 in the 70s and stuff, and here we are again kind of assessing and now having to deal with his incoming presidency. But, you know, life goes on, the struggle goes on, and we keep on fighting. So I'm glad the library here is hosting this event. So let me open up first with our land acknowledgment here in the library. It's something we always open up with. So let me give that out. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that the Ramaytush Ohlone understand the interconnectedness of all things and have maintained harmony with nature for millennia. We honor the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples for their enduring commitment to water, mother earth. As the indigenous protectors of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramaytush Ohlone have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this planet, of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. In the 1970s and 80s, I was one of the thousands of Filipino Americans who participated in the movement to rid the Philippines of a dictator. I was a latecomer to the movement, though. As someone born and raised in Stockton, California, I had little knowledge about the history of the Philippines. I never visited the Philippines. My parents never returned to the Philippines. I didn't speak any of the dialects of the Philippines and was only slightly informed about the growing repression that was unfolding there. The anti-Marshala movement, though, was probably the first national campaign in the Filipino-American community here in the United States. It mobilized Filipino immigrants, exiles, and us, the Filipinos born here in the U.S. It sustained itself for 15 long years and played an important role in finally deposing Marcos in 1986. I learned a lot about community organizing, legislative advocacy, movement building, the intersection of local and international politics, and the specific responsibility that we in the United States have since we are in the belly of the beast, as we used to say. All these lessons are applicable today and why I recently joined Akbaian North America who organized today's event. Before proceeding, I want to thank the endorsers of our event, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, both the National Office and the Alameda Chapter, Filipino Advocates for Justice, and the Buena Vista United Methodist Church. We want to thank them for spreading the word about today's event and for being here. I also want to thank Nene Ojeda, who put together the slides, that if you came late, you probably missed. And finally, the San Francisco Main Library and, of course, Abe Ignacio for this lovely space and the tech support. Please silence your phones. If you need to visit the restroom, the best option is for the floor below us, next to the elevators. There are multiple stalls there. On the other floors is just one stall. So I'm gonna turn this over to Edwin, the co-moderator. Thank you for coming. Hello, good afternoon. A pleasant Sunday afternoon to everybody. And my name is Edwin Batungbakal. I wanted to briefly introduce myself. I'm also a member of Abaya, North America, and have been a longtime activist since my young tender days fighting dictator in the Philippines, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. And also more recently been concerned also about the authoritarianism of the Duterte administration, which wantonly killed without due process hundreds, no, thousands of innocent victims in this so-called drug war. We are concerned for democracy in the Philippines. And I was a student activist when I first fought the Marcos dictatorship. I joined the underground fighting the dictatorship in the Philippines back then. And when I immigrated to the United States, I joined the KDP, the Union of Democratic Filipinos, where I worked in the San Francisco chapter of KDP as well as in the Los Angeles chapter of KDP. When we joyously experienced the downfall of the dictatorship in 1986, a lot of us resumed some of our lives and I went back to school, got a degree in social work and embarked on a 30 year career in public health, which I'm now retired from. But the work in the Philippines is never stopping, it continues. And today, a number of us are part of Abayan party in the Philippines. The Abayan party is a democratic socialist political party which was formed about 20 years ago. And it was founded based on two considerations. One is the socialist consideration where our people in the Philippines, there's a huge gap between those who are rich and poor and the marginalized sectors of society are often forgotten, oppressed and exploited. And the socialist part of Abayan wants to see to it that people are advocated for and that people are empowered. The democratic part of Abayan North America acknowledges that democracy and socialism travel along the same path. They are not divergent paths. And the best way to ensure that the interests of the poor are fought for is to have thoroughly democratic process. And the best way to ensure democracy is through equality. And so that's the long-term vision of Abayan North America. It's one of the significant death formations in the Philippines, different from the Communist party of the Philippines and the New People's Army group. So a little bit about the forum tonight. Thank you all for coming here. This is a live in-person forum. And we will have two presenters. One is Liloie Klodger, who's here with us physically, as well as Ruben Carranza, who is joining in from Zoom in New York. And I will, hi Ruben. And I will introduce both of them. We also are live streaming this on Facebook. And we have told our Facebook viewers that if they have any questions, they can type their questions in the comment section. And Isabella Borgeson is helping us monitoring the questions on Facebook so that she can pull some of the questions out now and then to ask of our presenters. We cannot guarantee, of course, that everybody's questions will be asked, but we will try our best to accommodate everybody within the constraints, time constraints of this forum. So let me introduce our speakers. I'm really very happy that both of them have agreed to be our speakers today. And the first person I'll introduce is Liloie Klodger. He's a local person here in the Bay Area. And Liloie, as he's called, Lisandro is his official name, is the assistant professor at the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches classes on Philippine history and culture. He has also researched extensively the Philippine left, Filipino liberalism, and is presently interested in the history of monetary policy. Liloie is also a fellow with Pulse Asia, which provides us very crucial information about the Filipino people in the country. Also present with us, thank you, Roben, for joining us via Zoom. It's Roben Carranza, who is a senior expert at the ICTJ, which is the International Committee for Transitional Justice. Is that correct, Roben? Okay, Roben works with that, thumbs up, okay. Roben works with that, yeah, we got you, Roben. Roben works with the Truth Commissions, with reparations programs and various international tribunals and domestic courts, and is an expert on the intersection of transitional justice, accountability for corruption, and violations of economic and social rights. Prior to joining the ICTJ, Roben was a commissioner from 2001 to 2004 in the Philippines Post Dictatorship Commission, that successfully recovered $680 million in ill-gotten assets from the family of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, and these assets were hidden in Swiss banks. From 1998 to 2000, Roben was an Assistant Secretary of National Defense in the Philippines. He obtained his BA and LLB degrees from the University of the Philippines, and an LLM from New York University as a Global Public Service Law Program Scholar. So with that, they will be speaking each for about 15 to 20 minutes, and then we will open it up for a dialogue and questions and answers. Oh, and lastly also, we have with us Christine Araneta, who is also a long-time fighter against the Marcos dictatorship, and now a health professional, physician assistant, who will also talk to us about the history of Filipino-Americans fighting dictatorship in this country. Just as a side note, Bong Bong won in the overall vote by a margin of over two to one in the Philippines. He was like 60 some percent, and Len, he was about 30 percent. In the U.S., he won only by a margin of 47 percent versus 43 percent. So he still won, but there is definitely a different atmosphere here in the U.S. in terms of people's awareness about dictatorship and democracy. Good afternoon, good afternoon to everyone. I'd like to thank the library for hosting this wonderful event and to thank Edwin Lillian, Acbya North America, and all the comrades involved with Acbya North America. I'm also very honored to share this stage virtually with Ruben and Christine. It's no joke, getting back $680 million. So Ruben is a hero of mine, and should be a hero for many Filipinos as well, and so are Christine and all the activists who work here in the United States. I am just an academic. We just talk, really. May I see my PowerPoint, please? Just waiting on the PowerPoint. There you go. So the title of the talk is the Decline of Good Governance Discourse and the New Marcos. And what I'm gonna do today is I'm going to look at the decline precisely of that good governance discourse, which I take as synonymous with anti-corruption discourse. So the reason why people voted for a person from one of the most corrupt families in the world is because voters don't care about corruption discourse anymore, and the data will bear that out. I had Edwin say that I was also a fellow of PulseAsia, and the reason for that is because I'm going to primarily be using PulseAsia data for this presentation. PulseAsia is one of the two big pollsters in the Philippines, and they were tracking electoral attitudes for, you know, they track it periodically, but there was obviously more intense tracking in the buildup to the election. I wanna, one provides so before I proceed, we do not have exit poll data. Nobody commissioned an exit poll in the Philippines. So the data I will be presenting is survey data, pre-election survey data. So it's not as reliable as exit poll data, but it's the best we have. With the election of the 13th in 2016, actually there was robust exit poll data, and that was very useful. And so, you know, it's just a pity that nobody funded exit poll data for this election. One thing that we should do actually is raise money for an exit poll for the next election so that we have more robust data. Anyway, first slide, please. First slide. Oh, there's a clicker. Terrific. Brilliant, Tina. So what's the typical explanation? The question of this forum is really how did it happen? Why do we have a Marcos Junior? I mean, the typical explanation we get is historical amnesia. And that's because the Marcos has whitewashed history. That, of course, is true, right? They used a lot of trolls, and they've been using a lot of trolls in, since at least the first pro-Marcos troll I saw on social media was in 2010, that early. And at that time, I thought these were just crazies that we didn't deserve to listen to. Now, of course, they've won the battle for historical narratives. So obviously, that's a valid reason. And people like Maria Ressa, of course, have done tremendous work to show that there is disinformation. Maria Ressa and also academics like my colleague Jonathan Ong. But what I wanna argue here is that it's not enough to talk about misinformation or disinformation for many reasons. But I think the primary reason is that if you focus only on misinformation and disinformation, you are not looking at the problems with respect to the opposition. I mean, it kind of externalizes the problem. Like the problem is with those people who voted for Marcos. The problem is not with the people who were campaigning against Marcos, right? So it doesn't actually teach us many lessons. But if we look at kind of the problems of organizing against Marcos, that transcends disinformation. And it allows us to ask, answer the question, what can we do better next time, right? And there are also three other reasons why it's not enough. Number one, only 8% of Marcos voters voted for him because they thought he was clean. In other words, there is a significant number of Marcos voters who did not forget. They knew they just voted for him despite the fact that he came from a family of crooks. And this is borne out by ethnographic data. And I'm lifting here largely from the ethnographic work of another colleague, Nicole Curato. She says that what she interviews people who voted for Marcos, one of the main refrains you get is they're all the same. It doesn't matter if Bong Bong Marcos is corrupt or the Marcos family is corrupt. They're all the same anyway, right? Another line which a reporter, I think from an Australian news outfit got was, there are safeguards now. It's no longer like the 80s. So we can vote back the Marcos. So this is not the image of a misinformed electorate that just forgot about the corruption. This is an electorate that knows the corruption but despite that votes for the Marcos. Another reason why amnesia is not enough is a third reason admiration for Marcos senior never really went away. So it's not amnesia. Some of them liked him since 86. And the proof of that is this survey. This is a survey from 1986. So this was, you can assume that Marcos' popularity had bottomed out at this point. It was the kind of low point because he was ousted in 86 and the economy was in shambles. Everything was in shambles and he had just lost a major election. But if you look at this, I'm gonna move closer. I'm gonna make sure the mic gets this. But if you look at statements about further than Marcos, 69% agree that he was a brave resident in 86. And then if you look at caring for friends who enrich themselves by pocketing the government, 54% agreed but 33% already disagreed. In other words, as early as 1986, you already have 33% of Filipinos not believing the corruption allegations. You raise that by a couple of percentage points and you get to the kind of majority that Bongbong Marcos has. So it can't be all this information. This is a Pulse Asia survey, by the way. Oh, sorry, this is an SWS survey. There was no Pulse Asia yet at that time. So if it's not just amnesia, what are the reasons? I'm going to provide two. My second reason is the decline of anti-corruption discourse. But my first reason, I think is the most important reason except I'm not gonna spend too much time on it because I think it's very easy to explain and it's not a very provocative point. The reason why he won was simple. The politics of dynastic addition. Farinan Marcos Jr. was backed by the most formidable dynastic coalition ever seen in post-authoritarian Philippines. He was backed not just by the Dutertes. He was also backed by former president Gloria Arroyo. He was backed by former president Joseph Estrada and he was backed by the Villar family. The Villar family probably some of the most successful real estate magnet in the Philippines. These are the most powerful political families in the country. To defeat that kind of coalitional power, you need to prepare for it and you need to have a strong coalition yourself. Lenny Robredo announced her candidacy in October, 2022 whereas Marcos had been preparing for this campaign since 2016, since he lost in 2016. Now you don't beat the most formidable coalition ever in less than a year. You just don't do it, right? So that's the major reason and the data bears this out. So on the right hand corner, on my right, what you see is the survey from September 6th, 2021. And you see here that leading is in Dysara Duterte. She has 20% of the votes and for then Marcos is just 15%. And of course she's leading because she has 47% of Mindanao. She's from Mindanao of course and the Dutertes have a hold over Mindanao. Marcos just has an 8% preference in Mindanao. That is not just behind Sara Duterte, that's also behind Manipa Kyao who has a 15% preference in Mindanao. In between these two, the next survey is January 2022. In between these two surveys, Sara Duterte drops out and endorses Fernand Marcos Jr. What happens? Marcos becomes the prohibitive favorite with 60% voting for Marcos. And what's most interesting is Mindanao. So the Dutertes really deliver Mindanao to the Marcos. Now from 8% preference in Mindanao, he has 66% preference in Mindanao, beating the native son of Mindanao, Manipa Kyao. It's a remarkable boost that you get from Duterte. Now the politics of dynastic edition has always been the politics of the Marcos. When Apolakai, I say that kind of sarcastically, the old man, when the old man won, he said, I will get the votes from the north, Imelda will get the votes from the south, but Imelda's from later, that's not really the south. That's kind of like the middle. So now with the addition of the Dutertes, votes from the north through the Marcos, votes from the middle through the Ramaldes and votes from the south through the Dutertes. That is a formidable politics of dynastic edition. So we shouldn't be surprised. There's nothing surprising about this result. So I'm gonna move on from that explanation because there's really nothing we can do about it. It's dynastic edition. Another reason, I think, why the Marcos has won this election is something to do with the opposition. And the opposition has prided itself on being the opposition of good governance. And when I talk about the opposition, I'm not just talking about the liberal party, which is the main opposition party. I'm talking about the vast, the broad democratic opposition that is somewhat allied with the liberal party and that coalesced with the campaign of vice president, then vice president Lenny Robredo. Now, good governance discourse has been a mainstay of Philippine politics, well, since the 1950s, since the time of Ramon Magsaysay, but it really became a solid part of Philippine politics since 86. 86, of course, was when Fernand Marcos fell. And there are roughly three attributes to, there are two attributes to good governance discourse. One, it hinges on this idea of a restoration of democracy and morality in government, which is, of course, the opposite of the kind of immorality of the Marcoses. And the second attribute is the focus on anti-corruption. Because the Marcoses were corrupt, the opposition will not be corrupt. There's a third attribute that I forgot, and that third attribute is that anti-corruption discourse or good governance discourse is mostly centered around kind of established middle class. Established middle class, middle class that voted for Corriaquino. Actually, you can work it back even. This is the middle class that voted for Ramon Magsaysay in the 1950s. It's kind of like the Namfrel middle class for lack of a better term. If you don't know what Namfrel is, it's a kind of electoral watchdog body that began in the 50s and then extended all the way into the 1980s. So it's a kind of middle class reformist discourse. It's old, it's established, and it peaked, I think, in 2010. It peaked in 2010 with the election of this guy here, Noy Noy Aquino. And if you remember, he ran on a good governance platform. The platform was kung walang korapu walang mahirap. Translation, difficult to translate, but if there are no corrupt people or no corrupt politicians, there are no poor people or no corrupt politicians or no corruption government, no poverty, right? So it peaked there and the electoral data will bear this out. So this is the reason why people chose a president in 2010, the main reason why they voted for a president in 2010, 26% not corrupt. The second reason was cares for the poor 26% also. So it was not corrupt and then caring for the poor. These were the main reasons. You see this more concretely when you look at the data concerning President Aquino himself. So 46% of voters voted for President Aquino because he thought he was not corrupt. 15% voted for him because they thought he cares for the poor. So these were the top two reasons. You see a slight shift in the electoral tenure once you get to the election of Rodrigo Duterte in 2016. 20% of voters voted for Rodrigo Duterte. The top two reasons for voting for Duterte was number one, 20% not corrupt slash clean record, tie that number one, sorry, is also 20% has done something, can do something. So from 46% voting for Aquino because they thought he wasn't corrupt, only 20% are voting for Duterte because they think he's corrupt. The other reason is this, this kind, can do something. That changes again, of course, in the last election in 2022, where people voted for Ferdinand Marcos because they believe he has done something. So these are the top reasons why people voted for Ferdinand Marcos. 20% said they believe he's done something. 16% voted for him because they felt he had knowledge about the government. 13% will uplift the economy and 11% cares for the poor and then only 8% vote for him because they think he's not corrupt. So it's not the most important reason. And I'd like to contrast this to here, it's pink. So of course it's referring to Robredo. 36% of Robredo's voters voted for her because they thought she wasn't corrupt. In other words, the kind of reformist, middle-class base is still there, right? They still believe in anti-corruption and that's still the reason why they voted for Robredo. Very similar reason for why they voted for Aquino but didn't work this time. What was more important was this idea that you could do something. Just a bit more data, kind of proving that. Primary reason for selecting a president overall in 2022. 18%, the most important reason is has them something is doing something, can do something. So this kind of idea of political will, this kind of capacity to change things, right? More than being not corrupt. Here's more data to prove my point. The voters did not like other candidates who are accusing other candidates of being corrupt. In fact, 69% of voters did not like other candidates presenting accusations regarding the anomalies of rival candidates. So even mobilizing anti-corruption discourse to discredit your opposition, your rival did not work. So, which leads me to ask this question, was the approach of the Robredo campaign enough? Because if you look at the campaign tagline of the Robredo campaign, it's very similar to the Aquino campaign. In other words, in a reliable, in an honest government, you raise everyone up, which is very similar to if there's no corruption, there's no poverty, right? So was it enough? In the context of the election, I don't think so. So why is good governance discourse or why was good governance discourse ineffective? Number two, number one, if there's no corruption, it's likely a false claim. There are many countries that become rich even if they're corrupt. These are two studies that show that China is becoming wealthy despite corruption. This is a case study that's largely focused on Korea, examining the corruption of Korea and how they posted growth despite corruption. Right, so one is probably empirically false. Not that I'm defending corruption, I'm just being an academic here. Just being an academic here. Second, good governance under Aquino did not solve inequality. Yes, Aquino was clean, but the Philippines is still one of the most unequal societies in the world. Definitely in Southeast Asia. Number three, good governance discourse was largely passive. In other words, good governance is not about what you do. It's about what you don't do and people want something that's passive, right? So the idea of Robredo and Aquino is that good governance creates conditions for wealth. This is a quote from Robredo. If there is confidence in leadership, investments will come in. In other words, if I'm a nice person, the investments will come in. That's largely passive. Whereas Duterte and Marcos are saying, we're gonna make this country great, right? And I think that's become more appealing, which leads us to the fourth reason why I think good governance discourse has become ineffective. Good governance discourse does not offer a vision for national greatness. And this is, I think, the main lesson that the opposition should learn. It should not just be a matter of work cleaner than the opposition. It should be a matter of we want the Philippines to be a great country. That is a discourse that should not just be owned by the Marcos as under Duterte's. That should be a discourse that should be claimed by the opposition as well. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Liloie. Ruben, can you hear us? Yes, I can. I know there's a delay, but I can hear you very well. Okay, yeah, you can start presenting now. All right, let me just open my slides here. And I'm not sure if I can run through all of this, but as I would like to, of course, thank Akbaian North America for hosting. And I would like to thank the allies of Akbaian North America for supporting this event. I was actually a lawyer for Akbaian before I came to the United States and I helped Akbaian activists, young activists get the right to vote right after the fall of then-president Joseph Estrada and we went to the Supreme Court. And ever since I've had the pleasure of working with many Akbaian activists. And of course now it's one of those examples. I worked for the ICTJ, as Edwin said, the International Center for Transitional Justice. I'm based in New York, our office is here. We have offices in eight other countries, mostly in the global South, but also in Brussels. And as Edwin says, we work on truth commissions, reparations, programs, prosecuting human rights violations and more recently addressing corruption as a transitional justice issue. I wrote this article right after Marcus Jr. won and it was not very hard for me to come up with a title for this article, as you can see. And during the campaign, I actually did do what the Marcus campaign did. I created a TikTok account. I was asked by various activists to help in the campaign against the Marcuses. And so I created a TikTok account. And this is one of the TikToks that I had to create with the help of my daughter, a teenager. And this is, if you go on TikTok for my account, this is one of the TikToks that generated a lot of views for me and a lot of shares, a lot of likes. This is really a TikTok I made of the Trump building in Wall Street in New York, where I described that it was first purchased by Ferdinand Marcus Jr. in 1981 together with three other buildings and this building alone was $71 million. It was given by Marcus Jr. as a gift to email the Marcus on her birthday. And when this birthday gift was given, at the same time, there was famine in Negros Island in the Philippines where sugar is grown. The Philippines had a $17 billion foreign debt at that time. And so this was one of the most scandalous purchases of Ferdinand and Emelda Marcus during the dictatorship. And if you were impressed by the fact that this has 40,000 likes and maybe exploded, you will also not be, you will then be disappointed that this next TikTok that you see, there is no hardly any text, hardly any sound but just pictures of Marcus Sr. and Marcus Jr. And it says, like father, like son, generated by a Marcus TikTok account had 200,000 likes and then was shared so many times that it probably then reached over a million likes and this is just one TikTok. Let me skip that then. So it's important to remember what Emelda Marcus said. Some of you may have already seen the documentary, The Kingmaker and this is what she says there, that perception is real and the truth is not. And while I heard Leloy say that this information should not be seen as the only or even the main reason for the return of the Marcusus to power, I would say it has been this information, not just about the Marcusus, but about the history of the Philippines has been a significant reason for the return, not just of the Marcusus to power but of fascism itself through Rodrigo Duterte. So you will remember that Emelda Marcus was a presidential candidate in 1992 and she placed fourth, fifth out of several candidates even higher than Senator Hito Salonga, lower than Marcus Crony, Dandico Juanco but if you put their votes together, Emelda Marcus and Dandico Juanco, they would have technically won over Fidel Ramos. So in 1992, Emelda Marcus obtained two million votes, 10% of the votes cast in that election. In 1995, Ferdinand Marcus Jr. tried to win National Office. In a contest for 12 Senate seats, if my data isn't mistaken, he lost. He placed 16th in 1995, just three years after his mother ran for president. He then decided to run for hometown positions in the Marcoson province. He was congressman, he was governor. It took another 15 years before he ran again for the Senate placing seventh out of 12 seats this time winning but not so high that he was number one or close enough to run for president in the next presidential election. And I think it's important to note that between the time he first ran for the Senate in 1995 and finally won in 2010, just a few years before he won, the PCGG in which I was a commissioner recovered the $680 million in Swiss bank accounts that the Marcosas had hidden for years. It's also significant to note that after, just before the 2010 elections, when Marcus Jr. won for the first time a senator, Emelda Marcus threw her former aide in New York, a woman named Vilma Bautista, sold several artwork and other assets in the black market for paintings in the black market for valuable assets and generated millions of dollars out of that. And I suspect that this was money that they then used to fund the campaign of Ferdinand Marcus Jr. in 2010. One of the paintings sold by Emelda Marcus to Vilma Bautista was a Monet painting, part of a series called the Water Lily series. And just that painting alone generated $32 million, just one painting, $32 million for Emelda Marcus. But Vilma Bautista was actually investigated, charged for tax fraud. I helped the New York district attorney's office with some background on these paintings. And she was convicted in 2013, but remember, at that point, they had already taken some money. And even if this painting, $32 million was recovered, many other paintings were likely sold by them without ever being recovered. In the Philippines, we've had several truth commissions. I would count two. One was the presidential commission on human rights, created right after the Marcus dictatorship headed by Senator Jose Diopno. And the other one is the presidential commission on good government, which continued to exist. I was even a commissioner and still operates today. The presidential commission on human rights folded up and was disbanded after a massacre outside the presidential palace in 1987. But the PCGG, like I said, continued to work. I was involved in human rights litigation in the U.S. I was also, of course, involved in recovering assets of the Marcus system in Switzerland, the United States and in other countries. So it's important to take note of the history of the PCGG and its role because it partly explains the problem with countering the efforts of the Marcos to disinform Filipino voters and then to change the historical narrative about the dictatorship. The PCGG has so far recovered 174 billion pesos, worth of assets from the Marcos and their cronies. That's about two to three billion dollars, depending on how you count the exchange rate. But there's a lot more to be recovered and that's about 125 billion pesos in assets under litigation, but even more assets that have not been found. The assets we recovered from Switzerland were used to fund a reparations program for Marcos dictatorship victims. Out of the 680 million, we allocated $200 million to fund a reparations program for victims. So officially, the Philippine government counts 11,103 victims of human rights violations during the Marcos dictatorship. Some of you might have already heard about a documentary that's entitled, 11,103, referring to these victims. There's a separate $10 million allocated for a Marcos martial law museum to remember the resistance to the Marcos dictatorship. It is supposed to be built at the campus of the University of the Philippines. Whether this will happen or not, I still don't know. In 2018, Emelda Marcos was convicted again of corruption. She was previously convicted in 1993, only for that case to be reversed later. This is her second conviction. This conviction at the anti-corruption court is now on appeal, where at the Philippine Supreme Court, under a Ferdinand Marcos junior presidency. It's also important to take note of where Filipinos get their news. And I mentioned this because I will talk a little bit about this information and its place in the return of the Marcos. Television remains the most popular source of news according to a Reuters Foundation survey in 2021, but 73% of Filipinos rely on Facebook for their news. TikTok used to be a source of news for only 2% of Filipinos in 2020. By 2022, it has become the source of news for 15% of Filipinos. Thus, this information through social media violate human rights. I ask this because Facebook itself, Meta, the company, acknowledges that there are human rights violations that can happen or that happen when there is this information. Facebook commissioned this third party human rights impact assessment of their business in the Philippines. And these are the findings of that human rights impact assessment in the Philippines. It says that human right to life and security of person is harm. If misinformation contributes to offline harm, it violates access to information. It violates the right to political participation. It violates the right to health, speaking in particular of the drug war of Rodrigo Duterte. It violates freedom from unlawful attacks on one's honor and reputation and it violates the right to truth. All the other violations I mentioned, except the right to truth are in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The reference to the right to truth is from a UN Commission of Human Rights resolution in 2005. So Facebook itself acknowledges that this information violates human rights. And so one question that I would ask, especially those in the United States who are able to pressure their own congressmen and senators to hold social media corporations accountable is whether there is appetite to hold social media corporations accountable for undermining political rights in the Philippines. But the other reason, aside from this information for the return of the Marcos is certainly Rodrigo Duterte. The return of Rodrigo Duterte meant the return of authoritarian populism and the acceptance of populist solutions to the root causes of social and economic injustice in the Philippines. So together with Duterte and this information, those are two factors that allowed Marcos Jr. to return. But the third, and I think the most important factor is that democracy is not enough. Inequality in all its forms must be addressed, including inequality in access to education and information in the Philippines. So just to answer quickly the questions that Acbya North America sent to me, and I think it's in the title in the flyer of the program, one question that was asked is, will the restoration of the Marcos family lead to democracy's demise? And here you can see that democracy wasn't exactly alive even before 2022. And certainly the United States was instrumental in an earlier death of democracy and perhaps even in its non-resurrection. This is Ferdinand Marcos and George H.W. Bush in 1981. George H.W. saluted Marcos Sr. for his adherence to democratic principles in 1981. This is the president of the United States, congratulating Marcos Jr. on his election. And so it's important to remember that democracy and democratization are different things. Democracy can be participation in political exercises, but democratization is wider. It involves governance and accountability. It's also important to note that the idea of one person, one vote is political fiction versus the reality of economic and social inequality. So the next question that was asked is, can the opposition survive? And some of the thoughts I would share with that are the following. For the opposition to survive, I think it's important to create a left-wing movement in the Philippines, not a liberal party. It's important for that left-wing movement to fight strategically. And it's important for that left-wing movement to win small victories. Second, I think it's important to take back populism. Rodrigo Duterte won on that platform. And I see no reason why the left should not resort to populism itself. It's important for the Philippine left to learn from Latin American and progressive movements and not necessarily from European social democrats. And yes, Acabaya North America, this is addressed to Acabayan. There are other things that I would discuss, but I'll run through them quickly. It's important to make conditional cash transfers permanent to raise the poverty line threshold in the Philippines, even possibly build a political party out of 4P beneficiaries. Very poor people who receive conditional cash transfers. One way the opposition can survive is to make red tagging obsolete. And the National Democratic Front's armed struggle. Support amnesties for all NBF fighters and leaders, perhaps even create a truth commission on the Maoist insurgency. The last question that the flyer asked is can the US Filipino community make an impact? And so these are points that I would raise in answer to that. It's important for Filipino Americans who have not forgotten to remember for all other Filipinos. And I say that not as a presumptuous person who thinks only Filipino Americans can remember, but it's important for us to use the privilege we have of being here to help Filipinos remember. It's important to learn from other global South communities in the US on how to deploy influence, votes, and money for accountability. We should learn from Armenian Americans who have made sure that officially the Armenian genocide is recognized in the United States. We should learn from Colombian Americans who were able to hold truth commission public hearings in the United States to hear Colombians displaced by fascism and violence in Colombia tell the truth. We should learn from Korean Americans and how they fought for comfort to women to be recognized in the United States. It might even be a possibility to seek official as well as non-government commission of September 21 as a Philippine never again day, perhaps as the California attorney general, a Filipino American who knows about the Marcos dictatorship to support Filipino American efforts at memorialization. And we must remember that the US political and economic elites enabled Marcos corruption and abuses. This is a 1987 New York Times article that covered the release of Raymond Bonner's book, Waltzing with a Dictator. And it was not so much a revelation as much as a recognition at that time that the United States did enable 39 Marcos, including being aware of his plan to create a dictatorship. So one thing that the Filipino American community can do is to ask the US government to open its Marcos dictatorship archives. When Barack Obama visited Argentina in 2016, he expressed regret for US policies during the dirty war in Argentina. But more importantly, he also ordered the opening of US archives that involve US knowledge and complicity in the dirty war in Argentina. And even the Trump administration continued the release of information from those archives. It's important to hold accountable other institutions that are based in the West, including those who are in fact headed by Americans by tradition, the World Bank or the IMF. In 1973, the World Bank president, Robert McNamara said, the Marcos dictatorship is a miracle. We must support it. And then started lending up to $5 billion in loans to the Marcos dictatorship. In his recent visit here in the United States, this is one of those people that Marcos, one of the groups of people that Marcos met, Marcos Jr., the World Bank. So Filipino Americans who have not forgotten must remember for many Filipinos. This is Richard Nixon hugging Bong Bong Marcos. And then this is Bong Bong Marcos hugging the secretary of state of Richard Nixon, who knew that Fede and Marcos Sr. was going to create a dictatorship, steal $10 billion from his own country and kill, torture and disappear 11,103 Filipinos. Marcos Jr. met Henry Kissinger. So let me stop there and we can proceed with questions. Sponsor. The National Committee to Restore Civil Liberties, authoritarian regimes abroad, US interests. But this didn't stop us, we soldiered on and organized. And these are some pictures of our organizing in major US and Canadian cities. So shout out to Agana Guam, Honolulu Hawaii, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego, all up and down the West Coast. In the Northwest we had Seattle, Midwest Chicago, the East Coast Philadelphia DC, New York and further North, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. So we also organized a smattering of cities in between like Madison, Wisconsin and Arbor, Michigan, Boston, Massachusetts and St. Louis, Missouri. So we formed chapters and solidarity groups, notably the Friends of the Filipino People. Spearheading this actions was the coalition against the Marcos dictatorship. That's Rene. Many years ago. We built alliances with other forces. So let's pause here. The movement for our free Philippines, essentially the liberal party in exile. And we have here in the picture are the late Senator Aquino, Argilene Avila, Romeo Capulong and the late Senator Omanglapus. And with them we campaigned for the calling of the lifting of martial law and the freeing of all political prisoners. And where do we have? And in Congress we campaigned tirelessly every single year to cut military and economic assistance to Marcos with every round of foreign appropriations hearings. So were these actions consequential? You know, this was like 14 years, a big chunk of our youth, right? You know, other than the conviction that we were fighting for justice, that we were on the just side of history, there was little certainty that we would one day, we meaning the broad opposition, the broad resistance. There was no guarantee that we would one day prevail. We would one day win, right? But, you know, if we were to gauge the dictatorship's response, if that was any indication, I think we were making an impact and they were scared. I'd even say paranoid, okay? Because they sense that there was power and influence building on the ground that this would ultimately impact, you know, the relationship with the United States government. And maybe the turning point was the 1982 state visit of Marcos to the US, okay? This may have been the eye-opener because we certainly welcomed him warmly everywhere he stopped. Okay? So picture this, on September 27, 1982, the Marcos's were lodged at the St. Francis Hotel, okay? And right across the street in Union Square, we were protesting so loudly that their gala was disrupted and the guests had to enter through the back, okay? And then Senator Feinstein, she was mayor then, she was handing over the keys to the city, okay? Right? She was handing the keys to the city to the Marcosists, but we were really drowning that observation in Union Square, it was just packed with people spilling onto the side streets and halting traffic. So it was a scene to rival a warrior's victory. Okay, maybe not the finals, maybe just the play officer, just the regular season, but it was that huge. So they continued to push us back. The long arm of martial law tried to push us back and the Philippine consulates became spying outposts run by military attachés. A blacklist of those who took part in protests who was revealed, and there is my name up there with my mother, and I was all of 16 years old. So, and it was actually a consular official, repairable, yeah, right, who defected and leaked this information out about this active blacklist. Wait, that's my mother's name. Your mother's name is there, see, we're all, it's a badge of honor, right? Yeah. Okay. They also negotiated the extradition treaty, and it was to intimidate the critics into silence, those who were abroad. And to diminish us, and this is what I remember constantly, because they would always brand us, if there was a meme, right, they would say, you're the stake revolutionaries. All you do is protest, and then you go back to the comforts of your home, and you eat steak, right? And you're enjoying the privileges of the West, so that's how we got caricatured at the time. But it wasn't just care tactics, right? It really took a deadly turn for us on June 1st, 1981. And this was with the murders of Selmy Domingo and Jean Viernes. So you would think, how could local politics become global? Well, this is how. Jean and Selmy were members of the KDP. They were active trade union leaders. They were trying to reform a cannery workers union that was long dominated by a very corrupt syndicate that was just living off the dues of the members. And they were at the time trying to do the reform movement and building solidarity with the labor movement in the Philippines, and they had just recently returned from a trip to the Philippines. And evidently, this greatly alarmed Marcos and his intelligence agencies. Shortly after returning from the Philippines, they went to Hawaii, where they introduced and passed a resolution at the ILWU conference. This was the national conference, and they overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the repression of Philippine labor. That was a big deal. It's like the AFL, CIO, right? So, they returned a week later to Seattle, and a week later, they were dead, right? At first, it seemed this was the deadly outcome of local union disputes between reformers on the one hand and the old school union leaders. But it was actually, it really just provided a cover. In reality, Tony Barruso, he was an embattled union president, was a Marcos henchman. And that's another story, because there was a network of Ilocano loyalists. You know, I'm not anti-Ilocano, but that was just the reality, right? Ilocano loyalists who were up and down the West Coast and who actively spied and built support for the Marcosists, okay? So, you had the coincidence of interest of Barruso, who was fighting for his position. And Marcos, who regarded this development of labor solidarity as very threatening. Years later, years later, the meticulously kept ledgers that Marcos brought with him to Hawaii would show payments made to Barruso to finance the assassinations. So, it's not out of the realm of possibility, right? But these murders and attacks just only strengthened our resolve and broadened the anti-martial law movement. And they cast a critical spotlight on the complicity of the U.S. in allowing agents of a foreign government to violate the rights of its own citizens. By 83 to 86, the dictatorship was imploding. There were splits in the military. There was a growing consensus of the U.S. political elite that Marcos was a liability. The economy was in desperate shape. Hunger literally stalked the country. And here's a picture of Joel Abong. He's literally the poster child of famine in Negros as a result of the collapse of the sugar industry. And next was the unconscionable assassination of Nino Joaquino. And this set in motion the beginning of the end. What was the regime's response? It tried to call for a snap election, right? To legitimize its weakening grip on power. But desperate measures for desperate times could not save the Maharlika. Finally, the dictatorship fled. It fell and the revolutionary government of Corazon-Aquino was sworn in. Like the multitudes who thronged to Edza I, okay, we too here in the U.S. rejoiced with tears, the triumph of the People Power Revolution. Because it was exactly that. People power built slowly over time in the Philippines and yes, here in the diaspora. And this led to the unraveling, the events that helped accelerate the dictatorship's fall. So 50 years hence and 36 years after People Power, I'm no longer a child of the times, okay? I'm an OG. I'm an OG who was simply a witness, a participant in history. So it was really a cruel and bewildering moment on May 11, 2022 when the son of our collective nemesis, Bongbong Marcos Jr. was proclaimed president. He asks not to be judged by his ancestors. So I said, hmm, maybe he's developing insight. But, you know, he makes no apologies, no voluntary return of stolen wealth, no full indemnification of martial law victims, you know, no repudiation of the policies which set back the Philippines by decades, okay? And he won, riding on the crafted myth that the Marcos years was the golden age. And that was what was so confusing because, you know, if he had a good public record as a governor, as a congressman, as a senator, okay, we'll have a different conversation. Maybe it's trying to redeem their name, right? But no, it was all built on the so-called record of his father and this mythical golden age. So I guess the lesson is in a country in desperate need of a fantasy, fiction can actually win. And nightmares can come true, right? I guess if you wish, it's like buying a lottery ticket. You have this, anyway, BPM would like us to forget, sweep under the rug the abuses of the period. And he and his trolls and they always say, move on. Like you have some kind of psychological hangup, right? Move on. And his sister even has the audacity to say, you know, moving on won't kill you, right? You know, so that's really rich coming from her, right? So unless there is a settling of accounts, there can be no moving on. There can be no moving on. You know, and unless we work towards adjust, as Ruben said, adjust more equitable society, it's like Groundhog Day, right? We're all caught in this recurring saga from which there is no escape, okay? So until we, you know, get rid of patronage and transactional politics, the dominance of political dynasties, you know, the normalization of corruption, we're gonna be in the same place, okay? So it's true, those who don't learn from history, well, we're condemned to repeat it and we're now in this condemned phase of the historical cycle, thanks to the 31 million who decided to go along, all right? And we're not alone, by the way, the Italians kind of went that way too recently. So, but good news in Brazil, Lula is leading. So maybe things are reversible, right? Okay, but there is hope, okay? So there is hope, if the results of the overseas election returns are to be believed, Marcos won by only a few thousand votes in the US in contrast to the double digit leads elsewhere. So to the extent that voting is a proxy for political sentiment, and I qualify this because the vast majority of Filipino Americans did not vote, did not participate or were not eligible. It's nonetheless a positive sign in terms of where the sentiments of the community is at, no? And of course, don't forget the pink wave. The pink wave, it launched late, it crested early. I really feel bad, but it's not a spent force, okay? We saw for the first time a generational mobilization of young idealistic politics who will be engaged in politics, so don't count them out. And in the US, we too, we too had the pink wave. Okay, or the wavelets. All right, maybe not as huge. So what to expect and what should we do? So four months into his administration, Bongbong comes off as being nice to everybody, right? So he's affable, he's earnest, non-antagonistic to the world community, unlike his predecessor who really relished just cursing everyone. And he says, he's a friend to all and a foe to none. I love that. I'm gonna start collecting Bongbongisms now. Well, if he's not to be judged by the actions of his ancestors, then let's judge him by the realities on the ground. And it may not be the iron fisted rule that we've known of in the past of his father, but the template that he may quite follow is the six years of the Terte rule. And what happened in the period prior to his election? We see the disabling of media outlets deemed at odds politically with the administration, such as the ABSCBN and Rappler. We see the control and neutralizing of the opposition with cyber libel lawsuits and other manufactured charges. Example is the continued detention of Senator Lila de Lima, despite the recanting of all the star witnesses. We see the indiscriminate red tagging and red baiting of members of the left, progressives, even celebrities, civil society and now judges, right? And we see the trolling and manipulation of social media to spread this information. We see the continuation of the drug war, arbitrary killings, maybe it won't be so gross now, but definitely that's a good cover for getting rid of your opponents, right? We see the stacking of government departments with political appointees who do the dirty work, you know, without tainting the executive. And what the marcos has really excelled at most, you know, is creating perception, right? Whitewashing, erasing, denying history, promoting false narratives to achieve the consent of the ruled, right? Right, that's what they do best. You know, if they really wanted to make a difference in Locos North, they wouldn't be a fourth class province, right? But the return on investment is higher in this information because then you get a national position, right? So in summary, Marcos does not need martial law, the detention of foes, presidential decrees to carry out their agenda. He already has a super majority in both the Senate and House. And that was, and even if there are political rivalries, and I think we're beginning to see that, we can expect them to fall in line in the near term. So what's gonna happen, what has been, and what will continue to be, as Maria Reza puts it, democracy's death by a thousand cuts. So this is the new terrain we have to navigate. We must remain vigilant and signal to the U.S. government, like we did before, democratic or Republican, that the U.S. not ignore or give free pass to the human rights record of the Marcos government, that political expediency in service of U.S. geopolitical interests in the region not accommodate violations on the ground. We call for the unconditional release of Senator Lila de Lima and the dropping of all charges against her. We demand the Marcos return absconded wealth and pay all taxes and obligations on it. So I close with this reminder, and it's a reminder for the ages, something that struck me when I was in the Museo de Alhube in Lisbon, Portugal, several years back. The museum is a memorial to the victims of the Salazar dictatorship, which by the way lasted 36 years, right? Okay, but it's also a learning hub. It's very interesting. It's a learning hub on how to strengthen civil society and engage in democracy building. And it reads, without memory, there is no future. Preserving the memory of history is an act of citizenship, breaking the silence in which everyone was submerged and rescuing them in order to educate the younger generations. To move on, to move forward, this is what we have to do. Thank you. Thank you very much, Christine. Wonderful presentation along with Rubens and Lilo's presentation. This is a very rich discussion that we've had. We're now gonna go into questions and answers. And just as a heads up, we have Rubens who will be participating in the questions and answers. And because of the feedback, there is a muting process that's going on engineered by our technicians. So when we ask a question, we pause a little bit to wait for Rubens to get unmuted. And then after Rubens finishes answering, he will again be muted, so we will wait. I hope you got that, Rubens. Because we want you to participate also. So what we're gonna do now is we're gonna give chance first to the three endorsing organizations who have representatives here to ask questions that they prepared for us. And that's the representative from Filipinos for Advocates for Justice, Santi is here. And then we also have the representative from Apala, Luisa Blu is here, I believe. And then we also have the representative from Buena Vista Methodist Church. And, sorry. Astin Tan is here. So let's start with Santi from Filipinos for Affirmative Action. I mean, sorry, Filipina Advocates for Justice. Yeah, before I go on, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Susan Tagle. Here in the US, I'm known as Susan Buenzuceso or Santi. I am a former political detainee. I was, I started with the movement in 1976 at the age of 16. I was detained and tortured in 1977. I am a Martian law survivor and I am one of the 11,103. I moved here in 2017. And so what I'd like, actually it's not more of a question, it's two things. I'd like to comment on the fact that while I agree with Leloy that the loss of discourse on good governance has become a very major factor. I will quite agree with Ruben that this information, misinformation and disinformation played a huge role in the election of Marcos this year. 48% of the voting population of the Philippines is below 40 years old. Therefore, these are people who did not experience martial law, who are basically getting their information from social media and who have absolutely no idea what went on during martial law. And so I think my ask of the Filipino community is one. And this is something that I discovered while I living here in the last five years on and off intermittently. Many of the Phil Am youth, whether they were born here or brought here as children, do not know anything about martial law. I speak to a lot of the youth members of Faj and they talk about their parents not wanting to talk about martial law. So I guess my ask of the Phil Am community, especially those who are parents and grandparents, please talk to your children, to your grandchildren about martial law. While I know it is painful to talk about it, especially those who came here to escape or especially those who refuse to remember, I would like to ask you, please, please do not keep the facts from them. Open their eyes, give them the facts, let them discern for themselves. But just don't be silent. I think that is the, I will be crucified by a lot of my former comrades for saying this, but I have always said this. That is a major fault that the Communist Party and its people had after 1986. We went on with our lives. We went back to school. We had families. We found good jobs, but did not work on putting martial law history into the educational system of the Philippines. That is why now 50 years after, you have a whole generation of children who do not know, or they're not even children, young adults who know nothing about martial law. That's why when I see Holocaust memorials, I am so, so jealous because the Jews, those who suffered from the atrocities of Hitler did not allow themselves to be forgotten. And that is something that we Filipinos should also do. We should not allow ourselves to be forgotten in the Marcos era. And moving forward, I think we just need to be more vigilant. But one major factor is the educational system. Something has to be done with the educational system of the Philippines. Because even the understanding of the discourse on good governance will redound to the educational system. Poverty has become so, so widespread that nobody wants to talk about, yeah, nobody wants to talk about the economy. What they want to talk, I mean, nobody wants to talk about good governance. What they want to talk about is how to put food in their tables. Thank you very much. I wanted to give a chance to our speakers to have any reaction from what Susan said. Did you like? Yeah, I'm not discounting this information unless I be misunderstood. I think that this information has been talked about a lot. The reason why I didn't focus on it is because there are more qualified people to do that through Ben, Maria, Jonathan, Ong. But I want to nuance this idea of this information a little bit because it's not just a youth problem. I don't know the data when it comes to this last election, but in 2016, the voters for Marcos were younger boomers and Gen X, so not necessarily the youth. And there's a reason for this. It's because these people were already misinformed in the 60s and 70s by Marcos himself. So for example, you were born 1965. You're 13 in 1973. And 1978, you're reading nothing but Pro Marcos propaganda at that time. So the Philippine press, Philippine pre-press was already gone. You weren't reading Nick Joaquin anymore. There's no critical journalism. So when you talk about this information, you have to talk about it as a problem that begins in the 60s and 70s. And when you talk about the agents of this information, you can just talk about the people on Facebook and the people on other social media. You have to talk about the various propagandists of Marcos who are still around today, people who wrote Marcos' speeches. We have, for example, lectures in the Philippines dedicated to one of Marcos' main propagandists. And nobody's grappling with that fact, right? We have historians who are still around, who worked as ghost writers for Marcos in his authorized biograph, his authorized history of the Philippines called Tadana. And we're still not calling these people out. So this information is not just a TikTok and Facebook thing. It begins in the 60s and 70s, and those people are still around and they should be held accountable. Ruben, would you like to make a comment? I'm gonna mute. Sure. I think it's important to take note that unlike social media, this information, and here I agree with Lelo, there already was this information during the dictatorship and even after the dictatorship fell. The Philippines had 36 years to deal with that. When I was at the PCGG, I recall writing a letter to the then Secretary of Education in the Philippines, Raul Rocco, asking why the Department of Education in the Marcos' home province had declared the birthday of Ferdinand Marcos as a school holiday. And the response, while partly encouraging, he stopped them, but he also said in his response that the teaching of history must allow students and young people to decide and evaluate facts. And of course, this can be a long debate, but this very liberal attitude, this epitome of liberalism, that young people can discern easily how a past in which they were not part of really happened, lies on a wrong premise. It assumes that the Marcos' were not actively trying to propagate a version of history in which they're the heroes. And so that, I think, is both a criticism of the liberal response to the Marcos' dictatorship's legacy, whether it's Corazon Aquino, all the way to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, but at the same time, it also goes back to a point I made, that inequality and access to education, inequality and access to information is what allows this information to become effective. And in many ways, it would have been less effective had we taken away the rest of the resources that the Marcos' had to pay for this information. Unfortunately, it took 15 years before the Swiss bank accounts were finally recovered. And in that 15 year period, that money was capital for disinformation by the Marcos' and even after we took back a substantial amount of money from the Marcos' a lot was still left and social media made it cheaper to spread disinformation and the Marcos' still had the money to pay for it. So let me stop there. One sentence, just to add to what Ruben said, actually Corazon Aquino, the first president of Aquino, decentralized the production of textbooks. So that allowed for misinformation to also creep in there. Thank you. So my name is Luisa Blue. I'm a retired executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union. So I do have a question, because I've been away from this movement for many years doing some other stuff in the labor movement. But when I was much younger, when I was president of the SEIU local here in San Francisco during the time that Diane Feinstein, who they still can't stand to this day, gave the key to the city. My question is, what happened to the labor movement in the Philippines? How united are they? Because it's very difficult for US labor and to make connections if the labor movement is not united there. And then for the US labor movement, there's right wing forces, or leaning right forces within the labor movement and they don't care what happens in the rest of the world. They refuse to acknowledge that the workforce in this country is much more diverse, more immigrants are part of that workforce. And then the decline of the labor movement were only 4% of the private sector workers in this country is unionized. So how many people belong to a union here? Okay, how many of you are active in your union? Okay, so there you go. Anyway, anybody who can answer that? Well, two hindrances to the growth of a productive labor movement in the Philippines. So one is the sectarianism of the Maoist parties, which is kind of dominated left-wing discourse and that makes it very difficult for people to work with them. And also because the goal of the Maoist movement is ultimately revolution. So anything that's palliative is not something they're gonna work with. And many of the things you do in labor negotiations, for lack of a better term, are in fact palliative. They're not revolutionary. They're about raising wages. They're about better working conditions. So the incentive is actually to make working conditions certain incentives sometimes, to make working conditions worse so that they become organized and that they become part of the armed struggle. That's one hindrance. Second hindrance, of course, the development of the economy. The economy right now has moved very quickly. And the reason for that is because of the way the BPO sector and the OFW sector is structured. So it's very hard and Akbaian organized to know this because the BPO sector is so new and because the kind of language of old labor. So I speak of BPO business processing outsourcing sector. Call centers, right? Because the work is so transient and because they're relatively, and they're highly paid, it's very difficult to organize in those sectors. And the labor movement has to come up with a new language on how to organize these new sectors. I have no doubt that it's gonna happen. Part of the problem is that it's new and that we have to find the language but definitely that's a hindrance. And Ruben, do you wanna add something? Okay, very good. Thank you. Our next one person we wanna acknowledge is one of our co-sponsors, the Benevista Methodist Church, Austin. Would you like to ask a question or Cynthia? My name is Cynthia Bonta. I was also an anti-martial activist during the 70s and 80s. Oh, can you hear me? Yeah. I won't repeat that. But I was in the Sacramento area. We were a little bit in the periphery of things but definitely a very strong united spirit was felt throughout the country under the leadership of the Union of Democratic Filipinos. So we were part of the anti-martial chapter in Sacramento. So I have invited Austin Tam who is a member of the Benevista United Methodist Church. This is a church that has been very much a supporter of the Philippine issue. The minister there, Michael Yoshi, is a long time leader and a member of the International Council of Human Rights in the Philippines, which is international. And recently there was a meeting of the council that was from Geneva to the Philippines, to Manila to Canada to the U.S. And I listened in on it and they had very strong reports of their observations during the election. And they had interviewed voters and they were really saying that there was definitely vote buying in terms of offering aid for people to be able to buy and put food on the table. So it was more like a survival kind of a feeling among the voters that they had to vote the way they were asked to if there was money offered. So there was a lot of that. And so this faith community that's international is very much concerned about the violation of human rights, of course, in the Philippines and would like to be a strong force to prevent that. So one of the instances that they're now experiencing is something that maybe Austin can talk about more about United Methodist pastor is being charged for murder only to discourage others like her to continue to work for the indigenous. She in particular was working for the mangyans in Mindoro. So this is one of the things that are happening right now. And so the question that we want to raise with Austin, I guess I might as well continue, is how can we, how can the international faith community be able to effectively stop, or prevent the rise of human rights violations like trumped up charges and things like this. Because what we're doing right now that I'm observing is that the church is just telling the government to withdraw the charges. I mean, we know they're not gonna do that. So we want your ideas as to what an international faith community can do in cases like this. Thank you. Austin, do you wanna add something? Thank you to you, Cynthia. I'm an elected member of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee, and I'm bringing up issues about this. So I'm hoping maybe I'm trying, we're trying to connect with other central committees, state committees to kind of share the word and see what we could do to help you internationally, okay? Thank you. That's all I gotta say. Thank you. I'd like actually to make this question broader, and perhaps harder, I'm sorry, Lily, and Raben, which is, this is really in the area of what can we possibly do given that we lost, okay? How, what can we pass? There was a question on the Facebook site that says how can we possibly countertroll this information that's professionally paid and well financed? I'm gonna lump up a lot of questions for you. The other question that came from the Facebook streaming is that if good governance wasn't good enough as a convencer for people to vote against Marcos, we need something else to convince people what could that possibly be? And what kind of work should the faith community should liberal forces, should socialist and progressive forces embark upon so that we could reverse the things that are happening right now? So it's a very broad question. It's about the faith community, but it's also about what challenges faces the democratic, the progressive forces in the next coming period so that we can overcome troll this information, we can overcome dynasty, dynastic power, and perhaps raise the level of discourse above just good governance and fundamental and move towards fundamental reform. Any ideas, Lee, lawyer, Ruben? Um, should I, okay, so two things. First is the Marcosists can spread this information and fund this information and win an election based on this information, but they cannot erase history including the history of American courts rendering judgment against them. There are still several pending cases before US courts that either ought to be enforced against the Marcosists or could be decided against the Marcosists. And this is where Filipino Americans or American citizens in general faith communities, American labor unions, elected American officials can actually be involved not only because these cases are before American courts, but because these cases are emblematic of forgetting and remembering that you have to fight for remembering and these are arenas where you can fight for remembering. I'll mention one case because I think it's very helpful to do this. Agapita Trajano is the mother of Archimedes Trajano and some of you would have heard of Archimedes, 20-something year old who spoke against the daughter of Verde and Marcos during the dictatorship was taken away from a university and then his body was found tortured and killed by dictatorship military forces. The mother who later resided in the United States sued the Marcos family in the United States it was consolidated in a court in Hawaii and won a judgment against the Marcosists, against Aimee Marcos particularly for $4 million. And symbolically that's important and symbolically it's something we always talk about as something to remember that Aimee Marcos was found liable for torture and death, for torture and murder in a US court specific to the Architrajano case but something more happened. Mrs. Trajano went to a Philippine court to have that US judgment enforced in the Philippines and this is where tragedy is layered on top of the previous tragedy because Mrs. Trajano had to go all the way to the Supreme Court only to be told by the Philippine Supreme Court including by two justices who have cast themselves as allies in the anti-Marcos movement Justice Carpio for example and I'm not saying that this is personal I'm saying I'll say something about that just after this. Mrs. Trajano lost in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said that Aimee Marcos was correct she no longer lived in this condominium she was using in Manila she was already a resident of Singapore and this was a technicality that the Marcosists used that the person who served the summons on her condominium in the Philippines was not authorized to receive it for her the case was dismissed $4 million judgment against Aimee Marcos filed by the mother of a young man that Aimee Marcos murdered was dismissed on a technicality by the Supreme Court. It's important for Americans to assert the idea that at the very least Philippine courts should live up to what is expected of Philippine courts that they don't resort to technicalities that they actually render judgment in a case that was already tried by the US court and here's the final clincher here Aimee Marcos to this in the United States walking around in New York City for some reason shopping at the discount store and I don't know why I have no explanation for that but that's how impunity happens they go to the United States because they feel that they can now walk around in the United States as if nothing happened as if they were never found accountable as if there is no judgment against them and Americans can do something about that unlike in the Philippines where it is far more difficult for ordinary Filipinos to get even an ounce of justice from their courts so that is something I think that United States activists can do find ways to have these US judgments enforced pressure the Department of Justice in the United States to file amicus briefs in these cases pressure local officials the Attorney General of California for example can do so and make sure that this is not forgotten let me stop there two points on information I think we cannot have good information unless we support our truth tellers if you go to the Philippines many of the journalists who covered Duterte's drug war still have PTSD until today and there is no money for their counseling so we should come in there that's one very concrete example with respect to this vision if good governance is not enough what is my own sense is that we should co-opt some of the discourse of greatness coming from the authoritarians so Duterte for example talks about the golden age of infrastructure and build, build, build he wants a strong economic state and a lot of Marcos nostalgia falsely is also about a strong economic state Sandro Marcos comes out on his TikTok and says my grandfather was building a developmental state similar to Korea similar to Singapore why is it that only the authoritarians tap into that discourse of a strong economically activist state that is something that the left can contribute to and actually co-opt because the idea of a strong state is actually a left-wing concept but what we can add to that is not only are we proposing a strong activist state we're also proposing social protections on top of that because if you look at the developmental state you got breakneck growth but it took some time for them to address the issue of inequality and that's why this idea of an activist state coupled with social democratic protection is I think should be the vision for the left and we know that this works because who is the only opposition senator to win in this last election was Theresa Anteveros and she ran on a social protection pro-health platform not necessarily on a platform of good governance so I think the template for a new opposition discourse is already there it blends the activist state that Duterte and Marcos are nostalgic about with a kind of social protection and the heart that you get from candidates like Theresa Anteveros Thank you we have time for maybe two questions and we're going to take them one after the other so that the respondents can figure out what to say Oh hi I think I know most of you here, thanks, Edwin so my name is Ago with the Philippine-American Human Rights Alliance thanks Lilo and thanks Ruben whenever I found this discussion it's always nice to hear what happened 50 years ago or even 30 years ago but of course most of the young people would like to know just exactly what's happening in the last six months and we don't want to be coming out here kind of a little defeated but that so much has been done against us so let me just point out what transpired in the last three months exactly on how we oppose the current government number one even before the ICC Office of the Prosecutor's Office said that they're going to open up the trial again against Marcos for the crimes against humanity they actually emailed us asking for more documents we filed 12 documents of widows and victims who are actually filed their cases in the ICC the ICC actually promised they're going to start soon but we said that it's going to be a long, a long whole job I did lobbying in the US Congress for the last 10 years and we always assumed that this ICC process will take a while but the thing is unless we hear unless we email them directly then they're not having the pressure that should be coming from us and they do they do get the pressure last thing and I think I want to react on Deloitte about the Pulse Asia thing I think for us who are really involved in the whole campaign in the last three months I think it is a learning tool for us to see exactly what the discourse was, what the comments was but just know that there's a pending action in the Comilec right now because most of the activists and most of the people who actually were in the election do not accept the results of the election Non-Frel Head was there General Alessay was there statistically in everything we do not accept it but we're saying that looking forward if we're going to have an election it's not going to be the same type of election where things are regained and then when things are dictated by the SD cards and no transparency at all Thank you Yeah, thank you Agu Actually I'm going to also call a woman for fairness after Donnie but let's keep our questions and comments to one or two minutes Okay, somebody's going to respond? Yeah, I mean... Donnie DeLeon also from the Filipino-American Human Rights You know we're being asked basically if you live here in this place what do we do next, right? We know that, as you said the coalition of political dynasty and this information were basically the weapons and why this man was elected Here in America we also know that very similar in what's happening Trump and the rise in Italy and Sweden and of course the markets, dictatorships something is happening around the world but when we talk about this information Facebook is just 40 minutes away from here YouTube is just right in San Bruno So these are the companies that are spreading this information About March in 2021 I was with Edwin and with the group we actually rally in front of YouTube asking them to stop the fake news After our rally there were 400,000 that were taken out who were spreading, you know, the pro... all the lies that were basically being spread on social media So we can... Excuse me, so we can actually make a difference by making all these businesses like Facebook and YouTube and Google in spreading all this information So I think we need to continue doing that We need to ask our congressman to help us doing this So we can do it, we can make a difference My reaction, please Edwin I think one... If we're going to fight this information we can't believe this information ourselves and during the election, you know, Pulse Asia the organization that I'm affiliated with it got called Pulse Asia because it was saying that Bongbong Marcos was going to win Never mind that Pulse Asia had correctly predicted all other elections and had even predicted the election of Benigno Aquino The problem is if we deny the reality and you know, we know what a cheated election looks like it happens when it's very close 2001 is your example Roya was able to cheat Fernando Poe because it was close but this was a majority... This was the first majority president in the plurality era in the era of the non-to-party system You cannot cheat, it's very difficult to get that through cheating If it were cheating, it would be a marginal win for Ferdinand Marcos Jr So the reason why we should accept that these things are real is because that comes with the acceptance that we failed And along with the acceptance that we failed is the result to do things better? Hi, good afternoon I am Marnell Marasigan My mother is Bullet Marasigan one of the 11,103 victims of martial law I wanted to ask, because in our history there is so much trauma around it the trauma of martial law the trauma of colonization How are we also incorporating trauma-informed care in a way of activism now and changing the world and changing the discourse? How do activists take care of ourselves especially after this defeat? Well, I won't give you an answer from the perspective of someone who would have worked in mental health I am not that but do things I will say I'm involved in a project funded by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations a project in the Philippines that is meant to address the situation of families of those killed in the drug war of the Vigo Duterte these are thousands and thousands of families most of them poor families living in desperation and now even more desperate because the breadwinners have been executed by Duterte and they want to incorporate trauma-informed care in the accountability process for that and one of the ideas that we have proposed to them is to organize local truth commissions unofficial truth commissions local perhaps at community level that would help them express what they hope to express before a public willing to listen to them because they have been demonized including those who were killed and in many ways that might give some possible ideas for others to come forward and talk about what happened to them in a far longer past during the dictatorship I spoke at the premiere of the documentary 11,103 here in New York I was in a panel with Robert Swift who represented class action victims in Hawaii as well as with Wana Ver Wana is the daughter of Fabian Ver the military chief of Ferdinand Marcos it was the first time for Wana and I to meet and in the public discussion Wana talked about how she has been ostracized by her family for speaking out against the Marcos and I then also told Wana about my work at the PCGG going after the ill-gotten wealth of her mother her mother was the head of the so-called Binondo Central Bank that smuggled dollars out of the country to shore up the Marcos and I also talked about the torture and killings committed by her father's military it's important for us to also then find figures people who can speak about the dictatorship and its perpetrators from that side of history and perhaps this is something that can be done in the United States there are families in the United States families of Marcos Cronys who have lived here who have fled here who might somehow be able to be convinced that they have something to say about their own families and their role in the dictatorship so let me stop there Thank you, Reben I want to add a rather dark note the former chairman of the Commission on Human Rights Chito Gascón the late great Chito Gascón in the middle of the terrorist's term I interviewed him and he said things are going to get worse before they get better and that's my suspicion things are going to get worse before they get better remember this is a majority president and the Philippine economy though unequal and though there's a crisis by virtue of what's happening in the inflation in the United States and Fed policy though that can create temporary economic crises there is going to be growth for the wealthiest Filipinos and that is going to ensure that this regime is going to have support for the near future it's going to have majority support from it's because it has trolls because there's going to be economic growth and because of the 50% support so the question of self-care here indeed becomes very important because this is about how to tell people that we will still keep on going despite the fact that we are in the middle currently in the middle of what is a losing battle amidst this losing battle we will figure out how to win in the future the Marcos has played a long game they were losers in 86 they played a 30 year game I feel really really bad for my parents because they fought against the Marcos dictatorship and it happened again and you know who knows when we'll win again they might not be around anymore and that's what breaks my heart but for the young people you can still play that long game if the Marcos can wait 30 years maybe we can wait 20 years maybe we can have that turn it into 15 but the point is if we play the long game we'll get somewhere but we have to accept that we're in a really really sorry spot right now I think that's a wonderful place to end not that we're in a sore spot but we are playing a long game okay so just last announcements talk about self-care there's self-care Lumpia over there from the Philippines so please partake of it and also there's books that are for sale you know you can order books about martial law and please do hang around because we know some of you still have questions but we want to talk and converse so am I missing any announcements Lillian? okay