I live in the Philippines where poverty, unemployment, corruption, and injustice prevails. A man sleeping on the street, or a kid selling flowers along highways in Manila are common sights. Still, my heart breaks every time I see such things, the same way my heart broke when I read your stories.
I’m tired of the filthy rich on top of the social triangle who keeps getting richer. I’m tired of politicians stuffing their pockets with money while their countrymen drown in poverty and debt. I’m tired of their greed and selfishness.
That damn triangle should be inverted.
It’s time for a social revolution.
America’s 99%’s fight= the rest of the world’s 99%’s fight (and we are quite a lot).
We are the 99%.
I can’t say I haven’t felt the same feelings powering this person’s writing. Every day I pass streets peopled with children whose eyes wrench my heart out. But I have to say with all the violence and intensity and love and rage in my bloodstream: no.
I do not stand with America. Not because I do not believe in the aims behind these protests, but for the simple fact that I cannot. I do not stand with America because the idea that the fight of America’s 99% is the fight of the rest of the world is terrible and dangerous and murderous.
I do not stand with America because of the weight of history. I do not stand with America because of the blood price for which my people was bought. I do not stand with America because of the Philippine-American war and Bud Dajo and Balangiga’s silent bells still on American soil and the artifacts and rich culture imprisoned in America’s museums. I do not stand with America because of false promises and the stranglehold of English on my throat and the self-hate it has taught me, the seeds of famine its legacy has planted in my skull. I do not stand with America because of plunder and the abuse of our land and our forests and our mines and what it did during the Marcos years and what it is doing in Mindanao. I do not stand with America because I am not its little brown sibling. And you may say that these are old wounds that my bitterness is preventing from healing. That may be true. They are old; they are wounds; they are bitter.
But think of it: all this past horror, and its shadow remains as darkness hung over my land. I live in a country of rot and canker and broken institutions — institutions whose brokenness was encouraged and enacted and perpetuated by first our American occupiers, then later our American allies. I cannot see how I can say “the fight of America’s 99% is the fight of my country’s 99%” when part of the reason we are in such dire straits is because of America’s continuing influence and coercion and use of imperialistic force over our politics and our economy and our society. When precisely the same kind of thinking — that America’s fight is our fight — continues to keep us in chains. When we have been broken and bound and denied even the acknowledgment of that history, when it is such a simple thing to kick earth over bloody graves and keep us in terrible debt.
No. I do not stand with America. I will stand with the poor and the hungry and the oppressed, wherever they may be. I will stand with those on the fringes of society, those erased and rubbed raw by the margins. I will stand with those who have no strength to stand and I will raise my voice in whatever capacity I can with those who have little breath left to speak.
But I will not stand with America. Its fight is not my fight. It never has been.
