

Spare us from relocation, Manila's creekside dwellers plead

2011-02-17T19:10:00.000-08:00

By LEONARD D. POSTRADO

February 17, 2011, 4:32pm

MANILA, Philippines – Families living along the six major esteros in Manila Thursday asked Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim to spare them from being relocated to distant provinces as part of the joint effort of government and private sector to revive the Pasig River.

Members of the Nagkakaisang Mamamayan sa Legarda (NML), who live along Estero de San Miguel, said they will oppose any plans of the government to transfer them to Bulacan and Rizal.

It was first reported that informal settlers living along Estero de San Miguel, Estero de Quiapo, Estero de Uli-uli and Estero de San Sebastian, will be relocated to Towerville VI, Barangay Gaya-Gaya, San Jose del Monte in Bulacan and at Kaunlaran Village in Rodriguez, Rizal.

NML President Felomina Cinco said the homeowners had a meeting with President Benigno S. Aquino III last December 23 and presented him with housing designs appropriate for the esteros.

The designs, which were made by urban planning and design consultancy firm Palafox Associates, was intended to give creek-dwellers decent housing and at the same time not interfering with the cleaning of the tributaries of Pasig River.

“He (President Aquino) listened to our housing proposal and we talked to different agencies including PRRC and the city government of Manila regarding our alternative solution which is to live in new housing in the same place,” Cinco said.

“DILG has formed a technical working group to study the estero housing designed by Palafox Architects. That’s why we are surprised with the reports that 1,800 estero dwellers will be evicted. From the beginning we opposed relocation,” she added.

Meanwhile, Urban Poor Associates (UPA) field director Alicia Murphy pointed out that it is not necessary for the city government to transfer the creek dwellers to distant provinces but instead urged the government to conduct a so-called slum upgrading as proposed by Palafox.

“Although Victoria Clavel of Manila Urban Settlement Office mentioned that the relocation is yet to be made final and there is no target date when the estero dwellers will be relocated, this news roused fear among the affected settlers.”

Murphy said the families living along the creeks are an important asset to the city and not the polluters they are pictured them to be.

As proof, she cited the slum-upgrade on the stretch of Bangkok’s Bang Bua Canal where 3,400 families benefited from the program.

“The Bangkok Canal peoples’ networks demonstrated to the city that these canal-side communities are not polluters but are an important asset to the city, and they developed a long-term comprehensive solution to problems of land and housing in Thai cities,” Murphy said.

She stressed that the urban poor and the cleaning of the river are not mutually exclusive of one another, and that the shelter rights of the poor are as essential as the rehabilitation of the waterways.

The public must not be made to choose between the interests of the environment and the rights and welfare of the poor, Murphy said.

Brides and young prostitutes

2011-02-16T10:00:00.000-08:00

Commentary

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 05:39:00 02/17/2011

Look after the land

2011-01-30T02:30:00.000-08:00

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: January 28, 2011

A RECENT story in the newspapers said that the government plans to sell Camps Crame and Aguinaldo. There were few follow-up stories, letters to the editor or editorials, despite the fact that the sale of the 212 hectares in the heart of Metro Manila will have tremendous direct impact on the lives of thousands of people, determining where they live and work, and indirectly affect nearly all the people of the metropolis to a greater or lesser degree. The importance of the sale can be grasped by its estimated sale price of about P200 billion at a conservative P10,000 per square meter. Some people say the price could be as high as P30,000 per square meter or a total of more than P5 trillion. Few of us have a real understanding of such a figure, any more than we do light years and black holes in space.

Wise use of the land will benefit generations. The Luneta is a good example of wise use. Half a million people spent Christmas and New Year’s Day there, the media reported. On the other hand, the proposed use of 400 or so hectares of the reclaimed land in Manila Bay fronting Pasay and Pasig for gambling casinos intended to rival the giant gambling centers of Macau and Las Vegas is a dubious use of land. Does Philippine society want gambling on such a scale? Equally important, aren’t there better uses for the land?

Small groups of people decide what will happen to the country’s disposable land. The transactions are not very transparent. It’s likely the public won’t hear any more about the camp sale until it is already finalized. The point here is not that there is something suspect going on, but rather that the matter is so important that the public ought to have a say in who gets the land and what uses are made of it.

What do people want the land to be used for? Do they want another Trinoma, Ortigas Center, Eastwood or Fort Bonifacio Global City? Do they want another Luneta, Quezon City Memorial Circle Park, or EcoPark? Do they want the land used to house the poor? Do they want a mixed housing development where people of different economic levels will live? Do they want a giant upscale entertainment area with casinos, hotels, spas, etc? Do they want the land to have playing fields where the country’s future soccer champions, boys and girls, can develop? Should the land be used for light industry, cottage industries, cooperatives or job training? Should it be a park with thousands of trees to promote clean air for all? Should it have memorials for the heroic deeds done there in the past?

I found in discussing the uses of the camp land that people often have a clearer idea of what they don’t want than of what they want. For example, they don’t want uses that will make traffic worse. Many don’t want more malls. They claim we don’t need more, that we have already more malls than any city needs. Poor people want something they can use, such as the Luneta. They don’t want the land to be reserved for the use of tourists and rich people. Playing fields, libraries, museums, gardens and art centers can change boys or girls’ lives. Maybe these uses should be the priority.

It might make good sense for the government, before it sells the camps or the reclaimed land, to ask to what degree the sale of Fort Bonifacio, Camp John Hay, and Clark Field have benefited the whole country. Have the sales invigorated Metro Manila, Baguio and Central Luzon, or have special interests largely benefited?

Can the sale be done in a more transparent way? Can there be public hearings and presentation of alternative uses for the land? Is there some way the people’s preferences can be accurately calculated and serve as guidelines for our decision makers?

Land once sold is gone for good. Three years ago the urban poor had their annual “Kalbaryo” on the reclaimed land in Manila Bay. They made the Stations of the Cross near the Mall of Asia. They wanted to point out to the public that while thousands of poor families live in degrading slums and others are evicted to far-off relocation centers, where there were few if any jobs, hundreds of hectares of government land were being set aside for a casino complex and a family entertainment center (whatever that is, it sounds expensive).

The poor that day were a small ragamuffin group and were ignored by the government and the media. After they finished the stations, they walked around the empty land. They found themselves in a vast and empty desert. The security guards they met didn’t know who owned the land or who had a claim on it. The people felt sad but they were helpless to do anything. The answer of course is not to give up, but to enlist more and more people in making sure that public land serves all the people. The best way to do that is for the people to ask that their opinions be heard.

If there aren’t compelling reasons to sell the land now, why not wait until there are such reasons?

A Hopeful Presidential Poor Initiative

2011-01-16T19:48:00.000-08:00

Commentary

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:45:00 01/17/2011

IN A long-delayed meeting President Aquino and the urban poor chose to attack urban poverty and the many problems of our cities in a collegial way through discussion and common sense, as collaborators rather than as combatants. Government and the poor have more often than not seen each other as opponents, or at least as obstacles in the way of each other’s plans.

The President agreed with the request of the poor for a three- to four-month moratorium on all evictions on public and private land. He and the poor believe the moratorium will create the peaceful milieu in which a committee, appointed by the President with representatives from government, civil society and the Church, can seek solutions to the many problems of evictions the poor brought to the President’s attention. Over 350,000 families in the past six months or so have received written or oral notice they will be evicted. With an average size of five members per family, some 1,750,000 persons are under threat.

For five months the poor people tried to arrange this meeting. They began to feel the President had forgotten their concerns, though they had signed a Covenant with him during the election campaign. On the matter of evictions the President had promised in the Covenant to give decent relocation for every family evicted, and to do everything possible to relocate the people in the city itself and not in far off areas, such as Calauan, Laguna, 115 kilometers away, where there are few if any jobs. In the first few months of President Aquino’s term of office there was no change from the old ways of evicting families, and the people wondered if the promised changes would ever come. They now believe they and government are on the right track.

The problems presented to the President are of two types: one set concerns the concrete eviction threats mentioned above that need solution as soon as possible. The second type concerns the long-term land and housing policies. Government, for example, must decide on its strategic priorities in the use of urban land. Will these uses include homes and jobs for the poor as well as for infrastructure, business centers, industry and homes and recreation centers for the well-off?

Such policy questions can best be answered with the help of urban planners, architects, social scientists, moral leaders, such as the Church, and representatives of the different stakeholders. Research is needed, including a better knowledge than we have now of what is happening and succeeding in countries around the world which have similar problems.

The poor have asked that the committee include, in addition to officials of the government’s housing agencies, Cabinet secretaries Corazon “Dinky” Soliman and Jesse Robredo, experts such as Architect Felino Palafox Jr., Dr. Esteban Godilano and Mary Racelis, the Mapua Institute of Technology architects and engineers, the UP School of Urban and Regional Planning, the Church and other moral leaders and civil society leaders. The poor suggest the committee choose its own chairperson.

Eviction is not the only problem the poor face. They need legal light and water connections, better clinics and schools (shouldn’t the children of the poor have the best teachers, for example?), help in finding work, land proclamations and housing loans adapted to the abilities of the poor to repay. They need an understanding government and an understanding elite.

Is it naïve to hope this cooperative approach proposed by the poor and approved by the President will succeed? Perhaps it won’t succeed fully, but that only means other new approaches are required. What is certain is that it makes no sense to go on trying to solve the growing problems presented by millions of poor, unskilled and unhappy families in our cities without some form of systematic planning that takes all aspects of problems into account. Our present policies haven’t worked. Government cannot ignore, mistreat, cajole or abuse its urban poor, now 20 percent of the country’s total population, and expect to have a peaceful harmonious nation. The poor won’t disappear. They will continue to sit on the doorsteps of the powerful demanding change.

Perhaps farmers, industrial workers, tribal people, the aged and other sectors can find similar planning arrangements with the President. He has shown a willingness to engage in more democratic forms of decision making.

The well-being of the entire country depends in great part on the President remaining close to the poor in these planning efforts. In turn he will be supported by the poor in his efforts at curbing corruption and building a nation based on social justice. It is difficult to see how he can succeed in these tasks without the poor.

(Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net)

Dialogue with Aquino worth the wait

2011-01-10T05:43:00.000-08:00

By Denis Murphy, Manila

The Philippines’ urban poor finally had their long-awaited meeting with President Benigno Aquino two days before Christmas and found it was worth the wait.

Since July, when Aquino came into office, the urban poor have sought a meeting with the president to clarify the government’s position on the demolition of shanties, relocation of slum dwellers, social housing and basic services for the poor.

A press report on Dec. 15 suggested that the president had forgotten all about the poor despite an agreement he had with urban poor leaders during the elections. Aquino signed a “Covenant with the Urban Poor” as one of his campaign promises.

The Dec. 23 meeting between the president and 10 representatives of the poor and key government housing agencies resulted in a promise that the government will declare a four-month moratorium on evictions from public and private lands. The poor said the time was needed for government agencies and the poor to come to a consensus on how the issues in the “covenant” will be implemented.

President Aquino also agreed to set up a committee with representatives from civil society, the urban poor, the government and the Church. It will analyse the situation and make recommendations to solve the issues.

A main point of contention is the relocation of people evicted from their homes. The president vowed that no family on public or private land can be evicted without decent relocation. He also agreed that relocation of displaced residents will be “in-city” and not in distant areas where there are no jobs.

Felino Palafox Jr., head of one of the country’s foremost architecture firms, told the meeting that urban poor dwellers need not be removed from canals because there are ways to address access to the city’s waterways that will be beneficial to both the government and residents.

There are more than five million urban poor people in Metro Manila, where the total population is estimated by the Asian Development Bank at 14 million.

Urban poor leaders believe the government will have to attend to the immediate problems of the poor, like imminent eviction, while looking for long-term solutions to the problem, including providing jobs for the poor, improving education and ensuring good health.

Bishop Broderick Pabillo, chairman of the social action secretariat of the Catholic bishops’ conference, for instance, has made attempts to train parish committees to help address the problems of urban poor communities.

The urban poor representatives who met with President Aquino found him knowledgeable of the problems people face. Results, however, will depend on seriousness of the people he appointed to address the issues of the poor.

Highblood : Santa in Payatas

2010-12-25T04:35:00.000-08:00

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: December 24, 2010

THIS CHRISTMAS I played Santa Claus, complete with a red and white suit and flowing beard, to 200 poor children in Payatas. It was a walk-on role with very few lines, just “Ho, Ho, Ho,” “Maligayang Pasko” and a few words about the North Pole.

I wanted to be credible to the children and not spoil the party. I was nervous putting on my costume. I was like a matador, I thought, putting on his “suit of lights” while the crowd roars in the arena above.

If Santa sits in the passenger seat near the driver, people see him. Everyone greets him like a pope or Manny Pacquiao. Children run along beside the car. No one seems to think it’s strange to see a grown man dressed as a child’s toy in Manila’s traffic. Our right front door, however, is broken due to an accident. I sat in the rear where no one could see me. We passed through crowds and traffic jams, but no one noticed.

The Payatas Christmas party took place in a smallish covered court on top of what was once a hill of garbage. It is now covered with grass and serves as the compound of the company converting garbage to electricity there. I wondered if it was the same hill of garbage that collapsed 10 years ago. Bodies were recovered, but the local people told me at the time that there were many more bodies, especially those of children, still buried in the garbage. The government denied this, but the people said the children were dead and buried in the garbage, no matter what the government denied. I once wrote a poem about these children:

The garbage hill collapsed,

Burying hundreds of children.

We found them, wiped slime from their faces

And lay them in rows

Arms crossed on their chests.

Later when we looked back,

They were holding tight to one another.

I remembered the dead children as I made my way in among the children at the Christmas party. I think I was a flop. I wished them merry Christmas, but there was no response. I told them about the polar bears who live with Santa up north, but they didn’t seem interested. I tried to get them to sing “Silent Night” in English or Tagalog with the help of the parents. Again, no response. Is it possible they don’t know about polar bears? I looked more closely at the small children right in front of me. Their eyes and mouths were wide open in what looked like amazement. All the time I looked at them they didn’t blink.

I thought I’d innovate a little, so I introduced my wife as Mrs. Santa Claus. I don’t think she was happy about that honor. Finally we gave out chocolate pops.

None of the children rushed to get one, none grabbed for one; one little boy even returned an extra pop. They were definitely interested, but not in songs, animal stories, not even particularly interested in chocolates. I had played my part. If they pelted me with their chocolate bar wrappings, I wouldn’t have been surprised. I was a flop.

“Goodbye, Santa,” Miss Princess and Miss Jing shouted as I got to the covered court entrance. I turned around and the children were all standing, cheering, waving their arms, and shouting,

“Goodbye Santa!”

“Merry Christmas, Santa,” Princess and Jing shouted.

There was another thunderous roar from the little children. I felt so good I almost went back to thank each of them.

I left them feeling better and wandered up the hill to a turn in the road from where I could see all of Payatas and all the way across the National Government Center to the Batasan. I thought of the children who may still be buried underfoot in the garbage. We have to be saddened by their short, sad lives, but surely they will have better Christmas parties than we have here. They’ll have God and His angels and not just an old guy who played Santa for a day.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

2010 UPA Christmas Party

2010-12-20T13:15:00.000-08:00

The Urban Poor Associates and other NGOs celebrated their Christmas Party at the UPA office.

PART 1:

PART 2: