Urban Poor and the Pork Barrel Scandal

Urban Poor Associates

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13 November 2013. Urban poor groups composed of Urban Poor Alliance, Urban Poor Associates, Community Organizers Multiversity, and other different people’s organizations presented urban poor peoples’ views on the pork barrel scandal and related matters November 13 at the Ateneo De Manila.

Professor Prospero “Popoy” De Vera, University of the Philippines Vice-President for Public Affairs and  Senator Benigno “Bam” Aquino spoke to the group.

Jeorgie Tenolete, President of Kabalikat sa Kaunlaran in Baseco, Tondo said the poor were shocked by the amount of money revealed.

Tenolete spoke for all urban poor when he said: “If that money were spent for the good of the poor majority, nobody would be begging in the streets, nobody would be evicted because housing is inadequate, nobody would be out of work, no children would be out of school, nobody would die because he/she had no money for medicines and nobody would be hungry. Now that we know there is money, they cannot tell us anymore that there is no money for basic needs. We will do our best to make sure that the poor will never be an ingredient in a scam like this—we will organize ourselves to go against the corrupt.”

The forum called for extending Philhealth benefits to every poor family; by making sure each student in elementary school had free uniforms, text books, meals and transport; provide funds to improve light, water and drainage in the poor communities; creating jobs; and flooding poor neighborhoods with rice, fish and vegetable at affordable cost.

The urban poor also pledged action by organizing signature campaigns and rallies for honest government and in order to jail pork barrel villains within one year; organizing voters against persons known to be corrupt; putting a committee of urban poor leaders and NGOs into the six agencies that received the money that would have gone to the pork barrel in 2014 to monitor the utilization of the funds; work with Bottom-Up Budgeting, and make citizens’ arrests of corrupt officials.

Alice Murphy, UPA Field Director said, “this forum is a venue for poor people to get together, share their sentiments, suggest alternatives and at the same time be enlightened on the issue of the  pork barrel scam. We believe that by free discussions we can learn and with understanding of the issues we can come to commitments that will improve the condition of the poor through better public service.”

She said: “We will start by advocating PhilHealth for our poor people. Many of our leaders have PhilHealth but when the time came that they try to use the card and present it in the hospital, they find out that it was not funded. Many poor people die because they don’t have access to hospital care.”

Token From Kabalikat's Habi Bag

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Not the ‘gates of hell,’ but worse

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

 

 

Manila is not the “gates of hell” Dan Brown described in his latest novel “Inferno.” If anything, it is worse. Brown and observers like him see only the shell of poverty, the part of it that is visible from a car or from a walk on the edge of an urban poor area near their hotel. They don’t know the truly awful scenes in the heart of the slums and they don’t know the people. And most Filipinos have little more real knowledge of the slums than our foreign friends do.

 

Foreigners and most Filipinos lack an understanding of why the slums are here, how little is done to help the urban poor, and how much courage and self-sacrificing love exist in the slums. Cardinal Chito Tagle and Pope Francis have urged us to listen to one another as a precondition for understanding one another: To understand all is to forgive all.

 

Yes, in the slums there are pimps, men ready to kill for P500, drug lords, child prostitutes, parents who encourage their children to become prostitutes; there are drunks, lazy people, opportunists, violent husbands, vultures who prey on the weak, and all types of bad characters. There are, however, as I have experienced in my 43 years of work in the Tondo-Baseco slums, men and women, especially women, of near-heroic love and unselfishness.

 

I also believe there are embers of compassion in all our people, so that a gesture of concern by a decent government or an engaged Church, or a group of young people, can fan the embers into flame and into genuine concern for the very poor. Why worry about what Dan Brown or others say? We will be judged on what we do to help the poor who are there before us, as Jesus promised they always would be.

 

Let me give an example of what embers of compassion look like and how these can be fanned into life.  We were driving on Aurora Boulevard in front of St. Joseph’s Church last week when we saw coming toward us, against the traffic, an older man, a scavenger, pushing a kariton that was piled high with the stuff he had gathered during the night. On top of everything was a cardboard box turned upside down, and balancing on the box were two small puppies. The box tilted this way and that and the puppies looked around for help. The man, who seemed to be in his sixties, was smiling at the dogs and reassuring them they were safe, and perhaps for a few hours at least he was smiling at life itself. After all, he had finished work and had earned his P150 or P200 for the night. He was on his way to the junk shop to sell his stuff and then he would head home for breakfast and bed with his puppies.

 

Then something remarkable happened: None of the drivers around us blew their horns at the man for coming against traffic and slowing them up in the rush hour. Ordinarily, these same drivers would be furious at a wrong-way driver. People have been shot for blocking traffic. Here no one was angry. They sympathized with the old man. Compassion was still alive.

Maybe the drivers liked the old man’s self-reliance and jaunty air in the face of poverty and old age. Maybe they liked his affection for the puppies. Whatever the reason, the drivers saw him as a good man in need of help. If there were a program for the old man, they would readily have signed on.

 

Let the old man stand as a symbol for the urban poor and the rural landless poor and the tribal people hustled out of their land by mining companies and others. The job of the government, the Church and ourselves, I believe, is to awaken the interest of all people in the poor of the country. Like the old man, most of the poor are decent, interesting people.

 

The poor need help. No one escapes poverty by himself or herself. Not Batman, Superman, or even the Irish superhero Finn McCool, who is so strong he can lift himself up by the scruff of his neck, can manage to get out of poverty unaided.

What might a program for the old scavengers and people like him be? We should note, first of all, that if he has a home, he is fortunate. There are hundreds of scavenger-families who sleep at night in or alongside their kariton. Let us talk about what can be done for them. At night they pull their wagons up on the sidewalk wherever they can and huddle together for the night, more like people in the Tabon Caves 50,000 years ago than residents of a modern city. They are liable to be beaten or robbed, or rousted by the police or by security guards, or well-off people who fear the presence of homeless people.

 

Suppose we set up camps around the city where the poor scavengers can come at night, where they will have water and be safe, where perhaps a medical person can examine the sick and the children can get a bite to eat, and maybe some tutoring. Can Ateneo de Manila University, Miriam College and the University of the Philippines open their parking lots at night to the kariton of the poor and homeless? The security guards are already in the schools to keep an eye on things. The homeless people will be safe and will leave in the early morning.

 

The schools can become homes of peace and compassion for the hundreds of young and old people who are literally homeless in the Cubao area.

 

What must be done?

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/53985/not-the-gates-of-hell-but-worse#ixzz2Wdv5AuMy 
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Weddings on Estero de San Miguel

By Denis Murphy

Philippine Daily Inquirer
Tuesday, April 16th, 2013

My wife Alice and I were ninang and ninong recently to 24 couples who were married on the banks of Estero de San Miguel. The estero hasn’t been a famous venue for weddings, to say the least, but in the near future we may be surprised.


The couples will move a few meters along the estero from the fragile, congested shacks they now live in to beautiful family houses. Thanks to their own determination and the wisdom of a few government officials, they will look out their windows each morning to a clean estero, trees along the banks full of birds bathing in fresh air and sunshine. The only noise beside the birds will be students heading for Claro M. Recto High School. This is an example of the on-site, in-city housing President Aquino has promoted.

Urban poor people are often defined as families that live illegally on land they don’t own, in rundown, dilapidated houses. Does the shift of our 24 couples to the new houses mean they are no longer urban poor? Not in most people’s eyes: urban poverty is still linked to low incomes. But this tag may soon disappear from our 24. They may now be below the poverty line, but they are located in the heart of Manila, and so can take advantage of every job opportunity. Also their children are graduating from the nearby colleges at a higher rate than in other poor areas and they will soon bring good money home. The couples will then be above the poverty line. Are there other urban poor stereotypes that must be shed? Perhaps, but first back to the mass wedding?

We know how much excitement one bride can cause, so imagine the clatter and clutter as 24 got ready. Add to that the playfulness of their 50 or so children. Sadly for romantics, they were not marrying out of young love but because they needed a marriage license to enter the government housing project. Whatever the reason for it, the ceremony awoke in the couples an understanding of how much they had come to depend on one another over the years. Deep appreciation may be another name for love.

Remember the scene in “Fiddler on the Roof,” when the man asks his wife of many years, “Do you love me?” The wife makes fun of the question. What’s happening to him, she muses, and then she sings: “Do I love him? For 35 years I washed his clothes, cooked his meals, raised his kids, milked his goats, if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is?”

Urban poor areas are usually accused of being dirty, of harboring criminals, of allowing rowdy drinking and needless violence and of standing helpless in the face of corrupt politicians and drug gangs.

The 24 couples don’t want that identity, anymore than other groups of people would want it, and they have taken steps to eliminate such activity. They have put together a Management Estate Agreement that covers all the above, from garbage to drugs. They say they will put an end to the public drinking that leads to violence and all the other mistakes. Will that remove the last taint of urban poverty or are there other aspects of urban poor culture that need to be changed? Maybe not, but let’s not look only at negative qualities.

The urban poor may also have admirable qualities. The people of the Estero de San Miguel, for example, have shown remarkable strength of will in pursuit of their rights.

Vendors, drivers, scavengers, tricycle drivers, security guards, unskilled construction workers and small-scale businesspersons, they are not powerful in the eyes of society, but they have outlasted the powerful government officials who sought to evict them. They have attended close to 150 meetings with government agencies to get their housing on the estero. It seems a remarkable record of perseverance.

A few days before Christmas in 2011, President Aquino announced there would be groundbreaking for a housing project on the estero within a few weeks. However, an agency head called the people and said she was coming with a committee and she would decide about the groundbreaking, whether it would go ahead or not. The people told her, “Don’t come; you’re not welcome with that news. We won’t let you enter.” The day after Christmas, the community burnt to the ground. They didn’t give up. The people rebuilt. There were many other threats and endless anxiety over the years. Now they will live in the nice houses on the estero banks, with only the sounds of the birds and children on their way to school to disturb the peace.

With the help of their allied NGOs—Urban Poor Associates and CO Multiversity among them—some old notions about the urban poor are being redefined: They are learning to make their own analysis of their situation; to choose the solutions they think best to put together their own people’s plans for housing; and to undertake actions that are most appropriate. They have learned to organize, and they deeply appreciate solidarity. They act democratically in a persevering and resilient fashion. All this should be added to their usual age-old care for one another—they have always helped each other when times were tough.

“Urban poor was once a name assigned to poor people who lived illegally on land in rundown, degrading housing, in communities marked by violence, noise, drugs and abuse of children. Common usage now adds that they are well organized, democratic, independent in their thinking and planning, have great respect for one another and community solidarity, are persevering and resilient, and do not accept corrupt politicians and drug gangs easily.”

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates [urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com].


Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/50837/weddings-on-estero-de-san-miguel#ixzz2QoF8BoiC

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‘Blessed’ Jesse Robredo

Commentary
By Denis Murphy

9:12 pm
Sunday, November 18th, 2012   Debate in the Catholic Church today is mostly about the proper understanding of the Second Vatican Council. We can discuss these matters theologically, though that is the most abstract of approaches and sometimes the most puzzling.


There are more concrete ways to seek the meaning of Vatican II. We can, for example, ask what type of saints will be canonized if the Council’s teachings are fully implemented. Will the Church continue to canonize persons such as the recently honored St. Pedro Calungsod, or will it look more to people like the late Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo?

We have been steeped in Vatican II’s teachings for 50 years. We know more about the modern world that is in great part indifferent to Christian beliefs than the bishops who attended Vatican II in 1962-1965. If we thoughtfully search for saints for our times, we can almost certainly clarify the type of man or woman needed by the Church.

Will the Church canonize brave young people like Pedro who know nothing of our modern world and little of their own world, or will it honor mature men and women of this age who have mastered the modern world’s sciences, systems, technologies and disciplines for good ends and still possess a heart and a mind for our traditional faith, and a mind and a heart for the poor? Will it seek out men and women who can show in their own lives both the achievements of this world and the awareness in the end that there are just God, the poor and those who live as the poor?

We need both types of saints, of course, now and in the future. But of which do we have greater need if we are to transform the modern world?

I knew Jesse Robredo for 35 years. Many knew him better than I. We were friends. I wrote articles about him. One was titled “An organized people and an astute mayor,” and it was intended to praise his ability to work with organized poor people and turn a small sleepy town into a bustling modern city without losing its old cultural strengths. I worked closely with him on the problem of housing urban poor people over the last two years. I certainly didn’t know his personal spiritual life as his confessors and his wife knew him. But I’ve listened to people whom I admire and who knew him well. They tell us a great deal.

His wife, Leni, for example, said in an interview in this paper that every time Jesse came home from trips around the country he went as soon as possible to the Peñafrancia Shrine to report to Our Lady about the things that had happened to him. His life as secretary of the interior brought him into the middle of treachery, betrayal and danger, but it also brought him into the homes of the very poor, where he sat like any other visitor and appreciated the snacks that the poor offered. No Cabinet officer worked harder than Jesse or took on more dangerous tasks.

When I mentioned the idea of this column to one of my friends, he said: “Miracles, Denis, it’s all about miracles.” There are no physical miracles that I know of, but here is an incident that sets one wondering.

A friend of Jesse’s who held a high government position was aware of corruption in his office. He was reluctant to be a “whistle-blower” for many personal reasons, and then he visited Jesse’s grave near the Peñafrancia Shrine. He said that as he stood there he became aware that Jesse was urging him to do what was right. The friend weighed Jesse’s words of advice and decided to speak up. He said he immediately felt very happy. He did speak out. A miracle? A sort of miracle perhaps that may be much valued in the modern world?

If ever, Jesse would be the first happily married man with a loving wife and children to be canonized in centuries. Wouldn’t that speak to our modern world? He talked constantly by cell phone with his family. They lived in the same simple two-story home they lived in during his first term as mayor of Naga, 1988-1992.

I have been especially impressed by the affection that retired Archbishop Leonardo Legaspi of Caceres (Naga City) has shown for Jesse. The archbishop has been one of the modern pillars of the Philippine Church. In the past he often appeared as a rather stern and conservative person, but when I heard his talk at the end of Jesse’s funeral, I was deeply touched: He was a father mourning for his son, I thought.

Lawyer Angel Ojastro, who worked with Jesse for many years, told me this story. He took charge of the last arrangements for Jesse in Naga, according to the wishes of Jesse’s wife. He waited one night at the Archbishop’s House for Jesse’s body to be brought there for the wake. He found that the archbishop was still up.

“Go to bed, Excellency, I’m here. I’ll take care of him,” Angel said. He knew the archbishop had painfully bad knees and was sick in many other ways. “Go to bed, Excellency.” The archbishop refused. They both waited until almost 1 a.m. Angel repeated the phrase that was in my head: “[The archbishop] was like a father waiting for his son.”

If such a learned and insightful churchman as Archbishop Legaspi could show such love and respect for a politician—they had been mayor and archbishop in the same small city for 18 years—there was probably nothing in Jesse’s public life that the archbishop hadn’t heard about, nothing that would diminish his admiration. The archbishop held Jesse in such high respect to the end, which should make us wonder once again about Jesse Robredo’s true value.

Maybe someone should introduce his cause for canonization. Archbishop Legaspi, perhaps? It seems a step toward the world of the future.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. [urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com].
http://opinion.inquirer.net/41086/blessed-jesse-robredo

The women of Pescador

Commentary
By Denis Murphy
1:52 am | Monday, October 1st, 2012


he women of Pescador in Navotas attempt to stand straight up with their children, almost defiantly, we might say, in their world of poverty and abasement. It is hard not to talk dramatically about such women, even though hundreds of thousands of similarly poor women do it every day, and succeed to a great extent.

There were six of us—Fr. Jorge Anzorena, my wife Alice, Ate Cita Vendiola, Luz Sudueste, Benjo Raposa and myself. We wanted to see if our nongovernment organization could help the people there. We found small, thin women selling miserably little fish that looked more like strips of gum than something to eat.

The women must have been beautiful once, but now their faces are wrinkled and their teeth are missing. They are from the 150 or so families in the Pescador neighborhood who live in temporary housing along both sides of R-10.

They live in tents that are packed close together, worn and dirty on the outside. But inside the tents are clean, and all the space is carefully used. Some families have only three or four square meters, just enough room for a family-size bed, where their whole life of sleeping, eating, loving, studying and playing is carried out.

The families have been in this emergency housing for at least a year, since Typhoons “Pedring” and “Gener” and a community fire destroyed their old homes. How long should emergency housing last?

It’s a bad situation. The government promised some families space in a new tenement. Other families are willing to live on stilts in old fishponds in an area called Tanza. Maybe the people and the government can look into that possibility. A few years ago, the Pros Architects designed a village on stilts for the very same place. It can work. Haven’t tribal people lived graciously on stilts in the southern Philippines?

The women also hope the government will give them loans with which they can start small businesses, such as selling fish.

We had the impression that the women had done just about all they could do by themselves. We asked them what lessons they had learned that they could share with us. One of the leaders said, “We must go on and on, no matter what. Life must go on.” We asked, “Are you angry with God, perhaps?” Another woman said, “If God were not here taking care of us, we would not be here.”

It was a Saturday, so after a long talk the people invited Father Jorge to come back on Sunday and say Mass for them. He agreed, so on Sunday we were back and had a very simple, prayerful Mass in the middle of the tents. The altar was an old piece of plywood. A row of small girls sat in front, looking very intently at Father Jorge and myself. We were being judged. The adults stood behind, perhaps 50 all together, mostly women.

When the time came for the sermon. Benjo and Alice talked.

“Just encourage them,” Father Jorge whispered to Benjo. “Tell them God loves them and is very pleased with them. That’s enough.”

The women were very grateful. They thanked Father Jorge for having “noticed them” and for taking time to visit them. Maybe they hadn’t expected anyone’s attention in their lives. One older woman put her arms around him and cried softly.

The women may not be beautiful as they perhaps once were, but the children are, especially when they are pouring water over themselves and their young bodies gleam in the sunlight. They are beautiful, too, in their quiet moments: Long before the Mass started, a little girl seated on one of the chairs before us was telling her little brother to be quiet. “Sssshhh,” she told him with a very stern look. There was no one else around.
We had the impression the women live for their children.

These women are a good example of how God wants men and women to live in this world. It is described in the Prophet Micah (6:8): “Do good, love tenderly and walk humbly before your God.” There are many women like them among the poor. There are men, too, of course, but it is the women we met that weekend.

If the reader is fed up with the problems of Manila or feels somehow uneasy with or threatened by urban poor people, please visit Pescador and talk to the women. I think it will help. It helped us.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

A hill on the Mohawk River

Commentary

By: Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer


Hundreds of gravestones in neat white rows cover the crest of a hill overlooking the Mohawk River in upstate New York. It may appear to be a military cemetery—the kind the United States leaves behind in all the countries in which it has fought—but the men buried here were not soldiers. They were nonviolent, peace-loving, and, it must be admitted, only a few looked very much like warriors.

The hill overlooking the Mohawk once held Iroquois villages where French Jesuits arrived by canoe in the 17th century to evangelize the Indians. The Jesuits had little success, though one young woman, Kateri Tekakwitha, will soon be canonized. The Indians tortured and killed some of the missionaries, including St. Isaac Joques.

Centuries later, the missionaries gained control of the land where the Indian villages had stood and built a shrine in honor of the French Jesuits. They named it Auriesville. The bones of the laymen working with the Jesuits and killed along with them have never been recovered. These lie somewhere on that hill or in the valleys around it, along with the bones of the Indian chiefs, the few converts the missionaries had made, the young warriors dead in the ceaseless intertribal wars, the Indian mothers and children, some of whom died of diseases brought by the Jesuits and other white men. Along with them are the remains of 500 or so New York Province Jesuits who have died since the 1970s and lie in the neat white rows.

They are all there in the sunshine with the trees, summer clouds, flowers and songbirds. Sadly, there are no traces left of the Indians.

My brother Ned is one of the men lying there, one of the most recent Jesuits to be buried. We came to visit and say our prayers. Then I walked back and forth through the long rows of gravestones, reading each of them; I knew those buried there almost as well as my brother did.

They were all types of men—some were missionaries sent to the Caroline and Marshall Islands and the Philippines; others were parish priests, superiors, authors, scientists, and teachers. There were men who ran labor schools, greeted guests in the novitiate, ran world-famous aquariums, men who campaigned for peace and others who campaigned against pornography. Sometimes other Jesuits didn’t appreciate a man’s work. Peace work was criticized by some of them. Some Jesuits were well-known, others were not. Many were quite eccentric: The Jesuits give their members so much freedom, it is the rare man who doesn’t end up somewhat free-spirited.

I looked up from time to time as I walked through the long rows and realized: This is beautiful country. There are lakes, mountains and a forest bulging with pine, elm and maple. There are deer, hawks, and small furry animals none of us could identify. There are dark blue rivers and farm land sweeping down to the river banks.

I think the Jesuits are content to be there together in that earth with the tiny wild daisies that grow among the graves and the songbirds that sit atop them.

When we were young my brother never dreamed he would end up on that hill. I don’t think he would have imagined being anything but a Latin-Greek professor. He worked eventually with Fr. Dan Berrigan in the peace movement and then he set up with friends a soup kitchen that has grown into a very effective social center for poor people in the Bronx. On his tombstone—if the Jesuits allowed brief summaries of people’s lives on their tombstones—might be the words: “He tried to make peace. He fed the hungry.”

We walked away with peace in our hearts, leaving the French Jesuits, the Iroquois and the more recent dead to God’s warm and calming care.

The last stanza of “Amazing Grace” could have been written about the Jesuits of Auriesville and the Indians of the Mohawk River: “When we’ve been there ten thousand years/ Bright shining as the sun/ We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise/ Than when we’d first begun.”

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. Please send your feedback to upa@pldtdsl.net.

Death—one or one thousand

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

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

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.