Category: criticism

U.P. calls out senator bato

i grew up in a convent school, was 16 when i went to UP diliman in 1966.  some friends and family were surprised, if not shocked, at my parents.  but U.P. is RED! they said, or pink at the very least, one conceded.  but i hadn’t applied anywhere else and four more years of st. scho was just unthinkable, i wasn’t sure why, until U.P., where i realized how ill-prepared i was for U.P.’s kind of rigorous thinking, no spoon-feeding, sink or swim, hippies, gays, activists, all.

THE BATTLE FOR HEARTS AND MINDS
Randy David

… I don’t expect President Duterte or Sen. Bato dela Rosa to feel comfortable around UP students. No one who is used to exercising absolute authority, to being obeyed without question, will ever feel at ease dealing with someone with a critical mind. To the latter, every idea is open to doubt; you can’t invoke rank to win an argument. In matters of thought, the only force that a critical mind accepts is the force of the better argument.

The best universities have always been those that not only create and transmit cutting-edge knowledge, but also fulfill functions that strengthen democratic culture. “[T]he university has always fulfilled a task that is not easy to define,” writes the sociologist Jurgen Habermas; “today we would say that it forms the political consciousness of its students.”

Whether they are aware of it or not, parents take a great risk when they send their children to universities that consciously promote and preserve the liberal milieu of learning. If they are bright and conscientious, these youths will return to their families as transformed human beings, worthy not only of their parents’ name but also of the nation that paid for their education. One will know them by the type of questions they ask. In UP, we call this badge of honor “Tatak UP.”

As a parent myself and, more recently, as a grandparent to a UP student, I am not immune to the worries that all UP parents are heir to, even as I have lived almost all my life in this university. I try to keep in step with the young by engaging them in meaningful conversation, constantly reminding myself of Kahlil Gibran’s words: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”

public.lives@gmail.com

gelo, MRTbulok, ingat!

katrina was having a chat with angelo suarez and other friends on facebook when he was detained by MRT plainclothes peeps for alleged vandalism.  she freaked out and so did i, knowing that gelo has been fiercely critical of the privatization of the MRT and, being a daily commuter, unforgiving of its neglect and poor maintenance over the years.

that the vandalism charge turned out to be trumped-up, but gelo nonetheless had to go through the harassing paces of a barangay hearing, even a medical exam of sorts, and then a QC hall of justice inquest where the case was only temporarily dismissed and the chief fiscal took his time signing the release order so that gelo had to spend not one, but two, nights in a holding room of kamuning’s station 10, was all too horribly distressing.

it could happen to any of us, and our kids, who dare be critical, not just of government but of the establishment as a whole, whose status-quo tentacles, we all know, are far-reaching, with the police and the military, more often than not, complicit in the silencing of critics.  i could only be glad for gelo that his co-parent donna refused to leave him to the mercy of circumstance and that they had friends, among them katrina, adam, and chingbee, who took turns keeping him company in station 10, making sure he was never alone and could not “be disappeared” a la, ummm, jonas burgos? — yes, that’s how paranoid we can get.

a wake-up call, certainly, in these unsettling times.  before she left to take her turn keeping gelo company, and on the advice of a concerned friend she had phoned, katrina put together for me a list of names and phone numbers i can call in case of anything.  top of the list: a lawyer friend who promises to come to her rescue at any hour of the day or night.

calling a lawyer for help, before anything / anyone else — one who knows how to deal and negotiate with police authorities — can make all the difference.  gelo did not have to spend a single night in that holding room.

Cliché

By Katrina SS

On Tuesday, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) reprimands us all: stop negative criticism. Tumulong na lang kayo.

This echoes what we heard from a United Nations official on Monday, who told us all to stop the finger-pointing and the bickering. He then implored us to preserve the spirit of bayanihan.

Read on…

Raging After the Storm

By Andrea N. Macalino

First, the admission that tragedy is difficult to discuss—more so when we are removed from the tragedy. As mere spectators, it is understandable why on some level our empathy seems suspect. Which is why, before I write anything else, we must acknowledge the limitations of language. We must admit that even our native tongue cannot plumb the depths of loss and trauma that the victims of super typhoon Yolanda (internationally named Haiyan) feel.

There is a limit to how much we can communicate using words, when the incomprehensible happens to the poorest of the poor, the weakest of the weak. There is a darkness that words cannot help or hope to communicate, and if we cannot speak it, then we must at least acknowledge it, full stop.

Read on…