Filipinos Join Progressive Workers Alliance Rally Against Wage Theft at San Francisco City Hall

National Alliance for Filipino Concerns Rallies in Sacramento in Support of Domestic Workers Bill of Rights

From Balitang America:

Filipino Caregivers Demand Passage of Workers Bill of Rights

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – About 200 caregivers and their supporters traveled to the State Capitol in Sacramento yesterday to attend the first hearing on the California Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

The bill would grant caregivers and domestic workers rights to minimum wage, overtime pay, sick and vacation leaves, proper rest breaks and health care coverage.

69-year- old Tony Reta, who once cared for nine elderly patients on a daily basis said caregivers are burdened with round-the-clock hard work. He said, “Not only do you have to care for the patients, you have to care for the home where you work is clean. It’s not a joke. It’s hard work.”

Another caregiver, 60-year- old Boots de Chavez traveled all the way from Los Angeles — to let California lawmakers know how much they’ve suffered. She said, “We feel there are no rewards to our hard work. We don’t have any protection at work.”

Reta and de Chavez’ prayers for support from the government were answered that day. The California Assembly Committee passed the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. But the bill has to go through the Assembly floor, the Senate committee and the Senate floor — before it goes to Governor Jerry Brown’s office for signing.

If it passes among California lawmakers, Brown could sign the bill by September.

New York is the only state in the nation that has passed a similar bill of rights for caregivers and domestic workers.

You can reach Henni Espinosa at henni_espinosa@abs-cbn.com

BAYAN-USA-NORCAL Joins United National Antiwar Committee Demonstration in San Francisco

 

The War on Terror continues around the globe with $1.15 trillion U.S. tax dollars being spent on this alone. In the meantime FBI repression upon Anti-War activists intends to silence opposition to war. Right wing attacks on workers rights and union organizing make way for rampant abusive conditions in the workplace. Continuing cuts to education paired with ever increasing tuition fees limit access to education. Women’s reproductive rights & access to affordable health care are continually de-prioritized by the government. These are attacks on OUR communities, because the working poor and immigrant communities suffer the most due to cuts to basic services. BAYAN-USA joins with all peace loving people to demonstrate in defense of our rights to fight for the needs of our communities!

BAYAN-USA calls for an end to U.S. military occupation in Iraq and promotes the people’s national democratic struggle against U.S. imperialism in the Philippines. We call to CUT the $30 million US tax dollars that is sent every year to the Philippines that support oppressive policies such as the Visiting Forces Agreement and the current counterinsurgency program Oplan Bayanihan which targets political activists and community organizer-People Just Like Us. We condemn the 3,000 additional American Troops that are arriving in the Philippines This month to conduct Balikatan exercises with the Armed Forces of the Philippines! We call for an END to the increasing militarization that has caused the deaths of innocent civilians and displaces entire communities. We support the people’s liberation movements fighting U.S. imperialism and puppet-dictatorships in order to truly see our countries FREE from foreign occupation!

Mass uprisings are taking place all around the globe demanding that dictators step down in order to make room for true democracies created by the people for the sole purpose of serving the people! As BAYAN-USA we wish to encourage all oppressed peoples to continue building an international movement to rid the world of U.S. imperialism and to support people’s revolutionary movements by building genuine international solidarity. Let us all continue to build a better world for all!

We Say END the U.S. military Presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines and across the world!
FREE FREE FREE! FREE Palestine! END END the Occupation!
END the Visiting Forces Agreement & Balikatan Exercises!
SUPPORT People Power Movements around the Globe!
SUPPORT Affordable Healthcare, Housing, and Human Rights HERE in the United States!

LONG LIVE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY!

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

Happy International Working Women’s Day!

X-posted from GABRIELA-USA’s website at http://gabusa.org/

 

Filipino Women in the U.S. Stand in Solidarity and Sisterhood with Women’s Struggles Across the World
GABRIELA-USA’s Statement on the Centennial of International Women’s Day

 

On March 8, 2011, over ten thousand women in the Philippines took to the streets, in what are the largestInternational Women’s Day actions organized by GABRIELA, the world-renowned Filipino women’s alliance.  The women demanded relief from the economic crisis in the form of price controls of basic goods, national wage hikes, immediate repatriation and protection for migrant women, comprehensive reproductive health services, education for all, and housing for poor families.  In addition, GABRIELA highlighted their unity with the rest of the Filipino people in calling for fundamental change and national liberation.

Read more here!

 

 

“UP! UP! EGYPTIAN PEOPLE! DOWN! DOWN! MUBARAK OUT!” BAYAN-USA-NORCAL Joins San Francisco Demonstration in Solidarity with Egyptian Peoples’ Struggle.

On Saturday January  29th, 2011 BAYAN-USA-NORCAL and NAFCON joined over one thousand demonstrators including representatives of the bay area communities of Egyptians, Tunisians, Palestinians, Asian Americans, and other people of color marching in solidarity with the Egyptian people and all other people in the Middle East who are taking to the streets to demand freedom and justice.  Filipino Americans stood in solidarity with all peace loving people who are calling for an end to the fascist dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak and for genuine changes in Egyptian society.

As Filipino Americans we will continue to stand in solidarity with the courageous struggle of the Egyptian people and all oppressed people until freedom is finally won!

BAYAN-USA-NORCAL Supports the Rights of the Egyptian and Tunisian People to Struggle for Genuine Freedom and Democracy

The allied organizations of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan-USA Northern CA (BAYAN-USA-NORCAL), as members of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), stand in solidarity with the people of Egypt and Tunisia as they struggle for genuine democracy and freedom. As patriotic and peace loving Filipinos living the United States we feel that the massive demonstrations in which the Egyptian and Tunisian people are aggressively asserting their rights to freedom and dignity are not only just, but necessary considering the unbearable conditions of repression and negligence to basic human rights brought on by more than three decades of rule by respective fascist dictatorships of Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. For Filipinos the world over the scene of a sea of humanity calling out for a dramatic and sweeping change in socio-political conditions is “déjà vu all over again.”

The peoples’ uprisings that are ongoing in the nations of Egypt and Tunisia come literally weeks before the anniversary of the famed People Power Uprising in the Philippines which overthrew the fascist dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Even for young Filipinos who were not alive at the time of People Power the scenes of Filipinos occupying Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (or EDSA) are imbued in their collective consciousness as if they had actually been present during those fateful three days in late February of 1986.

Much like in Egypt and Tunisia today, the demonstrators were not simply a group of activists or students, but represented all classes and sectors of society. Working people, professionals, government officials, clergy members, men, women, youth; they were all present. Over 2,000,000 Filipino civilians spoke in a common voice calling for an end to the regime of Ferdinand Marcos and for definitive solutions to the lack of employment, landlessness, and poor access to basic needs and services.

We have faith in the possibility that Mubarak’s iron grip on the nation of Egypt will in fact be loosened and overcome and we also hope for genuine democracy in Tunisia with the departure of Ben Ali. We are not, however, naïve about the likelihood that the bourgeois interests of the old Egyptian and Tunisian elite will hijack the victory of the Egyptian and Tunisian people simply to recycle the old anti-people policies of the Mubarak and Ben Ali regimes under different names.

Despite the overthrow of Marcos Filipinos came into yet another round of repressive leaders representing the interests of the comprador/landlord class and Philippine elite puppeted by American Imperialism. Filipinos welcomed Corazon Aquino and her yellow-clad Laban Party with open arms, yet were met with the same repression and disregard for human rights that they faced during the Marcos dictatorship. The people’s struggle in the Philippines continues to this day and so shall the struggles of the Egyptian and Tunisian peoples.

Regardless of the immediate outcome of the current demonstrations we are convinced that Egyptians, Tunisians, Filipinos and all oppressed people of the world will continue undaunted in their quest for liberation until genuine freedom has been won. Long Live International Solidarity! ###

 

San Francisco State University Filipino Student Organizations Stand in Solidarity with Student Led Strikes in the Philippines.

The League of Filipino Students – SFSU Chapter, the Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor, and Kappa Psi Epsilon Filipina Sorority send a message of support to the student led strikes against budget cuts to public higher education in the Philippines.

BAYAN-USA-NORCAL is always proud to see our youth and student member organizations, along with our fellow Filipino American allies, support struggles in the Philippines!

CALL TO ACTION: Online Demonstration for Peace in Korea – Sun 11/28 and Wed 12/1

Saturday, November 27, 2010

 

 

President Obama is sending the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington (carrying 75 warplanes and a crew of over 6000) and other warships for additional war-games with the South Korean military beginning this Sunday, November 28.

Please read the following fact sheet that outlines the current situation, key facts and historical context to this ongoing armed conflict. Click here to download the factsheet.

This only escalates the already tense situation on the Korean peninsula and brings us dangerously closer to an all-out war.

And the blogosphere is already full of hate-mongering rhetoric calling for “retaliation” after the tragic incident on Yeonpyeong Island earlier this week.

Two civilians and two South Korean soldiers have died.  We say: NO MORE LOST LIVES.

We need all those who stand for peace to call for deescalation on the Korean peninsula and an immediate end to the U.S.-South Korean war games.

On Sunday, November 28, from 12 noon to 3 pm EST (9 am to 12 noon PST) and Wednesday, December 1 from 7 pm to 10 pm EST (4pm to 7 pm PST)

Join the National Campaign to End the Korean War (www.endthekoreanwar.org) in a coordinated online demonstration!

1. Barrage the White House and State Department with emails and urge President Obama and State Secretary Clinton to immediately stop the joint U.S.-South Korean war maneuvers, and sign a Peace Treaty to end the state of war that has existed for sixty years on the Korean peninsula.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
http://contact-us.state.gov

2. Post replies on online media sites and blogs where they are discussing the issue and beat back the war-mongering rhetoric with calls for de-escalation and a peaceful resolution.  Refer to the attached factsheet for talking points. Some suggested sites (and their Twitter accounts) are:

• CNN (Twitter: @cnn)
• The New York Times (Twitter: @nytimes)
• The Washington Post (Twitter: @washingtonpost)
• The Huffington Post (Twitter: @huffingtonpost AND @huffpostpol)
• NPR (Twitter: @npr)
• BBC News (Twitter: @BBCBreaking AND @BBCNews AND @BBC_HaveYourSay)
• Yahoo! News (Twitter: @YahooNews)
• Voice of America (Twitter: @VOA_News)
• ABC News (Twitter: @abcnews)
• Foreign Policy (Twitter: @FP_Magazine)
• Reuters (Twitter: @Reuters)
• Associated Press (Twitter: @AP)
• Politico (Twitter: @politico)

3.  Post links to articles calling for diplomacy on listserves, blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Some suggested articles are:

• “North Korea’s Consistent Message to the U.S.”
by former President Jimmy Carter in The Washington Post, November 24, 2010

• “Retaliation, Retaliation”
by Paul Liem of the Korea Policy Institute, Nov 25, 2010

• “Crisis in Korea?”
by John Feffer, Co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus in The Huffington Post, Nov 23,2010

• Obama’s Only Choice on North Korea
by Tim Shorrock in the Daily Beast, Nov 24, 2010

• “Crisis in Korea?” Tim Shorrock: Direct Talks With North Korea Are the Only Answer to End Korean War
Tim Shorrock on Democracy Now, Nov 24, 2010

• “A Return Trip to North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Complex”
by Siegfried S. Hecker, Nov 22, 2010

• ““Review U.S. Policy toward North Korea””
by Bob Carlin and John Lewis in The Washington Post, Nov 22, 2010

4. Change your Facebook and Twitter pictures with the “One Corea” image. You can also use this image for your own blog or website. Click here to download the image. (Helpful Facebook tip: Don’t forget to adjust the thumbnail size after you change your picture)

5. Have Twitter? Use the hashtag #koreanpeace in your tweets to make this a trending topic. You can also donate a tweet (click here): I stand for peace on the Korean peninsula. It’s time to end the 60 yr old Korean war. #koreanpeace http://endthekoreanwar.org/

6. Have Facebook? Donate a status update: I stand for peace on the Korean peninsula. It’s time to end the 60 yr old Korean War. Learn more at http://endthekoreanwar.org

7. Tweet your elected officials and other world leaders about the escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula and demand an immediate halt to the U.S.-South Korean war games.

• Look for you Members of Congress on Twitter. Click here to look for their twitter accounts.

• U.S. President Barack Obama (@barackobama), the White House (@whitehouse) and the U.S. Department of State (@StateDept).

• South Korean Blue House (@BluehouseKorea) and the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade (@mofatkr)

• United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon (@secgen) and the United Nations (@UN)

11/29/10 – The Palestinian Youth Network: “The Only Peace That Israel Wants is the Last Piece of Palestine: The Liberation of Our Land and People is Non-Negotiable”

Jessica Antonio, BAYAN-USA-NORCAL Regional Coordinator will be there to support this event on behalf of BAYAN-USA-NORCAL and Armael Malinis of Anakbayan-EB will be sitting on the panel to discuss Philippine-Palestinian solidarity.  If you’re in or near the east bay on Monday night, this should prove to be a lively discussion on a myriad of subjects regarding the discourse of the liberation of Palestine.  Don’t miss out!

Berkeley, CA: "The Only Peace That Israel Wants is the Last Piece of Palestine: The Liberation of Our Land and People is Non-Negotiable"

Join The Palestinian Youth Network in Observing the International Day of Solidarity With The Palestinian People  “The Only Peace That Israel Wants is the Last Piece of Palestine: The Liberation of Our Land and People is Non-Negotiable” …A Panel of Bay Area Youth Organizers: Loubna Qutami Nadeen El Shorafa Shoaib Kamil Armael Malinis Nancy Hernandez Monday, November 29th, 2010 UC Berkeley Boalt Hall, Room 100 7PM endorsed by: Al Awda – The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Anak Bayan East Bay, Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), BAYAN USA, The Bay Area Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid (BACEIA), General Union of Palestine Students SFSU (GUPS), Justice for Palestinians San Jose, NorCal Friends of Sabeel, Muslim Student Association Berkeley (MSA), Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT), San Francisco Women in Black, Seventh Native American Generation (SNAG), Students for Justice in Palestine Berkley (SJP), United States Palestinian Communities Network (USPCN) For more information about the PYN International visit www.pal-youth.org For information about or to co-sponsor the Bay Area event email activities@pal-youth.org Check it out on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=108082909260544