The Plight of a Liberal Arts Major

This is a cross-post from the NC AFL-CIO

The Raleigh News & Observer has accused Republican state lawmakers of treating jobless workers “more as enemies than victims,” calling, in a recent editorial, their proposal to enact devastating cuts to our state’s unemployment insurance system “petty, hurtful and unnecessary.”

“It will take a toll on families dependent on those benefits to stay in their homes and to put food on the table. And it seems to be advancing as the legislature prepares to begin its long session at the end of this month.” – News & Observer, 1/9/2013

The plan, which was hatched in secret meetings between Republican leaders and the N.C. Chamber of Commerce with zero public debate or input by jobless workers or advocates for the unemployed, was revealed before Christmas and voted out of committee (earlier this month).

The Chamber’s plan is to use the fact that North Carolina’s unemployment trust fund must repay $2.5 billion it had to borrow from Washington to cover claims during the Great Recession as an excuse to cut benefits for jobless workers. The cuts are steep – a 35% cut to the maximum weekly benefit, reducing the duration of benefits from 26 weeks to a few as 12, changing the formula for how benefits are calculated, and imposing repeated waiting weeks before benefits kick in.

As George Wentworth of the National Employment Law Project said after the committee meeting, “No state has ever cut their maximum benefit so severely.”

In fact, such severe cuts defeat the entire purpose of unemployment insurance as (a) partial wage replacement to keep jobless workers afloat and searching for work and (b) a stabilizer for the economy.

As the News & Observer noted that it doesn’t have to be this way:

“Republicans in the General Assembly do not have to do this. The rush to pay off the debt is foolhardy if it means that families in this state who are trying to recover from a financial setback they could not have anticipated will themselves be set back, again.” – News & Observer, 1/9/2013

Read more of the editorial here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/01/09/2594382/kicking-the-unemployed-while-theyre.html

(Photo: csmonitor.com)

The Congress of South African Trade Unions is shocked at the answer given in the National Assembly on 14 December 2012 by Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi, in response to an MP‘s question about the money spent on renovations to the residential homes of ministers and deputy ministers in the 2012-12 financial year.

He revealed that a total of R65 million had been spent. This included R15.076 million on a single Cape Town house for Rural Development Minister Gugile Nkwinti, R10.673 million on an overhaul to a house for deputy Transport Minister Lydia Chikunga, and R4.978 million on upgrades to a home allocated to Agriculture Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson.

In a country with 36% unemployment and in which 40% of workers – 6 million – live on less than R10 a day, and when there are so many backlogs in service delivery to undo the racialised inequalities we inherited from the apartheid era, COSATU cannot see any justification for spending such massive amounts on house renovations, when there are so many far more urgent claims on public money!

via Politicsweb – Ministerial residence renovation costs shocking – COSATU – PARTY.

Related articles

• The ANC’s imagined and real enemies: ‘Creeping counter-revolution’ vs. creeping scandals (dailymaverick.co.za)
• South Africa Tensions Mount Over Job Dispair (everything-pr.com)
• The bitter fruits of SA’s liberation (iol.co.za)
• The ANC’s latest enemy, unmasked (dailymaverick.co.za)
• Cosatu and Agri-SA in farm strike stand-off (southafricanews.wordpress.com)
• NUM, the incredible vanishing union; Cosatu in the danger zone (dailymaverick.co.za)
• Western Cape farmworkers’ protest ‘politically motivated’ – Agri SA (southafricanews.wordpress.com)
• No agricultural wage deal yet, not even in Clanwilliam – Agri SA (southafricanews.wordpress.com)

Democrats take over House and Senate in 2007

From CNS News.

Excerpt:

The number of Americans age 16 or older who decided not to work or even to seek a job increased by 8,332,000 to a record 88,839,000 in President Barack Obama’s first term, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At the same time, the number of retired workers collecting Social Security increased by only 4,234,480.

The increase in Americans opting out of the labor force during Obama’s first term resulted in a decrease in the labor force participation rate from 65.7 percent in January 2009, the month Obama was first inaugurated, to 63.6 percent in December 2012, the latest month reported. Before Obama took office, the labor force participation rate had not been as low as 63.6 percent since 1981, the year President Ronald Reagan took over from President Jimmy Carter.

To be in the labor force a person must either have a job or actively sought one in the previous four weeks.

When Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, there were 80,507,000 American civilians age 16 or older who did not have a job or seek one. In December 2012, there were 88,839,000—thus, the increase of 8,332,000.

In early 2007, the unemployment rate under George W. Bush was around 4.4%. The media at the time was not impressed with such a “high” amount of unemployment. Starting in mid-2007, we saw a huge spike in unemployment, just after the Democrats took over the House and Senate. The media is now thrilled that unemployment is now much less of a problem than it was under that evil capitalist George W. Bush, so it’s not worth reporting on.

Related posts

• 73% of the new jobs created in the last 5 months were government jobs
• Unemployment rate is 10.5%, counting those who have stopped job-hunting
• Obama: private sector job creation is “doing fine”
• New jobs report: unemployment rises and 70% chance of recession
• Economy improving? New CBO report says that real unemployment is at 15%
• 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month

At this time, I won’t elaborate here with a detailed analysis of Nicole’s various postings to the Imagine2050 website. Although they vary in the particulars, these articles conform marvelously to the general patterns that I described in my earlier entries, most notably the piece entitled “Meet Jesse Sanes and Rebecca Poswolsky: Open Borders Activists, Devout Followers of Betsy Hartmann, Fledgling Smear Artists.”  Suffice to say that in all her recent blogs there is no thread of argument that was not already addressed in detail in that earlier critique of JessBecky.  Nicole’s submissions are also devoid of the elements of respectful discourse as they would ideally be practiced among progressive people with differing perspectives. Of course, my earlier piece was based not just on my analysis of the work of those two fledgling smear artists, but my own experiences witnessing specific events, observations which sharply contradicted with the accounts offered by Rebecca Poswolsky. I was there at the time of the events she reported, and I know that what she wrote was not true.  With Nicole’s work, I have read enough to know that the same strategies and principles apply. As in the work of JessBecky, Nicole’s attacks focus on attributing evil hatreds to those with whom she disagrees, not on the real and tangible concerns they raise.

Oh, well.

As I have stated before, I had hoped to add no more names to the list of young people specifically identified here and publicly branded by their association with Hampshire College’s program of character assassination.  In my November entry, I specifically mentioned the ongoing activity of a former Hampshire student who may or may not have known of my protest last May and the posts I had offered since that time. So here is a new question for some ambitious Hampshire College journalism student:  Did Nicole Loeffler Gladstone continue to contribute these more recent smear attacks in full knowledge that her online reputation could be tarnished in this fashion?

I don’t know much about the algorithms used by modern search engines such as Google and Yahoo.  But I do know this; while Betsy Hartmann and Hampshire College are relatively safe from exposure due to the high volume of material that has been produced by or about them, individual Hampshire College students have far less prodigious online histories.  Post a blog about Betsy Hartmann on a small unadvertised blog, and that modest entry to the online universe will take a place in line behind the hundreds, easily thousands, of already existing entries.  But post a similar piece and tag it with the name of a less-prominent activist, and it could easily rise to the top of the list of results.  That is certainly what happened when I posted my critique of Jesse Sanes and Rebecca Poswolsky, as you can confirm readily enough with a quick Google search of their names.

Nicole Loeffler Gladstone, on the other hand, falls somewhere in between. Her name pulls up a few pages of hits in various categories, some having to do with her POBAFS/smear campaign contributions, most having to do with her work as a dancer and choreographer.  This entry might not come up near the top of the list, although anyone researching her background in depth will have the chance to learn about my disagreements with the POBAFS (Pro-Open-Borders/Anti-Free-Speech) agenda and the training of smear artists as practiced at her Alma Mater. And Nicole’s participation in these attacks might even be seen as a positive experience by some in the artistic dance field where she is working to build her professional reputation. If she ever needs to supplement that creative work with a day job, however, she will have no assurance of finding that perspective in the minds of employers sifting through piles of resumes.

You see, I really can’t answer the question of how prominent this post will be in those search results until after I have posted it, nor can I say with certainty how it will influence those who might consider hiring or collaborating with her.  What I can tell you is that I submit this post with some regret. In November, I had offered what I consider to be fair warning to the people that who are paying attention (there was indeed a flurry of new hits in subsequent weeks), and I hope that they would have had the decency to contact Nicole and ensure that she knew that the connection between Imagine2050 and Hampshire College had come under some unflattering scrutiny.  If someone were able to convince me that Nicole’s posts since November were submitted without her knowledge of my own activities challenging the Imagine2050 sleaze factor, I would consider taking this particular post down.

I could be readily swayed on this decision, for I can’t confirm that she had seen my reference in November to a past Hampshire College student.  I not only referred to that past Hampshire student but provided sufficient details so that anyone who had read the post could easily identify her. It would have taken just a minute or so to identify that former student on the Imagine2050 website, and Nicole’s contact information is readily available online. With a minimum of effort and time, in other words, they could have informed her of the protest, of my critique of Jesse and Rebecca, and of the fact that, for reasons that have not yet been pinned down conclusively, neither Jesse, Rebecca nor any other Hampshire-associated individuals had posted material to Imagine2050 in the intervening months. I should think that people reading my post of November would have gone out of their way to ensure that Nicole was fully informed of the potential consequences of further smear attacks in this venue. Whether they did make such an effort is a question that some ambitious Hampshire College journalism student could answer more easily than I could.

In the end I think it’s pretty unlikely Nicole submitted these additional posts without knowing the risk she was taking with her online persona, but in fairness I will offer to remove this post, while the viewership activity is relatively small, if I am provided with information that persuades me that she had not known of my own challenges to these Hampshire-related activities.  If she did so without the benefit of knowing what has transpired in the matter of past and present Hampshire students, Imagine2050, and the material posted here at progressivepopulationist.org, then the grownups at Hampshire College really owe her an apology.

On the other hand, if she continued to submit in that full knowledge, I have to give her credit for being courageous, if not necessarily wise.  Until I am convinced otherwise I will let this post stand as is, and Nicole should look elsewhere, including in the mirror, before blaming me for whatever follows, including the impediments she potentially faces in her future attempts to find employment and build partnerships in her various endeavors.  If that is indeed the case, Nicole, that you were fully warned, then you have hung this albatross around your own neck  All that I have done is opened the windows to let the world know how badly it stinks.

Up next, KMB is welcome to respond.

(Photo by Pedro Castillo/LaVoz).

According to figures compiled by Poland’s Central Statistical Office (GUS), 44.4 percent of Poles between the ages of 25 and 34 were living with their parents in 2011.

This marks a rise of some 8 percent since 2005, with an estimated 2.8 million young adults living with their parents in 2011.

The figures put Poland on a similar level to crisis-stricken Italy, where according to Eurostat, 44.7 percent of young adults still live with their parents.

Other notably high proportions include Slovakia (56.4 percent), Bulgaria (55.7 percent), Malta (51.9 percent), Greece (50.7 percent), and Portugal (46.3 percent).

In Spain, where the unemployment level is 25 percent, young adults have been dubbed ‘generation ni-ni’ echoing the endemic phenomenon of neither study nor work (ni estudian, ni trabajan).

Speaking with the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily, Dr Malgorzata Sikorska, a sociologist from the University of Warsaw, stressed financial reasons for the predicament of Poland’s young adults.

“They cannot afford independence, they don’t have any credit, they can’t afford to either buy or rent a home,” she said.

[...]

DO YOU WANT TO READ MORE? Click here for POLSKIE RADIO !

Poverty is the lack of basic human needs, such as clean water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter, because of the inability to afford them. About 1.7 billion people live in absolute poverty.

Woman sitting with her newborn on footpath and looking for donations, Photo by Yasir Kazmi, Karachi, Pakistan.

Poverty is not only about the numbers. It’s about the stark realities of daily life for millions in Pakistan. In Pakistan Poverty has many dimensions. Pakistan, ranked 141 of 182 in the United Nation’s Human Poverty Index, faces complex development challenges and is characterized by major inequalities in income and access to basic services.  Poverty remains a serious concern in Pakistan, where the per capita gross national income (GNI) is US$520. Poverty rates, which had fallen substantially in the 1980s and early 1990s, started to rise again towards the end of the decade. According to the latest figures, as measured by Pakistan’s poverty line, 32.6 percent of the population is poor. More importantly, differences in income per capital across regions have persisted or widened as have gender gaps in education and health. Poor countries are also infected because of the so-called economics reforms like downsizing and rightsizing, concomitant the unemployment and increase in the number of poor.

Woman sitting on footpath with her new born and looking for donation, Photo by Yasir Kazmi, Karachi, Pakistan.

One of the most humiliating and difficult profession to adopt, is beggary. It needs great courage and tolerance to accept disdain, contempt, insulting remarks and abuse from other fellow beings. But once these absurdities are taken for granted, they drift in human genes like a parasite and travels along with generation after generation.

Among 170 million citizen of Pakistan 25 million are professional beggars this figure is alarming. It is increasing day by day. The majority of beggars are Afghan refugees including many who lost there limbs in war.

Smiling Boy with his younger sister looking for donation, Photo by Yasir Kazmi, Karachi, Pakistan.

These beggars live in a well organized community by adhering to their own custom, rules and regulation. This community also indulges in heinous crimes of Kidnapping newly born and under age children to use them for there profession.

Mostly people adopt this profession because they think it’s an easy way to earn money.

Beggars are having a road business in cities. Beggars are mostly founded in main markets, railway stations, bus stands and the majority of beggars founds on traffic signal. Some time there behavior is very irritating for that people really hate and avoided them.

One of the main reasons for increasing beggary is increasing poverty. According of Asian Development Bank (ADB) the main causes of poverty in Pakistan are, poor governance, economic determinants, social determinants and environmental degradation.

The Idea for Help poor prestigiously.

On each and every signal we should install a small box for water with surf or any other cleaning material and a few wipers. Two to three kids should be assigned to each signal with one official to collect money. All these kids should be provided uniforms and they should have standardized times for their duty. There should also be a standardized system for distribution of money to each child at the end of their shifts. Each child should also join the team by filing paper work, and it should be mandatory for all of them to attend school in the morning. Through this effort we can at least try to eradicate poverty and beggars from the roads of Pakistan.

Implementation

We need to involve our corporate sector as well as individuals who will sponsor the idea and develop it further e.g. Mineral water companies could install coolers on particular signals and a team could serve water in the afternoons and charge a small fee per glass. I know I will receive comments that these suggestions are contrary to child labor laws, to which my answer is that it is better than beggary.

Yet many things which were arguably more meaningful remained unchanged. Despite supposed economic good news and a degree of political stability the majority of Filipinos still faced record joblessness, stagnant earnings, rising prices and growing poverty. Domestic manufacturing and agriculture continued their long-term decline. Corruption did not measurably decrease and old disagreeable political ways continued such as in the run-up
to the 2013 mid-term election and even on the part of the administration. State-sponsored human rights violations go on as does the militarist approach to the conflict with Maoist
rebels. If anything, there has been a marked regression in foreign policy with the Philippines increasingly subordinated to the United States (US) agenda in the region.

The administration and its supporters have played up the onset of ‘good governance’ in the country and supposed economic progress. However the two-and-a-half years so far of profits without prosperity, persistence of undemocratic politics, and dearth of fundamental pro-people reforms has affirmed the country’s duality: a Philippines for the rich and another for the poor. There is still no development and economic gains are shallow or merely financial and speculative. There has also not yet been anything approaching the major changes needed to improve the country’s political system.

The signs instead are of an elite-dominated ruling system that is consolidating after the weakening of its political institutions by another successful ouster movement in 2001 and by nearly constant destabilization over the succeeding decade. Alarmingly for the status quo, these created opportunities for progressive and even revolutionary forces in the country to steadily advance. But the conditions for dissatisfaction and dissent remain and any
intensification in 2013, whether in the real economy or the political landscape, would easily disrupt the current fragile stability.

My mind has not exactly been blown, but I will move on from this mini-rant.

I moved to Buffalo for grad school. I’ve assessed that school is really the only reason anyone moves to Buffalo. My biggest mistake thus far was neglecting to search for a job right away because I was sure I could get one anytime I wanted. When I wanted to pick up a second job in Vermont, it took me about two weeks and a single interview to find myself a cozy new place to spend my free time. About the time I started to run out of money, I decided it was time to look. After actually running out of money and starting to dig a financial pit with my parents, I’m fairly sure that was a bad move. As much as I briefly loved being unemployed, I’ve come to hate it.

Unfortunately, I hate looking for work even more at this point. I’m so tired of the process.

I hate calling people to arrange interviews. I hate applying for positions I know I would absolutely despise. The other day, I completely ignored one otherwise reasonable ad because they were looking for hosts to work 20 hours over two days. I know I should have applied anyway, but the thought of working somewhere as potentially unregulated as previous restaurants I’ve worked at (the biggest problem usually being a lack of necessary breaks) was just so repulsive that I couldn’t resort to that first thing I hate: calling a stranger to ask for an interview. I hate stopping by for open interviews because I usually read about them around 2:30pm the day they’re happening, and I’m still sitting in bed in sweat pants at least half an hour’s work away from being presentable.

Nonetheless, I’ve been sucking it up as much as I can, which is not always as much as I should. I’m still somehow throwing out enough job applications to avoid total self hatred. I’ve sent out so many emails that I’ve developed a template. It’s terrible.

The worst part is probably knowing that it won’t get any less terrible.

The National Runaway Switchboard estimates that on any given night there are approximately 1.3 million homeless youth living unsupervised on the streets, in abandoned buildings, with friends or with strangers.  Homeless youth are at a higher risk for physical abuse, sexual exploitation, mental health disabilities, substance abuse, and death.  It is estimated that 5,000 unaccompanied youth die each year as a result of assault, illness, or suicide!

The death of any young person is tragic. Kevin M. Ryan wrote in his blog that he had attended the funeral of a young man he’s known most of his life, who died unexpectedly in his sleep at the age of 21 a few days after Christmas.  He relates how, at the funeral, the church was packed with hundreds of family and friends.

While reading these sad and tragic stories I couldn’t help but think of what might have happened; how these precious lives could have been saved and changed for the better, if only someone who attended one of these funerals would have stepped up and helped them. Maybe they too, would be alive today and be following their dreams.

Over the past five years my wife and I have opened our home to a dozen men, women and children who were in need of a home. I’m happy to report that today they all have homes of their own and doing well.

Reading articles like this should cause a righteous rage to well up inside of every Christian’s heart and spur them to action.  I pray that more people will step up and help more of these vulnerable people instead of attending their funerals.

“I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.” (Matthew 25:45)

Narrative feature piece written about a year ago for a class. Published with permission.

She stands her ground, as a strong wind blows in from beyond the plywood doors of their little home. Erlinda Lacsamana tucks in his school uniform, careful not to stain his shirt with mud from their plastic coated floor, still soggy from a recent flood.

‘’Jorich, humarap ka sa akin.”

A mocha-skinned chubby little boy of Indian features – so much like his grandfather’s – turns around to face her. Her apo. She will make sure his pants are neatly pressed (for the fourth and final time) and that his books are in his bag.

She will hand him a packet of biscuits, for lunch. Give him some candy, to share among friends. She will drop a few coins into his little pouch, just enough for his jeepney ride back home.

They will walk together, lola and alaga, as they often do, for a kilometre or so to Aurora Quezon Elementary School, where Jorich, 11, is in sixth grade. It pains her sometimes, to walk, not because it hurts – morning exercise does wonders for her back, though the pangs of arthritis ripple through her knees and up her shins – but to see her bright little grandson sweat, even with the little towel on his back.

Next to him, under her equally loving gaze are the Twins, Ronnel and Rommel Deluna, both 12 years old and a few hours apart. Neither are her direct kin, but she’s taken them in anyway, and now treats them as her own. Their parents are alive, but long gone.

Jorich’s parents might as well be gone too. Foster (grand)parenting is all the rage these days.

Gazing at all three in front of her, she sighs. Age and fatigue have wrought deeper creases over her old forehead. She’s managed to take on more of a burden through the years, and seems powerless to shake off that impulse to care – the way mothers and grandparents do – perhaps too much.

She doesn’t know how long she can keep up with this, but she will stand her ground.

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Jorich, the twins, and their closest friends Renzo Manapsal and Jaycee Seguin are ready to go. The five are inseparable, the way kids often are, especially those ripped away from their parental moorings.

On their way to school at 5:30 in the morning, the kids dodge vehicles with the dexterity of little soldiers, or nimble elves, engaging in feats worthy of an Olympic medal in a more perfect, less prejudiced, world.

If they happen to forget their notebooks or a pair of slippers, they race back home in seamless sprinter form, barefoot, and return with a speed that would leave Roger Bannister breathless. Sometimes they have to jump over hurdles – pedicabs – or slide under barriers – scaffolding. But often their athletic ability comes handy only to duck away from a traffic officer in time to beat the red light when in a hurry.

On the streets, such stunts are likely to get them a slap on the lap or a whistle of alarm from a security guard or traffic enforcer. Sometimes it even earns them a few nights at a social welfare  centre or a children’s home, when social workers do occasional ‘’sweeps’’ to pick up vagrant youth off private property, like parking lots.

Then Lola Erlinda and the other parents must come to retrieve their children, explaining to authorities how they simply lost sight of them, again, when they run off sometimes…

To Taft. For here they beg, or plead, or outright pester, passersby for extra cash. Jaycee leads their little crew, often without Erlinda’s permission, but they usually get their way.

From old ladies in back alleys to St. Scho grads fresh out of school, Jaycee can tell between the stingy ones and those more likely to deal  the kids an open hand, who cough up just enough pisos for them scamper away to Piso-Net , a makeshift internet shop complete with coin-in machines, for their daily dose of Facebook and gaming, at ten pesos an hour  (half the price of the big chain alternatives).

Hey, at least it ain’t drugs.

But these feisty little chaps are more than internet afficionados. Short, dark and cute, Jaycee has the makings of either a mafia lord or a national athlete. On top of hatching clever schemes to evade the MMDA man the next time he comes ‘round, he’s also a breadwinner of sorts. At least a few times a week, he makes it a point to buy groceries, canned goods – and on a lucky day, a few kilos of rice too – for his friends and family: his absentee father and his pregnant mother, mostly jobless, plus his four siblings.

Where Jaycee is the epitome of small but terrible (if incredibly loving and lovable, or so he likes to think of himself), his closest friend, Renzo, is tall, mature – a peacemaker of sorts, with a level-headed demeanour that comes into play whenever jests within their little barkada turn into outright fist fights. He just wishes they’d stop quarrelling over the pettiest of things.

Ang ayaw ko lang sa kanila pag nag-‘’ramrambulan’’ (nagaaway)sila… napipikon na ko minsan, iniiwan ko na lang sila. (I hate it when they fight…I lose my patience, so sometimes I just go away and leave them be).

Often those pettiest of things involve food. More than once he’s seen them wrestle over an ice cream cone.

What’s worse though, is what happens outside their clique, when street fights break out between the groups of troubled teens that roam these parts. It turns out Taft has rules of its own, with rival street gangs locked in regular disputes over ‘territory’ and ‘begging rights’.

It is for this reason that the kids distinguish among themselves the non- or ‘di-taga-ilog, where they reside, and the taga-ilog, where most gang members come from, whose families live by a small urban creek just a few blocks away from Jorich’s home. Some are members of  local crime syndicates, others aren’t, though few admit to being part of one.

They have street cred to protect, and the rules of the street dictate older teenagers steal money from younger ones – a deed dealt with a good beating or two – especially if the latter stray into an invisible boundary, or into an ‘enemy street’.

About a month ago in fact, some of them had chased the kids down, as they made their way out of Rizal Sports Complex after a short swim. One of Renzo’s cousins was beaten up the day before his birthday after a spat with another gang. So they ran.

At times like these, neither side can count on the sympathy of the local police force, who occasionally lump beggars together with more cold-blooded criminals, like snatchers. Renzo and the others understand. With their grimy hair and filthy shirts and penchant for breaking out into sudden sprints mid-sentence – who wouldn’t mistake them for crooks? But they’re only messy in the late afternoon, they insist, and the rest of the day they’re as neat and tidy as the kids from La Salle. Regular students. They just wish the cops were smart enough to make that distinction.

So every morning Erlinda makes sure their hair’s untangled, their uniforms crisp, their faces presentable, their auras impeccable, warning them again to try to avoid the gangs as best they can.

But she’d rather the gangs stay well away from her family. Especially the ones with sticks.

On Renzo’s left temple is a white round scar, a puncture wound he got from when he was three or four. At a stagnant little puddle down an alley that afternoon all those years ago, someone, for some reason, had jabbed him there with a stick.

He remembers only the warm blood gushing all the way down his chin, the squeals of his distraught mother, the warnings of his stern aunts, chiding him for straying beyond their sight, again.

But that was nothing.

When De La Salle University hosted the Philippine Bar Exams two years ago, the kids found themselves on the frontline, near McDonald’s: a free front seat view of the homemade bomb that ripped through a crowd of examinees, causing dozens of injuries. The kids looked on in horrified fascination. Lola Erlinda was horrified.

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The many dangers the children face in the big bad world are things Erlinda can only hope they’ve finally learned to avoid for themselves, so they don’t land into trouble – this time. For this she mutters silent novenas and regular exhortations for the kids to behave with all the persistence of a broken record.

And for good reason. If she had her way, Taft would be declared a no-go zone for under-18s.

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National traffic statistics don’t usually distinguish between ages of victims of car accidents beyond aggregate data, but the World Health Organisation estimates unwieldy cars kill 1.3 million people a year (a), more than malaria, and are a ‘’physical threat to children – one heightened by a lack of safe play spaces and pedestrian infrastructure such as sidewalks and crossings’’. They are “a leading single cause of death worldwide among people aged 15-29, and the second for those aged 5-14’’ (b) .

It’s easy to see why. Renzo: “yun mga kotse ang iingay, ayaw magbigayan… gusto nila sakupin nila ang lahat”” (The cars are loud, and rarely give each other way – they want to take over the whole street).

A cousin of his once got hit by a cab. He survived, as the way things tend to do around these parts. To survive would have been unusual, miraculous, extra-terrestrial even, elsewhere – that is, somewhere other than on Manila’s streets – or if awful accidents and their subsequent miracles happened only to the more affluent or better-connected. Now that would have grabbed headlines.

In these parts, to these children, it happens all the time. Madalas naman nangyayari, lagi may nasasagasaan.

After making sure his cousin was alive and kicking after a brief check-up at a public hospital, doctors and relatives alike dismissed his injuries as minimal and sent him home to finish his homework.

Okay, maybe not all the time. The kids on Taft are an outlier among WHO statistics. Run over by a bus, they rise again like the Resurrection – or more accurately, like flies immune to a good swatting. Parang langaw lang siya… tumayo, tumakbo ulit.

Pressed for time and with neither party willing to go through the expense and bureaucracy of a court of law – or the local barangay – the taxi driver offered his cousin’s family some cash. The cousin got biscuits and candy, for consolation. The damage to the cab probably wasn’t too bad anyway.

Then again, cars hurtling to crash into them at 200 kilometres an hour are the least of these children’s concerns. After all, it’s easy to get used to the chaos, after years of making public roads your only playground. Crashing cars and difficult cops and well-meaning social workers are things one can adjust to.

You never really get used to a broken family.

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Back home in Singgalong, Manila, Lola Erlinda moves on to her daily routine, cooking, cleaning, washing, cooking, reminding the children to stay out of trouble.

Their neighbourhood is relatively peaceful –  with clean-swept streets, a basketball court, even a commercial re-filler for clean drinking water. Security has also improved since their barangay tanods began their nightly rounds.

But while some homes are of decent quality, with electricity and running water – others, like Jaycee’s, are mere painted façades of the squalor within.

Erlinda’s family is one of the lucky ones, living on land she inherited from her in-laws, long dead. Indeed, with a refrigerator and a television, they seem pretty well off.

When the kids return from school, they rush straight to her: there, in a corner, hunched over her red basin, scrubbing furiously at a stain on one of their shirts. The wrinkles on her freckled fingers merge in sync with every squeeze of the creases of a pair of jeans, like the creases around her tired eyes that look up every now and then just to make sure the kids are still there. All accounted for. She squints in frustration. She doesn’t see as well as she used to – even with the brand new pair of discount prescription glasses she got from a sidewalk stall the other week. She looks again.

At the children. Then at the mirror across the room.

She is, by all accounts, a heavy lady. Voluptuous, even. Well-fed.

But the diseases of seniority, perhaps partly brought on by her weight, haven’t escaped her: high cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes, the whole trio. She’s had her cataracts removed, her cyst-crusted ovaries taken out in 2009.

She tires easily and still fears for her health, whispering poetically her chosen motto, ‘’Hindi mo masasabi… ang buhay ng tao ‘di ba?…” (It’s hard to pin down… this life, no?) How long will it last?

She’s determined to last as long as she can. She has work to do, and people who depend on her. She praises the excellent care she receives from Ospital ng Maynila, but still has to shell out more than a thousand pesos on medicines a month, a sum her family can barely afford as it is.

Good thing she knows where to go – and who to ask, ‘’para lang mabawasan yung gastusin’’ (just to cut back on expenses). The prescription meds she manages to get from a local politician (Congressman Amado Bagatsing) once a month, especially come election time, or from charities like the PCSO (Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office). For check-ups and medical emergencies, she relies on her health insurance (PhilHealth). She wouldn’t know what to do without them.

But her family is grateful.

Jorich can play, and study, and laugh.

But it hasn’t all been bright and cheery.

She remembers his mother, who died shortly after his birth.

She remembers the ‘’60s, when food was affordable and water and electricity bills combined cost them no more than a few hundred pesos a month. Back then Taft was more of a green swamp – of water spinach (kangkong) paddies and flowing water – than a concrete jungle and a stagnant canal. They used to get their water from a stream. Today that same creek would leave them all ill.

She remembers the old factory where she used to work, sewing bags and assorted handicrafts for export, treasuring the pension payments she had received, extending even a few years after it had closed down.

It was an age of abundance, but also of tragedy. Over the decades she’s been through martial law, endured earthquakes, survived typhoons and two devastating fires, one in 1968 and another in 1982, which wiped out their second floor..

Renaldo had been there all the way. They had married, made love, built their home from scratch, saved up what little they earned for the future, made sure their kids were on the straight and narrow path. Her sons had feared and loved him.

Today, today she is alone.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

On a framed picture on the wall next to the rattan bench is a slender man with a mustache. Erlinda’s husband, Renaldo de Luna, who died in 1998 of lung trouble.

For years he was a housepainter, a construction worker, a repairman – juggling other odd jobs in between – until the fumes and the fatigue finally killed him.

She had wondered why he left her so soon, leaving her to contend with fifteen grandchildren.

They had nine children too: three sons, three daughters, three who never made it. Most have been disappointments. She points to the girls as her only ‘’saving grace’, pinning all her hopes on them… and Jorich. She hopes he doesn’t end up like his father.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

Nine words precede a litany of an old woman’s grief:

“…Wala akong swerte sa mga anak – sa mga lalaki.’’ (My children have never brought me any luck – the men)

Here was Erlinda’s eldest, Marinato, unmarried, jobless, who scavenges for trash on the streets.

Here was Roberto, Jorich’s father, a 43-year-old reduced to begging for food or spare change from his own mother. A pedicab cycler by day, he comes home drunk at night – or doesn’t come home at all, having passed out on some sidewalk in advance.

’Wala ka bang ambisyon sa buhay mo?’’ (Have you no ambition?), Erlinda had asked him. She’d had enough.

He had dropped out of second year high school, running off with Jorich’s mother-to-be, who would die that December of 2001, seven months after giving birth.

He returned to school, and finished, finally graduating to take up Marine engineering at the Philippine Maritime Institute, only to drop out again, when his parents learned he’d spend his tuition money on drinking sessions with friends.

Roberto has since started to pull his life back together…

Now he attends night classes at a local TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority ) programme, which offers ‘’over’-age’’ students like him a chance to re-enrol where they stopped and get into vocational training, lured by promises of sure employment after a successful graduation.

…Erlinda says he still skips remedial sessions, and doubts he ever will.

‘’Nagpupursige naman ako sa buhay, pero…’’ (I’m doing the best I can, but…)

She makes a living doing laundry for whoever’s willing to accept her services. She sells cooked meals on the streets. She tends her small sari-sari ‘’store’’, a set of grilles by the front door, through which she peddles her humble wares – candies, Red Horse beer, San Mig Lite sell out quick, especially on Friday nights.

But she can’t hold a formal job (too old as she is to do much else), so Jorich’s aunt is the family’s life-line. A cook, she moved to Hong Kong this April and now sends money home. Minus the bills, minus the loan payments, minus the agency’s hefty placement fee, her family ends up with 3,000 pesos a month, at most – a sum Erlinda can barely stretch to fit their needs.

Pressed for cash, she’s often forced to take out loans – 5-6 style.

She feeds seven people, dividing among themselves their daily rations: a kilo and a half of rice, occasionally some boiled vegetables, rarely any meat, except hotdogs. The rest of the day they make do with cheap junk food and instant noodles. Erlinda knows this isn’t healthy. She feels even weaker than she used to.

Sometimes, she thinks, she’s too old for this.

Then the tears flow.

“… gusto ko na magpahinga (I want to rest…)

‘’Kung mawala ako, papaano ang mga bata?’’ (But what happens to the children when I’m gone?)

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

Renzo has plenty of experience with drugs and criminals. His father is one – or so they say – locked up for close to a decade. All five charges against him have been dropped, but he won’t be out until next December. He doesn’t understand why his aunts and grandparents hate him. They say he’s a drug trafficker, but his mother says he earned a decent living, even helping them build their home.

Now his older brother must work on less than minimum wage on an irregular contract. His mother is unemployed, and often sick: with blood clots that regularly break out all over her body. These days, he spends much of his time with Lola Erlinda and his cousins. He isn’t sure how long his family will hold together, but at least he’s better off than the twins.

Ronnel and Rommel’s mother was a shabu addict who abandoned them. Like Renzo, their father is also in prison, in Palawan.

When they came knocking at her door, Erlinda first tried to send them to a children’s home, to Boys Town, where they escaped soon after. She has since decided to let them stay.

They, Jorich and the others aren’t out on the streets, just yet. But Erlinda has seen so many – too many – children lose their way. Their parents gone to who knows where, their futures reduced to a pile of drugs and glue-sniffing.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

Erlinda is determined not to let it come to that.

Her neighbours sometimes chide her for taking on too much. So what? Erlinda has assumed responsibility for these children, and will raise them the way she knows only she can.

After all, she isn’t alone. There’s old Ester Real, 62, never married and single for life, who also happens to be Lola Erlinda’s husband’s cousin (read that again), and lives just two blocks away. Her back now twisted nearly forty five degrees by the early stages of osteoporosis, she has raised two branches of her clan since childhood. Then there’s Liza Hilario, whom she probably has never met, but whose life would resonate with her own: an old matriarch who has single-handedly ensured the survival of fifteen of her relatives – children and adult alike – in a cramped shack by a creek in Binondo.

With absentee parents on informal wages having to juggle two or more jobs a day, neither state support nor money to pay for child care, and a reliance on relatives to pick up the slack when they’re gone – thanks to the final vestiges of family solidarity still present in Filipino culture – overworked grannies like Erlinda are left to pick up the pieces when things fall apart. Like they so often do.

But it wasn’t always this way. Must grannies always swoop down to save the young ones, from themselves?

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

Children and the elderly are almost universally regarded as the most vulnerable members of society.

It’s a familiar refrain, one sung on the streets of poverty-stricken communities the world over. It’s a familiar story, one of young and old, of wasted talent and dreams long hidden away and lost by the ravages of old age.

Such stories expose the lives of generations in distress, of families on the verge of breakdown. Yet it is often the oldest and the youngest who bear the full brunt of tragedy, of poverty, of ‘’loneliness, neglect and abuse, and suffering from drug addiction and many other medical problems… children are homeless, separated from their families, are out of school, and work to survive by begging, selling flowers, cigarettes or newspapers, sweat shop working and prostituting.’’

“’Their lives are characterised by domestic and sexual abuse, dangerous and abominable working conditions, exploitation, drug and substance abuse, HIV/AIDS and problems with law enforcement’’, Ma. Teresa Tuason, associate professor of Psychology at the University of North Florida, points out (e).

But this is Erlinda’s story. She stands her ground.

At a time when others look forward to quiet retirement and a decent pension, this woman is gripped, no longer by fear for her own insecurity, but for fear of what might happen when she’s gone to her hapless posterity left to fend for themselves. Erlinda harbours no illusions. She has no savings to her name to pass on to the kids. And while she has that pension, she has no steady income, and knows she can’t keep relying on her daughter’s trickle of remittances from abroad.

She doesn’t expect any of the kids’ parents to return any time soon – nor, come to think of it, would she want that. They have all had enough trouble, thank you very much. The least she can hope for is to last long enough to see the children graduate, or, if providence allows her a few more years, maybe land decent jobs. To see them through.

But the worries mount, and the question lingers like the dull pain in her right knee.

Paano yung mga bata? (What about the children?)

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

She turns to god for answers.

Every first Wednesday and every first Friday of every month, she goes to Baclaran Church. A pilgrimage she has offered to the Blessed Mother of God after surviving her ovary operation three years ago.

Every afternoon she prays at a small shrine on the first floor of her neighbour’s house, next to the sari-sari store, where her community hosts regular prayer services.

Every day she bows down to her own little shrine, where plastic flowers and agua bendita and rosaries draped over wooden saints occupy a prominent place in a corner of their home. She lights a candle for good measure.

She prays for her community, sliding fast down the ladder of social breakdown. Drugs. Alcohol. Marital Abuse. The lot.

She prays for her health. Keep me well, oh Lord, just long enough to see this through.

Above all, she prays for the children.

Kahit anong sikap ko sa mga bata… dasal na lang ng dasal (No matter how hard I work for the children…I have to keep praying)

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

But she doesn’t stop there.

In the face of what development experts and social scientists dub ‘’vulnerabilities’’ and the rest of us call plain malas (bad luck) – crime, disease , depression, pollution, landlessness, joblessness, hopelessness, child abuse, marital abuse, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, underage pregnancy, juvenile delinquency, persistent poverty, and all the familiar trappings of life in an urban slum… they do have one asset. They have each other.

The experts call this social capital, wealth measured not by the money in people’s pockets but by the strength of their relationships. People in Erlinda’s community call it common sense. We know this by intuition – those with very little in the scorecard of earthly possessions have little else to depend on but each other.

Erlinda knows this by the wisdom wrought of her 64 years. When born into a climate of chaos, fear, alienation and anxiety, children grow up into adults likely to find themselves on the driver’s seat of destitution, revving up the same cycle that trapped generations before them there in the first place (c, d). When reared in a supportive environment, with the necessary resources and a network of upright friends to draw on in times of weakness – and perhaps most vital of all, are given a reason to dream and take control over their destinies – children are that much closer to a decent future.

The same research lays out education as a way out of poverty and the act of valuing education as empowering in itself.

But such fanciful notions are miles away from daily life at Barangay 733, Dagonoy, Singgalong, where urban decay and broken families stand as unwitting testaments to the despair that cuts across the generational divide.

It is for this reason that Erlinda goes out of her way to remind them all of hope.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

It’s early evening, and she’s teaching the children English. She needs to learn some of it herself.

Pinning her hopes on their education, Erlinda drills into their heads her unquestioned faith in its ability to get them out of poverty. “Pakiusap ko sa kanila…Magsikap kayo. Magaral kayo ng mabuti.’’ (I tell them…persevere, do your best. Study well.)

She isn’t sure they got the message. Not tonight at least. Jorich and Renzo seem to be doing well, but Jaycee often cuts class, and the twins are lagging well behind.

Erlinda sighs. They’re hungry again, or sleepy. Either way, the lesson ends abruptly. They will try again tomorrow.

She worries about the twins. Their parents never bothered to send them to school. Now both are 12 years old – about as old as Jorich – and should be in grade 6 by now. Both are five year levels behind. Rommel can at least spell. Ronnel still can’t read. Their teachers won’t let them skip years until they grasp the basics.

Rommel – the one with the red birthmark on his right forearm – pushes his brother away. The kids quarrel a lot, even if they spend the night asleep in each other’s arms, with little else to share between themselves but narratives of loss and separation; their bright dreams – one wants to become a seaman, the other, a teacher – bound up by darker shades of reality. They are parentless, anchorless on the shores of who knows where.

An old woman is all that keeps them afloat.

So every night, like tonight, Erlinda teaches them, reads to them, guides their small hands as they trace the words together, letter, by letter, by letter. Whatever it takes. For the children.

FOOTNOTES

a. World Health Organization, Decade of Action for Road Safety, 2011–2020: Saving millions of lives, WHO, 2011, <www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/publications/ road_traffic/saving_millions_lives_en.pdf>

b. World Health Organization, Global Status Report on Road Safety: Time for action, WHO, Geneva, 2009, <http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2009/97892415638

c. United Nations Children’s Fund, State of the World’s Children 2012: Children in an Urban World, UNICEF, 2012

d. Evans, ‘The Built Environment and Mental Health’, p. 545; Hart, ‘Planning Cities’, p. 13; Krug, Etienne, et al., eds, World Report on Violence and Health, World Health Organization, Geneva, 2002, p. 25,<www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/ violence/world_report/en/full_en.pdf>,…. ETC.

e. Tuason, The Poor in the Philippines: Some Insights from Psychological Research, Psychology and Developing Societies 2010 < http://pds.sagepub.com/content/22/2/299.refs.html&#62;

[edited slightly on Jan. 12, 2013]

My son is sleeping now, after having not slept last night and feeling ill for a couple of days. He’s a teen and visits his dad, and they had a roommate that was an older man and who was often difficult to deal with – though my son and him talked all the time.  My son last saw him yesterday before 1 pm. It was to be this roommates last day at the house and he was packing boxes (the dad told him he couldn’t live there anymore – part of my son’s stress-related illness, I believe). When my son and his dad came back, the roommate was gone but his stuff was all there. The dad got a call from the Sheriff’s department saying that the roommate was at the hospital, but upon contacting the hospital, and going there, nothing could be found out about the roommate. He couldn’t be visited and the hospital staff said they couldn’t relay any information until the next of kin were contacted.

Doesn’t sound good.

Some background about this older man. He’s a veteran with epilepsy, and while he had health care through the veterans program, he had to drive far away to get care. He had married a few years ago, but after he and his wife both lost their jobs and their house, his wife filed for divorce.  He didn’t have a place to live and ended up staying in a room at my son’s dad’s house.

He called his ex-wife everyday but it seems that she didn’t really care for him (she lived very far away, too). While he seemed happy enough, he argued a lot.  He snored loudly.  He had an old dog that kept peeing everywhere because it just couldn’t hold it in.  The dog was in bad shape but the roommate hadn’t had the nerve to take the dog to the vet yet . . . who knows how much he could afford, as his work was off-and-on.  He had taken to sleeping with the dog.  I imagine he was saying good-bye to it, and making his last days as good as they could be.  His dad had died a few days before Christmas and the funeral was on Christmas day; after this he became ill.

His dad just died; he lost his job, house, wife (I’m so sickened that this has happened to a lot of older people in our country); he was older, with epilepsy; he was sad that his dog was dying and he had to deal with that; he was kicked out of his residence.  Is there some reason why you would think that this person was actually dealing with life OK, even though he didn’t want to talk about stuff much? As Christians, are we to just keep going our own way and not actively asking and helping people who are having a difficult time in their lives? As Bonhoeffer said, we need to look beyond the superficial stuff in people’s lives, what they do, what they hide, and reach out and help the suffering.  Does a curmudgeonly guy deserve help any less than a sweet woman? No.

I’m not trying to say in this essay that I wouldn’t have wanted the roommate to move, I wouldn’t be able to say.  But I am saying it seems that more could have been done to ease this person’s burden, emotionally at least, so that he could deal with life’s circumstances better.  I think I and others need to try and live what the NT writer said more proactively:  “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus . . .” (Phil 2:3-5).

I don’t know for sure that the roommate is dead. I just don’t know why my son’s dad wasn’t allowed to see him or find out anything about him if he was alive. But I will update later. Thanks for any prayers.

Update (Jan. 12, 2013):     The roommate died in surgery.  He had suffered a severe epileptic event while driving, which resulted in a very very bad accident.   We are not allowed to know the details of the accident, other than his car rolled over many times.  Apparently the roommate forgot to take his epilepsy medicine that day.  Both stress and age can contribute to forgetting things like taking one’s medicine, though my son thinks he may not have taken it on purpose (he had never forgotten before).  Anyway, his wife (or ex-wife) had come to see him before he went into surgery, so I’m glad of that; he used to call her everyday.

Update (Jan. 29, 2013):  I keep looking to see if a death notice or obituary is published, but there has been nothing.  I don’t understand this.  Can’t anyone who knew him or is related to him file something, out of respect?  This world is fallen, indeed.  It is easy to find two notices of when his dad died, but nothing about Dennis, but it’s as though he never existed.

woman who mediated grief with the stricken
and woman who works to transmute loss

into a limitless raiment of light