ABSV READS

continuing and advancing the study movement + sharpening our analysis, all day everyday. #itslit more about this tumblr tags

[absv-reads]

A growing number of U.S. special forces veterans are veering off the traditional path of working for private security firms and law enforcement agencies, and instead are heading into the tech industry. Companies are discovering their abilities to build teams and think outside the box make them a good fit for the innovative businesses.

From SEALs to startups: Special ops drawn to Silicon Valley - San Jose Mercury News

[absv-reads]

"Women are more likely to be hiding in order to find safety," said Louis Chicoine, executive director of Abode Services, a nonprofit that develops homeless housing. "They're not as obvious as homeless men and that's the incredible challenge."

Facing additional threats, San Jose homeless women often stay hidden from safety net - San Jose Mercury News

[absv-reads]

Upon his victory in the presidential race, he announced his willingness to set aside four Cabinet positions — labor, agrarian reform, social work and environment and natural resources — to be filled by nominees of the CPP. These pronouncements taken together with his record of non-antagonistic and, even more so, friendly ties with the New People’s Army in Davao City, as well as support for the Leftist movement in general, underscore three aspects of Duterte that distinguish him from other run-of-the-mill bourgeois politicians. First, he does not harbor a rabid, anti-communist bias having had exposure to revolutionary concepts and organizations since his youth. He does not consider revolutionaries as terrorists nor traitors but as patriots who are seeking radical societal change for the good of the majority of the people. While his views may not coincide completely with the communist-led movement, he recognizes that the objective conditions of social injustice and vast inequality are the fertile ground on which the entire national democratic movement thrives. He shows respect for the movement’s leaders; he acknowledges the CPP-NPA-NDFP as a significant force to contend with. Second, because he acknowledges the deep socio-economic and political underpinnings of armed conflicts, he knows these cannot be resolved by military means alone. Thus, he has publicly-announced his commitment to resume peace talks with the NDFP until a negotiated political settlement or, even much earlier, an agreement for immediate truce and cooperation is reached. He has also repeatedly declared his intention to release all political prisoners, most specially the 18 NDFP consultants covered by the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees and the sick, women and elderly, for humanitarian reasons. Third, Duterte has a strong, idiosyncratic character manifested in his refusal to kowtow to conventional ideas and norms about how a presidential aspirant or an elected president should behave towards the country’s former colonizer, the US of A; or how the presumptive president should relate to the pillars of the reactionary system — Congress, the Supreme Court and the judiciary, the civilian bureaucracy, and the military, the hierarchical church foremost of which are the bishops of the Catholic Church, the big landlords and big business including multinationals and their local comprador partners and dummies.

http://kodao.org/2016/05/24/carol-pagaduan-araullos-streetwise-duterte-and-the-left/

[absv-reads]

“One way to think about it is that if you’re a beautiful beach community, you’re a great place where people want to come,” Pastor said.  “But as more and more people come, it gets overcrowded, and it’s no longer a beautiful beach community, it’s something else.”

(via San Jose's Intergenerational Mobility - The Atlantic)

[absv-reads]

Seize the Time is digitized!

Seize the Time was a Marxist-Leninist organization that grew out of the revolutionary national struggles of Black, Chicano, Asian American and Native American peoples. Based in California, Seize the Time was published mainly by people identifying as third world revolutionaries along with some white revolutionaries. All the people on the paper are engaged or in contact with revolutionary practice. Most are Marxist-Lenninist. The main purposes of the paper are:

an organizing tool for local struggles and coordinating tool for regional and national organizing. 

provides revolutionary information and analysis. 

communication network independent of bourgeois media.

a forum to discuss the major problems and tasks of the revolution. 

Seize the Time contains recurring sections on self-reliance in building revolutionary struggle (Juche); reports on political prisoners and prisoners of war (Break de Chains); Behind the Lines (trial news and reports); From the Sisters (perspectives from women) and in-depth insert sections on political theory and practice.   

(via Seize the Time)

[absv-reads]

Outside of Silicon Valley, American labor is looking a lot like this already. The old, sanctified status of “employee” is getting egged in the face. The days of blue-collar job, suburban tract home, Disney vacay, and pension awaiting at the end of the 9–5 rainbow looks like a curious blip on the way to a more profit-maximized, capitalist future. It’s the age of the precariat: unions are nearly kaput, many will only know pensions from history books, and most “at will” workers can be fired as easily as Uber can kick its drivers off the app. Now many old titans of industry have latched onto this idea of on-call shift work — which many call “just-in-time scheduling,” — a grayish labor abuse tailored for the age of the text message that has lawmakers hustling to curb it.

(via Quit Your Job and Go to Work — Matter — Medium)

[absv-reads]

(via Filipino Immigrants in the United States | migrationpolicy.org)

[absv-reads]

The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood

The freewheeling opportunity associated with 20th-century California was not available to black residents, and that exclusion reverberates in our neighborhoods and communities today.

(via The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood - The Atlantic)

[absv-reads]

New San Jose pharmacy offers free meds

There are no copays, no deductibles, no proof of income or ID required -- just a doctor's prescription.

On Tuesday, the pharmacy will host a grand-opening celebration, and Santa Clara County supervisors will present a formal commendation to its staff and volunteers. The county had chipped in $90,000 to fund the pharmacy's startup costs.

That a free pharmacy is needed in San Jose speaks volumes about economic disparities here.

Bloomberg Business recently dubbed the San Jose metropolitan area the richest in the nation. But the city's homeless population is among the country's largest.

An estimated 7 percent of people in Santa Clara County don't have health insurance. Seniors face Medicare's dreaded "doughnut hole," a gap in coverage of prescription drugs that forces out of pocket spending. And working people with health insurance feel strapped because of the region's high housing costs, Silverthorne said.

"Because of how expensive things have gotten here," she said, "people are making decisions like: Do I pay my heating bill, or do I get my prescription?"

[absv-reads]

Quinn: For tech, a bumpy year ahead

Tech is not in vogue and its leaders aren't treated like rock stars like they used to be.

What tech is "creating scares the hell out of Middle America," said Alec Ross, who served as senior adviser for innovation to Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state. "Middle America is full of anxiety. Silicon Valley contributes to that anxiety. It doesn't reduce that anxiety."

People are wondering if "what is being created is causing displacement," said Ari Wallach, the founder and CEO of Synthesis Corp., a New York City-based strategic consultancy. "That is causing some people to outweigh the gee-whiz factor."

[absv-reads]

The South Bay has its history of violence, structural racism and worker exploitation. But it also has a long history of resistance—of courageous organizers who built movements that have had an impact far beyond the Santa Clara Valley. 

(read more: Roots of Social Justice Organizing in Silicon Valley | Reimagine!)

[indiohistorian]

In a country such as ours, elections are controversial and at times filled with the good, the bad and the ugly. But the process of electing is that one thing that defines us as an Asian democracy, that is, that the Philippines was the first in Asia to espouse a republican form of government giving the people the right to choose their own leaders. I am well aware that politicians have often hijacked this democratic exercise by block voting, and vote-buying. Politics is dirty. But democracy works best when the electorate is well informed of the candidates and aware of their power and voice to choose who deserves to lead. Hence, a well-informed electorate is one who cannot be cajoled, bullied or persuaded by money or “utang na loob” because of this power they possess. As Leon Ma. Guerrero would say, “An educated native is a dangerous native.”

Now that the national election is almost upon us, a history book has been published by the PCDSPO chronicling the long electoral history of the Philippines, from the semblance of election among the datus (primus inter pares) during the precolonial period to the controversial election in the Tejeros Convention of 1897, all the way to the last Philippine national election in 2010. Full of infographics, historical write-ups and maps covering the electoral demographic of every part of the archipelago, the reader is given the entire scope of the Philippine political narrative—from the polarizing questions of the national plebiscites that defined a generation, to the profiles of past presidential, vice-presidential, senatorial and congressional candidates. It is interesting to note how precious the electoral process is, especially when one understands the fact that Filipinos were not always given this right to elect, especially during the Spanish colonial period. Eventually, we were given that right, via the Philippine Revolution, onwards. In the Martial Law Period, we were forced by Marcos to ratify the 1972 constitution via viva voce, almost at gunpoint (since the presence of the military was there in the precincts). But it was in the snap election of 1986 and the vote rigging in the countryside that made us regain this right yet again through a peaceful revolution. 

Below are excerpts from the book Philippine Electoral Almanac: Revised and Expanded:

I am proud to be part of the team of historians under @mlq3 who made the revised and expanded edition of this book possible. Since this is a publication of the government, this can be downloaded for free, while printed editions of the book would be given to universities, schools and public libraries.

Feel free to download the book and share it to every Filipino.

Read the online version via Archive.org and download! 

[absv-reads]

(via The Lessons of Zapatista Women Activists for Today’s Social Movements - In These Times)

[jayarea]

Patriarchy and Women’s Subordination in the Philippines, Luz Lopez Rodriguez

“Patriarchy is therefore loosely defined as male culture or ideology, male choice, male bonding and male political interests in dominating women as producers and reproducers.

Patriarchy is historically developed.  It started with the appropriation by men of women’s sexual and reproductive capacity even prior to the formation of property and class society but its commodification evolved with private property” (15).

Ann Ferguson, historical evolution of concept of patriarchy in US (15-16):

Father patriarchy: during the colonial period, it was reproduced by the fathers’ legal and economic control of children’s marriages and inheritance through family property which rested in sons, not daughters.

Husband patriarchy: during the Victorian period, it was reproduced by the institution of “family wage” which was rested in husbands who were the family breadwinners.

Public patriarchy: it was reproduced by modes of sex/affective production characteristic of modern industrial states, whether capitalist or socialist states – through an unequal division of family wage and unwaged labour, through the relative power in family decision making that their higher paid wage labour brings, through domestic violence, and through public mechanisms of the patriarchal welfare state: gender segregation of wage labour, state controls over women’s physical and mental health and biological reproduction, and the exploitation of all mothers’ unpaid child rearing labour, mass media’s stereotyping and sexual objectification of women in the context of sexual consumerism.

Lacanian feminists: two semi-autonomous domination systems in advanced industrial societies which perpetuate male dominance: capitalism and patriarchy, the mode of ideological reproduction (16).

“Unpaid domestic labor provides the most reliable and the cheapest way to reproduce the labor force it needs to reproduce itself.  Patriarchy, on the other hand, is perpetual, not primarily through ideological beliefs about the natural role of women in the family, but through the structure of unconscious desires that are tied to gender identity through early childhood experiences” (16).

“Research on the status of indigenous Filipino women before Spanish colonization reveals that they enjoyed a high status in society.  There was equal value given to male and female offspring.  Women participated in the decision-making processes not only in the home but in the important social processes of the bigger community.  They had equal access to production resources and had equal ‘inheritance rights’ to usufruct [n. the right to enjoy the use and advantages of another’s property short of the destruction or waste of its substance] rights over communal property.  They received an equal opportunity for education; they enjoyed the same liberty of movement as men.  They had equal rights with regards to divorce before the law.  They occupied leadership roles as the men in the political and religious fields” (18).

Pre-Hispanic communities geared for social use, to fulfill kinship duties (18). Family as self-sufficient subsistence unit of production and consumption.  “Thus there was no need to create relations of dependence nor of exploitation.  Since the concept of private property still was to come with Spanish conquest, the concept of woman as property of a man had no social basis for existing.  However, the early forms of feudalism had started to take root in some communities, and class structures had germinated and were well on their way to full development.  This was happening in some economically progressive and more politically consolidated riverine and coastal kingdoms which had more production surplus, had more barter trade contacts with foreign traders, and in some areas had become Muslim sultanates.  In these communities, the women had become part of social and productive relations which had need for dependence and exploitation” (18).

Spanish conquest turned communal lands into private reserves (18).

Sr. Mary John Mananzan, “The Filipino Woman: Before and After the Spanish Conquest of the Philippines.” Essays on Filipino Women 1987

Aida Maranan, “Do Women Really Hold Up Half the Sky?” Essays on Filipino Women, 1987.

The “new” Filipina (or female Indio) was now her father’s meek daughter, her husband’s faithful subject, the Church’s obedient servant, and before her marriage, a chaste virgin who would yield only to her husband (and occasionally to the friar).  But of course, like her peasant husband, she was also a slavelike toiler who worked the rich man’s and his descendants’ land for pittance…

Export crops: coconut, sugar, tobacco, abaca, pineapple, banana, mango (19).

Landgrabbing, usury, “new legalities of ownership of which the peasants were unaware” (19).

“The traditional self-sufficiency of the Filipino rural households (usually an extended kinship system) gave way to nuclear families dependent on male wage earners who worked mostly as landless peasants, as factory and office workers, or at other low-paying jobs.  Many families migrated from the farms to urban centers and constituted the urban poor population congesting the slum communities” (19).  –> Stagnation of countrysides; subordination of women; sexual division of labor; elitist socio-political structures; inequities in power and wealth distribution.

“Religion, specifically Roman Catholicism, was introduced by the Spanish colonizers to facilitate their rule over the local people, especially to neutralize the influence of independent women at that time.  Mananzan writes ‘Her freedom of choice in important aspects of her life was curtailed by the imposition of new laws and mores.  Confined in her area of action, the woman poured all her innate sensibility and energy into the energies allowed her, developing a religious fervor which would verge on fanaticism.  She was constantly reminded of her innate danger to men as the seductive Eve and was relentlessly exhorted to follow an impossible model – the Virgin Mother.  She would venerate her but her efforts to emulate her brought her into scrupulous, frustrated efforts which ended up in giving her an abiding guilt complex which added to her timidity and lack of self-confidence and in many cases reducing her to frigidity” (19).

“Under Philippine laws, a woman below 23 years of age cannot leave the parental home without the consent of her parents except when she marries, exercises her profession or when either parents enters into subsequent marriage” (19).

Until 1987, the man chose the residence of the family; was legal administrator of children’s property.  “The wife could not accept expensive gifts, except from relatives, and could not make expensive purchases without the husband’s consent.  The husband could object to the exercise of the wife’s profession if he could support the family sufficiently… The husband however can more easily accuse his wife of adultery but the wife has to catch the husband in the sexual act and prove that he is supporting and maintaining another woman to be able to accuse him of concubinage… Barrenness on the part of the wife may be a ground for separation or an excuse for the husband’s infidelity” (20).

“Premarital sex is even taboo especially for a single woman whose ‘greatest gift’ to her husband is her virginity.  On the other hand, it is deemed natural that bachelor men are sexually adventurous to prove themselves and gain experience” (21) [this is bullshit!].

“Sex is generally considered dirty and taboo as a subject for discussion, hence it has not been squarely tackled until recently.  Adolescents are often left out of sex education, thus the incidence of teen-age pregnancies.  In the case of teen-age pregnancies, marriage is usually the solution even if the parties concerned are not prepared for the responsibilities” (21).

“The Catholic church does not allow the use of artificial contraceptives and strongly advocates against abortion” (21).

Avg size of Fil families down from eight to six: “This was after some years of intensive population control campaign undertaken by the government with World Bank support. This confuses the Filipino women who, on one hand are caught up in their Catholic values and, on the other hand, are pressured by the state to surrender or of their reproductive capacities in favor of the ‘national interest’” (21).

“The care of the children and the husband is the woman’s primary responsibility and at some point, is considered her greatest contribution to humanity” (22).

“The health of women in a poor country like the Philippines is affected most seriously by their crucial roles as child-bearers and child-rearers.  Women get trapped in the vicious cycle of pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, malnutrition, infections, fatigue and stress in the course of their performance of their multiple roles as mothers, workers and health providers.  Thus, they generally suffer from poor health, with a maternal mortality of 100 per 100,000 live births and a high incidence of anemia and goiter among those who are pregnant.  Their condition is aggravated by the inadequacy of the health care delivery system and the lack of trained health personnel* to attend to them and their children.  Women are the target consumers of food, drug and cosmetic manufacturers who have recently been criticized for their production of non-essential drugs which pose serious threats to women’s and their families’ health” (22).

*This is interesting considering the rate at which the Philippines trains and exports health professionals. 

“Women are advertised alongside commodities.  Women are commodities themselves especially in their role as prostitutes to lure tourists, as subservient mail-order brides or as lively entertainers abroad” (22).

“Only 36% of the population 15 years and over who are in the labor force are women; 74% of these women are housekeepers or those who enable other members of the family to engage in productive work outside the home but whose contributions remain unrecognized” (22).

“The major issue in fact is how and why domestic labor came to be and continues to be regarded as less productive work and are unrenumerated reproduction/subsistence/private production, as it is variably called, secondary only to work outside the home which is paid ‘economic’/public production activities.  It should now be clearly recognized that mothering and domestic labor performed by women in the household are exploited to subsidize capitalist production” (22-23).

“Work outside the home does not also result in liberation because jobs are also sex-stereotyped.  Most of the jobs that are open to women are usually extensions of the mothering, caring and educating roles that they do at home: teachers, nurses, midwives, social workers, salesladies, vending and other odd jobs in the service sector” –> also exported workers into electronics, garments, “for their docility in toeing the company rules and accepting low wages” (23).

Filipinas: 36% of employed; 41% of unemployed

“The lack of opportunities and unfavorable work conditions at home lure women to overseas employment mostly as domestic helpers and entertainers.  This exposes women to greater dangers such as sexual exploitation and physical abuse.  While it also presents a serious threat to their well being, dignity and status before the world, to the family as an institution and to national self-respect, the government somehow encourages overseas employment because of the foreign exchange they bring to the debt-ridden country” (23).

“Despite the increase of women’s participation in the labor force, they do not enjoy comparable employment opportunities, privileges and benefits as men.  Working women are also left open to displacement and marginalization by large firms and subjected to many regulatory policies by government.  Their contribution to housework and the informal economy usually go unrecorded in standard labor force accounts and simply form part of unpaid family labor” (23).

“In formal education, there is the widespread sex bias in textbooks, curricula and instructional materials and even among teachers themselves” (24).

“…But there were candles to burn, the world was my concern While our home was her domain And the people were mine While the children were hers to maintain…” -I Have Fallen in Love” by Ninoy Aquino about Corazon Aquino

“A patriarchal culture prevents men and women from genuinely working together as equals in liberating society from capitalist exploitation.

Consciousness-raising and organizing efforts in social movements such as non-governmental organizations and especially the women’s movement should systematically take up the issue of patriarchy in its work with the grassroots as well as in advocacy for alternative policies and programs” (25).

[absv-reads]

(via Photos | Never too old to protest – Pinoy Weekly)

[absv-reads]

The percentage of low-income preschool-age children in Silicon Valley who have have at least one immigrant parent exceeds rates seen in urban areas known for their large immigrant populations, such as Miami, Los Angeles, and Houston. And while a majority of Silicon Valley’s low-income immigrants come from Mexico and Central America, a sizable minority come from other parts of the world; parents who’ve immigrated from Vietnam and the Philippines, for example, account for 10 percent of the young low-income children in Santa Clara county.

(read more: How Low-Income Children in Silicon Valley Are Missing Out on Early-Education Opportunities - The Atlantic)

[chaliphotojones]

The Shellmound Walk.

Black Friday. Emeryville, Ca. 2015

Is a series of protests held at desecrated burial sites around the greater San Francisco, Ca. Bay area. On Black Friday, 2015. Representatives of many indigenous tribal nations, including Ohlone, Apache, Tongan, and local activists all races, gathered in protest at The Bay Street shopping mall, in Emeryville, Ca. As is done there annually in their continued resistance to the theft of their lands, pollution of theirs waters and environments, and the continued desecration of ancient burial grounds, and monuments. 

More info here: http://ipocshellmoundwalk.homestead.com/shellmound.html

Trailer for a documentary about the site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSpyroEgB3Y