“Happy birthdays” used to be a cheerful song for a new beginning. But under the Duterte regime, birthdays, especially for political prisoners, are reduced from being celebrations of hope to just ordinary days behind bars. Today, Chad Booc, a volunteer-teacher at the Lumad Bakwit School, faces the contradiction between celebrating his birthday and counting days of imprisonment inside his cell in Cebu.
It has been two months since Chad, along with 25 other Lumad companions, was arrested in a Lumad Bakwit School temporarily housed by the University of San Carlos in Cebu. Within those two months were days of rage and nights of disquiet as they struggled for their freedom from the hands of a worsening authoritarian dictatorship. For his students and comrades, Chad is a simple teacher and an activist who studied with them a life of resistance. But in the eyes of the state, he is vilified as a “terrorist,” a “kidnapper,” a “communist rebel” to be imprisoned.
READ: https://tinyurl.com/Who-is-Chad-Booc
Yet, the root cause why the Lumad people resist is deeply embedded in the fertile soil of the struggle. No amount of state terrorism can pre-empt the growth of the seeds of resistance when they are cherished by the blood of the struggle’s matyrs and heroes. Chad’s fight is tightly intertwined in the centuries-old Lumad struggle for right to self-determination—in search of a more equal society that delinks from the rotten-to-the-core system founded on exploitation and oppression.
The Lumad struggle is born out of their own consciousness and existence. Intense militarization, imperialist plunder, dispossession of ancestral lands, and racial discrimination are all factors of their militant calls from the lush mountains of Mindanao to the mundane cities of Metro Manila. The horrors of the Lumad experience is woven into centuries-old grand narrative of foreign domination, monopoly of land ownership, and corporatization of the government.
Chad was a petty-bourgeoisie engineering student in UP Diliman. But he became Lumad when he embraced their struggle. Identity politics is lacking when it is read from a liberal lens that treats an individual as the master of destinies. Identity politics adequately serves its purpose when it grounds itself in class analysis and unites all groups into a common identity—or as the Philippine Society and Revolution puts it, “the Philippines is a rich country but the people are in extreme poverty.” This common identity unites us more in the struggle for genuine liberation.
“Maximize ang kalayaan dyan sa labas, dasig lang always,” [Maximize your freedom outside prison, always onward with the struggle.] Chad reminds us. On his birthday, we would be certain that Chad would have wanted his freedom because he still has so many wishes —but, I think, the ultimate one is to march with the people on the way to oust Duterte. But for now, he has no other choice but to endure the buhay preso and be hopeful in the outcomes of the continuing struggle.
In his initial contradiction, he said that he had chosen to stop counting the days in the calendar. He shares his new mantra: “Stop counting the days, instead make each day count.” But how do we make our days count when, at times, we feel that our days are counted? We must turn to the masses to make us appreciate the significance of each day, despite the imprisoned feeling, in forwarding the national-democratic cause which Chad had dedicated his full time and energy to.
He is currently detained in the Regional Police Drug Enforcement Unit. So his kakosa are involved in drug cases. A life spent with the masses teaches you how to cherish them. Even if they are considered deviant and dangerous in society. He said that he always makes time to talk with his fellow prisoners to know more about them, understand their material conditions, and their place in a society where drug usage had become tantamount to a death warrant. The Maoist in him never died; his thorough social investigation and class analysis always gave him the right to speak.
Their stories, albeit sometimes redundant, taught Chad, a teacher, of the realities of the widely-criticized War on Drugs and the realities of drug trade and substance addiction. As the Lumad Bakwit School abolished feudal (read: unequal, discriminatory) relations between students and teachers and reject what Freire calls the “banking concept of education,” Chad and his students had become students and teachers of the masses–sharing their own experiences to sharpen their understanding and strategies to amplify the voices of those silenced by the repressive state.
With such determination, Chad resolutely declares that the drug inmates feel Duterte’s fascism. Even those who had supported him in the past years turned their backs away. This story made Chad quipped a gentle reminder to the ever-growing mass movement, “Kaya talaga mas dapat pa tayong mag-organisa, magpalawak, para mapatalsik na yang halimaw, at para maensure na hindi na kakampi nya ang pumalit.” [We must improve our organizing, broaden our ranks, to oust the monster (Duterte), ensure he is not succeed by his ally].
Now, there are at least 600 political prisoners detained in the country. And this number is increasing as state forces continue their terroristic operations, under the guise of “counter-insurgency”. There is no one to blame but the Duterte administration and his virtual military junta, the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). Despite state repression, political prisoners are more hopeful as the people continue to resist and gain victories.
However, we must interrogate why political prisoners are imprisoned, their hopes being crushed in isolation from the masses. For in the eyes of the state who wants to conserve the status quo, to deviate, to rebel, and to organize the people in burying the moribund system is a crime. Inside or outside prison cells, the state cannot imprison the march of history, which the people create, to freedom. In the final analysis, as long as we are waging the struggle, we are bound to be free.
We shall build the foundations of the new society on the ruins of the old one. Our collective struggle ensures collective victories. Let us oust Duterte now—a generous gift to Chad, the Lumad 26, and all Duterte’s victims.
No one can imprison hope as it escapes the fascist grip of dictators; it inspires the people to arouse, organize, and mobilize for their interests. Hope breeds love and love sustains the struggle. May this birthday mark a new beginning: the beginning of Duterte’s end in power so that he may be the one in prison.
Let us wish Chad a militant birthday and send him our greetings: Dugang kadasig, kauban!
#FreeChadBooc
#FreeAllPoliticalPrisoners
#FreeLumad26
Featured image courtesy of Bulatlat
