Change the strategy

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

In the New York City subway, there are signs telling people to notify a policeman if they see something dangerous happening: “If you see something, tell someone.” In Tacloban, there are hundreds of people, from all walks of life, who want to tell whatever “policeman” is listening that the government’s relocation plans in their city are loading one more disaster on the shoulders of poor people who have suffered enough.

As many as 20,000 families, who are still mourning the deaths of their loved ones in the onslaught of Typhoon “Yolanda,” as well as the loss of their jobs and homes, will be relocated from downtown Tacloban where they live to hills and logged-over woodland far north where there are no jobs. Most of the families will be sent to temporary housing, which is good for one or two years at most. Hopefully, they will be transferred to permanent housing within the two-year period, though there are doubts that the government can meet such deadlines.

This relocation plan violates the central lesson learned from the many relocations of poor people from Metro Manila in the years 1965 to the present: that you cannot relocate poor families far from the city because there are no jobs in these far-off places, and government cannot create jobs for so many people. Government is sending thousands of families, wounded in soul and body, to survive without work in strange surroundings, in deteriorating houses.

True, people can commute back to Tacloban to earn a minimum wage of P260. But by the time a family subtracts 20 percent of the earnings for transportation and other work-related expenses (baon, for example), there is little money left. We have also learned that a poor family cannot survive decently on a single low-income salary. The mother must work part-time; the children must help after school.

There is, however, no demand for washerwomen or manicurists in relocation areas; children can scavenge in-city, but there is no valuable scrap in a community of poor people. It is better, economically and socially, for rich and poor to live side by side. It may also be better in a religious way. Living side by side, rich and poor learn to know one another, which makes the Church of the Poor more feasible in our lifetime.

Alternatives

Are there alternatives? Thankfully, there are. There is more than enough idle land in Tacloban suitable for housing. The Bank of the Philippine Islands, for example, has printed a list of about 40 pieces of property it has foreclosed in Tacloban. Some of these areas measure 6 hectares. Some haven’t been used for 20 years. We had an engineer look at one of these 6-hectare properties, and he told us that very little money would be needed to prepare the land for housing.

This is a list of just one bank. There are other banks, businesses, government agencies and private individuals with similar land holdings.

A government that has concern for its poor people can make these landowners offers they can’t refuse, that can be well within the law and customs of a democracy. The Church teaches that God made the world for all. No one, no entity, can hold idle land which poor people need to survive. We are stewards of the land, not absolute owners in God’s eyes.

The people have suffered enough. In-city relocation is relatively painless. The people work with a contractor (government, nongovernment or private) to build the houses. They can decide what type of house and overall community development they want. They move in when the houses are ready. They can usually walk to work or take a short jeepney ride. All the services are available because the main water and light lines, hospitals, schools, markets, churches, etc. are already in place around the site.

To understand the uncertainty and pain of distant relocation in a temporary housing area, it is necessary to visit one. We were in the Operation Compassion (OC) relocation site in New Kawayan, 10 kilometers north of the barangays of Tacloban from which the people had come. We were there because it was raining and we had met two small boys shivering in the cold who were from the OC site and were out searching for firewood. We took them home and then the thunderstorm hit, so we decided to wait it out there. The 78 homes are all alone in an area of old fields and overgrowth. The wind and rain battered the houses that were shuttered up like turtles in danger. We wondered what the people would do if someone in the community had to be taken to a hospital at night. There were no vehicles in the community that we could see.

The storm passed, the sun came out, and the beautiful children spilled out of the houses to play in the street. It struck me that the children would suffer the most in the future in that relocation site. Food was scarce, some women told us, because community feeding was stopped a month or more ago. One mother told us she could live in the house for six months because she was told she would transfer to a permanent home in six months. She may be disappointed. The construction of permanent homes is moving very slowly in the government’s pilot project, which is also in New Kawayan.

How will the mother react when she has to stay a year, two years or more in that house? Added to all her problems will be the experience of living in a rapidly deteriorating house.

Hunger

People in Barangay 88, 89 and 90, as well as people in the temporary houses outside Tacloban, say there has been growing hunger ever since the government and the United Nations agencies ended the community feeding programs. The expectation was that new jobs and cash-for-work programs would help the poor enter once again into a cash economy after six months of community feeding.

However, Tacloban still has a long way to go: Only 2,008 businesses are active now out of the 12,900 businesses that were active last year. Jobs are scarce. Fishing has its down seasons. There are no large cash-for-work programs organized.

With growing hunger comes an increase in petty crimes and violence. Perhaps it’s time to restore the feeding programs. Why were they stopped, in the first place?

Change the relocation strategy and resume the feeding programs, before it is too late and we discover that we have clusters of poor people close to death all throughout the northern part of Leyte.

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

Happy children, hungry children

Commentary
by Denis Murphy

Fr. James Donelan, former president of Ateneo de Manila, once said at a meeting of Jesuits that when he arrived in the Philippines as a young man, he fell in love with the country’s sunsets and children. The children are as handsome and pretty as any in the world, but no other children can match their friendliness and sense of humor. They somehow see the funny things about all of us. It is painful, therefore, to see a picture of these children on the front page of this paper begging, with their hands out, for food behind a sign that reads “Help us here.”


It’s not just the children of Compostela Valley that are at risk. There are at least one million children in Metro Manila’s slums, in congested and unhealthy housing, often malnourished, and studying in overcrowded classrooms without sufficient textbooks that guarantee a life of poverty. The same can be said of poor children in the rural areas, on mountains and in our fishing villages. The abuse of our children is on a catastrophic scale. It is a form of genocide.

This situation need not continue. Children are resilient; they respond vividly to good care and teaching.

We saw this happen with 30 young boys and girls from Metro Manila’s urban poor areas who starred in a recent play of Peta titled “Maryosep.” Peta had tryouts in September in the poor areas. The children that came were like all poor children: Some were shy; the girls seemed more athletic than girls elsewhere, but were just as pretty. Three months later they appeared on stage, singing and dancing before big crowds. They told their story in song and dance, and they were spellbinding. They had become poised, confident young people. After the final show they mixed with the audience made up of college students, professionals, and the rich and influential friends of the poor. Here, too, they shone. It warmed our hearts to see them so happy and confident.

There are other examples: Sr. Felicitas de Lima runs a home in Iriga for 145 orphans (true orphans, children from families too poor to feed them, the children of Negritos living on Mount Iriga, disturbed children, and sexually abused children). Almost single-handedly, she and a small group of young sisters provide love, food, education and a true home for these children of the poor. The children care for one another; they all learn a marketable skill. They finish high school and go to college. They learn how to raise pigs, and plant fruit trees and vegetables in the most modern ways. They pray together and play together and help one another, and smile and sing. Being there among the children for a few days is a taste of the peace and camaraderie that life should have for all.

Sister Itat’s center has a motto: “We make useless things useful.” It is inelegant, but the sisters really do just that: They begin with the poorest and least promising of rural children and fashion them into fine young adults.

A tutorial center in Baseco run by the Urban Poor Associates for fifth- and sixth-graders takes only students with grades averaging below 80, but recently saw one of its graduates win first honors in high school.

We will be able to save this generation of our young people if we put our minds to it. It is Christmas time. Surprising things have happened at Christmas. It is a time for out-of-the-box thinking. Wasn’t the thinking behind the first Christmas the greatest out-of-the-box thinking ever?

December in the Holy Land is very cold. The stable or stable-cave where Joseph and Mary ended up was cold and had the rancid smell of animals. We stand to the side in the dim light and watch the young mother nurse her baby. God became a poor child. In the light of that vision, let us walk with God along Roxas Boulevard.

When God sees the vast stretches of land reclaimed in Manila Bay, does He say, “What a great place this can be for a gambling casino paradise”? Does He plan for luxury housing surrounding the casinos? Or does He think, “Here is a place where I can settle my poor people”? And not just the impoverished families, but also the outcasts, the physically incapacitated, the blind and deaf, the despondent—the same people Jesus sought out in His lifetime. On the reclaimed land He sees top-flight schools, swimming pools where the children’s bodies glisten in the sun and water, athletic fields, and schools for special and gifted children.

When He sees an empty lot, does He think, “There’s a great place for a mall or a parking lot”? Or does He imagine a playground and a small park where the old people can sit in the shade of trees with one another, or, as Bishop Julio Labayen, now in retirement, told us recently, “I sit in the mornings looking at the trees; I see God in them”?

When God sees a family asleep at night, huddled near their kariton in the tall grass along the wall of the V. Luna Hospital, does He just think something must be done about the poor families and walk on, or does He go over, put a blanket over the children, and make sure they are not too near the street where they may be hit by a car?

We can learn from Bethlehem the value of our children.

Unfortunately, our children are at risk. Christmas tells us we must do a better job of caring for them. Can we at least end malnutrition among them?

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

A Pinoy ‘New Deal’

Inquirer.net

Inquirer Opinion / Columns

Commentary : A Pinoy ‘New Deal’

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: October 18, 2009

MANILA, Philippines-In the days after Ted Kennedy's death, when people discussed his role in American political history, the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt often arose. At first it was just talk, comparing him and Kennedy, but then by some strange providence of the Lord, the man himself came back from the shadows of history. He was seen in Washington, D.C. being pushed about in his wheelchair. The former US president, father of the New Deal program that saved America’s poor in the Great Depression of the 1930s and polio victim, was back from the grave for a brief while. He seemed to enjoy every minute of his return.

He met with President Barack Obama in the White House and with Ted Kennedy’s family. Kennedy was often called “The last of the New Deal Democrats,” that is, those Democrats who worked in season and out of season almost exclusively for the poor.

Then Roosevelt surprised everyone by asking to meet with the candidates for the Philippine presidency. I was in Washington, so I was asked to help gather the candidates. We met in the Philippine Embassy in Washington. There were eight candidates, seven men and a woman. We sat in a semi-circle around his wheelchair.

I told the candidates the little I knew of the former president and his New Deal: When he entered the White House in 1933, some 30 percent of American workers were unemployed; thousands of small farms were foreclosed monthly; unions were beaten down and ineffective; and Wall Street reeled out of control. Roosevelt turned this situation upside down. He started Social Security for the old and handicapped, strengthened labor unions, saved the small farms, created jobs, controlled the banks and financiers, and effectively restored the American people’s faith in their country.

What I didn’t tell the candidates because I didn’t know how the old president would react was that critics say he brought class struggle between the rich and the poor into American politics. He said he was simply restoring justice.

“Yes,” said Roosevelt, when I finished, “and anyone of you can do the same for the Philippines and even more. I know something about the Philippines. I signed the law that created the Commonwealth. I oversaw MacArthur’s return. It wasn’t all his doing, was it? But you know all that history better than I do, so let’s talk instead of what may be more relevant, namely, our program of government in the 1930s that came to be called the ‘New Deal,’ and its usefulness in today’s Philippines. What was it, or better, what is it, since ideas are timeless? The New Deal comes down to this: we gather state power for the benefit of all citizens, but especially for the poor and handicapped. I think the Philippines needs something very much like it.”

I could see he was enjoying himself. “I have a test,” he told them, “that will help me judge who among you is most likely to introduce a New Deal-type program in your country. I’m looking for someone who is clever, passionate for the poor and lucky. I’m dead, but I can still help that person and I will. Here is the test.”

He told us there was going to be a great flood in Manila in a month or so. Hundreds of thousands would be affected. The poor living along the waterways would be blamed for the flooding and many would be banished. The rich—government officials, developers and loggers—who really did the damage would not be touched. There would be widespread hunger. Then he asked, “What will you do as a candidate when this flood occurs?”

The candidates took a few minutes to think and then one after another they told him what they would do. Roosevelt listened and at the end said, “I’m disappointed. I don’t see anything like a New Deal political analysis in your thinking. For example, who’s to blame for the floods? The poor or the rich and powerful? Don’t let them blame the poor. Blame the rich and let the poor know you are on their side in the controversy, and will be on their side as president.”

The candidates were taken aback by his criticism. “Well, what would you do?” one of them asked.

He answered, “Do you agree nothing will change unless the Philippines gets a government that acknowledges its existence to the 60-70 percent of the voters who are poor and near poor, and makes them its special and favored constituency?”

The candidates nodded in agreement. Roosevelt was happy now that he had his audience agreeing. He put a cigarette in his long black cigarette holder and lit it. Strange, though, we couldn’t smell the smoke. He went on: “In the case of the floods, I would go to the affected people and ask them what they want me and my partymates to do for them in the flood crisis. When they tell us what they want, I’d go and do it, at least, I’d try. I’d fight government efforts to evict the squatters. I’d be in the courts and in the front lines when the police came to evict them. I’d picket with the poor outside the grain bodegas if there were no food.”

He said, “Some will accuse you of electioneering, but the poor won’t and their allegiance is all you need. You must, however, be sincere. The poor will spot faking.

“I’d make sure the poor people are aware that I know what their problems are and that I really care what happens to them. In the meantime before the election, I’d spend my money to bring in earth-moving equipment to clean up the city streets and to remove the mud from the homes. I’d buy new clothes for the children and the women. The men, too, of course, but women and children first. I’d work alongside the men in the mud. I’d treat the poor women as the saints they are. We are in a democracy in the Philippines and in a democracy the majority rules, but it must be aware of its power and take advantage of that power. In democracies reform comes through the ballots of the poor.”

The candidates were writing everything down feverishly.

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

iWitness: Diskarte ala Pobre

'Diskarte ala Pobre'

Episode aired on November 19, 2007

Every morning, noon and night, Quiapo Church serves free “lugaw" or rice porridge to the poorest of poor. On Tuesdays, the El Shaddai gives out free bread. The Methodist Church opens its soup kitchen on Thursday afternoons, while on Fridays, San Sebastian Church does the same.

Kara David meets a group of beggars who prove that with a bit of resourcefulness, one can survive for free in Metro Manila.

Their solution to seemingly endless poverty and hunger – and that of other urban poor dwellers – is documented in Kara's upcoming i-Witness documentary.

Aling Nining saves on her food budget by eating “pagpag" or food from the garbage dump. A college graduate, she continues living in a dumpsite to save her income. She has managed to buy cellphones, two colored tv sets and sends her three children to school with her thriftiness. For as long as her kids are still in school, she says she won’t stop eating – and feeding her children – recycled garbage.

A new and sometimes disturbing set of Filipino values, espoused by survivors of poverty, is explored by Kara David in “Diskarte Ala Pobre" this Monday late night over GMA, right after Saksi.