Filipino-American Youth and Students Stand in Solidarity with Kilusang Mayo Uno and the Filipino Working Class
On the occasion of Kilusang Mayo Uno’s 10th National Congress, we Filipino-American youth and students proclaim our solidarity with the struggle of the working class in the Philippines and throughout the world. We applaud Kilusang Mayo Uno’s genuine, militant and patriotic trade unionism as an expression of the continuation and strengthening of the revolutionary tradition of the Filipino working class.
We youth and students recognize your critical role as the Filipino working class in transforming society through the advancement of the national democratic movement with a socialist perspective. Without integrating with the workers, we would be divorced from the realities that plague the Filipino people and would fall prey to the bourgeois culture that only serves to profit the few by exploiting the majority. It is only through your leadership that we can thoroughly analyze the concrete conditions in society and advance steadily towards genuine freedom and democracy.
In the midst of the current crisis of the world capitalist system, the brunt of the burden is being placed upon the shoulders of the working class of the world. In the US, the gap between the rich and the poor is the widest that it has ever been. Workers are suffering more strenuous workloads and unpaid wages while others lose their jobs, homes, and health care after decades of hard work. In addition to abusive working conditions, poverty wages, and the cutting of social services, workers face outright attacks from the ruling class. In Wisconsin, the reactionary state congress is stripping away the collective bargaining rights of public employees. Meanwhile in the Philippines, union leader Celito Baccay became the 41st victim of extrajudicial killings under the Aquino administration. The escalation of labor rights violations around the globe are products of neoliberal globalization and symptomatic of a desperate system that is already crumbling. Imperialism continuously attempts to destroy the ability of the working class to unite and fight for their rights, but workers around the globe continue to resist these schemes. Kilusang Mayo Uno shines as a beacon of genuine trade unionism, the kind that shuns shallow economism and advances genuine systemic change for the working class.
We Filipino-American youth and students join you in the growing struggle of workers around the world for jobs, decent wages, humane working conditions, and collective bargaining rights. Here in the US, we are joining picket lines of hotel and health care workers, mobilizing community support for trafficked Filipino migrant workers, and supporting the campaigns of domestic workers for fair wages, recognition, and dignity. Over 100,000 workers and students of Wisconsin took the streets to protest union-busting. We celebrate the upsurge of the worker’s struggle in the belly of the beast and Kilusang Mayo Uno’s many victories and ongoing fights for workers rights. They are powerful and inspiring contributions to the global struggle for a just and humane world.
We salute you and stand firmly by your side in escalating the fight against imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism, the root problems that force our families to migrate overseas due to the lack of genuine land reform and national industrialization in our homeland. The victorious and continuing uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa expose the vulnerability of imperialism. With the ever deepening unity of the youth and other sectors of society with the workers, the inevitable downfall of imperialism is at hand.
Mabuhay Kilusang Mayo Uno!
Youth and Workers of the world unite!
Long live international solidarity!
Uring manggagawa, hukbong mapagpalaya!
In solidarity: Anakbayan East Bay, Anakbayan Los Angeles, Anakbayan New Jersey, Anakbayan New York, Anakbayan San Diego, Anakbayan Seattle, Anakbayan Silicon Valley, League of Filipino Students – San Francisco State University
Anakbayan SD 