01/01/2017
2016 is a year of victories for the student movement in the College of Engineering. These victories are sure to be launching pads for even greater victories in the near future.
Last March, Engineering organizations stood their ground and refused to accept the fascist suspension of their org tambayans. Their defiance ended in victory, and demonstrated the powerful potential of collective action in the College. Using this as a stepping stone, Engineering students united around three calls: the end to exorbitant, redundant, and dubious other school fees, the junking of the eUP Project, and an end to all repressive policies against students and organizations inside the College, as revealed by the tambayan suspension and other attacks on the students’ democratic rights. Around these calls, Engineering students and organizations united and mobilized, the first local campaign mobilization in the College in the last few years.
Later this year, Engineering students fulfilled their role as inhenyero ng bayan. The College of Engineering wholeheartedly participated in the Lakbayan 2016, with hundreds donating to the caravan, integrating with the delegates, performing or attending the nightly cultural nights, and participating in the various mobilizations in support of the calls of the national minorities against national oppression, feudalism, and US imperialism. Hundreds more joined the protests against the burial of the fascist dictator Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, both in the Black Friday protest at Katipunan and the National Day of Rage in Luneta. Engineering students are surely rising up to defend their democratic rights and to fulfill their duty to serve the people.
Amidst these victories, it is important that we draw clear lessons and resolutely forge a path to greater victories in the future. It is integral that we fully understand the social illnesses that maintain the rotten state of the Philippine society and the chronic and decaying crisis it is undergoing under a semi-colonial and semi-feudal system. US imperialists and the local ruling classes implement neoliberal policies that lead to rising tuition and other school fees, high prices and low wages, peasant landlessness and landgrabbing, and the impoverishment of the majority of the people. These neoliberal policies stunt our national industries, resulting in a chronic job crisis that leave Filipino workers and engineers with no choice but to go abroad looking for decent work lest they be condemned to perpetual unemployment or underemployment. It condemns the country to a colonial economy exporting raw materials and labor and importing manufactured products, creating a trade imbalance that sinks us further into debt and impoverish the people while providing select multinational and transnational monopolies their superprofits through the exploitation of our economic backwardness. As the people struggle against these policies, ztate fascism rears its head to either forcefully or persuasively repress the people’s movement, leading to militarization in the countryside, numerous human rights violations, and attacks on our right to organize and assemble.
Only genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization can rid us of these social ills. With genuine agrarian reform, we cure the landlessness and landgrabbing that impoverish the majority of the Filipino people, who are peasants and national minorities. This will boost the country’s agriculture, which will serve as the base for the establishment of the country’s national industries. These industries will provide millions of jobs for our countrymen, and will transform our colonial economy into a stable, industrial economy free from foreign dependence and dictates. Genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization are key to genuine freedom and democracy, but this will not be given without a fight. Those in power benefit from the status quo, and thus we can only rely on ourselves through our collective action in ensuring that the interests of the majority are answered to.
It is clear that the struggles of the various sectors of the Filipino people are intertwined. Imperialism, feudalism, and fascism are the roots of poverty, and its impact is felt across all sectors, be it with peasants facing landlessness, workers facing contractualization, and the students facing high tuition fees and student repression. Only if we unite with the whole Filipino people and support each others’ struggles can we be rid of these ills that have long held Philippine society into perpetual backwardness and exploitation.
Our tasks as inhenyero ng bayan for the coming year are clear. We must build ever greater unities, both in our local struggle against fees and repression, and in our national struggle for genuine freedom and democracy. We must popularize the nationalist study of our situation and society, and the key role of engineers in building our national industry. We must strengthen the organized force of the student movement, for only such can contend with the organized reaction of our exploiters. We must launch ever bigger mobilizations of the students and the people, for only such can provide a challenge to the three social ills that are the root of the problems the Filipino people face.
We are a motive force that can shape our nation’s history. As we rise in the thousands, we not only solve the local problems we Engineering students face, but also the deep and comprehensive issues the whole Filipino face.
Education is a right! Junk STS! Junk OSF!
No to campus repression of students and organizations!
End contractualization and landgrabbing!
No to neoliberal attacks on the youth and the people!
Fight for genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization!
Down with imperialism, feudalism, and fascism!
