sorryyyy / anti-imperialist social club (Hawaiʻi, January 2025; Manila, February 2025)
Whoaaaa it's already March and I haven't written a dang thing in this thing.
I visited my brother in Hawaiʻi for a week in January. I was originally hoping to visit the Ferdinand Marcos Martial Law archives at UH Mānoa, but—thankfully—they have digitized the whole archives, presumably to keep researchers' too-close-to-touristy feet off of the islands. I really shouldn't have been there; of all lands Hawaiʻi has been subject to some intense and intensely problematic fantasy production. But my brother lives there, a man of United States Marine Corps training; who has consistently repressed his need for support but was still happy to have me there. A military settler who's benefited from the same history of militarism that has, historically, destroyed our family. Yeah, our great grandmother was killed by a US Army jeep, ran over during "liberation," and (I've told my therapist that) this started a chain of generational traumas leading down to us....yep! My therapist also says that visiting my brother can just be visiting my brother, so, well, I'm working on that.
what the fuck is a globemaster
So he took me to this beach that was very nice and very local. And right next to the military shooting range. And I couldn't help but notice a huge military plane flying overhead during this very scenic paradise (paradise secured [Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez]) and my brother said, "yeah, that's a Globemaster." And my mind began racing through everything I've ever thought about the American military, and I can't fucking believe that there is a military vehicle called a Globemaster. It's hilarious in the name's straightforwardness, kinda interesting to theorize, disgusting in practice. Since the 1990s, the Globemaster has been used to transport American military personnel and technology to "secure peace" in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, wherever there are American military bases, and literally wherever the President of the United States goes (transporting a fucking limousine). It was can hold almost 1,000 people in it; in the 2021 departure of the United States military from Afghanistan, there were 823 Afghani refugees crammed in. For comparison, the Manila City Jail was designed to hold a little over 1,000 inmates (going above and beyond design to cram 4,000 awaiting trial in jail as of 2020). As military logistics can attest, it seems that the large-scale, ongoing transport of securitized and securitizing people and objects are what is needed to master the globe. But also, fuck that.
[family time, family time. Fast forward to February in Manila, Philippines]
Thankfully, in Manila...
I was able to join the EDSA memorial march on February 22nd, joining kasamas in the Sama-Samang Artista para sa Kilusang Agrikultura (artist's alliance for the peasant struggle), and it felt so powerful. The global security state, manifest in the bloody martial law period under Marcos Sr. from 1972 to 1981 (laying the foundations for ongoing militarization of the police and armed forces until and beyond 1986, Marcos Sr.'s deposal) continues to manifest under Marcos Jr., so my first EDSA march felt particularly meaningful, especially after meeting and gathering with the homies here.
The march began at EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue) near Camp Aguinaldo, moving south about a kilometer to the EDSA Shrine on Ortigas Ave., where the PNP (Philippine National Pigs) formed a semicircle enclosing the march and forcing it to turn around. Of course, the march was planned in advance, with appropriate permissions and all - but the lineup of cops doesn't get less menacing because of that. Coming off of a decade in NYC, seeing what the fucking NYPD are capable of, I felt angry and defeggressive (defensive/aggressive?) but kasama and I, while we were handing out pamphlets and printouts, were able to get through them easily to climb the stairs to the pedestrian over/underpass, where a line of masa were looking on. I got a few decent photos of the police lineup, featuring a killer banner made by BAYAN screaming "BUROKRATA KAPITALISMO WAKASAN!" (END BUREAUCRAT CAPITALISM!)
This moment in particular was very powerful, as we were on a main travel artery and shutting it down to memorialize the end of one Marcos regime while directly under another. Marching down the historic highway with an entire procession of kasamas, comrades, and friends was the biggest mobilization of Filipinos that I had ever been a part of, and the power of people to claim not only spaces, but major traffic corridors. Commercial vehicles need these infrastructures to run commodities, and while transportation workers like jeepney and Grab/Angkas/scooter drivers also use the highway, many of the marchers themselves were from this very sector, and if they all had joined (as it partially was in the 1986 People Power-driven EDSA shutdown), Manila commerce would grind to a halt. That was the real power of the EDSA "Revolution," a mass shutdown that continues to be necessary in the here and now. And as former President Rodrigo Duterte faces the International Criminal Court in the Hague for his genocidal massacre of the poor during his reign of terror, we can't forget that the cops that committed those murders continue to run free, promoted even; and that Bong Bong Marcos's involvement in Duterte's arrest was driven by politics, not justice.
We ended at the EDSA Monument, where there was a full program of speakers denouncing the entire bureaucrat capitalist system as politically, ethically bankrupt. Of course, the answer remains in the hands of the people. And I was so lucky to have swam in this river of revolutionary power!
[More to come...I've been doing some archival work in Manila, hence my silence; then visiting Palawan to vacation in El Nido (hehe, research/vacation life) and then get back to work visiting the Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm near Puerto Princesa, where I'm writing this. I'll process this Palawan trip and post as I make a short trip back to NYC/NJ, and then ultimately return to Manila in April. From there, I'm planning to head to Mindanao to hopefully visit the San Ramon Prison and Penal Farm in Zamboanga; the Davao Prison and Penal Farm; and meet with folks in Iligan City......]
xx, ftp