Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? (Matthew 7:9, NRSV)
THE PROMOTION of Church People’s Response condemns the local authorities for their forced dispersal and arrests of hungry residents of Sitio San Roque, Barangay Pag-asa, Quezon City.
Never has it been more important for Church people to speak out to expose the reality that many people in urban poor areas are hungry and not receiving the food relief, as promised by the Duterte administration.
Hungry people deserve food.
Let it be known, that the urban poor who took action are likely receiving cries for help from friends and families in other communities. The fear and worry is both palpable and warranted. Priests, pastors, and mission workers are also receiving regular calls and cries of distress. At least, Church people are often with means to try to respond. In contrast, as poor families communicate with one another, they see clearly that they are at the brink of utter devastation and the government does not seem to be doing much to stop it.
Every announcement from the national government discusses compliance and threatens consequences for noncompliance, but this government has blatantly failed to reveal concrete plans on how they are giving and mobilizing much needed support to hospitals and delivering food to poor and made-vulnerable families. Ample budget was given with emergency powers to President Duterte, yet what we are witnessing is humanitarian negligence as he fails to deliver what the people desperately need, so that they can stay at home.
Those who are struggling most at this time may not be the ones long listed in Department of Social Welfare and Development and other welfare programs. Day laborers, industrious self-employed vendor and repair people, and those working with minimum-wage-or-less, no-work/no-pay, contractual arrangements are all trying to figure out how to make ends meet.
We should be alarmed, not by the protest, but by the police reaction to it.
We should be alarmed that the Duterte administration has prepared so poorly for this pandemic. And, we should be more alarmed that at every juncture the answer seems to be threats and additional suffering meted out upon the poor and hapless, trying to survive.
The approach is misplaced. The goal should be community cooperation, using immediate rewards and social compliance mechanisms rather than threats and punishment. This has long been demonstrated as a more effective way to get people to change their behaviors. Yet, even the announcements on mass testing have ominous overtones. The government will force the poor into massive quarantine.
Fever centers such as those conducted in Wuhan, China, make sense, when people know they are being brought to a place for convalescence, so that their needs will be provided while they also don’t spread the virus to others. Here in the Philippines, the government speaks only of the forced quarantine, not on the reassurance that they will do it in a way that will care for those who are both mildly and severely ill. The plan sounds more like horrible reports of BPOs that locked up entire floors of workers when one worker tested positive. As if everyone, who happened to be in a wrong place at a wrong time, is doomed and must be sacrificed, without nuance or degrees of consideration on how to minimize impact of COVID-19 spread within a community that experiences an outbreak.
Such threats feed panic and will, by their very nature, fuel resistance. The poor are not interested to be “so lucky” as to be sacrificed for the country. They are people with human dignity and a deep reservoir of struggle for survival. They will not simply concede to being led, like lambs to a slaughter, by an inept and corrupt government system that continues to oppress them.
The Duterte administration should shape up and deliver the needs of the people. This is not a war on the poor or a war on communities with outbreak. This should be a scientific and sociological exercise of humanity outsmarting a virus. The virus is not trying to kill us. It can’t even move on its own. At this point, state security forces and personnel are likely a biggest factor in contamination from one location to another. We should all be on the same side — the side of humanity.
Dialogue, rather than violence, is what is needed. Appealing to a common, greater good will include making sure that the poor and especially those rendered without means because of the lockdown are fed and cared for. When people ask for food, GIVE THEM FOOD!
Quit putting so much energy in policing and get fever clinics and testing centers up and running. If the Duterte administration will lead by example, demonstrating that people’s lives matter, the people will have no reason to protest. They protest because they fear that they will suffer, will be sacrificed and will be forgotten. Those fears have merit, given the hit or miss track records of the local government units so far, especially when it to comes delivering the people’s basic needs. – Fr. Rolly De Leon, Rev. Mary Grace Masegman, Rev. Irma Balaba, Rev. Marie Sol Villalon, Promotion of Church People’s Response <pcprnatl2016@gmail.com>
