Best and worst of government

Commentary : Best and worst of government

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: February 18, 2010

EVERY DAY IN METRO MANILA WE HAVE numerous examples of the best and worst practices of government. In Navotas, young policemen beat up poor women old enough to be their grandmothers. The women wouldn’t disperse from a barricade they had formed to protect their homes against actions of the Department of Public Works and Highways which they believed were illegal. Lawyers and other government offices agree with the women.

Meanwhile in Baseco, Manila Mayor Fred Lim and Barangay Chair Cristo Hispano have agreed to resettle 300 fire victim families in the most humane and efficient way possible.

Cora Geducos, 61, was one of the women beaten by police in Navotas along the R-10 road that runs along Manila Bay. “He held his shield against my face,” she said of the young policeman who clubbed her, “then he bent down and hit my legs and feet with his club.” She showed me her bandaged toe and the lesions on her arms. “I didn’t think they would do that to us. We were just protecting our homes and our rights as human beings. I feel very sad about what happened. It hurts to think they would do that to old women like myself.”

Sixteen other women showed their wounds, including Angelita Villaruel, Virginia Cantellas, Daisy Jalbuena and Emma Villaruel. Few wanted to give their ages.

Fr. Robert Reyes had led a prayer service in the street at which the men and women of the barricade laughed and cried, hugged one another, listened to the Scripture, prayed and sang “Ama Namin,” which has become the anthem of the oppressed ever since it was sung in the giant rallies that supported Cory Aquino before and after the snap election of 1986.

The women were also water cannoned from a distance of a few feet. The use of water cannons is illegal in such evictions. Water cannons on women!

Usually after big fires the government takes steps to keep the poor from returning to the land they occupied, because it believes it has better use for the land. The fire victims must look for land elsewhere. Mayor Lim, the barangay captain, the local people’s organization, Kabalikat and architects from the Mapua School of Architecture have agreed on something more useful.

They, too, will not allow people to return to the land they occupied, but only until the land has been surveyed and subdivided into lots, and then they can return. The new settlement will have straight roads for ambulance and fire engine access. Access is the biggest problem in most slum fires. The recent fire spread because fire trucks couldn’t get near it.

Second, the mayor and others will ask the Mapua School of Architecture to survey and plan the settlement in consultation with the people.

Third, the restructured area will be the model for the other 6,000 families living in barong-barongs in Baseco. Because the soil is very “risky” and liable to liquefaction in case of an earthquake, houses will be limited to one story. The people involved will work with neighborhood groups, including Muslim organizations and Fr. Cris Sabili and the St. Hannibal Empowerment Center (SHEC).

The fire area has been bulldozed, and now looks like an ancient battle field excavated after the ages. Individual men and women wander about on it, lost in their thoughts. The setting sun sends long shadows of playing children across the scorched ground. The people are content as they line up for relief goods; they don’t have to worry about relocation. That is, all the people except the parents of a little girl who died in the fire.

In Navotas the people live on land designated for the widening of R-10. They agree to move and they qualify in every way for the relocation ordered in the Urban Development and Housing Act of 1992. If they receive their relocation allowance, they will move.

The DPWH says it asked the National Housing Authority and other agencies to provide resettlement. When they couldn’t do so, the

DPWH claimed it had done all that was required and went ahead in another questionable way to plan the eviction. Instead of a home, it offered P21,000 to families to move, an alternative not mentioned in the law.

There is a greater willingness now even among the most influential government agencies to ignore the housing and resettlement laws. The government can deal kindly or cruelly with the poor, but there are serious consequences in this life and the next.

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

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Commentary : Bishops repudiated By Denis Murphy Philippine Daily Inquirer Posted date: January 13, 2009

Commentary : Bishops repudiated

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: January 13, 2009

When Congress voted to extend the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) but remove its teeth, namely, the power to coerce landlords to surrender land, the farmers outside the House of Representatives complex knew they had lost badly. Leonardo Montemayor, a former member of the House and official of the Federation of Free Farmers, said, “The defeat marked the end of all the dreams of all the farmers.”

The Catholic bishops also lost. Never before had they invested so much effort in a cause of the poor, only to see their teaching authority and political influence overwhelmingly repudiated by Congress.

The bishops had done as much as could reasonably be expected in support of the farmers. Some 70 bishops signed a statement backing the extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program with reforms. On the eve of the vote Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, Cardinal Ricardo Vidal of Cebu, Archbishop Angel Lagdameo and Bishop Broderick Pabillo wrote again asking Congress to extend the CARP with reforms. Eight bishops joined the farmers’ hunger strike.

I don’t think people who were there will soon forget Cardinal Rosales sitting in a makeshift tent outside the House complex with the defeated farmers and hunger strikers and looking just as sad and weary as they were.

The overwhelming rejection by Congress of land reform, which is central to the Church’s social teachings, must trouble the bishops and they may well wonder what will happen to similar causes they champion, such as, human reproduction, if they are put to a vote.

What will the bishops do? Will they withdraw from such controversial issues as land reform or will they push ahead? If they abandon or lessen their engagement in the human rights struggle, they will leave the poor without a dependable ally in times of trouble. If they push ahead, they may very well fail again. However, it is also possible that they and everyone else involved in the struggle for human rights may learn from the recent sad experience and find more effective ways to achieve their goals.

It is clear that solutions to the major social problems require a political consensus in favor of the poor among the members of Congress. Legislators listen to those who can help them in the next election. The bishops and all human rights advocates can play a vital role in gathering people, helping them to organize to solve their problems, to think clearly at election time, and to do this in a coordinated way throughout the country.

How in the concrete can the bishops help create this new movement among the people?

There are degrees of involvement possible. The first degree, in which the Catholic Church is a main actor and decision maker, can be in the formation of the Basic Christian Communities or Basic Ecclesial Community, as the Brazil Church did in the 1970s and 1980s.

The foundations of Partidos Trabalhadores (PT), Lula da Silva’s party in Brazil, we were informed by some of its founding members, lie in the Basic Christian Community (BCC movement of the 1960s to 1970s. Almost all the mass membership of the PT, whatever their political stripe, were members of the movement. The organizing culture of the PT was, therefore, basically that of BCCs which stressed listening, respect for others and compromise, rather than ideological hard lining. It helped, we were told, that the senior leftist leaders and intellectuals were in prison. There were tens of thousands of BCCs in Brazil in those years. Can the Philippine Church expand the number of its BECs, deepen their appreciation of human rights issues and the need to link with other groups in some form of national action, especially during elections?

The second degree of involvement for the Church is in large secular movements, such as, organizations of the farmers. The Church can support these groups, but it is not in charge of them. The Federation of Free Farmers was such a group. The main education activity for the FFF was a 30-day live-in seminar, which was most often given with the help of the priest chaplains, and centered on the Church’s social teaching. On the eve of martial law, the FFF claimed 300,000 members. The movement had its flaws, but no other group has reached such a membership.

The Church may also help groups not so clearly linked with the Church. Usually such groups are required by the Church to be non-violent and democratic.

The third degree of involvement is in the support of particular candidates and parties. This step may be farthest from the Church’s normal guidelines. Ordinarily the Church is advised to avoid partisan politics. However, desperate times call for desperate solutions. Maybe the Church is called to be more active in a partisan fashion, since that may be one good way to get the country established once again on the road to justice and prosperity.

Nandy Pacheco and Eric Manalang of the political party Ang Kapatiran [The Brotherhood] have just published Passport to a New Philippines, which explains their party’s goals and assumptions. Many bishops quietly support the party. Ang Kapatiran can be one ally of the bishops if they decide to be more politically involved. Ang Kapatiran believes strongly in the importance of the lay people in political matters and in the necessity for a party platform that expresses exactly what the group stands for.

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

©Copyright 2001-2009 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company

Tondoman’s last flight

Commentary : Tondoman’s last flight
By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

I once wrote a short story about a Filipino superhero by the name of Tondoman. He could fly like other superheroes, but unlike them he could be wounded and even killed. Like all of us he had to risk everything when he went to help the poor. He wore a blue and white costume with a long red cape and a golden “T” on the chest.

He was active in Manila’s Tondo district in the 1970s. You may remember the many good things that happened to the poor during those years. He was at the height of his powers then, but he was already in late middle age and soon after his powers disappeared.

We don’t hear much about the old age of superheroes. It is not a nice time. They can never marry, so they are alone in their last years. They are poor since they cannot take money for their services, much like the true faith healers. They have no close friends and most leave their families behind when they became superheroes. In many ways it is a curse to be a superhero. The life of a superhero calls for total dedication to the cause of justice, a life that is rewarded with an old age of loneliness and near poverty. They do receive a small pension—and powerlessness.

The following is what happened to Tondoman in the last years of his life.

He lived alone and very simply in a small apartment on Leveriza St., a kindly old man who was well liked by his neighbors. No one there knew about his past feats. Then one day a woman by the name of Maria who was about half his age came to see him. She told him the country needed him.

“The poor are suffering,” she told him. “Come back and walk among us once again.”

She was the daughter of one of the leaders he had worked with in Tondo years before.

“I have no powers,” he told her. “They’ve left me.”

“We will pray together and in the morning the powers will be back,” she said with the assurance of the true believer in the value of her cause.

“I don’t think I want to go back. I’ve come to believe it’s not good in the long run.”

“I hate to hear people talk about ‘the long run,’ Tondoman. It’s usually bad for the poor.”

“But it’s true, Maria. Look at Gotham City. Have the people learned to solve their own problems? Not at all, and neither has Police Commissioner Gordon. Whenever there’s a problem, they flash the Bat sign on the night sky and Batman comes to save them. It’s no good. The people never develop.”

“That’s the long run. We need you now. It’s an emergency.”

He remembered the many times people had come to him with emergencies. He smiled remembering some of the things he had done. Soon he was lost in reverie.

He remembered that years before, he had one day snatched the president of the country from the golf course, took him 2,000 feet in the air and told him that he would drop him if he didn’t give the urban poor people of Tondo the land they wanted. It was only a threat. He didn’t intend to drop the president, but something went wrong, the president moved suddenly or something, and Tondoman lost him. Down the president plunged screaming at all the world. Tondoman fell like a rock and caught him just a few feet off the 18th fairway. They were so close they could smell the grass. Then he took the president up high, and made believe the fall was intentional. He told the president he would drop him for good if he didn’t give the land. Sure enough, the people got the land.

He returned back from his old memories. “No, I don’t think a superhero is good for the people. They should do things themselves and not rely on superheroes or politicians or anyone. That’s what I feel now. After we won in Tondo, everything stopped. They weren’t ready for the next problem.”

“Tondoman, please come and talk to us anyway. I boasted I could get you to help us. Come to our meeting with your costume on and talk to us. Say whatever you will.” They prayed and the next morning his powers were back.

He flew off to the meeting, remembering the great flights of the past. The crowd at the meeting cheered when he arrived, but he sat them down and told them what he had told Maria.

“Yes, you must have supporters, but you yourselves must decide what you want to do and be in your lives. You must lead. Don’t rely on anyone, even on superheroes. Rely on God. God alone is always dependable and always seeks your good. It’s bad for your leaders to rely too much on them. They are then free to do as they want. We should instead watch them to make sure they do their work properly.”

“We can’t fly or do all those other things. We need you.”

“You really don’t. You have no idea how much strength and wisdom you have within yourselves until you begin to depend on yourselves and not others. Jesus told us, if you have faith you can say to a mountain get up, fly to the sea and throw yourself in! If you have faith, you can fly, at least as far as God intends you to fly. Believe in yourselves, believe in God.”

There was a thoughtful silence when he finished. They sat quietly, some with their eyes closed. Time to leave, he told himself.

He barely made it home. He flew just above the treetops. He couldn’t go higher. He was like a plane running out of gas.

He made it home, hung his costume in the closet for the last time, and sat down to have a night cap. Now for the rest of my life, he thought.

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

©Copyright 2001-2008 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company

A watch in the night

Commentary : A watch in the night

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: November 14, 2008

I FOUND MYSELF the "bantay" at my mother-in-law's bedside very early in the morning the day before she died. Everyone else was sleeping or busy somewhere. The only sound in the hospital room was the breathy "choo" "choo" "choo" of the ventilator every few seconds. Medicines dripped from six bottles suspended over the bed. It was icy cold in the room, but she was in deep coma and no longer cared. At times I went close to look at her face: her head hung at an awkward angle on the pillow; her tongue half protruded from her mouth, pushed aside by the oxygen tube. It wasn't the woman I had lived alongside for 32 years. Outside Chinese General Hospital crowds already made their way into the North Cemetery for the All Souls' Day vigil.

My mother-in-law, Carmen Laroco Gentolia, reached 89 the day before. Her husband was also 89 when he died four years earlier. He had been in a coma that lasted for years, and she wanted none of that: "Don't do that to me," she often said. "No machines. No tubes stuck in me. I'll pull them out, if I can. Let me go. I have asked God to forgive my sins, I'm ready. Let me go." Her children had promised they would.

My wife and I went to live with her family 32 years ago soon after we married. She had never talked to an American and suddenly there I was in the middle of her life. I often caught her studying me, wondering perhaps about God's funny ways. I'd be eating, look up suddenly and she'd be watching me closely, much like an anthropologist watching a tribal ritual.

Over the years, through good times and bad, my mother-in-law and I grew to be at ease with one another. In the end she was the only member of the family to come with me to the barangay court when I brought a case against our neighbor's very noisy dog. My wife and the others in the house were too embarrassed to come, even if the dog was the marathon barker of all time and bothered everyone. "Imagine, taking a dog to court," I heard them whisper. Lola not only came with me, she spoke eloquently on my behalf. We won and the dog was remanded from behind our house to another place where we wouldn't hear him.

She had a full life. Nine children were born and six survived. She was a great, great-grandmother, whose life extended over five generations. She served her parents, her children and husband for 80 years. But it wasn't all toil. She "escaped" from her parents' home in Pangasinan to marry the man she loved. When she found it hard to live in Sorsogon, she went in 1943 by small sailboat along the coast, in danger of storms, robbers and Japanese soldiers on a trip to Manila that took months to finish. She took her eldest daughter who was still a baby with her. She had the good times of every mother--the weddings, graduations and successes of her children.

Nothing happened during my watch, and soon dawn was up in Manila. I had once written a novel titled "A Watch in the Night." The phrase is from Psalm 90 where the Psalmist compares our short life to that of the Immortal God: "A thousand years in your eyes are merely a yesterday. / But humans you return to dust, saying, 'Return, you mortals. / Before a watch passes in the night you have brought them to their end.'"

She died the next day in the early morning. When we got to her bedside, her face was at peace as if she were sleeping, but she looked very content. She seemed to be saying, "I have won." Her chin was out just a little in her triumph. We were left with the cold room, rain in the streets outside, but she was home with her loved ones. We see rain. She now sees, I thought, the Living God.

They wrapped her in the sheet like a mummy and we followed the gurney through the hospital to bring her to the hearse that would carry her to the funeraria. At one point we watched the gurney go over a little pedestrian bridge that joins two buildings at the Chinese General Hospital. It was a symbol of her passage from this world to one where the martyrs and the saints would meet her and bring her to the Lord she served so well.

The Psalmist also writes: "You take hold of my right hand. / With your counsel you guide me / and at the end you receive me in honor." (Ps 73).

Her children made her very comfortable in the last years of her life. Someone was always with her to talk. If she wanted crabs, they hurried to Hi-Top; if it was palabok, they went to Cubao. Her most faithful companion, however, was our dog, Titanic, who has also grown old. They sat side by side all day, watching the TV, she on her chair, Titanic on the couch. Any program would do--horror movies, old Tagalog films, quiz shows, it didn't matter. There were more important things to think about.

We often worry about the growing immorality of the world, and yet 50 percent of all people are mothers just like Lola, who live lives full of love and service, who have always tried "to do the right and to love goodness and to walk humbly with God." (Micah 6:8)

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

Copyright 2008 Philippine Daily Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A day in the zoo

INQUIRER.net

Commentary : A day in the zoo

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: November 03, 2008

MANILA, Philippines - Here in New York city, polls reveal that some 80 percent of women and a slightly lower percentage of men feel they are severely stressed by the damage done to the country’s economy in the past month. No one has asked for my advice on what to do. But if they did, I’d tell them to spend a day at the Bronx Zoo, preferably on Wednesdays when the admission is free and the park is packed with thousands of children from the city’s schools. I’d advise them to listen to the children, watch how they react to the animals and learn from them. In fact, any zoo will do, or any park, beach, woods or rural area as long as there are children and small animals. No zoo is too humble, the Bronx Zoo or Manila Zoo; any strange animal, big or small, is as good as any other.

I went to the zoo with my wife, daughter and two young special children, brothers whom my daughter teaches, and one of their friends. I was surprised first by where the boys wanted to go: the Mouse House and the Reptile House, not the gorillas, big cats, rhinos or grizzlies. The two places overflowed with little children holding hands, wandering in the semi darkness of these houses, standing wide-eyed in front of white striped African mice or tiny turtles that look like leaves and twigs, Norway rats and strange lizards, including a chuckwalla who stared back with cold black eyes. Huge, powerful men looked after the little children, teachers and parents. Some of them could have been on loan from the New York Giants offensive line. They were not very good at answering the children’s questions, however.

We overheard a little boy say to his companion in front of another exhibit, “Watch those turtles. They’re gonna eat the fish. I have a turtle, I know. Trust me.”

They waited and waited, but the turtles never moved. Two high school boys had overheard the little boy and stayed to watch. They waited and when nothing happened, one of them said, “F— it, let’s go.”

The older we get, the less patience we have with new things, animals, people or ideas.

Another group of children watched an exhibit of shrimps. One of the shrimps chased the others. “Look at that crab go,” a little boy said.

“That ain’t no crab, it’s a frog,” a friend corrected.

Another boy wanted to see the sharks. Unfortunately, they were far away in the Coney Island aquarium.

Whether it was a shrimp, a motionless python, or a mouse the children appeared to look on them as friends, as if all of us and the animals were members of one family. It is very close to the way tribal people, such as the Mangyans and Negritos, look at nature. They look with awe, respect, open-heartedness and friendship.

(On the Staten Island ferry a day later, we saw another example of children’s openness. A small, curly-haired, Hispanic boy of 3 or 4 years old tried to make friends with a family of very orthodox, Hasidic Jews. The Jewish little boys had ritual locks of hair falling by their ears and wore brown and white clothes that looked like uniforms. They looked shy and not used to carefree ways. The little Hispanic boy ran around them and even put his head in the family’s baby carriage to kiss the baby. For him all kids were friends and family. The Jewish children were surprised at first, but soon they, too, were all playing.)

At around 12, we heard children all over calling for lunch so we went for hotdogs. Later, the two smaller boys with us bought foot-long rubber snakes. One of the boys told us he was going to put the snake in water and when it grew to be 14 feet long, as he was sure it would, he’d give it to his mother. There was no suspicion his mother might not want a 14-foot snake in her house.

The biggest excitement was caused by a peacock running loose among the children.

We watched sea lions torpedo through the water in their pool. A small Afro-American boy told us, “My grandma swims like that. My mama, too.”

We walked in the sunshine with the trees turning red and yellow and the air full of the aroma of flowers, popcorn and cut grass, and then we went to the Siberian Tiger exhibit where the tigers roam on a hillside and the people view them through a glass wall. The tigers pacing the hillside sometimes came only inches away from the little children who had their faces pressed to the glass. One tiger grew in size as he came nearer the glass wall until he looked enormous. “Tiger, tiger, burning bright…” Adults backed off, but not the children. They waved. The Burmese have a saying that may relate to the children’s reaction: “A tiger never kills an innocent person.”

We have alienated ourselves from nature, so much so that the weather and animals (except household cats and dogs) have become just problems we have to deal with. This attitude has closed us off from large branches of the family God has given us. We have filled in the vacant space with concern for money and power. We can recover the proper point of view by watching the children—they teach us that there is more to wonder at and cherish in nature and one another than money or power can offer.

We walked out of the zoo at the end of the day, very content. The lines of little children still holding hands walked along beside us. The children looked happy but very sleepy, and I knew the big men watching them would have quite a job getting them all home safely. But no one would regret the day.

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

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