OPINION | Filipino Community and Allies Rally Against State Neglect as APEC Meetings Convene in Seattle

by Allie Hotzfeld

On Monday, July 24, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. (BBM) delivered his second State of the Nation Address as president of the Philippines. In direct response to this address, Filipinos and solidarity groups all over the world held a collective People's State of the Nation Address (PSONA) to speak out on the conditions in the Philippines under the Marcos family, as well as on the experiences of Filipinos abroad. Seattle was no different, as organizers from BAYAN Seattle, Malaya Movement Seattle, and Seattle's branch of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP Seattle) welcomed community to PSONA last Sunday, July 23, to rally against state neglect and against the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) convening in Seattle this month.

As speakers noted a laundry list of abuses ranging from dictatorial rule, plundered wealth, and the institution of martial law under Ferdinand Marcos Sr. (during which thousands of Filipinos were tortured and disappeared in the 1970s), it was clear from the PSONA program that the Marcos family does not have a good reputation. Despite attempts to distort the past and launder his family's reputation, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. already has a personal Wikipedia entry documenting the abuses and subsequent protests that occurred during the first year of his own presidency. Yet the yearly State of the Nation Address in Manila has remained a prime opportunity for the Marcos family to continue their historical distortion campaign, prompting the global PSONA response to ensure the historical truth is heard by the people.

During his address last year, BBM claimed that the state will "care for our countrymen who are in dire need… [and] not abandon them," and that the Philippines "must become an investment destination." Based on the assessments of his first year in office, it seems BBM only focused on the latter. Human rights violations, labor abuses, and record inflation rates all occurred during the first year of the current Marcos administration. Meanwhile, BBM spent much of the year traveling abroad making deals, such as the expansion of the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with U.S. President Joe Biden this past spring, or the unannounced trip to attend a Formula One Grand Prix in Singapore last fall while farmers in the Philippines suffered in the wake of Typhoon Karding.

Rather than caring for those in the most need as promised, BBM's administration also doubled down on militarization and the practice of "red-tagging" — the tagging of civilian activists as insurgents — which allows governments to expose civilians to state-sponsored harassment or worse. In the past year particularly, there was an increase in red-tagging of teachers and continued disappearances of labor activists (like the Fausto family, including parents and two children) after being red-tagged by the state. Additionally, the EDCA expansion deal with Biden has particularly opened the doors for more U.S. troops to operate bases in the Philippines, exposing civilians to risks of environmental hazards, human trafficking, sexual abuse, and exploitation. And as Biden will welcome BBM back to the U.S. this fall to attend the APEC Leaders' Summit in San Francisco for closed-door business dealings, it's clear that both administrations continue to prioritize militarization and business profit while neglecting the lives of their constituents.

In response to these abuses, the PSONA program in Seattle began with a rally in Occidental Square and ended at Hing Hay Park, with speeches made by local organizations to highlight state neglect felt in the Philippines and to connect it to the situation here in Seattle. In Occidental Park, a speaker from Stop the Sweeps Seattle prompted attendees and brunch-goers alike to consider what connects the poverty in the Philippines with the poverty in the U.S., especially in Seattle, explaining that connecting factors include:

"governments that put profit over people, governments that continue to allow corporations to exploit the labor of the people, governments that continue to break up social support systems and control people by increasing policing, surveillance, and militarization; governments who collaborate with each other to maintain an oppressive neoliberal system that intentionally neglects the needs of the people most vulnerable in our communities."

As the Philippines has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians in preparation for mining and military operations, there is documented evidence that the City of Seattle has also actively increased the number of harmful unannounced sweeps of peoples' homes, including recently in Pioneer Square and SoDo ahead of the MLB All-Star Game earlier in July. But these sweeps in Seattle also catered to tourism for the spectacle of back-to-back Taylor Swift concerts, as well as for the APEC ministerial meetings that started in Seattle on July 29. The APEC forum in Seattle will facilitate closed meetings between multinational corporations and leaders from 21 member economies through Aug. 22, intended to negotiate corporate-friendly trade agreements like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) which will harm billions of working people throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

A second powerful stop on the PSONA route in Seattle was the old ILWU cannery at 2nd Avenue and South Main, where Filipino American labor activists Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo were assassinated in the early 1980s as they implemented anti-corruption labor reforms within their union. While the assassinations of Viernes and Domingo were eventually linked directly to orders from the Marcos Sr. regime, a PSONA speaker from ICHRP noted the parallels to the assassination attempt that was made on American citizen Brandon Lee by the administration of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in 2019. Lee, who was in the Cordillera region working to protect Indigenous land rights, sustained permanent injuries when he was shot outside his home after experiencing repeated harassment and intimidation by the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Four years later, Lee has yet to receive justice and his case has seen no proper investigation while Duterte's daughter now sits as vice president of the Philippines beside BBM.

Connecting these past and current struggles in international solidarity, PSONA united Filipinos and allies to uplift people's history of the Philippines and to expose the Filipino diaspora at the hands of the Marcos family and U.S. business interests. Many of the participating organizations from this past PSONA are also part of a coalition of progressive forces called PNW People Over Profit (PNW-POP), which held a counter summit in response to the beginning of the APEC ministerial meetings this past weekend. PNW-POP will continue to ensure that demands for worker-centered, climate-friendly trade policies are in the public spotlight as APEC continues meeting in Seattle in August.

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Featured Image: Attendees at the July 23, 2023, People's State of the Nation Address (PSONA) in Pioneer Square carry signage to raise awareness of how neoliberal policies — like those being discussed at the APEC ministerial meetings in Seattle — cause oppression of working-class people globally. (Photo courtesy of PNW People Over Profit Coalition.)