Women Leaders' Bangkok Presentation

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.

‘Occupy Wall Street’

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

Commentary By: Denis Murphy Philippine Daily Inquirer 9:03 pm | Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 Most 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

News Release September 12, 2011 In 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 Intervention Secretary 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-