Makabayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan (Makibaka) | National Democratic Front of the Philippines
December 26, 2022
Revolutionary women’s organization Makabayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan (MAKIBAKA) pays our highest tribute to the life and struggle of a great proletarian teacher and treasured Filipino revolutionary Jose Maria Sison.
Ka Joma is an inextinguisable beacon of light that will perpetually shine bright on generations upon generations of patriotic daughters and sons of the people, at the homefront and even across vast oceans of the oppressed peoples of the world, who derive from Ka Joma’s political writings and ideological teachings an invaluable guide to analyze social realities and tread the honorable path of ending the oppression of peoples, defeating imperialism and all reaction, and birthing a new social order where there is true freedom for all.
Ka Joma’s firm and profound dedication to the cause of liberating the Filipino people from all forms of oppression and class exploitation, his indomitable spirit and inexorable strength in selflessly dedicating his life to the pursuit of the liberation of the working class, is an endless wellspring of inspiration to the struggling peoples of the world that a better society, a better world, is possible and already on its way.
Ka Joma’s profoundly rich politics across decades of tumultuous times has paved the way for the formation of organizations that serve as collective aspiration of struggling peoples to achieve liberation. These include the Communist Party of the Philippines (MLM) that he founded, the New People’s Army, revolutionary mass organizations like Makibaka, and legal democratic organizations like the anti-imperialist International League of People’s Struggles. In all these organizations, the teacher and revolutionary guide Ka Joma has selflessly contributed importantly sharp political analyses on waging people’s resistance and revolution.
For the revolutionary women’s movement in the Philippines, Ka Joma’s formidable and succinct analysis of the woman question—that women experience a distinct double-bind oppression as women and as members of their class, and that the path to women’s liberation lie in the participation of women from the peasant, workers and other patriotic classes in the peoples’ struggle—provides timeless clarity to the political struggle for women’s liberation that must be integral to people’s liberation and an important ideological tool against the idealism of so-called second wave feminism of the 1970s and how ‘women’ as a supraclass concept and social category has been wielded by reaction and counter-revolutionaries to derail women from taking the revolutionary path.
And so from when Makibaka was founded in 1971 and up to this day in the next millenium, from then tyrant Marcos Sr. to many other similar tyrants and scions along the way, and despite several attempts to ensnare and crush the women’s movement and the whole revolutionary movement in the country, Ka Joma has already contributed immensely to sharpening the dialectics of class and gender and in creating an ideological weapon versus imperialist offensives against women’s participation in social movements and the revolution.
In life and in his passing on, reactionaries and enemies of the working class may persecute Ka Joms and try to taint his legacy—let them try in vain. To the Filipino working class and struggling peoples, Ka Joma’s life and teachings resonates deeply because they speak correctly of our realities and of our aspirations for liberation. Ka Joma is no less than a hero of the people, his life and sacrifice an immortal contribution to the history of our struggle and our imminent liberation.#
