The recent bloody clash in Mendiola and surrounding areas between mostly urban poor youth and fascist police of the US-Marcos Jr regime highlights the readiness and courage of the oppressed masses against our class enemies. This happened in the context of massive protests with participants numbering in the hundreds of thousands, in Luneta, EDSA, and other parts of the country.
In spite of the black propaganda of the regime and snide remarks of all-knowing petty bourgeoisie, they are the youth who risked their lives to show how rotten the current ruling system is. With righteous anger and pure bravery, they used Molotov cocktails, stones, sticks, and crude tactics to get back at the fascist police lapdogs of Malacañang, who have done nothing but protect the ruling class. While criminals in the reactionary government are given “due process” and are defended by the Philippine National Police (PNP), hundreds of militant protesters and even bystanders were arbitrarily arrested, with many more violently beaten and shot for protesting against corruption. LAB joins the Filipino people in condemning the brutality of the police, and calls for justice for the victims of police brutality and for the immediate release of all those arrested.
These protesters were the youth whose relatives were killed during the bloody Tokhang campaign of the fascist US-Duterte regime, and continue to be victims of abuse and terror of the PNP. Their urban poor families, who eke out livelihoods that barely meet their daily needs, are also being forcibly displaced by projects of corrupt politicians and private corporations like reclamation, road widening, real estate enclaves, and waste-to-energy facilities. Every day, crooked police milk them of their hard-earned earnings, further fueling their seething and deep-seated anger against the PNP and the whole oppressive system.
They are the semi-proletariat whose taxes feed the luxuries and opulence of the bureaucrat capitalists and the ruling elite. They are the oppressed masses struggling and fighting for change, not the “gangsters” and “utak-adik” that reactionaries like Manila City Mayor Isko Moreno would make them out to be. Their courageous–however unorganized and spontaneous–September 21 battle in Manila, along with their demands, is justified and should be supported.
We call on our patriotic and progressive scientists, engineers, and technologists, in the heat of the current anti-corruption movement, to integrate, live, and learn with the urban poor and semi-proletariat. We must conduct social investigation, deepen our understanding of the roots of their anger and frustration, help them in their daily work and production, and learn where the urban poor get their courage and bravery in fighting their class enemies. We can even conduct workshops with them to make Molotovs and other tools that they can use to defend their communities against demolition, and to punish oppressive corporations and institutions who have destroyed their homes and livelihoods.
At the same time, let us help them understand, with more clarity, the root causes of why they are poor and perpetually oppressed under the current exploitative semi-colonial and semi-feudal Philippine social system; why the police and military are the fascist dogs and protectors of the bureaucrat capitalists, bourgeoisie compradors, and landlords; why imperialists, particularly the US, are the overlords of the local ruling elite; and why the revolutionary movement regards armed resistance in the countryside as the primary form of struggle, while simultaneously developing the militant mass movement in the cities.
Through this, it will be easy for them to comprehend and accept the road of the national democratic revolution through people’s protracted war as the solution to the problem of the poor and oppressed Filipino people. We must encourage them to join the underground national democratic movement and their true army, the New People’s Army. Here, they will see that the vast terrain of our countryside is more advantageous to do battle and defeat the abusive and fascist police and military.
As scientists and technologists who serve the people, let us learn and fight alongside the urban poor youth. Let us do battle again in Manila and other urban centers while declaring, “Fuck the system! Ipagtagumpay ang matagalang digmang bayan!”
