Waiting for daylight to arrive
Kim and I attended the fund-raising concert for the Free Jonas Burgos Movement last night at Newsdesk in Timog.
‘Jamming for Jonas’ was organized by the friends and supporters of the Burgos family.
As we walked up the path to Newsdesk, JL (Jay-Jay’s younger brother) waved hello, calling out my name. I went up to him and gave him a hug, remembering how JL has always been to me a cheerful, good-natured person, and now he must be bearing a weight quite unlike anything he has ever been forced to carry.
‘Walang iiyak ngayong gabi,ha?" he said. I simply nodded. I didn’t think asking him how he was was necessary.
Later on during the concert when he was called on stage to share developments in the search for Jay-Jay, JL looked slightly drunk, and I suppose he was because he’d already been drinking even before the concert started. He stood there in the middle of the small, make-shift platform with a bottle of San Mig and the remnants of a cigarette, his voice was strong and confident in the beginning, but breaking in some parts, and at one point he simply had to stop talking.
Alcohol dulls the senses, I know; and since April 28, JL and his family have been feeling too much and last night I guess JL had to take a few drinks just so he could fight off the urge to just break down.
He broke down all the same, a little; a young man hoping against hope that his mentor, his friend, his elder brother would still be alive and would come home not soon enough and maybe they would laugh about everything that transpired and his utol would give him a wallop on the head for revealing to all and sundry that he, Jay-Jay, once ate a dragonfly when their mother Edith told him in jest not to.
JL sounded so bewildered ("all this is so surreal’) even as he denounced the government and the military for their lies, for the run-around they’ve been giving the Burgos family.
‘Aktibista ang kapatid ko, at ako din ay aktibista. Proud akong sabihin yan. Aktibista kami, at walang karapatan ang gobyerno na gawin ang ginawa, ginagawa nila. Walang masama sa pagiging aktibista, sa pagkakaroon ng pampulitikang paniniwala.’
Guy Portajada of Desaparacidos said that often the families of the disappeared would wish that it would always be daylight, and never night. "Kapag may araw, nagagawa naming hanapin ang aming mga nawawalang mahal sa buhay. Sa gabi, pag madilim na, wala kaming magagawa kundi maghintay para sa pagdating ng liwanag."
In this sense, she said, the families of the victims of extrajudicial killings are ‘lucky.’
‘At least the bodies of their loved ones are not missing. They can head to the cemetery and light candles on their graves, and there will be some closure even as they continue to seek justice. The families of the disappeared have nothing. There is never closure, only a painful hope that refuses to die completely that one day even years and years later, we might still find our loved ones," she said.
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This is a picture I took of LFS chair Vencer Crisostomo yesterday in Plaza Miranda.
Ano man ang mangyari, sana manalo ang Kabataan Party-list kahit isang seat man lang. At least this time their will be less risk that %^$%#^*Akbayan will be able to steal their votes because their names sound different.
It’s frustrating how our party-lists led by Bayan Muna keep being compared to Akbayan.
We have nothing in common with Akbayan. It makes me sick everytime Akbayan is mistaken as one of ours. Utang na loob. There’s a measure of gladness in the thought that Etta Rosales is no longer the first nominee; kaso how awful is it that Walden Bello could become congressman? Mga palasukong repormista na nagpapagamit at nakikipagkutsabahan sa gobyerno when it suits their agenda to bash the national democratic movement and the progressive party-lists. I believe in the struggle for reforms, but Akbayan’s reformism makes one sick to to one’s stomach. And they have the gall to project themselves as progressives. Sa isang bansa tulad ng Pilipinas, pag nagpatali ka lang sa simpleng pakikibaka para sa reporma at pagtitiwala at pag-iilusyon na nakikinig ang gobyerno, niluloko mo lang ang sarili mo at dinadamay mo pa ang mamamayan.
What’s even more frustrating is how they supposedly campaign for people’s issues with the direct intent to make money. Disgusting.
–I want this shirt!
