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).

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The poor didn’t benefit

Commentary
By Denis Murphy

Philippine Daily Inquirer

How did the midterm elections affect the urban poor? More than any other group, the poor need free elections to improve their lives, but the simple truth seems to be that in the last poll exercise they hardly benefited. It was partly their own doing.


The urban poor in the Philippines now number about 20 million, according to the UN Habitat. They are the fastest growing of poor sectors. They live in the larger cities, the great engines of the economy, but to paraphrase the Gospel, they are in but not of the great wealth found there. They are like the small fish along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef that clean parasites off the sharks, manta rays and other highly dangerous marine creatures. The big fish drop by these special “cleaning” areas when they feel the need, the little fish who love to eat parasites do a first-class cleaning job, even going into the gills and jaws of the sharks, then the big fish sail off, leaving the small fish with nothing in the great ocean but their parasites.

There was a sticker used in the election of 2010 that read: “In a democracy, reform comes from the ballots of the poor.” It expresses the classic belief of people organizing the poor, that if they can gather the poor into political parties that are informed and eager for change, they can win political power through elections, and then use the power to help the poor.

I don’t see that this happened in the last elections, except in very small areas of Manila, in very small ways. Still, elections remain the main political hope of the poor. Realistically, there is no other path to a decent life. But for now, the politicians who believe they can win the poor people’s votes at election time by giving them money and food, coopting their leaders and making endless airy promises, have been proven right once again.

Thousands of poor people have sold their votes. They have taken money in exchange for their free democratic votes that are the key to the locks and chains that hold them in poverty. People who sell their votes lose their self-respect and agree with the powerful that change is not needed, or possible. Taking money encourages the power-brokers to manipulate the poor all the more.

Why should anyone help such poor people? But before we start blaming the poor, we should remember that while among the poor there may be pimps, men of violence, drunkards, as well as lazy, greedy and vulgar people, there are even more decent, hardworking and caring ones.

There are many good people among the poor. I once saw a heavily pregnant woman walking barefoot through her slum community. Her dress was stretched so tight around her swollen belly that we feared her child could be hurt. She had no money to buy a more suitable dress. She had nothing to offer her baby except herself. All her life she will sacrifice for her children though she is hungry, unhappy and often a victim of violence. She will never give up on them.

There are innocent victims. Think of the 12-year-old prostitutes who work along the piers of Tondo at night. They charge P30 ($.75 cents) for touching (pakalog, groping) and P300 ($7) for sex, often in the back of a truck, with the men who hang out at the piers. When you see two or three of the girls together, you are aware they still have the thin legs and the awkward, shy stance of children. They should be playing childhood games, not waiting for customers.

The great reason for helping the urban poor is, of course, that God is with the poor. God is not with them because they are good and deserving of help any more than He was with the Israelites because they were good. He helps the poor, as the Prophet Ezekiel tells us, just as He helped the Israelites, not because they are good, but for the sake of His Own Holy Name.

At the risk of trivializing a serious matter, here is how things may work. A smart fish who has traveled outside his or her own sea—someone like Nemo, perhaps—one day advises the small fish-cleaners: “You don’t have to do what the sharks and manta rays want. You are not slaves. Organize yourselves, elect leaders and tell the sharks you are tired of your parasite diet, and you want the sharks and others to bring a variety of food when they come, or no cleaning.”

“Suppose they just eat us instead?” one of the small fish asks.

“If they eat you, there will be no one to remove the parasites, and that will pain them more and more. Don’t worry, stick together, and they’ll do what you want,” the smart fish says.

So the small fish stand firm and confront the sharks and the other great fish. The small fish win, and they now live with dignity and have expanded their services to include beauty treatments, massage, and organizing advice. The fish who started it all is now a Senator of the Sea.

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

An old novitiate

Commentary
By Denis Murphy

Philippine Daily Inquirer

You know you are getting old when you drive into a religious novitiate and care more about the men and women in the cemetery than the present novices. I realized this as we drove into the Jesuits’ Sacred Heart Novitiate in Novaliches one day.

We go in past the old mango and balete trees that line the road; they are at least a hundred years old, but strong and shaggy, and somehow suggest you are on your way to an otherworldly type of place. There is a mystic air about the old grounds. Still we realize that the lawn that stretches from the house down toward Quirino Highway, between balete trees that are 50 feet in diameter, would make a wonderful par three golf hole.

The original novitiate building stands at the top of the hill, blazing white in the morning sun. Ironically, despite all the martial law rancor

between the Jesuits and President Marcos, the novitiate reminds a person very much of Malacañang: both are Spanish-style, two-storied, brilliant white and set in lush green lawns.

We spend the morning at a seminar discussing amendments to the Urban Development and Housing Act (1992). I am lucky to meet John Paul Dy, a Jesuit novice who accompanied me to the cemetery. I’m surprised by the renovations made. I remember the ivy covered stone walls, with Jesuits buried under the grass and leaves falling from the trees that overhung the cemetery walls. Now the cemetery is neat and modern, but the aura of age is gone. Gone, too, is the sense the old cemetery gave of the continuity of the Jesuit Order, which is its great strength: the men lying there know their work will go on.

No men opposed martial law with more courage than those buried there: Fathers Pacifico Ortiz, Joe Blanco, Jim Reuter, Benigno Mayo, Francisco Araneta, Antonio “Toti” Olaguer and, of course, Bishop Francisco Claver. I lived with them all, except Father Reuter. It wasn’t all serious work. One weekend Joe Blanco and I decided to grow mustaches. His turned out much better than mine. We walked to the Luneta from our house in Padre Faura to show them off.

Francisco Araneta was in charge of the small group, of which I was a member, that traveled by boat to the Philippines in 1953. He taught me how to play chess, then beat me three or four times a night.

Jim Reuter complimented everyone, including myself, a little more than we deserved. But looking back, it helped all of us to keep writing and performing.

Bishop Claver opened coke bottles with his teeth on one of our seaside holidays when we studied philosophy in Berchmans College, Cebu.

The two most outstanding men, I believe, were Bishop Claver and Horacio dela Costa, who was in Rome for most of martial law until he came home and died in 1976. The bishop was a courageous Bontoc warrior and a doctor of anthropology. He lowered God’s gaba on the army and police who abused people in Bukidnon and headed a local church that many saw as a model for others. Dela Costa was the smartest and wisest of all. He knew Philippine history as well as a person knows his own family’s history. He was probably the only man who could have led the Jesuits in the very peaceful transition from American to Filipino control.

Where are their likes today? Will we ever again see the Jesuits and other religious groups take such a strong position against injustice and authoritarianism as they did?

There were other great men among the even older Jesuits who are buried there—Fathers John Pollock, Joseph Mulry, Jim Hoggerty and some unique (eccentric?) men, such as, Hector Mauri who started labor union work among the sugar workers and sacadas, built fishing boats with nets 10 stories high, and designed SST aircraft that Boeing said were too advanced for their engineers to deal with. They recommended that Father Mauri send the plan to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. There was Guido Arguelles who was born one day before me, so we celebrated birthdays together. He brought fresh vegetables to the poor of Tondo, sang opera at the drop of a hat and was the only man I knew who thought carne norte was the world’s best food. The cemetery also contains the bones of 80 Jesuits “known only to God,” whose bones were transferred in 1945 from the ruins of San Ignacio Church in Intramuros.

Soon after we finished in the cemetery, the rain comes. In the Novitiate there is an air of recollection before the rain actually arrives, as if it gathers itself for prayer. The rain falls steadily on the old trees and the grass. It is the only sound we can hear. There is no one walking about, not even a stray dog. When the rain stops, the air is suddenly so fresh you feel you can wash your face in it.

For a short stretch of time the setting sun spreads its golden light. And then it is time for sleep.

As we drive out along the winding driveway, I feel certain that the men in the cemetery behind me are happy. But the question still remains: When will we see their likes again?

Jesuits and others were able to focus their energies during the martial law years on getting rid of a dictator. What can serve as a focus today? The new Pope (Francis) has suggested that it be the poor. Perhaps the poor and justice for all can serve as the focus. Perhaps the focus could be jobs, land and a better life for all the poor. In the “Covenant with the Urban Poor,” President Aquino promised public works projects to be done with the help of people paid in the form of cash and food. Why don’t we try such projects in our great need for jobs?

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

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].


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Urban Poor Echoes Pope Francis, “Defend the Poor and the Weak”

Urban poor groups held their 27th Kalbaryo ng Maralita (Calvary of the Poor) today reechoing the call of Pope Francis, “Defend the poor and the weak”. With them were members of housing rights organizations including Urban Poor Associates (UPA), Community Organizers Multiversity (COM), and different people’s organizations from Tondo, Pasig, Quezon City and Laguna Lake.

The group marched from Liwasang Bonifacio to Plaza Miranda led by 40 urban poor people simulating flagellation.

  

Kalbaryo reminds Philippine society that the suffering of Jesus in his passion and death are repeated today in the sufferings imposed on the poor by forced evictions, homelessness, hunger, landlessness, injustice, joblessness, lack of dignity and powerlessness.

Jennylyn David, resident of Manggahan Floodway, Pasig said, “we gathered today in a hope that with the call of Pope Francis to defend the poor and the weak, our government would listen to our plea. We plea that the government will halt/ stop evictions set on May 15 for the families in Mangahan Floodway and other urban poor living in danger areas to give way for the flood control-project.”

“We fear that it would lead to displacement of thousands poor families. We do not oppose the flood control project but we hope the government will understand our sentiments that while it is valuable, it must not come at the expense of displacing thousands of poor families like us already marginalized by society,” she added.

UPA data shows that the first three years of the present administration had the highest number of eviction cases compared with the past presidents. This shows that the President has more to do to fulfill the covenant he signed with the urban poor in March 6, 2010 at the Del Pan Sports Complex, Tondo Manila.

UPA pointed out that the land is the basic problem in resettlement matters as it is in all in-city and near-city housing of the poor. The government should now provide the land as it will be more difficult to do so as the years go by. We ask them to acquire resettlement land before they evict or plan to evict.

The flagellants shirts were bloodstained with the words of the poor people demands such as, provide quality education for the poor, end hunger, implement on-site housing and include the poor in the decision making that concerns their welfare.

At 9 AM Manila Auxilliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo led the mass.  

“Just like our Pope being consistent with his call to defend the poor, we believe that it is true that in housing and similar problem areas the voices of the poor come closest to being the voice of God and that we must listen to them,” Marlon Llovido, UPA senior community organizer concluded.

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

Pope should take a new look at liberation theology

Commentary
By Denis Murphy

Monday, March 25th, 2013

Soon after the papal election was over, there were two images on my mind. One was of Pope Francis on the balcony of St. Peter’s in his white soutana, seemingly frail in the wet and chilly Roman night.


The other was of a lovely, gracious Muslim woman lying dead in her car after being shot by masked men for helping the poor of Karachi. We received news of her murder that same day.

Unlike most Catholics, I could not rejoice at the sight of the new Pope. I had two problems. One was the suggestion in the media and from Jesuit friends that as Fr. Jorge Bergoglio, he may have acted poorly in matters involving human rights and Christian loyalty during the military junta years (1976-1983) in Argentina. He may have allowed the torture of two of his fellow Jesuits, the reports said. I asked myself, couldn’t the cardinals in the conclave have found someone more heroic? Someone perhaps like Perween Rahman, the Muslim woman killed because she refused to leave the poor? Courage is also a Christian virtue.

The story of the two Jesuits began when Bergoglio, then the Jesuit superior, learned that the two men working in an urban poor area would be arrested, which in those days often led to torture and death. He ordered them to leave the area. They refused, and he dismissed them from the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). They were arrested and badly tortured and later dumped on piles of garbage. Sometime during the night of their arrest, Bergoglio reached the military and they were not killed. Much later, the two were offered reentry into the Jesuits, and one refused.

What else could Bergoglio have done? He could have gone himself to stay with his men. He could have asked other Jesuits to go with him. Possibly their large number may have given the military pause. I think this is what Fathers Horacio de la Costa and Benigno Mayo might have done. Our urban poor people do it: If an area is threatened with eviction, the residents of other areas come to help. What would Archbishop Oscar Romero have done?

We have, I believe, a right to expect a degree of heroism from the man who heads the Holy Catholic Church we profess in the Creed. Heroism is not as rare as we may think.

The second hesitation I have is not with the new Pope himself, but about many conservative Church officials. They simply do not deal kindly with people who disagree with them. They are harsh and display a take-it-or-leave-it attitude. I don’t sense any interest among them to understand the roots of the nonconservative disagreement, though nonconservatives are a huge part of the Church, maybe the majority.

I hope the Pope will throw a line of hope to them that things can change. Perhaps he can begin by reopening some topics for discussion, such as the role of women in the Church. The women who want to be priests are not the enemy. No one believes more firmly in the Gospel than they do.

Thousands in Karachi mourn Parween. She was an architect by training, but instead of becoming rich designing homes for the well-off, she chose to spend her life with the poor, helping them gain land-tenure security and improve their houses and communities. In the poor areas she struggled with the racketeers who robbed the poor of their land, and even their drinking water. The racketeers cut the water mains, take control of the water, and then sell it. Some of the poor have no decent drinking water.

When the social fabric of Karachi fell apart in recent years, Parween redoubled her efforts. She said the following at a meeting of housing people in Bangkok in 2011: “The situation in Pakistan is indeed very bad—the Taliban, the bombs, violence, the disasters. Yet everywhere we look we see signs of hope. We look on these with eyes of respect and try to support them, and make them strong. The links we make with each other are a powerful way to do that.”

It is not pleasant to feel alienated in some important way from the Pope. A Catholic hopes to find at the heart of his or her Church a totally concerned, totally dedicated, compassionate human being. It is easier to see the Pope erring in matters of doctrine than in loyalty.

In the days that followed, however, I began to question my first reactions. Knowledgeable people denied that the Pope had ever compromised human rights during the military junta years. I heard voices: “The Almighty said to Job, who is this that obscures divine plans with words of ignorance?” Could that be me? I wondered. “Were you there when I laid the cornerstone [of the earth] while the morning birds sang in chorus? Have the gates of death been shown to you?” (Job 38:1-2, 4, 7,17)

Perhaps the new Pope sought God’s forgiveness long ago, and has been forgiven. Jesus can say of him as He does of the sinful woman: “Much has been forgiven because she has loved much.” (Luke 7:36-50)

I hope the Pope takes another look at the theology of liberation. It is true, as he said in a Mass with the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel, that we don’t want the Church to be just another “compassionate NGO,” but we don’t want it to be ineffectual in its efforts to end hunger, illiteracy and powerlessness. The theology of liberation provides a Christian framework for the people’s efforts to organize themselves, analyze their problems, choose their solutions, and take appropriate action. It isn’t perfect, but it is the only theology that fits comfortably with the poor who struggle in an organized, democratic and nonviolent way for their human and God-given rights. Also, the development of poor people is a science. The Gospel can and must inspire the process in a Christian context, but it can’t substitute for the science needed.

Hopefully, with the new Pope we are closer to becoming the Church of the poor.

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



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Urban poor dreams

Young Blood
By Princess L. Asuncion

My fiance, Ritche, has a friend whose house was partly demolished without a court order on the behest of the family that claimed the lot on which the house stood. The friend’s house was somewhat saved when he quickly filed a case in court.


After years of litigation, the parties came to a compromise. The lot claimant offered to dismantle the makeshift house of Ritche’s friend and turn over to him whatever usable materials remained.

The friend declined, saying that he could not bear the sight of his house being torn down by other people. He said every crashing sound of a hammer or wrench of a crowbar tearing apart the house would be like a bullet ripping into his body.

He couldn’t leave the house behind. He couldn’t let it be torn down by strangers. So finally, he asked for three days, and he personally dismantled the house, every part of it. He packed the parts in boxes and brought these to his new lot where he intended to live with his old and sickly parents. That’s where the house is now.

This story is not unfamiliar to urban poor men and women, and children, too. They value their houses as much as Ritche’s friend did. The first step our society must take to help our urban poor people is to understand them—to understand, first of all, their love for their dwellings, unattractive as these may be to us. Such an attachment cannot be measured. The sentimental value of a man’s house is life itself.

This was true in the case of Myrna Porcare, a community leader who was killed while protecting her house. I met her on the morning she was killed. I have her on video speaking about the piece of land where she had lived for more than 20 years with 1,000 other families on a 2.4-hectare site in Pechayan, North Fairview, Quezon City.

Myrna wanted to stop the security guards hired by the land owners from fencing the land, because they were going beyond what was stated in the court order. When she tried to stop a guard, she was killed by a shotgun blast in the stomach. Her son came to her aid and was also murdered.

There are many urban poor people who will sacrifice and even die for their houses. These are their treasure. The urban poor value everything around them, including their houses, in a very special way. No matter how bad we think they are, their houses are beautiful to them.

“A person doesn’t need to be a legal expert to understand what these poor families live through,” Ritche told me. “You only have to be human to understand.”

In the “Panunuluyan” play that the urban poor presented last December with the Philippine Educational Theater Association, titled “Maryosep,” I played the role of Aling Hing, a poor woman pregnant with her sixth child and a victim of a violent demolition. It was a hard role to play. The character’s thoughts were so different from mine, but after three months of rehearsals I came to think like Aling Hing. When the director told me that the demolition team was coming to wreck my house, it was not my own thoughts that made me angry and full of energy to act; it was the feelings of anger and love that Aling Hing would have had. I came to internalize her love and anger.

Another woman in that play was Maryjane. She is a real person. She had dared audition for the play although she has eight children. Her youngest child was then six months old, and she had to ask her husband’s family to take care of the child temporarily. Her husband recently died of tuberculosis.

Maryjane didn’t need special motivation to cry; every time she began to deliver her monologue in the play about the hardships of the poor, she burst into tears.

As I watched Maryjane, I reflected on the hard life that women like her have to endure, and how very few of us appreciate the way they carry on despite the difficulties of raising their children well. I have learned that urban poor women and men still dream. Poverty has shaken them, but they haven’t given up.

Think of the poor man who took his house apart piece by piece and carried it away with him. Imagine Maryjane and her eight children in the slum, and her dream of becoming an actress.

Princess L. Asuncion, 26, is a media advocacy officer of the Urban Poor Associates, an NGO that works for the housing rights of the poor.

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/49329/urban-poor-dreams#ixzz2OVXvjoEd