The Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) condemns in the strongest terms possible the barbaric killings of at least 19 aid workers belonging to the Freedom Flotilla which sought to bring much needed humanitarian aid to Gaza. The six ships had civilians on board, including Nobel laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland, European legislators and Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, 85 according to reports.

There is nothing that can justify the massacre of these aid workers by the Israeli armed forces.

The US-backed Israeli government has long violated the rights of the Palestinian people, from the inhumane economic blockade and the large-scale destruction it inflicted when it bombed Gaza in 2008. The Israeli government now extends its atrocities to international waters after it blocked and boarded the six aid ships and opened fire on the people on board.

We call on the Philippine government and the international community to protest this latest atrocity. We call on the US government to stop providing economic, political and military aid to the terroristic Israeli government. We call for an end to the occupation of Palestine by Israel and for the lifting of the inhumane blockade.

We call for international solidarity for the Palestinian people and for justice for the victims of the massacre.

Contact: Rhonda Ramiro
Secretary General, BAYAN-USA
secgen@bayanusa.org

PHOENIX, AZ and SAN FRANCISCO, CA–BAYAN-USA linked arms with allies across the country during a nationwide day of action against Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law SB 1070.  Members of BAYAN-USA boarded buses that caravanned hundreds of miles to Phoenix, Arizona, where tens of thousands of protestors marched five miles in 100-degree heat to the State Capitol to condemn SB 1070.  “Arizona is ground zero for the immigrant rights movement, and the people here are fighting on the frontlines of struggle for immigrants in the US,” said BAYAN-USA Vice Chair Kuusela Hilo, who participated in the action.  Arizona is notorious for the likes of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose racist and anti-immigrant tactics such as forcing immigrant prisoners to parade around in pink underwear and housing inmates in sweltering hot tent cities behind razor wire have earned lawsuits from civil rights organizations, and for vigilantism that has turned the Arizona-Mexico border into a graveyard for thousands of migrants.  “SB 1070 is nothing less than state-sponsored racism, as it legalizes racial profiling and imposes militarist law enforcement,” said Hilo.

BAYAN-USA also participated in a solidarity protest in San Francisco, where the Arizona Diamondbacks faced off in a baseball game against the San Francisco Giants.  “Ken Kendricks you can’t hide! We can see your racist side!” shouted protestors, referring to the Arizona Diamondbacks owner, who personally contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Arizona Republican Party which was responsible for pushing SB 1070 through the state legislature. “The Diamondbacks and Kendricks are bankrolling state-sponsored hate in Arizona,” said BAYAN-USA Secretary General, Rhonda Ramiro. “Protests will hound the Diamondbacks wherever they play, as immigrants around the country step up the fight to prevent the spread of SB 1070 copy-cat legislation.”

BAYAN-USA also echoed the calls for comprehensive immigration reform and legalization for all, an end to collaboration between local police and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and to stop the skyrocketing deportations which have torn apart hundreds of thousands of families over just the past year.

Contact: Bernadette Ellorin
Chairperson, BAYAN USA
chair@bayanusa.org

Filipino-Americans under the umbrella group BAYAN USA are calling for a one-day boycott of remittances from the US to the Philippines on Monday, May 10th should the scheduled national elections in the country not push through due to a postponement or technical failure. The alliance called for heightened vigilance to ensure clean, honest, fair, and peaceful elections to take place as scheduled next week and expressed zero-tolerance for a possible holdover scenario of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo that would result in an indefinite extension of the current presidential term.

“The conditions for a failure of elections and the engineering of an Arroyo holdover are present,” states BAYAN USA Secretary-General Rhonda Ramiro, who is currently in Manila to participate in an elections observers mission next week. “No one stands to gain from an election postponement or election failure scenario but GMA herself, who can easily take advantage of the current automated election system (AES) chaos and engineer a holdover.”

Last May 4th, a proposal was made by former Arroyo election lawyer Romulo Macalintal to postpone the elections 15 days in order to respond to numerous reports of technical glitches with 76,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines. Macalintal later resigned from his post after the proposal was ultimately rejected by the Comelec, who claimed it could resolve the technical failures by replacing the flash disks in each of the PCOS machines. BAYAN USA, however, continues to raise concern over the timing of events just days before the scheduled May 10th elections.

“In the first place, Comelec and Smartmatic failed to do its job of conducting adequate pre-testing of the PCOS machines before deploying them to the precincts, largely ignoring the people’s questions about the new computerized system” Ramiro continued. “Now just days before the election, it will rush to change all the flash disks to resolve these technical glitches. The Comelec and Smartmatic should be held accountable for failing to ensure accuracy and efficiency of the new AES. Not to mention that the timing of all of this is very suspicious and hints of either massive automated electoral fraud or massive technical failures come election day.”

Ramiro pointed to other conditions that suggest an Arroyo maneuver for election failure, such as the Arroyo government’s rush to appoint a new Supreme Court Chief Justice before May 17th, and the massive deployment of thousands of Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) troops to over 10 cities in Metro Manila this week supposedly to monitor polling stations.

“Why rush now to appoint a new Supreme Court Chief Justice? Could it be to ensure that Arroyo would have the Supreme Court’s support to implement a holdover of her term should the elections not push through on Monday? Are the AFP troops deployed to safeguard polling stations or to quell any protest action that may result from a failure of elections next week? Either way, the people, including Filipinos in the US, should be vigilant.” Ramiro concluded.

In 2009, annual remittances from overseas Filipinos totaled to more than $17 billion. Filipinos in the US contribute at least 60% of the annual overall total.

BAYAN USA is joining other Filipino groups in the US in four days of action and vigilance starting this Friday, May 7th till Monday, May 10th. Actions include informational forums, prayer vigils, and demonstrations to monitor the elections and warn against an Arroyo holdover by way of election failure.

A Unity Statement of the Filipino Community on Immigrant Rights

Together, We Have
Worked the fields and in the canneries
Nursed the ill and the elderly
Taught the young and tomorrow’s leaders
Fought for freedom and defeated tyranny
Invented new technologies and perfected the old
Ministered to congregations celebrating life and coping with grief

Together, We Are
The doctors and nurses who heal the sick and tend the wounded
The engineers who build skyscrapers and roads
The accountants who keep businesses running, small and large
The custodians and room cleaners, clerks and dock hands who do thankless jobs with dignity and pride
The veterans who braved world wars to defend democracy
The farm workers, cooks and waiters, who put food on America’s tables
The playwrights and poets, painters and musicians who awaken our dreams and inspire our actions
Four million people who are your neighbors, friends, co-workers, employees, partners and community members

Together, We Will
Continue to cherish the American values of equality and freedom, and oppose misguided policies that undermine them.
Keep families and communities, workplaces and homes together, because dividing us weakens us all
Fight for immigrant rights that value our contributions to society and give us the opportunity to fulfill our potential to build a better world.

Our Principles and Demands:

Uphold the dignity and humanity of all individuals. Legalization now!
Civilized society embraces equality and upholds the humanity of all people. Labeling individuals “illegal” demeans them, and forces millions to endure dangerous jobs, and to toil in the shadows in slave-like conditions. Criminalizing people for being “undocumented” subjects millions to the exploitation of traffickers, to remain in abusive relationships, or to refrain from reporting crimes because the authorities may imprison the victim instead of the perpetrator. We need legalization now, to free our community from the indignity of being labeled as “illegal”, and the inhumane treatment which is sanctioned by it and endangers us all.

Unify and Protect Families
Families of all shapes and sizes—parents and children, siblings, cousins and grandparents, same sex couples–deserve to be together. Many Filipino families have been waiting over 20 years to have their petitions for loved ones approved. We must clear the Family Visa backlog to stabilize our communities, both in the U.S. and in our homeland. We must protect immigrant women and children escaping abuse, and refuse to allow them to be subjected to the further cruelty of deportation. Children of immigrants should be shielded from all harm, including separation from their families and the threat of deportation. Support services must be provided in our languages and with sensitivity to our cultural values and norms.

Value Our Labor– Workers Rights for All!
The U.S. was built with the blood and sweat of working people. All workers must have the right to organize and to be free from exploitative contracts and working conditions. Having a underclass of workers drives down wages and protections for all of us. We must normalize the status of guest workers, because temporary contracts serve as a tool to undermine all workers. Law enforcement should punish illegal recruitment agencies and unscrupulous employers and lawyers, who maximize profits by preying on vulnerable and desperate workers—workers should not be penalized for the actions of their employers. The labor and contributions of all people, including immigrants and those who are undocumented, should be valued equally.

Dignity, Respect and Due Process for All!
The US government’s aggressive foreign policies of war and exploitation fuel economic and social instability worldwide. Immigrants should not be blamed for our national security concerns. Rampant raids, deportation, and inhumane conditions in detention centers jeopardize the safety of everyone. The billions of tax payer dollars contracted to build up and further militarize the U.S.-Mexico borders does not make us safer. We must build our immigration policies on the sound universality of human rights, not the volatility of criminalization and militarization.

Forced Migration is a Result of the Global Economic Crisis
One-sided and unfair trade agreements that have been designed to maximize profits for greedy corporations have destroyed the economy of the Philippines and many other countries, contributing to the ever-worsening economic crisis that has forced millions of Filipinos to seek jobs and means of survival elsewhere. U.S. political and military support to corrupt regimes who bankrupt their countries and repress their people also fuel worsening migrant and refugee conditions. We will link arms in solidarity with all migrant communities in the U.S. and internationally, until we have built a society where all people can thrive, families are not fragmented and separated by the urgent need for survival, and our homelands have the conditions in which all people can live a decent and humane life.

Signatories:

BAYAN-USA * National Alliance for Filipino Concerns * GABRIELA-USA * SanDiwa National Alliance of Fil-Am Youth * Filipino Advocates for Justice * FOCUS (Filipino Community Support- Silicon Valley) * Fellowship for Filipino Migrants-Chicago * AnakBayan Chapters of East Bay, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, New York/New Jersey * Babae SF * League of Filipino Students- SFSU * SiGAw (Sisters of Gabriela Awaken) * South of Market Community Action Network * Filipino Ministry-Diocese of San Bernardino * Filipino Migrant Center-Los Angeles* Filipinas for Rights & Empowerment- NY * Pinay sa Seattle * Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines-Portland, San Francisco, New York Chapters * Filipino Community Center-San Francisco * Pilipino Youth Coalition-Southern Alameda County * Habi Arts-Los Angeles

Contact: Bernadette Ellorin
Chairperson, BAYAN USA
chair@bayanusa.org

Statement of BAYAN-USA on May Day 2010

The recent passage of reactionary and anti-people legislation in Arizona coupled with the pending Schumer-Graham Immigration Reform Bill in Congress illustrates the US immigration system’s continuing assault on civil liberties, human rights, and drive to undo the hard-won gains of the Civil Rights Movement. Both pieces of legislation breathe new life back to the defeated Sensenbrenner hate bill of 2005, posing a clear threat to both the documented and undocumented alike, and underscoring the need for unity in struggle, especially in lieu of divide-and-conquer tactics being waged by the proponents of SB 1070 and Schumer-Graham.

Arizona’s SB1070 pulls the hood off of the racist core of current immigration reform proposals and parades their hateful tactics out in the open. By criminalizing undocumented immigrants, legalizing racial profiling, and imposing militarist law enforcement, SB 1070 seeks to test out elements of Schumer-Graham and initiate a dangerous pattern of implementing it by way of state-by-state enactment. This devious approach charts a path towards the “Sensenbrenner”-ization of US immigration policy regardless of Congressional will, voter approval, or the people’s widespread demand for legalization.

Both SB 1070 and the Schumer-Graham Bill bank on the falsehood that fundamental problem with today’s immigration system is the presence of illegal immigrants, undesirable beings who not only burden to society, but also threaten national security. By addressing immigration as primarily a security issue and not a socio-economic one, the US government is automatically starts from an incorrect framework. By dichotomizing legal immigrants as good and undocumented immigrants as bad, the US government– by way of its immigration system– whips up hatred, racism, and anti-terrorist hysteria in order to justify passing off criminalization and militarized law enforcement as comprehensive immigration reform.

SB 1070 and Schumer-Graham prove that the current laws, not the presence of illegal immigrants, are the real threat to national security. Schumer-Graham’s so-called “four pillars for immigration reform” are built on a minefield of scapegoating immigrants for society’s ills, exploitation, and exclusion. It pushes a national ID system that blatantly violates basic civil liberties, privacy rights, and constitutional guarantees; the unfair and unjust criminalization of undocumented immigrants; the implementation of a temporary worker program that will embolden illegal recruitment and worker exploitation; and increased border security that will lead to thousands of more innocent deaths of men, women, and children in search of better lives at the extreme cost of US taxpayers.

Such a plan is inherently destined to fail because it does not recognize nor address the real problem– that massive migration to the US is a direct result of deepening global poverty and joblessness caused by neoliberalism. Like many other client-states to neoliberalism, the Philippines hosts a domestic economy starved, denationalized and oriented to rely on the aggressive export of cheap, surplus labor to rich countries like the US to keep afloat.

As the world’s foremost proponent of neoliberalism and since the formal abolition of slavery, the US government has maneuvered foreign labor importation in service of the interest of big business to maximize profitability by building an underclass of cheap, desperate, and willing workers. By sowing fear in immigrant labor with reactionary immigration laws, big business is assured it can continue to drive down wages and forego labor standards when employing immigrant workers. It is a fact that immigrant workers contribute richly to the US economy by providing high quality labor and paying billions in taxes, even though undocumented workers are exploited and get nothing in return.

Moreover, the proponents of Schumer-Graham across the country have waged an offensive against the genuine mass movement for legalization and humane immigration reform by maliciously dividing immigrant rights coalitions across the country in an attempt to co-opt, isolate and mute-out the growing anti-Schumer-Graham Bill movement. But even with the ruling elite’s money in their pockets, these opportunist efforts ring hollow and will fail without the support of the people.The only way to fight divide and conquer is by waging the broadest and firmest unity in struggle.

This International Workers Day and beyond, Filipinos will take to the streets across the country to stand in solidarity will all other immigrants in US in demanding an immediate repeal of SB 1070 and call on state governments to not follow suit with passing similar state legislation. As the second largest Asian immigrant community in the US, numbering up to 4 million, including at least 1 million who are undocumented, Filipinos will surely be targets of hate and abuse if the pillars of Schumer-Graham are implemented. Vigilance against SB 1070 and Schumer-Graham must start with the struggle for unity. In addition, the struggle for full legalization for the over 12 million undocumented immigrants presently in the country and for the swift reunification of families broken by forced migration must also be advanced in contrast to the deceptively-vague rhetoric from the Obama administration for so-called comprehensive immigration reform. As victims of over 100 years of immigration legislation patterned on xenophobia and exclusion, Filipinos call for US humane immigration reform that is just, pro-people, inclusive, and values the contributions of all immigrants.

REPEAL SB 1070 IN ARIZONA!
NO TO THE SCHUMER-GRAHAM IMMIGRATION REFORM BILL!
LEGALIZATION NOT DEPORTATION!
STOP DIVIDING FAMILIES! FAMILY REUNIFICATION NOW!
IMMIGRANT RIGHTS ARE WORKERS RIGHTS!

Contact: Bernadette Ellorin
Chairperson, BAYAN USA
chair@bayanusa.org

The US Chapter of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, or BAYAN USA, an alliance of 14 Filipino organizations in the United States, vehemently condemns the government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for its escalation of the national counter-insurgency program known as Oplan Bantay Laya (Operation Freedom Watch) as its scheduled June 2010 deadline fast approaches. Oplan Bantay Laya (OBL) was crafted and implemented by the Arroyo government in 2001 with the said objective of annihilating the armed insurgency raging the Philippine countryside for over four decades. Its utter failure to meets both its deadlines in 2007 and now in 2010 to expunge the Communist Party-led New Peoples Army (NPA) exposes Arroyo’s inherently flawed approach to “resolving” Asia’s longest-running armed conflict.

At the crux of the armed insurgency in the Philippine countryside is the matter of genuine land reform and redistribution. The majority of those who turn to armed struggle are poor farmers that must contend with backward agrarian policies that essentially obliterate their livelihood and displace entire communities. Popular opposition to these neoliberal policies on agriculture are commonly met with brute military force and violence. The most outstanding example of this in recent history is the case of Hacienda Luisita, a sprawling 6000-hectare sugar estate where in 2004, hundreds of farm workers on strike were met with military tanks and bullets from the 69th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army in Tarlac. At the heart of the strike launched by the Central Azucarera de Tarlac Labor Union (CATLU) and the United Luisita Workers Union (ULWU) was the broken promise of land distribution of Hacienda Luisita to the farmers by the estate’s owners, the Cojuangco family, a powerful political clan, coupled with an exploitative take home pay of 9.50 pesos or 17 US cents a week. Instead, an unscrupulous sham operation known as the Stock Distribution Option (SDO) engineered by powerful Cojuangcos in government has been made to pass off as so-called “land reform”, much to the offense of the Hacienda Luisita workers and their families. Without the implementation of a genuine, pro-people national land reform program that gives land to tillers rather than concentrates land ownership to a privileged few wealthy families, every Philippine president will fail to end armed insurgency in the countryside.

The real objective of Arroyo’s OBL, though touted as a counter-terrorist cum national security campaign, is to continue the US government’s relentlessly violent assault on Philippine sovereignty by destroying a strong and capable national liberation movement. By recycling McCarthyist tactics of red-baiting, the US puppet Arroyo government justifies its modus operandi of pointing its guns at legal, unarmed activist organizations and partylists that are also the strongest and most vocal critics of the Philippine government. By upholding a culture of impunity, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) are ensured a free pass at mercilessly targeting civilians without having to answer to the country’s justice system, nor the numerous international covenants and accords on human rights signed by the Philippine government.

Fortunately, public outcry from a strong pro-democracy movement in the country and the international community on escalating human rights abuses committed by the Philippine military and private armies continues to pressure the Arroyo government to account for its poor human rights record. This includes the growing campaign led by taxpayers in the United States to cut all forms of US economic aid to the Philippines. A historic 2007 US Senate hearing linked the US government’s Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to the Philippine government to over 1000 cases of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances perpetrated by the Philippine military. This eventually led to the placing of human rights conditions on a portion of the US military aid package to the Arroyo government the following year. BAYAN USA vows to advance the campaign to cut all forms of aid to the Philippines and mobilize within the US against the structure of reactionary violence in the Philippines upheld by US puppet presidents in order to maintain the archipelago as a reliable enforcer of US neoliberalism in the Asia-Pacific region.

As 2010 brings the promise of elections and the end of the Arroyo presidential term, it must be expected that Arroyo will intensify OBL and claim that it will try to reach its goal before the June 2010 deadline. It will not. Pro-democracy and human rights advocates both in and out of the Philippines must also heighten our vigilance to stop this escalation. In addition, her drive to escape the thousands of criminal charges against her waiting to be filed by the families of victims of OBL has predictably prompted Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to file candidacy papers for a seat in the Philippine Congress, a position that would ensure her immunity from suit. In this regard, the campaign to ensure justice for the scores of victims of OBL by filing class suits against Arroyo for human rights violations
is integral to the campaign to end OBL.

Time has proven how the international community plays an important role in the struggle for human rights in the Philippines. With the Arroyo government banking on national election mania to divert the public from the headlines on the absolving of Arroyo crony Andal Ampatuan Jr. for the Maguindanao Massacre and the illegal mass arrest and continued detention and torture of the Morong 43 healthworkers, its time for the international community to make 2010 a banner year in human rights advocacy for the Philippines by raising the demand to stop Oplan Bantay Laya once and for all.

Contact: Gary Labao
Interim Northeast Coordinator, BAYAN-USA
ny@bayanusa.org

NEW YORK– Over 100 gathered at the Gallery Bar last Wednesday in the Lower East Side as hip hop artists shared their talents to help raise awareness about the upcoming May 2010 elections in the Philippines and the anticipation of a consequent spike in human rights abuses in the country. Dubbed “Power in Numbers”, the concert is part of a series of concerts across the country being organized by BAYAN USA, an alliance of 14 Filipino organizations in the United States and largest overseas chapter of BAYAN Philippines.

Performances included Rogue Pinay of Seattle, Gabriel Teodoros and Khingz of the Seattle hip-hop duo Abyssinian Creole, Deep Foundation Crew of New York and New Jersey, and local DJ’s Boo and Otis.Throughout the evening, members of BAYAN USA organizations Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment (FiRE), New York Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines, and Anakbayan NY/NJ took to the stage to talk about the integrity of the May 2010 elections in the Philippines, anticipated election fraud and cheating, and the campaign to stop the national counter-insurgency program of the Arroyo government known as Oplan Bantay Laya (OBL).

The United Nations and various other international human rights groups have denounced Arroyo’s OBL for targeting unarmed civilian activists critical of the Arroyo regime rather than it intended target– armed rebels in the countryside. With both the Arroyo presidency and OBL scheduled to end by June of this year, BAYAN USA is part of the international campaign to monitor the national elections as a means to preempt electoral-related violence the likes of the Maguindanao Massacre last November, which claimed 57 lives, including those of 30 journalists, all in the name of a rivalry between two local warlord politicians both vying for the gubernatorial seat in the province of Maguindanao. It is expected that the Arroyo government will seek to accelerate the intensity of OBL before June before it officially exits.

The concert, which took place the eve of Tax Day, compelled audience members to join the ongoing campaign to stop OBL and other human rights abuses perpetrated by the Philippine government and its military by demanding the US government stop allocating billions in US tax dollars to the Philippine government. BAYAN USA also called attention to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s scheme to stay in government post-Malacanang by running for Congress as a means to escape the thousands of criminal charges waiting to be filed against her for gross cases of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, illegal detentions, torture, and forced displacement of communities.

For more information about the Power in Number Concert Series of BAYAN USA, visit www.bayanusa.org.

Contact: Rhonda Ramiro
Secretary-General,  BAYAN-USA
secgen@bayanusa.org

BAYAN-USA kicks off election countdown with protests against Arroyo and Oplan Bantay Laya

BAYAN-USA kicked off its one-month countdown to the Philippine elections with protests at Philippine President Gloria Arroyo’s stops in California and Washington DC along her way to a nuclear arms meeting in the U.S. capitol.  BAYAN-USA condemned the Arroyo regime’s corruption and demanded an end to the Operation Plan Bantay Laya (OBL) counter insurgency program. Dubbed a “blueprint for impunity” by human rights advocates, OBL has been blamed for thousands of killings, torture and other human rights atrocities committed by the Philippine military.

“OBL guarantees that Arroyo’s legacy will be marked by mass graves and a trail of body bags,” said BAYAN-USA Chair Berna Ellorin. “The elections give Filipinos a chance to chart a course for peace instead of following Arroyo’s roadmap to ruin.  The next president and other elected leaders must abandon the OBL counter-insurgency model if there is to be any hope for genuine peace and democracy in the Philippines.”

BAYAN-USA also condemned the Philippine military and police for using OBL-type tactics to bully voters and campaig against opposition candidates—in direct violation of the Constitution. The military’s operation codenamed “Zero Campaign” sent camouflage-clad military personnel into Davao, Agusan del Norte and surrounding provinces to conduct house-to-house campaigning against Senate candidates Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza. The troops are distributing black propaganda fliers and posters and conducting weekly meetings to coerce community members not to vote for Ocampo and Liza.  “The military and Arroyo’s allies are resorting to illegal tactics to subvert the elections,” stated Ellorin. “Section 2 (4), Article IX-B of the 1987 Constitution explicitly prohibits civil service officers and employees from engaging in partisan political activity.”

Poll-watchers in Hong Kong reported glitches plaguing the opening day of overseas absentee voting in Hong Kong, prompting calls for more mock elections in the Philippines to prevent wide-scale malfunctioning of the new automated voting equipment and a potential failure of elections.  Advocates have also criticized the use of the Smartmatic voting equipment for the ease with which it can be tampered.

“The Hong Kong experience compounds the need for vigilance in observing the elections on May 10, which is one of the reasons BAYAN-USA is participating in the People’s International Observers’ Mission 2010,” said Ellorin. “We need to expose all fraud and corruption and provide an international voice for people who are simply trying to exercise their democratic right to vote.  We can not allow a counter-insurgency crazed military to overrun the Philippine elections with OBL tactics that force people to vote a certain way, or skip going to the polls altogether.”

BAYAN-USA is also conducting “Power in Numbers” concerts in New York, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area over the next month to uphold the Filipino people’s right to vote in free and fair elections, condemn all attempts to undermine democracy through violence and fraud, and educate our community about how to use the polls to push for meaningful change in Philippine society.  “The Power in Numbers shows will draw acclaimed local performers to underscore the message that while Arroyo and her supporters use brute force to maintain the status quo, the Filipino people have the ultimate power to change society,” said Ellorin.

Contact: Bernadette Ellorin
Chairperson, BAYAN USA
chair@bayanusa.org

BAYAN USA joins the millions of Filipinos in the United States and around the world in taking collective offense to the tasteless remarks recently made by radio personality Adam Carolla regarding Manny Pacquiao, the Philippines, and the Filipino people on his nationally-syndicated show The Adam Carolla Podcast. We also agree with the demand that Carolla issue an official apology for his insensitive and vulgar insinuations about Manny Pacquiao, Filipinos, and most especially Filipina women and children in the sex trade industry.

It’s sad that in 2010 it must still be pointed out that the two unfortunate realities of the Filipino people that Carolla despicably chose to goad with ridicule — the Filipino people’s overwhelming pride in Manny Pacquiao’s success and the existence of the sex trade industry that consumes mainly young Filipina women and children — stem from the most unfortunate reality of all, widespread poverty and joblessness in the country.

Only in a very poor country such as the Philippines, where people are afforded very little economic opportunities to rise from impoverishment, can the sex trade or any black market industry proliferate into a cultural norm.

Carolla’s tirade against Manny Pacquiao being “illiterate” and “praying to chicken bones” is no different than mocking Filipinos for being poor. Carolla mocks further by stating that all Filipinos have going for them is “Manny Pacquiao and sex tours.” Clearly, poverty and the choices it leads people to make in the so-called Third World is game material for comedy and cheap laughs from the likes of Adam Carolla.

Perhaps the even bigger offense beyond Carolla’s words that should not go unchecked is the mainstream corporate media’s tolerance and allowance of such derogatory and racist comments to even air. That a white radio personality such as Adam Corolla can boldly make those remarks against a racial minority with seemingly no air of reservation for the social ramifications ultimately reveals that corporate media here in the US has barely progressed from the turn of the 20th century when, during the long-forgotten Philippine-American War, mainstream US newspapers blatantly depicted caricatures of Filipinos as “niggers”, monkeys, and dog-eating savages, all in the efforts to justify what was to be the US’s first colonial project abroad.

CBS Radio Inc., which broadcasts The Adam Carolla Podcast, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, with more than 140 radio stations across the country, reaching billions of listeners everyday. In 2007, CBS Radio fired radio host Don Imus for racial slurs made against African-Americans on his now-cancelled show Imus in the Morning. Incidentally, CBS Radio was also the former home of notorious radio personality Howard Stern, who in 1992 used his nationally-syndicated radio show to issue a warning that the Philippines “is a country where fathers sell their own daughters for sex”… and that he wouldn’t recommend anyone go to the Philippines “unless you want to get laid.”

Despite making contributions to United States for more than 100 years, Filipinos — one of the largest Asian groups in the country, numbering at nearly 4 million — are still painfully absent from mainstream media. With the likes of Adam Carolla, Howard Stern, Alec Baldwin, David Letterman, and even the writing team of ABC’s Desperate Housewives each taking very public jabs against Filipinos and Filipino culture, it is no wonder why Filipinos would welcome and rally in support when one of their own rises from underdog obscurity to become perhaps the most successful boxing champion in recent history and deservedly earning worldwide respect and admiration.

Corporate media outlets such as CBS Radio Inc, Clear Channel Communications, Citadel Broadcasting and the media oligarchs such as Viacom that own them, literally profit in the trillions annually off one task — disseminating information to the public and shaping public opinion. When left to the hands and interests of multi-national corporations, we see how racists such as Adam Carolla, Don Imus, and Howard Stern are offered lucrative deals and the power of their own nationally-syndicated shows. While it remains to be seen how CBS Radio Inc. will respond to Carolla’s remarks now that the Filipino community is rightfully taking issue with it, clearly the bigger fight remains in the struggle against systemic institutional racism and for responsible media messaging that entails inclusion and representation of all racial minorities that suffer from marginalization.

Contact: Jack “Kiwi” de Jesus
Deputy Secretary-General, BAYAN USA
bayandepsec@gmail.com

A new generation of young and concerned Filipino-Americans will be taking on the issue of election fraud and corruption in the Philippines this April through May through the powerful medium of music. BAYAN USA, an alliance of 14 Filipino organizations across the US, will be launching “Power in Numbers”, a concert series aiming to bring musical talents of different ethnic backgrounds together to help shed light on the upcoming Philippine national elections slated for May 10, 2010.

BAYAN USA, an overseas chapter of BAYAN Philippines, is an alliance formed under the principle that even in the US, Filipinos are intricately affected by the social, political, and economic developments in the Philippines. Since its founding in 2005, the alliance continues with its campaign to cut US military aid to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on the basis that billions in US tax dollars are being funneled to arm, advise, and train Philippine military personnel to commit gross human rights abuses. The pattern of systemic killings, abductions, and illegal detention and torture cases in the Philippines under the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration has reached a point of high international scrutiny and condemnation from various international monitoring bodies such as the United Nations Human Rights Council.

In 2009, a BAYAN USA member on exposure in the rural areas of Central Luzon, Melissa Roxas, was the victim of a brutal  abduction at gunpoint, blindfolded, and subjected to 6 days of physical and psychological torture by her captors. Roxas, and BAYAN USA, believes the 7th Infantry Division of the Philippine Army is responsible for the ordeal.

Now back in Los Angeles, Roxas has been speaking out against Oplan Bantay Laya (OBL), the national counter-insurgency program of the Arroyo government that aims to annihilate the armed insurgency in the Philippine countryside by 2010.

“Instead of going after armed insurgents, the Philippine army and Philippine government are trying to reach their objective by targeting civilians critical of Arroyo and falsely claiming they are communists fronts,” Roxas states. “The upcoming elections, and official end of the Oplan Bantay Laya and the Arroyo presidency scheduled by June 2010 lay the foundation for human rights abuses to escalate by way of election-related violence, election fraud, government corruption, and more impunity for human rights abusers. We have already seen the opening salvo for this with the Maguindanao Massacre last November.”

“We are launching Power in Numbers as our effort to create more awareness about the very unstable conditions in the Philippines right now with the elections coming this May,” states Jack De Jesus, Deputy Secretary-General of BAYAN USA and the national tour spokesperson. De Jesus is probably better known as the hip-hop artist Kiwi, formerly of the rap duo Native Guns, who has previously toured with MC Geologic in the People Power Tour in venues and universities across the US.

Power in Numbers concerts are set to take place in various cities in the US. In New York City, an April 14th date is set where diverse acts such as Gabriel Teodros and Khingz of Abyssinian Creole, Rogue Pinay, and Deep Foundation will perform. To find out more information about the your nearest concert, visit www.bayanusa.org or email bayandepsec@gmail.com. ##