Last Friday, October 3, CSUEB and the Center for Filipino Studies hosted a symposium on Filipino-American political leadership. The assemblage of speakers and guests were impressive, many of whom are battle-scarred but successful politicians who have taken their stake in Bay Area politics: Michael Guingona, former mayor of Daly City, Joe Esteves, mayor of Milpitas, Manny Fernandez, vice-mayor of Union City, and Gertrude Gregorio, New Haven Unified School District Board member. Students and academics were represented by PASA chair April Tablante; Dr. Lindy Aquino from University of Hawaii, Dr. Penny Flores of SFSU, Emeritus Dean Alan Smith, poet/teacher Oscar Penaranda, and Dr. Rica Llorente, who hosted the event. In the audience were some of the movers and shakers in the Filipino-American Bay Area communities. All of the speakers and those who spoke from the audience were one in expressing a major if not singular concern – we’ve tasted the political waters, yes, there were ups and downs and there are many more hurdles to clear but how do we proceed from here to get there; there, being a political office beyond the city council to state and possibly national levels. The ongoing national campaign for presidency has clearly struck a resonant chord. If Barack Obama, the so-called “community organizer” have reached the highest political plateau through planning and circumstance focused with a singular vision –the Presidency of the USA and the ‘accidental’ rise of a hockey mom Sarah Palin, to political prominence over and above the more pedigreed politicians from within her party; then many a child’s ambition is now articulated in a very real American dream, a dream that brings color and gender, adding a new dimension to the oft-repeated phrase -“when I grow up, I want to be President”. Having said that, it was rather evident from the audience and the speakers, that now is the time for the political vanguards to pass on the mantle of political leadership to the younger generation. Of the presentors, Michael Guingona is the only US-born; the others in fact, were already adults when they came to the U.S. . The general distinction is critical because it poses unique issues in campaign strategies, role-identification, coalition-building, all the stuff that politicians need to get in place in order to succeed. Manny Fernandez bemoans the baggage of regionalism immigrants carry with them to the US and which is at once and a uniting and a dis-uniting, a characteristic to which Joe Esteves in his campaign can only counter by addressing core values – health care, income protection, education, etc. since much of the baggage gets in the way. A baggage that Greg Macabenta, publisher of Filipinas Magazine, says as one big reason why in spite of high voter registration incidence, Filipino-Americans cannot seem to get their political act together. Michael Guingona, side-stepped the so-called “Filipino vote” altogether by appealing to a broader and diverse constituent base in Daly City.
The symposium was also marked by an earnest concern (remarkably, there was little speechifying as politicians are wont to do) and a real desire to see programmatic steps to address the questions brought forward. I will propose some broad, sweep strokes on how to go forward, with the caveat the it will probably take a generation or at least several decades to realize its effects:
-Filipino academics, especially political scientists should engage themselves into dissecting what influences Filipino-American voting; much of what is being written is strong in critical rhetoric usually under the rubric post-colonial, gender, empire discourse of the Filipino-American presence in the U.S. It has become very evident to those who follow national party political campaigns that these are conducted with much background research in marketing, sociology, linguistics, statistics, even cognitive sciences. We should have think tanks which are engaged in studying the Filipino American voter and how this voter can influence local and national politics.
-Re-orient islandic mentalities to global mentalities and that we do not anymore operate from the confines of our provincial and barriotic mind-sets without realizing its impact on global issues such as environmental concerns, for example. Philippine deforestation does not only cause the flooding of Leyte communities and the misery it brings but also contribute to global warming; that the outsourcing of customer service to Philippine call centers, would mean the lost of U.S. jobs in that sector which may possibly include Filipino American employees.
-Discard the baggage brought to these shores that weigh-down engagement in the political process. Cultivate those that promote progressive values of empathy, responsibility and participation. This is a tall order, largely in part because much of this baggage are embedded in our neural pathways. Language in particular is as much a core brain function as it is cultural behavior of learned signs and symbols. Years of colonization attempted to eradicate Philippine dialects. Spanish did not gain headway except for the educated and mestizos; English only became accepted during American colonization because it was an entry to the bureaucracy. And the Filipinos learned quickly and well. Great examples can be found of Filipino-Hispanic literature and of Filipino-English literature. But Tagalog, Ilocano, Pampango, Cebuano, etc. also flourished regardless, developing its own vocabulary and its own literature. Under the guise that theirs was a “civilizing” mission, colonializers used language as part of their divide and rule strategy, pitting a Tagalog militia against Ilocano rebels and vice-versa during Spain’s rule and Muslims against christian settlers in Mindanao during American rule. These antagonisms die hard and were exacerbated by a colonial mis-education. The Phllippine national government tried to shoehorn a national language which was largely Tagalog-based; great debates about this went on for many decades. In the end, a new public language is emerging – part English, part Spanish, part Tagalog and, depending on which dialect region you are in, part Ilocano or Cebuano, etc. Critics opposed this diversity, citing a need for lnguistic unity, just as there should be geographical unity. This might have been possible before modern communication became widespread around the 50’s as had been possible with Indonesia’s Bahasa. That did not happen and amidst a plethora of communicative devices (cell phone, TV, internet) the ecleticism of the Filipino language will continue to evolve. Perhaps, one way of looking at this is to ask the same question of Europe now, where almost everyone especially the younger generation are multilingual, including in English. It is not coincidental that Europe now as EUR is one of the most prosperous region in the globe.
– Create/Build/Support programs to train 2nd-3rd generation youth on political leadership, community organizing, and cultural work. Schools should offer public service programs that provide internship in non-governmental agencies, or with public servants. Encourage the use of the internet as an organizing tool; as a training ground for cause-oriented journalism and advocacy; as a media of global proportions. U.S born youth are not obligated to carry their parent’s baggage and will respond better to cultural awareness education.
The path to political prowess is possible now. We only have to take the next step.
