I am pleased and honored to congratulate the alumni of the Philippine Studies Program at this time when so many events here and in the Philippines—disasters, crises, emergencies–are forcing us to think what we should do to advance social justice and equality, to make another world possible, a better world if possible. Our diverse responses will decide the direction of our lives and perhaps the future of our community.

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OVERSEAS FILIPINOS DISPLACED, CROSSING OVER, MOVING ON: RETURNING FROM THE DIASPORA, REDISCOVERING THE HOMELAND *

…my adored land, region of the sun caressed, Pearl of the Orient Sea, our Eden lost…

–JOSE RIZAL, “Mi Ultimo Adios”

I am pleased and honored to congratulate the alumni of the Philippine Studies Program (sponsored by the Philippines Forum, New York, USA) at this time when so many events here and in the Philippines—disasters, crises, emergencies–are forcing us to think what we should do to advance social justice and equality, to make another world possible, a better world if possible.

Our diverse responses will decide the direction of our lives and perhaps the future of our community. It confirms my belief that experience and social practice, not mere ideas, can precipitate change. But of course, without thought and critical reflection, we will surely leave ourselves open to the encroachment of the corporate media—FOX, DisneyWorld, MTV, the infinite glamour of images, shopping malls, commodity fetishism all around—until we have become robotized consumers of the globalized transnational market.  In the spirit of collaborative exchange, I offer the following comments to provoke thought and critical reflection. What’s the end in view? To make a better world if possible.

I.

In October 1997, I was invited to speak at the FIND (Filipino InterCollegiate Networking Dialogue) at SUNY Binghamton; the theme of the two-days conference was: “Re-examining the Filipino Diaspora.” Many students I met in passing were seriously disturbed by the image of Filipinos  around the world shown as “domestics” and “servants,” if not mail-order brides, prostitutes, etc. But, on the whole, the more than a thousand delegates were more seriously engaged in exploring how to achieve “success,” or “agency” in the trendy postmodernist lexicon. They were saturated with readings about the excess or “spectral presences” of Overseas Filipinos and the “shamelessness” of the balikbayans. No wonder, the FIND Conference could not “find” a feasible direction for common action, with the Fil-Ams generally conditioned still by the decades-long neoconservative indoctrination of the Reagan and Bush regimes.

This generation of Fil-Ams, all born after the end of the Vietnam War, differ from the generation I was acquainted with. They were politicized in the mid-sixties and seventies, learning mass politics in the activities of the anti-martial law organizations, the Union of Democratic Filipinos (KDP), and other inter-ethnic coalitions. They supported the Manongs (such as Philip Vera Cruz) at the forefront of the farm workers’ union struggles in California and  the ILWU struggles in Seattle, Hawaii, and elsewhere. While teaching in California and Connecticut, I was politicized by the Civil Rights struggles in the late Sixties and early Seventies, as well as the national-democratic struggle in the Philippines, together with these young Fil-Ams who discovered Bulosan and Bonifacio, who visited the Philippines on their own or in small groups to affiliate with the Kabataang Makabayan and other progressive sectors during the First Quarter Storm, before the declaration of martial law and after.