These people (I'd call them heartless but I'll settle for animals; they
should aptly be called animals -- my profound apologies to animals) who throw the words “bopis” or “corned beef”
around, especially on social media, while feeling so slick about themselves
like they just spewed some words of wisdom don't realize that it was the
struggle -- yes, even (or especially, whether you like it or not) armed
struggle, you ignoramuses -- of people like RJ Nichole Ledesma and Alyssa Alano
(of course the same like-minded people all over the world, not just in the
Philippines, who came before them, but people like RJ and Alyssa, in their own
selfless way that majority of us don't even have the courage to do, them
deciding to continue the fight and eventually costing them their lives) that
has brought us hard-won victories that the modern middle-class workers enjoy
right now: the 8-hour workday, the weekend, overtime pay, minumum wage, social
security, workplace safety, employer-provided health insurance, laws against
wrongful termination, etc. etc, just to name a few. These are not just your run-of-the-mill
“HR concepts” or the things that you commonly see when you sign that employment
contract. They are there because they were literally bled for. People over the
years have literally died for those things to appear on that fucking contract
that you affixed your analog or digital signature to.
Do you think -- and I'm
addressing the “sumunod nalang, wag pasaway crowd” -- if all those people who
fought the Good Fight to bring us all those labor standards and statutory
benefits didn't push back and just complied without being pasaway, the people
in power would proactively go out of their way to treat the common manggagawa
with dignity? Hell no -- fat fucking chance. They'd take all they could and
leave everyone else with breadcrumbs. Or peanuts. Or, more aptly in Cebuano,
mumho.
And there are people still
getting mumho after all these years, especially in the rural areas where big
corporations who grow fat from the land while leaving nothing to the lumads
wreak havoc using private armies that are kept unchecked because of State
complicity. Guess why there are more RJs and Alyssas in the pipeline, no matter
how slick you think you are to call them “bopis” and “corned beef” behind your
keyboards and smartphones and tablets? Most of these “sumunod nalang, wag pasaway
crowd” are also the ones who believed (and still believe) that Rodrigo Duterte
did a great job, was the “best president ever” – “Kay Bisaya man” -- but who in
reality hardly made a dent in improving large parts of the Visayas and Mindanao
anyway, even if he promised that he'd bring the people there a better standard
of living. Most of Mindanao is beautiful, of course (as is the Visayas) but --
as a friend who's from Davao City but who's also sane and intelligent enough to
know the real score recounted to me -- large swaths of Mindanao remain almost
uninhabitable because of the grinding poverty that you find there, while mayors
and governors who've ruled for decades pass down their government positions to
their kin and offspring as though they were passing on a vintage razor or
handwoven silk scarf. They can pass on the mayoralty or governorship to their
kin indirectly because they rule like warlords in the howling wildernesses that
they consider their fiefdoms -- dare to run against them and, well, just refer
to the Magindanao Massacre and I'm sure you'll know what I mean.
So what the Alyssas and RJs and
the other faceless people who have been gunned down in the service of the
people are, believe it or not, doing just that -- serving the people. It's a
simple concept, even if a lot of us can't wrap our heads around it. Trying to
improve the lives of those who still don't have the luxury -- unlike us, we who
work behind computer screens and earn a decent wage at least -- of signing an
employment contract with those “HR concepts” thrown in, while unfairly and
maliciously (they just can't hide their true nature, can they?) being called “bopis”
and “corned beef” to their bullet-riddled and mangled faces.
