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CO School
:
CO
Reflection
1)
Usefull
Lessons
2)
My
CO Diary
3)
Different
Times, Different
Lines
A Page From My
CO Diary
Francia C. C/a veal/las(COPE)
There is
happiness in community organizing but I was not blessed before with a
personality that articulated and tallied my joys. Now I'm past the organizer's
'mid-life crisis' (burn out) and sharing my delights is starting to become a
part of my personality. So what are my joys?
If you are
a community organizer or a friend of one or boyfriend, you know what these
words mean: "The human barricade was successful! We won! We won! The target
gave in!" It means a community of poor people escaped by a breath from the
misery of losing their homes and dignity. We are all a pulse beat nearer the excitement of
having justice offered to the wretched of the earth. Just an evening more
till the morning light.
What is it
I want to say? I want to tell you about the human barricades in Barangay
Lapu-Lapu in November 1983 and its aftermath.
Lapu-Lapu
in Legaspi City is a hectare or so of swamp-land that was made livable by the
present occupants who settled there 30 to 40 years ago. They filled the swamps
with sand, garbage, coconuts, stones, grass anything at all to make the
marshland dry, flat and presentable, the way we who are landless and deprived
of many things deposit our dreams in our wounds to keep us unsinkable - and
magnificent. One day in November1983, the threat of losing this land was real,
as real as the residents pounding hearts, as real as their fists, and their
faces that grew pale and cold at the thought of the judge, the sheriff and the
demolition team. At seven in
the morning there was no demolition team, only the Lapu-lapu residents, the
Slum dwellers
Federation members, a very supportive priest from St. Raphael's Parish, and
ourselves.
There were
two funeral parlors beside the roadside and in a lucky inspiration a lady named
Vida thought of using empty coffins, the cheap ones, as barricades. They were
set there as the demarcation line between the demolition team and the slum dwellers. As simple as that.
At 8:30 AM,
the Lapu-Lapu residents divided up. Some went to the bishop, some to City Hall.
More members of the Slum dwellers' Federation kept coming by the tens,
twenties, hundreds. The media came. At 9:00 a.m. the sheriff came to serve the
court order with a jeepload of policemen who 'would keep the peace.' The
Lapu-Lapu women in chorus, shouted 'investigation of titles, not demolition.'
The people claimed the so called owners of the land had fraudulent titles.
These same words were on streamers hung all over the place. We want to talk to
the mayor not the sheriff ,¡° they also shouted. There was an argument between
the sheriff and the residents but after 15 minutes, the sheriff left. He warned
the people that he and the demolition team would come back in the afternoon to
implement the court order.
We sang. We
laughed. We cooked food on a makeshift kitchen near the funeral parlor. Rice
and gabi with sili was a good mix. We ate lunch together and listened to the
radio that carried our songs and interviews with the residents. The parish
priest came and we felt good. By 3:00 PM,
the Sangguniang Panglunsod, the mayor, the bishop, and the provincial commander
had all come. Not the sheriff and other demolition teams. Lapu-Iapu St. became a sea of
people and traffic was re-routed. The negotiations between the Lapu-Lapu
residents and the local government were done in the middle of Lapu-Lapu St., a
thoroughfare turned
into a negotiating table. The result? The demolition was postponed
indefinitely; a committee was created that would look into the problem of Lapu-Lapu. On this committee the
Lapu-Lapu residents were represented. The sheriff said for legal reasons he had
to inspect the area. At first we were hesitant, but then we let the sheriff
proceed to the area accompanied by the priest.
While they went around, someone
from the slum dwellers¡¯
group started singing the national anthem. As if moved by a collective force,
everyone of us sang it from the heart.
When
everyone left the area, we recalled the day's suspense and excitement over
coffee and crackers. We have to let hope happen, there is power in
solidarity, the residents said. Before I slept that night, my eyes were wet
with joy.
A CONVERSATION WITH TATA MENCIONG
Corazon Jullano Soliman
Former Coordinator,
Congress for a Peoples Agrarian Reform and CO-Multiversity
It was one
of those gloomy days. The rain was pouring down and I had to get up for a
meeting in Southern Tagalog which would make me travel for almost two hours. In the
downpour, the ride could even take longer. I was depressed and didn¡¯t feel like
facing another round of discussions about peasant issues arid the reasons why
they cannot work with one another organizationally.
It had been
a difficult week that passed. There was a series of meetings in two provinces
trying to resolve conflicts, working out the basis of unity, clarifying the
history and development of the situation, crafting compromises that would
accommodate the positions of two or even more parties. Sometimes I wonder if
I¡¯m not dealing Just with organizational and human egos.
I wanted to
get off the merry-go-round. Is it all worth it, especially when it seems like
there ore so few of us convinced that there should be unity and common action?
But what is it you say in your training programs about organizers... one should
persevere... slick-to-ittiveness.¡± So off I went in the pouring rain.
And on the
way to the meeting, I had a conversation with Tata Menciong. He is one of the
old leaders of a peasant organization I had. helped organize. I worked in his
community for almost two years. It was so nice to see him now a
representative of their organization in a regional level meeting.
We talked
about the people in the village and what each one was doing. Most of those who
I remember are officers of the organization. He was sharing with me the problems they had,
about their need to learn how to manage their cooperative better, especially the
marketing aspect about their resolve to stay on the land despite the fact that
up to now their emancipation patents are In limbo; about their collective
effort to improve the traditional variety of rice and how he had changed his HW
variety to the MASIPAG variety; about the need to nurture the growing coalition
in the province because he sees this as an important factor to make more meaningful
changes in their lives.
I asked him
about his personal life, about his wife and their children. He said that he
feels that they are slowly rising from the quagmire of poverty. He has the
land, despite the fact that he still has to formalize ownership. He has won a
level of recognition, thus he can borrow for production loans at lower interest
rates, then sell his produce for a good price because he sells collectively. He
uses MASIPAG seeds so he does not spend for inputs and he has seen snails and
some fish come back to his field. He summed it up by saying he feels that
things are improving despite the problems. He has children going to school and
in fact one of them is in college (the first one). He had a smile on his face
as if assuring me that despite the problems in the organization, things have
changed a bit for the better.
Then I felt
a lift. I was in communion with Tata Menciong celebrating the victories of his
struggle. I knew it was worth it then, and is still worth it now. One can get lost
in the daily grind of strategies and tactics, analysis and assessment of
forces, political stakes and projections, and lose the essence of empowerment. It is the
collective action or a conscienticized people determined to have food on their
tables, a voice in governance, just peace in the land, and songs and laughter
in their children.
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