'Conditions are ripe for an urban upheaval’—urban poor group [Kadamay announces plan for a big nationwide mob on Bonifacio Day]

PRESS RELEASE l 07 November 2011
Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap
Reference for Interview: Gloria Arellano, Kadamay national secretary-general (09213927457)

MANILA, Philippines--Urban poor group Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay) that claims some 35,000 membership from different urban centers nationwide express today its unequivocal dissatisfaction of the Aquino regime and the thirst for a great urban upheaval no different from the ones happening in different cities around the world.

The group cited the objective conditions that seem to be "too ripe' for another upheaval. The urban poor leaders wear Katipunero outfit, a tribute to the pioneers of revolutionary movement in the Philippines, and they vow to mobilize thousands of urban poor nationwide on the 30th of November, the day of birth of Andres Bonifacio, the founder of KKK.

Bonifacio is inherently having a semi-proletarian origin, as vendor of abaca fans and other materials. He became a renowned hero of the toiling masses during the country's dark colonial past. The revolutionary organization called Kataas-taasan, Kagalang-galangang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan has easily gone nationwide in scope, and eventually ended the 333 years of Spanish rule.

New version of KKK
Kadamay launched today its own version of KKK, which is their plan to insure a big upsurge into the streets in the next two years. Called Kampanya laban sa Kahirapan, Kagutuman at Pambubusabos (KKKP), the campaign aims to gather local mass struggles of the urban poor from different communities and collectively call for change, in bigger than ever mobilizations in the street quite similar to the first and second EDSA Revolution.

Gloria Arellano, Kadamay national secretary-general cited the high hunger and poverty incidence, and the effects of the global economic crisis to comprise the objective conditions for an urban upheaval. “These are no different from the conditions that spurred the first Philippine revolution. Quite similar today, the urban poor who are threatened by left-and-right blows of eviction from their communities and sources of livelihood, to give way to projects that will only benefit the few and foreign corporations should lead the nation in waging a war against the neo-liberal policies of the Aquino regime,” the leader said. "It is undeniably the real culprit behind staggering poverty."

Meager wage and critical unemployment
"Like Ka Bel, I would probably not witness the passage of any meaningful increase in the wage of our workers," Arellano addded referring to the HB 379, the P125 wage increase bill that has remained as bill since the great labor leader Crispin Beltran filed it in Congress in 1999. "But who has jobs these days, when some 11 million Filipinos are looking for jobs with nothing to find?" she said.

Corruption-prone anti-poverty program
Aquino's poverty alleviation program, the Conditional Cash Transfer only shows its futility in addressing the widespread unemployment and the lack of lands for our farmers to till, according to Arellano. "Aquino's inaction on the case of Hacienda Luisita farmers has only empowered many land lords in maintaining the abusive feudal system in the countryside, driving many farmers to go into cities thus bringing urban poverty into an all-time high."

"Soon, as the prices of basic commodities become unbearable for the urban poor to accommodate, even those very few who benefit from the regimes dole out scheme will search for an alternative to end the widespread poverty," Arellano said.

"An urban upheaval will be evitable unless the government implements a genuine agrarian reform and a national industrialization program to give lands to the landless, and jobs to the jobless," she concluded. ###