there's blood in your coffee

I've been singing the Dave Matthews Band song "Don't Drink the Water" in my head for this past weekend. It's a little weird how a slogan and a song can take up a permanent residence in my head, especially in a place that's always so full already.

I'm sorry to everyone for bumping two intense, slightly depressing blogs up next to each other, but I haven't really had any time to write about much else between the two.

So I guess that was your warning. If you can't make it through another blog, at least scroll down to the bottom for a little plea from me on how you can help. Finally, something active (I know how some college students and Presbyterians can be on the needing something to do with issues).

This weekend has been really hard. For most of it, it wasn't even making it through the days. I was counting down, getting through the hours, the minutes. I specifically recall sitting on a jeepney, wondering where in creation I was, thinking how slow the time was going, and how much I dreamed and wished I had done anything different with this year of my life. Thoughts like that are scary, but they're real. Time has a weird way of never really ticking by at the same speed. Some things make it go faster, some things make it crawl. Thinking is a weird case. Sometimes when I'm busy thinking, staying only inside my own head, time flies. I can't believe what time it is when I come back to reality. Sometimes thinking makes it crawl when the thoughts are really heavy. This weekend and these thoughts where those kind and this weekend took me a very long time to get through.

Last week I went really step by step through what I did. I don't think I have the energy to do that again. It may end up a little chronoligical anyway, but it might also be a little disjoined.

Basically the weekend, Thursday through Sunday, was spent visiting semi-urban industrial workers on picket lines, and taking a brief re-touring of the urban poor, since, what else could happen to a family that doesn't have a job anymore.

I don't have my journal here to give you any facts at this time, so I will try to do that later. Just understand that here in the Philippines the idea of workers and a union are quite different from the US. Take a second and think about a strike in the US. The press it gets, how long it lasts, the work of a union. Now think about this. You've been on strike for a year. You've had a picket line that whole time, but you can't be directly in front of the factory because there are armed guards. Instead, you've been sitting outside of a side property, a "garage entrance" that doesnt' really seem to be used anyway, and you're basically just hanging out. You're a part of a union, but that doesn't get you much respect. Instead it gets you bullied by the company, and is even grounds for dismissal. So they want to lay you off, but if they do, they have to pay you your dismissal fees. People have already taken your job in the factory, and you have no money coming into your house besides what you can get from scavaging in the dump, which you live next to. And no one is helping you, and you're not makig very much progress. This is a wild concept to think of as an American. And it took a long time for me to understand what was going on. We met these people, members of REN, a garbage collection company, on two different picket lines. We were *supposed* to be asking them questions about their situation, but the only question I wanted to ask was, "why are you doing this?" To an American, that was not the way to go about getting your demands met. It's not very active, and we like results. It took a very long time to realize that they were campaigning for more than their rightful wages, they were striking because they would rather not work, than work for a company treating them as sub-human. They would rather be hungry than work under those conditions. To them, the little battles they were loosing weren't simply defeat, they still were fighting to win the war. And as someone this week put it, in a very "Christian-applicable way", it's not the hope that is necessary, which we, the Americans were looking for. The faith was what was important. A faith issue, not a hope issue. Not a promise of results issues. Faith.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I'm going to mention it again. The Philippines is an infected country. It's infested with big businesses that have come in when the tarrifs on imports, known as "liberalizing" the economy, were taken down. It's wrongly boiled down into supply in demand as a result. The supply of workers has gone up from the provinces who can't afford to be farmers anymore, and the demand for jobs is directly affected. Companies can afford to have a "take it or leave it" attitude with its workers, giving them below minimum wage and no benefits, because there is always someone else willing to work, for less. Most people work contractually. Five months on, one month off, then moving on, because more than five months means a company has to give them their due, their wage and their benefits. But why do that when there are so many other workers out there. The companies discrimate against and hassle the workers who seek to form unions. They even set up something called "yellow unions" who pretend to be for the workers and tell them that the company's interests and the workers interests are really the same. The company then "works" with the yellow unions, to give the appearance of being fair, but are actually doing nothing but splintering the workers and making it harder for the real unions to have their demands met.

We spent another Saturday listening to another lecture on this concept. The problem is that it was being taught by an undereducated union worker, who knew only the buzz words, and very little about the concepts. We already understood everything he was trying to teach us, except that he was adding little comments about how it was Bush and the Americans "doing it to the Filipinos". When we were interviewed for the YAV program by the site coordinators, we were constantly asked how we would react when someone talked about the ills of our government and its administration. Most of the time I said I would agree with them. I think that's an answer most people would give, especially a lot of my college-activist friends. But you really dont' know how you will respond until you're in it. It was really hard to hear such a tone from someone. I agree, a lot of their ills are due to what countries like America, and most of the G8 for that matter have done to the country. Most Americans don't even know that we owned the Philippines for a lot of the 20th century and they are technically in a semi-colonial state. But the "teacher" wouldn't listen when we tried to say we had poverty and injustice in our country as well. No. We were seen as all privaledged, greedy, and rich. We didn't understand. It was hard to hear, and you start to get really defensive. Since I learn mostly in hindsite, I look back on it and learn a lesson. This man is really beaten down, as well as all the people he works with. He is justified in a lot of his ideas. He's not as educated as we are, but he hasn't gotten that opportunity. And normally you hear about other countries or the poor and people want to say, "but they're so happy". No, he was bitter. He was very bitter about it all. But isn't he sort of allowed to be? A lot more so than we were allowed to be bitter at him for basically calling us all capitalist dogs (not that he used those words).

The other strike we got to really learn about was the Nestle picket line in Calamba. I urge you to look into the Nestle coorporation and its practices. Its not just Nestle Philippines that's corrupt, it's the entirety of the Nestle coorporation, all over the world, in human rights pratices, environmental practices, and shady business in general. They own about 80,000 (a crazy number to think) of sub-companies, including Loreal. Surprise.

But what have they been doing in the Philippines. Again, I can't give you a full history, since I stupidly forgot all of my notes, so I'm giving you what I can remember. Since the mid-80s, which means for most of my life, the Nestle coorporation hasn't been big on the benefits it gives its workers. They did, however, promise, or at least offer retirement benefits. But they we're giving them on an a whim, reserving the right to withhold them for no real reason. So the issue came up before tons of levels of the judiciary, until it reached the Supreme Court, eventually. Before that could even happen, the workers striked for three months in the year 1987. Of course this didn't sit well with the company, and two years after the strike, even though the issue was still going on, snailing through the courts, the president of the union was shot and killed in front of the factory in 1989. They call it a political killing, but when you get down to it, the government and Nestle were basically in bed together, the government from the executive side sticking with Nestle. So even when the Supreme Court ruled in 1991 that retirement benefits were a legitamit bargaining issues (which goes through the CBA or Collective Bargaining Agreement that handles union-company realtions to negotiate rights), the company wasn't obliged to respond or even uphold the decision. And they still haven't.

The strike was restarted in January of 2002, which means they've been striking throughout my entire college education and then some. They set up another picket line, only one that is a little more active then the REN counterparts. They have programs like the OTOP or Operation Ticket/Operation Paint where they go around, handing out pamphlets and painting the city with their slogans and story. They hold protests and have even made a little headway. The sad part is that total, they've lost 15 members to deaths. The most recent was the killing of a second union president last September. The eerie part was that our intern counterparts from last year had just left the picket line a mere two days before he was killed. They had met and talked with him, and even asked if he was scared for his life for what he was doing? His name was Diosdado "Ka Fort" Fortuna. I urge you to look up his story (you can always use the links to the right to find out more information about what I'm talking about). When we visited the picket line, we visited and even spent the night in his house with his wife and son. We saw the very spot he was shot. In front of the factory, in broad daylight. I guess terrorism requires fear, and nothing is more scarey than the idea that daylight can't protect you.

We also visited the wife of a UCCP worker who was killed three months ago. He wasn't directly related to any factories, but he was very outspoken in his community. Without warning he was shot and killed for being so vocal. The scarey thing is he worked with the PCPR, the organization I will be working with in Cebu come November. We heard about how many members of the UCCP have been victims of political killings. They have been labeled as terrorists by the government and alligned with terrorist organizations (with which they have nothing to do) to justify their killings, but have been given no acknowledgement by the government, hardly any by the media, and none by investigators into their murders. While talking with the family of this worker, we met his nephew, who was very involved in the military. He had participated in ROTC in high school and college, and was even going into an exchange program to West Point in the US, a very selective honor given by invitation only. When people on his campus started hearing about how he was speaking out against political killings. When he was given a legitimate reason to go home, his uncle's funeral, he was met upon his return with a dishonorable discharge for what they called going AWOL. (His story is on Butlatlat.com, although I don't have his name, I will include it in an upcoming post).

The crazy truth about all of this injustice, which I admit I've been a little scattered in conveying, was simpy the reality of it. What people think they can do to people who they believe to be below them. How people can merely be pawns and treated without basic human rights. The government under Gloria Arroyo has even just upped its spending in the area of counter terrorism, which in reality is going towards supporting and funding these political killings, usually of people no more guilty than of speaking out.

So what can you do? Well you can't really do that much to stop the killings or to make the companies treat the workers fairly. However, you can find out more information. Look up things like Nestle and REN. Look at the story of the Hacienda Lusita strikes and killings (all on Butlatlat). Look up Dole Philippines and the San Miguel Corporation. DON'T buy Nestle products or products of the companies it owns. Urge those you know to do the same.

Think about the Nestle picket line slogan "there's blood in your coffee" (because their big product here is Nescafe) when you think it won't hurt to buy one of their products. They've actively sought the death of a union president and have been responsible for the poverty of their workers. Keep it in your mind. I'll do the work for you on this one and give you a link to their brands page. http://www.nestle.com/Our_Brands/Our+Brands.htm It will surprise you.

I hope this has all made sense and I haven't given too confusing information. Please e-mail me with more questions and I'll try to remember to put up more information later in a much shorter blog I promise.

Keep in touch

Peace, I hope