Sunday Jump is an open space for spoken word poetry in Kapistahan Grill on Temple Street, Hifi. It's pretty cool because I used to leave a block away from that place. I even distinctly remember doing laundry at the laundromat next door and going up to the filipino tax filing business upstairs. It's also cool seeing how stronger the filipino community has gotten. Since living in Historic Filipino town 8 or 9 years ago, Hifi hardly had much of cultural aspects to it. Back to Sunday Jump though - I came straight from my camping trip to pick up Cameron and then Matt,Rachel, and Joe at the TP House. I don't wanna go over any specific details about all the poets that went up, but I will talk about the general vibe of the place. This place isn't like most spoken word venues. What I mean by that is that it doesn't try to be underground, hip, or forcibly creative. It truly is an open space for anyone in the community to share their thoughts - whether it be poetry, prose, or even just jokes. I think what ties everything and everyone together is that it is truly a community. This experience definitely shined a new light on what the "community" in my position as community and culture chair means.
In terms of the poets' substance, let me just write the one that stood out to me. The most memorable and powerful poem of the night came from a black man who put forth his voice on police brutality and black lives. With an extremely passionate voice, he tells us that it doesn't "matter whether our hands are up or down, we still can't breathe." Moving on to another speaker, there was this man who created a humans-of-NY-esque book titled "Filipino town Exposed."He read a passage known as "Papa Joe's barbershop," a hilarious and capturing story about how a stern, only-military-style-haircut kind of filipino showed his humorous side when he tricks these kids into opening the infamous filipino barrel man. And last, another man from anakbayan came up to speak on the dilemna for craving tropical coconut juice - on one hand it's representative of his obliviousness of the true struggles and reality of the Philippines, but on the other hand it's only through things like these which makes him feel closer to the motherland that never got to raise him. Overall though, Sunday Jump was fresh experience that I want to, one day, experience on the other side of the mic.
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"Just and Lasting Peace" Today officially marks the first day as community and culture chair. Thanks to an invitation from the KBKN SoCal regional director, I was able to attend the Forum for Peace and Unity in the Philippines held in the Wilshire United Methodist Church. Being the silly person I am, I forgot my notebook and pen, so I wasn't able to take notes like I wanted to. But it's all good because everything I write in this blog now will come organically from the top of my head. Hmm, so how did the forum go you ask? Well, the forum was divided into different segments with different organization leaders leading each segment.
The forum started with an opening prayer. The tita who led the prayer asked for a moment of silence. She followed that up by pleading everyone to pray for the political prisoners, pray for peace, and pray for unity. The most significant thing she said was how everyone, whether they were born Filipino or were children of migrants, shared the same struggles. Everyone goes through the same problems - joblessness, lack of health care, unlivable wages all happen "locally, nationally, and internationally." It's interesting to see how a house of worship can bring all forms of life together as cliche as it sounds. I came in to this forum picturing these people as marxists and maoists communists, or the type of people that are skeptical of everything including religion. But what this opening prayer taught me was that these leftist Filipino organizations weren't really that different from any other Filipino-American walking around Temple Street or any other Filipino riding the MRT in Manila. As a matter of fact, what it really proved was that religion and worship provided a common ground that united not only the Filipino diaspora, but also allied for the peace movement. The prayer leader was then followed by a history lesson of the civil war between the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the National Democratic Front (DNF). To give you a brief background, the Philippine government and The AFP has been in a 5 decade civil war with each other. Thus far, there has only been 2 Peace talks, both of which has been cut short. What this forum aimed to do was talk to the Chief Political Representative of the NDF to get his opinions on Rodrigo Duterte, and the recent president's plan to open up peace talks with the NDF again. When we did get to skype Professor Sison, however, there were a lot of technical difficulties that made it even harder for everyone to understand the professor and his thick accent. But basically, the biggest points that I got out of it were: 1. Before we can even have peace talks, we must urge the Philippine and US Government to take them out of the terrorist list since it was only through the fear and hysteria of 9/11 that got them falsely put on the list in the first place. 2. the NDF wants to purse a policy of national industrialization and land reform to develop the Philippine social economy. Other points that were brought up were about the Philippine summit, where leaders from different sectors come together for a discussion about what opportunities and challenges faces the country ahead. That pretty much wraps it up, It's been a week since the forum happened, and I've already held a meeting with KBKN SoCal. Will write about that one soon. Stay tuned fam. Side note: I'm still not exactly sure how I feel about these leftist red organizations. On an objective standpoint, though, I think the reason why the NDF has had such success and popularity with collegiate Filipinos in the states is that they just have really active operations abroad. And I think I communism is being sold to communities abroad because a portion of the population who left and/or are leaving, share dissatisfaction with the "status quo" of the motherland. In any case, I'm here to play the sponge role - absorb but stay neutral. |
Raven CastroRaven Castro is a pretty bad writer. He'll spend forever just to write a mini paragraph. The only reason he's doing this is because he believes he can better over time through writing shitty blogs like the ones you've seen above. Maybe one day, he'll be able to take this caption down and change it to "Raven Castro is an okay writer." Until then, however, you're just gonna have to suffer through these boring pieces of mine. |