Tubao for solidarity with the struggle

On March 2, I met with a dedicated young Filipina activist who presented me with this beautiful Tubao to express the gratitude of her community for the photographs I have made and will continue to make for them. Wearing a Tubao signals solidarity with the revolutionary struggle in the Philippines. 

She tells me many people she knows and loves are endangered, many have died, many have been arrested, but western commercial media does little to publicize what is happening. (A recent Guardian article is cursory, buried next to a longer story about a rock band reunion.) Activists depend on social media to tell the story of what’s going on in the Philippines, and she said photographs of rallies, die-ins, and other events in the USA are sent back to the Philippines to give people hope that their struggles are neither invisible nor in vain. Local activists have a bus they plan to paint with their motto, “Stop the Killings,” and they hope to embark on a speaking tour in the bus in the spring.

They hope first of all to educate people about what is happening in the Philippines, and secondly to raise funds for medical supplies, schools, and legal aid for the 500 activists currently jailed in the Philippines. Since Rodrigo Duterte became President of the Philippines in June 2016, over 14,000 people have died at the hands of extrajudicial killings in what Duterte’s press team calls their “War on Drugs,” a page taken from the playbook written in the USA to hide extrajudicial killings and racial profiling.

The U.S. continues to provide the Duterte regime with many millions of dollars worth of financial and military resources. With U.S. help, the Armed Forces of the Philippines has carried out at least 30 aerial bombardment campaigns outside of Marawi City, destroying rice fields and forested areas near communities that the AFP suspect to be supportive of the revolutionary movement and opposed to Duterte. I will wear the Tubao proudly.