Whichever way they choose, an observer must apply some skills of their own to the experience, just as the artist must apply their skills and experience to creating the work in the first place. In this sense audience techniques are parallel to the artist’s techniques, but on the other side of the fence of the work of art: they are an active rather than a passive response to the process, a response that acknowledges that just as the artist puts great effort into acquiring their skills and expressing their talent, so the audience must respond in kind. I am not suggesting for a moment that everyone needs an art degree before they are capable of understanding art. But I certainly am suggesting that some investment in time, and an openness to perceptual refinement, will be richly rewarded. A quick YouTube search will reveal several films of him [Jackson Pollock] working, which will help to understand the thoughtful process involved, and to see that although apparently unstructured to the unknowing eye, there is a great deal of composition involved: layering of contrasting colours, balancing of thin and thick lines. By such simple means we can learn to see these processes and follow them. We can understand their inner meaning and their power to communicate; we can learn the language of line, to get what Pollock is ‘saying.
Hugh Moss, “The Art of Understanding Art: A New Perspective,” 2015
In 2007, Abraham “Abe” Ferrer wrote on his blog about how independent film artists, cultural workers, and festival organizers and even Asian Pacific media arts organizations are the ones who might be behind the curve in the use of internet (YouTube, Podcasts, ITV) and how that might lead to irrelevance from them being unable to connect with digital audiences.
He recalled the experience of viewing music videos with a live audience and the gratification he felt when he saw filmmakers accept the challenge of filling Directors Guild of America (DGA) Theater One with audiences. He wrote then: “the shriek of collective joy that reported the announcement of Charlie Nguyen’s THE REBEL as the winner of the Festival Grand Jury Award at Closing Night; and the relief of watching it all shut down after eight days, 161 productions and nearly 16,000 guests; and [I] can’t help but think, we did pretty good.”
For 32 years, this informed sensibility towards communities is what drives his present work: “the programming and curatorial acumen [that] still apply to various areas of [Visual Communications (VC)], particularly VC’s Asian Pacific Photographic and Media Archive which I oversee here, and how we activate the holdings here in the service of film and digital media productions. For example, gauging the pertinence of particular films to present in a program from our filmography, or deciding what images would be best for a photographic exhibit that we may be working on.”
This writer was granted an interview on Nov. 15, 2017 with Abe as to the community-engaged process that he sustained in curating film festivals for 32 years, as well as the internal process of choosing films in the festival, which has attracted a consistent base of support in the thousands, now in its 34th year in 2018 and looking ahead to VC’s 50th anniversary in 2020.
He credited the festival’s success to a multi-generational, dedicated parade of entertainment workers, artists and just plain people, of which a very very small sampling of the program committee members over the years included: Kimberly Yutani (Director of Programming at the Sundance Institute), Chris Tashima (Academy-award winning director of best live action short film, Visas and Virtue), James Herr (formerly of Sony Studios, now a non-profit consultant), Phil Yu (blogger of Angry Asian Man), Traci Kato-Kiriyama (founder of Tuesday Night Café), and Eric Wat (former UCLA coordinator of Student/Community Projects), among many others.
Abe is quick to share credits of any organizational success with his colleagues and associates. The success is attributable to longtime Visual Communications staffers and associates through the years – like Steve Tatsukawa, Linda Mabalot, Leslie Ito, John Esaki, Jerome Academia, David Magdael, Anderson Le, Chanel Kong and Cheryl Yoshioka.
He said, “We have not populated the programming team with film snobs and instead, those that reflect our audience and what is important to them.”
I was then a programming committee member for a season in VC where I raised what I considered the line in the sand between nudity as part of an organic story of an artist, like a painter who has a portfolio of creation, boys playing in the ocean, encased woman inside a diamond and a nude female body and gratuitous nudity where there is no context for the sexual scenes depicted and I vehemently called pornography. That became a critical discussion for the committee as certain community members’ identities are defined by sexual orientations first before their identities as artists, writers, filmmakers, teachers, students, business owners – do we now censor their artistic products?
The committee derided the film as amateurish, incompetent effort by an academic whose approach to a timely issue lacked cinematic and intellectual rigor. It was a question left for the audience to resolve.
In subsequent festival offerings, I watched one film illustrating nudity as part of an artists’ story and less about sexual tendencies without a context. I felt my own perspective has been challenged, perhaps even encouraged to make me want to immerse more in what is art, what appeals to the audience, or what is simply a shallow effort of self-expression – all those came out of volunteering in VC’s program committee – an ancillary benefit of enlarging even my own perspectives and beliefs, which I had incorrectly thought at that time was open to diversity of ideas, yet had not in practice.
“What drives your moral compass?”
That was a question I posed to Abe, how do you get a multi-year festival that has appealed to multi-generational tastes and still appeal to the immigrants’ soul story in three decades plus?
“That’s huge,” he said.
As consumer and supporter of the festival for three decades, with more than familiarity, that also includes being part of the short films program committee for one season, I credited the festival for my sustained “wokeness.”
Wokeness is now defined as a quality of being aware of social justice issues.
In watching “Heart of the Sea” by Rell Sun, a professional surfer renowned worldwide, I became aware of her 15 years’ quest for cancer cures. She continued to thrive by accepting her local community’s support, but also a social purpose of contributing towards oncology patients’ future efficacious cures, even if she herself could not.
As also, the “Mele Murals” a documentary made by Tad Nakamura making us aware that graffiti art was about the search for identity, while illustrating how a Hawaiian community was formed over the painting of this mural, who engaged their elders, and engaged Mother Nature’s guidance through meditation.
“Linsanity” was a documentary on Jeremy Lin whose ascent to the mainstream sports world created such vibrant energies that I even got to watch it with my two adult children, whose identities are tied to Asian American awareness.
These three films have created an awareness larger than the ‘ghetto confinements of Filipino social issues,’ as Abe would describe, at least from this writer’s personal experience, as her children’s.
Pan Asian American awareness
Pan Asian is a state of awareness that refers to one’s sensitivities affected not just by one’s ethnic origins, but also the larger interests of all.
Abe described a progressive ecosystem which formed the context of raising his awareness, a period wherein there was an alignment between UCLA’s Student/Community Projects and the non-profits in the community like Asian American Drug Abuse Program (AADAP), Asian American Volunteer Action Committee, Chinatown TeenPost, Search to Involve Pilipino Americans (SIPA), towards “creating a laboratory which will partner with organizations and give the students an open education on how to apply what they learned to real-world issues like teen pregnancies, gangs and drug abuse, for me, how my art education informed my work.” In addition, Abe noted he “was influenced by the work Miles Hamada was doing through the Little Tokyo Arts Workshop.”
He described how he was a passive observer of events, rather than an active participant.
He witnessed how in 1978, following the UC Regents being sued by Allan Bakke, who claims he was “reverse discriminated” at UC Davis School of Medicine. That landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed affirmative action allowing race as one of the several admission factors but setting aside specific racial quotas, like 16 out of 100 seats were impermissible.
Allan Bakke, an engineer and a former U.S. Marine Corps officer in his 30s, sought admission and was turned down. The decision resulted in Bakke being admitted and also led not just a fracturing of the Supreme Court, but also grassroots campus organizing, like the creation of Asian Pacific Student Union. Abe recalled that it started the aligning of West Coast issues, like the redevelopment movement, the Japanese American redress and even Justice for Chol Soo Lee, the building of the infrastructure around the Far West Coast Convention.
Abe’s interview reflected an Asian American awareness of what is going on; from the time he was pursuing a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts Degree at UCLA to his aspiration of becoming a visual artist, to his life’s work actualizing that aspiration.
Donning his beret and a jacket, the casually dressed VC’s Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival director, sat down with this writer at LA Rose Café. When I was about to introduce him to the owner, Lem Balagot, Abe acknowledged that they have met. Abe is now the Digital and Distribution Manager of the Asian Pacific American Photographic and Media Archives, or VC Archives for short.
He traces his introduction into VC when Juliet Masculino was wrestling with a project, “MANONG,” one of the four films that were part of a Pan-Asian American Hidden Treasures Series that received a grant from the Department of Education. Juliet was then the roommate of Abe’s best friend, Thelma Custodio. Juliet was materially involved with helping to produce “MANONG,” as well as managing her role within VC as the organization was becoming involved with Little Tokyo redevelopment struggles, while the project director of “MANONG” was then Linda Mabalot.
He described the synergy of what he knows and the respect he has of what is being defined as culture and communities by the grassroots. In the Festival, for example, their open call generates about 500 to 600 submissions, to which only about a dozen or so will be categorically rejected as “bad.”
Most of the time the entries are distinguished and makes the program committee’s job more difficult. “It means increasingly good films are being made but our programming slots are limited.” Add to that, the quantity of works submitted and/or solicited each year has climbed to nearly 800 or so feature-length and short submissions.
The synergies of art, culture and communities
Communities are largely defined by a fellowship of folks sharing the same interests, goals and attitudes.
“That communities around festivals can determine support and encouragement for diverse artists, as well as dictate what is being produced and the direction for that viewing season, what perspectives externally and what’s happening in the world can all inform what people are creating,” Abe continued describing the synergies of art and culture.
It also means that they have a shorter window of selection from the Sundance in January to what is picked up by major studios, Abe said, “there is a shorter period given the film studios need to recoup their investments, and with Netflix and Amazon, that window is even made shorter, 30-45 days to put up films for screening, though streaming stays up longer than the theatrical run.”
The festival he managed for 32+ years will now be on its 35th year in 2019. The workshops continue to be well-attended as Asians are cast in center stages talking about diversity issues while providing forums to discover, to incubate and to showcase the community’s emerging artistic talents.
The festival is a “home,” a reliable cultural space for artists, a “major tastemaking event,” such that the Academy has qualified this festival as a pipeline for short films and a reunion of past to present Asian Pacifics involved in community building using the arts and social awareness.
“Festival No. 34 maintains our spirit of producing this annual showcase through the process of creating our ideal communities,” states VC Executive Director Francis Cullado on 2018’s LAAPFF, “Our programmers and staff imagine our ideal communities to be inclusive while striving towards equity and change. And with regards to the ongoing discourse about diversity, we aim to have a space that engages intra-diversity amongst AAPIs and inter-diversity with other communities and groups. We at Visual Communications (VC) and this Festival proudly present a slate of artists and creators who continue to shift narratives and challenge perspectives.”
2018 gave festival attendees an early chance to see John Cho and Debra Messing in “Searching” via Sony Green Gems, which was co-written and directed by Aneesh Chaganty, a first-time feature filmmaker.
Abe’s programming and cultural acumen have now switched to digital management of VC’s archives. His articulation of their dynamic programming committee’s criteria converged with what I read: “Has my involvement in the process, of which this particular art object [film] is part, raised my consciousness in any way?” Whatever the answer to that question, the fact that we can ask it gives art [film] a new life. With the full emancipation of art, we must also allow it the freedom to do anything and, more to the point, to say anything: to have free speech, if you like but also to have freedom of expression in the languages beyond speech,” Hugh Moss, one of London’s leading 20th century dealers in Asian art who represented the best Chinese artists in Hong Kong, and who wrote “The Art of Understanding Art: A New Perspective” (2015).
I recalled how Abe oriented his selection committee volunteers to consider we had a much larger impact, an impact that transcended our individual tastes even our narrow perspectives, and that our assessments would later inform the program committee’s decisions, who made their final selections. He marshaled professionalism to be our work styles, and emphasized the importance of our community-directed mission.
In viewing the shorts, we understood that they were more than artifacts, they were more than entertainment sources, and if they pass the screening criteria, they acquired a community recognition value on awards night, validated by evaluation forms from the viewing audience.
“We are always playing catch-up to the formations of communities,” Abe said, “how Indian Americans came to see themselves as part of that [Asian American] framework, although geographically, would be Southeast Asians. Perhaps, a final frontier wherein we place the Asian continent in the western part.”
Abe shared that the festival has endeavored to show films from Turkey, Iran and Iraq, as the boundaries of Asian Pacific communities are further redefined.
We switched the discussions to the larger framework of institution building and he highlighted the correct foundations leading to the formation of the Pilipino Workers’ Center, the Larry Itliong building for seniors, those with a clear mission and the need for new blood, as what Kayamanan ng Lahi does with the youth.
Similarly, the institutions that are delivering Asian American health care services that are doing what people have not attempted before and are as “close to the leading edge as possible.”
He shares the formations around FPAC and 626 Night Market in Arcadia “that we now have transit cultures.”
Is Abe articulating the power of culture, created from the ground up, and how relevant culture in reshaping our consciousness? Just like the emergence of the #FilipinoFoodMovement created with the presence of social media influencers in propagating that trend and that art is fluid in reflecting choices, perhaps informed by an Asian Pacific American awareness that has to be grown and enlarged by a broader world’s perspectives?
We see what we do in arts as inseparable, as we have been acculturated through Internet and cable TV, NHK World, Arirang and ABS-CBN. We also have new challenges as arts are informed of anomalies: wage equity, trafficking, equity wages, politics and of late, sexual assaults to the #metoo movement. We are ready to throw out our criteria in favor of a new level of “wokeness,” a political-cultural awareness that does not happen uniformly for people.
Every life is a wonderful story worthy of being told. Every life is a work of art, and if it does not seem so, perhaps it is only necessary to illuminate the reason that contains it. The secret is never to lose faith, to have confidence in God’s plan for us, revealed in the signs with which He shows us the way. If you learn to listen, you will find that each life speaks to us of love. Because love is everything, the engine of the world. Love is the secret energy behind every note I sing and never forget that there’s no such happenstance. There’s an illusion, lawless and arrogant men invented, so that they could sacrifice the truth of our world to the laws of reason.
Andrea Bocelli
While in Los Angeles, Rick Rocamora granted exclusive interview to the Asian Journal, after his book launch of Blood, Sweat, Hope and Quiapo at Echo Park Library in Feb. 2017, sponsored by Sigma Rho Fraternity. We sat down for a few hours recalling all his projects and where he draws his inspiration.
Photos by Rick Rocamora
When I read Bocelli’s quotes, Dan Amosin, who wrote a powerful essay in Rocamora’s book about Quiapo and Rodallie Mosende came to mind, a man who rose from poverty, eating one meal a day to now whose assets are worth millions. He was born with seven siblings to parents who were public school teachers.
“I am not bragging, I could not afford then to buy shoes and I would just change the soles,” he said. He rented a bed space in Santa Cruz and bought a kilo or two of liver in Central Market, which he would then cut into little pieces to become his only meal for the day. He was getting the support to go to college from his parents.
After taking a written exam, along with 5,000 applicants, he and 120 students got into the UP College of Law, which tested his equanimity and intelligence. There, he joined Sigma Rho and when his classmates would say, “Let’s eat,” he would then say, “I already did,” as he did not have the money to buy lunch.
One of his fraternity brothers learned of his plight and gave him a job as a consultant to RA 1530, a legislation that was being authored. He transferred to the evening class and worked during the day. He finished his law degree and got employed in a corporate legal department and became the manager of a big corporation. He is now a practicing lawyer in the greater Los Angeles area.
Amosin’s story remains an inspiration to Rocamora’s documentary projects.
Rocamora’s migration to the U.S. after Martial Law was declared was unplanned. Because his wife was an American citizen, he was able to get an immigrant visa quickly. As a successful pharmaceuticals sales representative in the Philippines, he was able to get a job in the same field when he arrived in the U.S. He worked for a New Jersey based company for a year and then was hired by a company that was eventually acquired by Dow Chemical. For 18 years of privileged corporate life in sales and later as the Regional Manager, he remained unhappy because the job did not quite give him the fulfillment in life in spite of the corporate travel perks.
After another company merger, he took a buyout and pursued a career in photojournalism and documentary photography. With passion and purpose, he worked on stories about H1B workers in Silicon Valley, driving while black and brown, and U.S. surveillance of activists through the years for American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He travelled and made pictures in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba and South Africa which were later published and exhibited. He spent 18 years documenting the lives of Filipino WWII veterans while waiting for equity. In 2009, he published Filipino World War II Soldiers: America’s Second Class Veterans. His photos are also part of a permanent exhibit in San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Perhaps, it is to open our eyes to love human beings as deeply as we can and to aspire for a world that includes them, believing that everyone is entitled to have everything they need in life to thrive and to be healthy. Rocamora’s works capture these universal principles and sometimes, he is fortunate enough to have his eyes become the conduit of human rights and common good.
Common good displaced and called to action
St. John XXIII said, “Of its very nature, civil authority exists, not to confine its people within the boundaries of their nation, but rather to protect, above all else, the common good of the entire family.”
In Rocamora’s personal long term project on conditions of Philippine Detention Centers, he spent six years visiting jails and detentions centers, documenting the plight of Pilipino prisoners and their conditions of “bursting at the seams.”
It was on exhibit at the Ayala Museum from March 10 until April 2018,
with support from the Integrated Bar of the Philippines. “We would like to share with you the good news that the Ayala Museum was awarded Soft Power Destination of the Year – Best Activation by the the Leading Cultural Destination Awards (LCDA) in London for the exhibition Bursting at the Seams! The jury found that it best exemplified the power of a cultural organization to influence and empower their community. The LCDA was organized five years ago by London-based philanthropist Florian Wupperfeld and is considered “the Oscars of museums,” Rocamora posted on his Facebook page.
Esquire Magazine’s Audrey Carpio on March 12, 2018 described this as: “The situation was already bad in 2011, but it has become exponentially worse with the current administration’s war on drugs.”
Photos by Rick Rocamora
One image moved me to tears as a father cuddles and hugs his newborn, while his partner sleeps on the floor inside the prison.
“And so what started out as a project for the Supreme Court has evolved into a long-term project that advocates for wide-ranging solutions, which require financial appropriation, structural improvement of facilities and integration of various stakeholders into a single agency. This means that beyond building more and better infrastructure, the jails and penitentiaries all throughout the Philippines—which are currently overseen either by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, the Bureau of Corrections, and by local government units—all need to be integrated under one body to standardize management protocols. Judges and lawyers, too, have their role to play in ensuring justice is served expeditiously,” Carpio continued.
Photos by Rick Rocamora
Another photo of about 24+ men sitting and resting on bunk beds while others in hammocks, occupying every inch of space in that crowded room was compelling. In a Quezon City detention center, Rocamora took a photo of Muslim prisoners praying during Jummah or Friday prayers.
After 9/11, he initiated a project documenting Muslim Americans in various occupations and ways of living, “My goal is to provide Muslim Americans a visual voice through documentary photography. My work will define the community and what they represent in U.S. society and to counteract hate speech, discrimination, profiling and defiling of their sacred spaces. I try to find the stories that says they are one of us.”
“There are 3.3 million Muslims from 77 countries in the world, 30 percent are whites and the rest are from Asia and the Middle East. Without faces, we cannot understand these statistics,” he added.
He recently had an exhibit “Identities of Minority Muslims in the U.S. and Japan” at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia of The University of Tokyo, Japan from September 29 to October 3, 2018.
From WWII soldiers to collecting cans for a living
After the passage of the Immigration Act of 1990, Rocamora documented The living conditions of the new immigrants after their arrival.Travel agents, luring them to come to the U.S. so they can purchase airline tickets, assured them that they will not encounter housing problems since they are veterans. Many ended up sleeping in homeless shelters on their first night in America. Some were asked to sign a power of attorney so they can be represented for possible monetary claims from the U.S. government.
The story of 10 Filipino veterans brought to the U.S. by Catalino Dazo was published as a series in the San Francisco Examiner. The story highlights their living conditions and their life with Dazo. One of the veterans, Magdaleno Duenas was fed with dog food and tied on a bed post. Others were allegedly used as free labor by Dazo for his other businesses.
With the help of Atty. Lou Tancinco and other Filipino lawyers, and the Contra Costa Sheriff’s office, these veterans were rescued from Dazo. In a civil case, Dazo was found guilty of abuse and was required to compensate the veterans monetarily.
The civil complaint and an investigative story that ran in SF Examiner brought forth a movement and the Veterans Equity Center was founded to assist Filipino Veterans for their needs, including a free legal clinic every Friday given by Lou Tancinco, Esq.
Rocamora’s photos of these blatant human wrongs got seared in our collective memories, as the sufferings of America’s Second Class Veterans. These photos were exhibited at the Canon House Office Building, at the House of Representatives in the Philippines and are now a part of a permanent collection in the SF Museum of Modern Art.
The Rescission Act of 1946 only entitled them to receive 50 cents to a dollar that other veterans were receiving as compensation for their sufferings during the war. New York Times’ Marvin Howe in 1990 described it “Under the law, Filipino veterans were denied all benefits except compensation for service-connected disability or death, paid at a reduced rate.” Yet this 1946 law included the other veterans who fought alongside America in WW II.
The Filipino veterans were finally awarded the Congressional Gold Medal (the highest form of recognition from U.S. Congress) in 2017. In 2009, a one-time equity payment to the surviving veterans was inserted in the special budget allocation, that was championed by Sen. Dan Inouye, and signed by Pres. Barack Obama. It granted $15,000 to U.S. citizens and $9,000 to non-citizens, based on proof of verifiable military service.
At the time of Rocamora’s book launch in 2009, only three of the book’s subjects were still alive and it was his wish to “give them a tribute, to their contributions to this country [America], and also to remember the injustice they suffered while waiting for equity.”
Nurturing an irrepressible artistic spirit
Rocamora was commissioned by UNHCR to take photos during Typhoon Haiyan, a cyclone that devastated not his home province, yes not his home province, yet he was thrusted in harm’s way in Leyte.
He captured the destruction of howling 145 mph winds resulting in 6,300 deaths in 2013. Without power and transportation, he spent a month travelling on foot, and when available, used tricycles and took photos to document hope, teamwork, sacrifices, even while he was surrounded by a tsunami of dead bodies, mangled limbs, floating bodies, apocalyptic uprooting of homes from their foundations, flying roofing sheets pried open like sardine can tops.
With his irrepressible artistic spirit, he was able to capture hope in his photos. Like a boy who was holding a basketball or a flag that flew amidst the rubble or even signs of rosaries or a cross, surrounded by destruction. It is the hopeful eyes of Rocamora that allow us to see beyond the tragedy to hope for a new tomorrow.
How did you survive, I asked? “Skyflakes and water,” he said, without
a tinge of self-pity. “I slept on a piece of cardboard inside a building. There, I met a South African family living in Indonesia who came to help in Cebu and found their way to Leyte. They gave me a bag of beef jerky.”
He was once described as the person who would not hold anything back
in pursuit of his artistic endeavors or to invite generosity to his chosen subjects. For example, Rodalie Mosende, a homeless girl, who with grit and determination transcended her life of living, studying, and doing homework in the streets of Quiapo to what she has become now, with a college degree, working, not living in the streets anymore and with her own family to raise. When Mosende graduated, a fellow Lyceum graduate, Pres. Rodrigo Duterte was the commencement speaker.
Your work seems to be well-exhibited, I said, and to which he responded, “If you have good work, it will find its way to exhibition walls. I seek it from time to time, as I am always thinking of the subjects, it is about reaching a target audience, it is always about them, not me. The documentary exhibit is providing a visual voice to your subjects.”
In his travels, he learned to speak Zulu, Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese and Korean, saying “Thank you and I am fat,” in all these languages.
As a young boy in Nueva Ecija, he cultivated deep interest in politics by attending political rallies. In high school, he read the daily newspapers in the barber shop near his home to be on top of current events. He studied political science in UP Diliman.
His guiding principles on photography embody the common good. “To be
able to give a visual voice to your subjects, you have to feel their pain, anger and anxiety in order to make images that reflects who they are. It is not about us but always about them,” he said.
His photos dignify thousands of lives and uplift them to be in parity with the viewer and to be considered as part of humanity.
Every judge needs to have both the intellectual capacity to deal with the incredible variety and complexity of the issues and an instinctive understanding of the human implications of the decisions being made. And I just talked to her [Ruth Bader Ginsburg] about her life and her experience, and her family and her work and judging and that‘s really what I wanted to know— you know, that it wasn’t just stuff that she had written, it was way more than just an intellectual concern of hers. She got the actual human impact of these decisions. I chose Ruth Bader Ginsburg for three reasons: First, in her years on the bench, she has genuinely distinguished herself as one of our nation’s best judges, progressive in outlook, wise in judgment, balanced and fair in her opinions. Second, over the course of a lifetime in her pioneering work on behalf of the women of this country, she has compiled a truly historic record of achievement in the finest tradition of American law and citizenship. And finally, in the years ahead, she will be able to be a force for consensus-building on the Supreme Court, just as she has been on the Court of Appeals, so that our judges can become an instrument of our common unity in the expression of their fidelity to the Constitution.
President Bill Clinton, New York Times, June 15, 1993.
The quotes refer to Pres. Bill Clinton’s transcript of his announcement in choosing Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the U.S. Supreme Court. “After her opening statements, and the next two days featured thirty-minute-question-and-answer periods by individual committee members, before banging the closing gavel at 2:43 that Friday afternoon, Senator Hatch commended the president for making an excellent choice. Senator Biden then thanked Senator Hatch for being a “gentlemen and a scholar,” and ended by saying that “next Thursday hopefully we will be able to make the recommendation to the U.S. Senate, “ according to notes on Ginsburg’s nomination, as cited by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her book, My Own Words.
Fast forward to Sept. 27’s U.S. Senate hearings wherein Dr. Christine Basley Ford came forward to give a credible, authentic, and reliable testimony about Judge Brent Kavanaugh’s attempted rape assault on her when they were in high school. Brent was 17yo at that time, she was 15 yo.
Before the 21 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, she provided testimony when she attended a party in a suburban house in Montgomery County in the 1980’s. She went upstairs to use the bathroom. But someone pushed her to a bedroom, pinned to the bed, and the door was locked. Brent Kavanaugh pressed himself on top of her, grinding down on her and twice Mark Judge threw himself on Kavanaugh and Ford. When she screamed, Kavanaugh put his hands over Dr. Ford’s mouth and groped her and attempted to remove her clothes. Inebriated and stumbling drunk, Kavanaugh had difficulty removing her clothes as she had also a one-piece bathing suit underneath.
“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” said Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist in northern California. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.” Ford said she was able to escape when Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them, sending all three tumbling. She said she ran from the room, briefly locked herself in a bathroom and then fled the house,” Washington Post’s Emma Brown reported on Sept. 16, 2018.
As she testified, America was riveted watching her testimony on television, listening to podcasts, while inside gyms, break rooms, students’ lounges, airplanes and homes, as reported by MSNBC. Reporters watched how women cried with Dr. Ford, anguished by their own incidents of trauma, and also “moved by her credible, reliable and truthful testimony.” That assertion in quotes is not mine, but was enunciated by former U.S. federal prosecutors interviewed on MSNBC, as Cynthia Alksne.
Lack of judicial temperament and credibility
One of the judicial requirements in any branch of government in America is the judge’s ability to be impartial and to have the judicial temperament to stay calm and to restrain oneself.
Cynthia Alksne, Esq. a former U.S. prosecutor described Dr. Ford as a fair and an outstanding witness and contrasted that to Judge Kavanaugh’s screaming, unhinged behavior, very partisan in describing that there was a “left-wing conspiracy, a vengeance being carried out on behalf of the Clintons, fueled by pent-up anger on the Trump win,” in his opening statement to the US Senate Confirmation hearing.
It revealed his inability to be impartial and instead, demonstrated his bias and unsubstantiated, extreme points of view. While it could be argued that he was simply indignant as he feels that he is being falsely accused, he acted inappropriately and cultivated more doubts about his judicial fitness to have a lifetime position in the U.S. Supreme Court.
When he was questioned 19 times and more directly by Senator Dick Durbin if he would call for an FBI investigation, his answer was silence, a long pause, silence, until he was questioned again and then, he said he would go along with what the committee wanted to do.
Would you not find this strange, as it was Dr. Ford who asked for a federal investigation, she submitted herself to a polygraph test and yet, she is not an officer of the court and Judge Kavanaugh is, and did not care to arrive at the truth, through an FBI investigation? He also had not done any polygraph test. Though others will say that the polygraph test results are not court-admissible evidence, the polygraph test is an indicator of one’s truthfulness.
He was asked about a “Renate Alumnius” entry on his high school yearbook where he and his male friends posed for a photo and explained that this was their way of showing their admiration towards Renate Schroeder Dolphin. Hardly true, as they even had a rhyme about not having a date and to seek Renate. “Renate Alumni jokes were part of the demeaning pattern in which boys bragged about having sex with Dolphin,” according to Vox’s Anna North on Sept. 25, 2018.
The former US federal prosecutor Alksne described Kavanaugh’s demeanor and itemized the lies he has made, including the “Leahy lies,” where he supposedly used stolen staff briefing notes prepared by the Democrats, and when asked about this in a Senate hearing he lied about it, another indicator of his lack of credibility.
When Judge Kavanaugh made his opening statement, he relied primarily on: “My two male friends who were allegedly there, who knew me well, have told this committee under penalty of felony that they do not recall any such party and that I never did or would do anything like this. Dr. Ford’s allegation is not merely uncorroborated, it is refuted by the very people she says were there, including by a long-time friend of hers. Refuted.”
It turns out Judge Kavanaugh’s statement is false and untrue, as he did not bother to watch Dr. Ford’s testimony and he would have learned that the single piece of evidence he relied upon was not done by Leland Ingham Keyser but her attorney. According to the Washington Post and the personal testimony of Dr. Ford that Keyser texted her: “while Keyser said she did not recall the party, but that she was close friends with Ford and that she believes Ford’s allegation.”
Kavanaugh’s disrespect towards Senator Amy Klobuchar
When he was queried if he remembers drinking beer, specifically a lot of beer, Judge Kavanaugh responded: “You are asking about a blackout. Have you?” It caught the Senator by surprise, yet she remained calm and repeated the question and no response. She said “I don’t have a drinking problem,” but described her father’s alcoholism and still goes to his AA (Alcoholic Anonymous) meetings. Judge Kavanaugh, with an indignant tone, “I also don’t have one.” Afterwards, he apologized to the Senator.
But Kavanaugh’s statement that he has no drinking problem is reputed by Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy’s Sept. 27, 2018 account describing the “Judge’s speech he gave at Yale Law School in which he described stumbling out of a bus at 4:45 am after bar-hopping in Boston. The bus had a keg on it. He was asked about that speech on Thursday, but characterized it simply as a fun night out with friends.”
When asked about the yearbook’s reference to “Devil’s Triangle,” Tim Murphy reported that Kavanaugh told the senators that it was a drinking game he played with friends. Yet, David Enrich, one of the Times’ reporters disputed that, as Kavanaugh’s own classmates say those are also false.
At the end of the day, America: The Jesuit Review Magazine had written an editorial calling for Kavanaugh’s nomination to be withdrawn, “But even if the credibility of the allegation has not been established beyond a reasonable doubt and even if further investigation is warranted to determine its validity or clear Judge Kavanaugh’s name, we recognize that this nomination is no longer in the best interests of the country. While we previously endorsed the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh on the basis of his legal credentials and his reputation as a committed textualist, it is now clear that the nomination should be withdrawn.”
The American Bar Association called for the confirmation vote to be postponed until FBI investigates allegations.
Senator Doug Jones, from Alabama, issued this statement at 1012pm: “The Kavanaugh nomination process has been flawed from the beginning and incomplete at the end. Dr. Ford was credible and courageous and I am concerned about the message our vote will be sending to our sons and daughters, as well as victims of sexual assault. I will be voting no.”
The LA Times’s headline reads: “Do we really want a man consumed with rage, self-pity and hate on the Supreme Court?”
For this writer, Judge Kavanaugh failed to meet the high standard met by Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s nomination and ultimately her endorsement by the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, 18-0.
On August 3, 1993, US Senate by a vote of 96-3 confirmed Judge Ginsburg to be the Supreme Court’s 107th U.S. Justice. She reminded us in her confirmation hearing statement about Alexander Hamilton’s words: the mission of judges is “to secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration of the laws.”
We just witnessed a judge get unhinged during a Senate Confirmation hearing, a job interview as he called it, and one with a clear bias towards the right and an animus towards the left. Judge Ginsburg added Justice Benjamin Cardozo who said: “Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.” The U.S. Senate is clearly not giving us a fair, impartial hearing and instead, a sham! What a shame for once an august institution – and it is up to all of us to make our voices heard. Next man or woman up!
TRUST is a tower built stone by stone. Lies remove stones from the base and can topple the highest tower. When trust is important there are no little lies.
Michael Josephson
Michael Josephson is a former law professor and attorney who founded the non-profit Joseph and Edna Institute of Ethics from which he operates as a speaker and lecturer on ethics. He speaks on six pillars of character: trustworthiness, respect, citizenship, responsibility, caring and fairness.
At St. Genevieve High School in Panorama City, the students learn about and behave towards caring, respect, trustworthiness, citizenship, kindness and responsibility. Since 1999-2003, St. Genevieve pursued character education. On October 17, 2003, it became “the first high school in California and the first Catholic school in the nation designated as National School of Character from the Character Education Partnership based in Washington, D.C.” These lessons on what constitutes good character are practiced by all: parking lot attendants, students, teachers, principal and pastor that this high school proudly displays a banner on its front door, “National School of Character.” It also proudly has undertaken this cultural change by the legacy left behind by the Class of 2000, “who decided that instead of bullying the incoming strangers, they would make them feel welcome in their new home, “ Principal Dan Horn wrote in his book, “Anointed Moments.” Character education continues to the present with inspirational speakers that come regularly to impart their knowledge and wisdom.
Perhaps our revered Catholic Church, headed by Pope Francis can rebuild the Church from these simple pillars of character: trustworthiness, respect, citizenship, responsibility, caring and fairness.
I write this not to be sanctimonious but to embrace the darkness that has plagued the stewards of God with cases of sexual abuse. Sexual abuse by the way is not about abuse of sex, but abuse of power. This abuse of power from the priests, enabled by hiding of the bishops and higher up administrators has cost the U.S. Catholic Church, according to National Catholic Reporter’s Jack and Diane Ruhl on Nov. 2, 2015, “The U.S. Catholic Church has incurred nearly $4 billion in costs related to the priest sex abuse crisis during the past 65 years, according to an extensive NCR investigation of media reports, databases, and church documents.” The meter of financial exposure is still ticking as Brooklyn diocese reached a record settlement of $27.5 million with four victims of abuse by lay educator as reported by New York Times on Sept. 18, 2018 by Sharon Otterman.
The Vatican owes it to its 1.2 billion Catholic parishioners to come clean, to fully account for all these crimes. Yes, these are crimes that should not be enabled nor should have been facilitated by secrecy. Instead, a full accounting of all the predators who were hiding inside the institution, and pretending still to be God’s servants, when they have in fact dislodged themselves from being aligned with God and have embraced darkness as to perpetuate the abuse on these young men who are now grown up and can speak of their trauma. We must fully make an accounting, and display the names of these men, some of whom got imprisoned and died while in prison. But more than names, their methods of luring the children and young adults, like Fr. Brendan McGuire, so called “grooming” must be exposed.
Do you recall reading California priest, Fr. Brendan McGuire, who shared his trauma of being a victim of abuse he suffered at the hands of a priest when he was 18? It was a secret he held for 35 years, according to Mark Pattison of the Catholic News Service of Sept. 20, 2018. His verboten story was finally shared to his congregation, at five weekend masses Sept. 8-9 at Holy Spirit Church in San Jose, where he is pastor, Pattison continued.
In an interview with Catholic News Service, Fr. McGuire related, “he has heard from 45 men who told him they also had been abused. Five of the men were priests, he added, and four of those had been abused while they were seminarians. ‘One man was 95 years old. He’d been holding it for 60-plus years, 70-plus years,’ the priest said. ‘I thought 35 was a lot.”
By the way, this incident of sexual abuse started in Bray, Ireland when he was just 14 years old and he did not recognize the “grooming” by the priest for his final play until he was 18 so “it wouldn’t be child abuse,” Pattison reported.
Truth over power
I write this not to dampen your enthusiasm as a Catholic churchgoer but to hold this as an example of healing. By embracing this systematic darkness where upon the Holy Spirit has not been illuminating parts of the Catholic Church, we need even more so now before the scheduled summit called by the Vatican in 2019 to implore its presence to heal the Catholic Church under Pope Francis. It is not an accident that Pope Benedict resigned, given this litany of sexual abuses by hundreds and perhaps thousands of priests, that must be fully accounted for and be dealt with numerous candles lit, candles lit to exorcise the darkness of abuse of power of these church leaders and lay workers.
Until Fr. McGuire shared his personal truth to his congregation, he felt imprisoned by the abuse of power that he suffered. Until he spoke, 45 other men could not start living a life of truth as they hid their lives of trauma from their families. Until Fr. McGuire spoke, the memory of ‘’illicit grooming” by this Irish priest could not be expunged from his being. Abuse lives in this priest’s molecular cells and he needs to talk about the trauma in order to fully heal. He said that his healing starts when his trauma is acknowledged and when he is heard.
So now we also find that it is not just the institution of the Catholic Church, it is also the executive branch of the United States, personified by the thousands of lies coming from the mouth of the 45th U.S. President. One mainstream newspaper has employed fact checkers and as of Sept 4, 2018, Fact Checker has reported Mr. Trump has made 4, 713 false or misleading claims in 592 days in office. It is now Sept. 22, 2018, he has had 18 days more that he has lied while in the august halls of the White House, once revered as the seat of power, where truth is the currency.
This same president has just nominated Federal Judge Brett Kavanaugh, whose court opinions have been withheld by the National Archives, once a neutral body of source of information, which now claims they report to the National Executive, meaning the President and released 7% of this judge’s past records.
Do you recall a similar withholding of information from this President, who did not disclose his federal tax returns? We now know why, as it would reveal his many entanglements with Russian banks and Dutch banks who loaned him their currencies to keep his businesses running.
But we are not simply talking of the U.S. President’s duty to tell the truth at all times, nor of the U.S. bishops to tell the truth of 65 years, even 68 years of sexual abuse.
We are now faced with this judge who is accused when he was at his drunken 17 year old condition, of attempted rape of then a 15 year old minor.
This minor is now Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, a professor of psychology and statistics, a holder of four degrees from four different universities, including Stanford University and the author of at least 50 scientific journals, who called for an FBI investigation of this incident. This is not a case of “he said, she said,” like Anita Hill who came forward to testify about Judge Clarence Thomas’ sexual harassment actions towards her.
My point is that trauma has a far-reaching impact and effect. That the victims are never really liberated from the harm and that they get to relive their “dark episodes” even 35 years, even 60 years, even 70 years later, when the national news turns on the light on another victim in the past, just like Dr. Ford and Fr. McBride.
The male U.S. Senators are now mistreating her with comments like, “she is confused and mixed up,” and Judge Kavanaugh has offered a bait that there might be another person responsible for the incident, and even shared a photo of someone like him, except that someone like him is known to Dr. Ford and she asserted it is not him, but Judge Kavanaugh.
The U.S. Senate, an august body known to be the conscience of the nation, has placed an arbitrary deadline of Monday, Sept. 24 for both Kavanaugh and Ford to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, all eleven white male in their winter years. Why do I bring this up? Can you imagine if you are Dr. Ford being questioned by eleven white males, with no woman in the committee? It speaks loudly of the lack of diversity and even the silencing of women’s voices in this once august institution that Americans respected? What has happened that the leadership in the Republican Party’s hands has concentrated power in only one gender? Is this not abuse of power as well?
Why is this U.S. Senate showing presumption of bias: “Unfazed and determined. We will confirm Judge Kavanaugh. #ConfirmKavanaugh #SCOTUS,” Mike Davis, the confirmation panel’s top staffer for judicial nominations, tweeted late Wednesday, as reported by “Roll Call” and “The Rachel Maddow Show”.
Mike Davis wrote, as reported by New York Post’s Bob Fredericks on Sept. 20, 2018, “I personally questioned Judge Kavanaugh under penalty of felony and 5 years of imprisonment, if he lies. I ‘m still waiting to hear back from the accuser’s attorneys, who can’t find time between TV appearances to get back to me.” In the first place, Mike Davis is not a skilled FBI investigator, he is Chuck Grassley’s lawyer who should show neutrality and perhaps even a semblance of professionalism as to not reveal his bias and instead, his commitment and conviction to get at the truth.
It elicited a tweet from Brian Fallon, a former aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer, “Does he sound unbiased to you?” as reported by New York Post.
It also elicited an enlightened response from Fr. Christopher J. Devron, S.J. who wrote on Sept. 19, 2018 about Brett Kavanaugh and Toxic Masculinity: lessons from another all-male Jesuit high school. At first, his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court was a high point, particularly when he said that the motto of his Jesuit high school was ‘men for others,’ and claimed he has tried to live that creed, Fr. Devron wrote.
They have then descended that roller coaster with the revelation that in one speech, Judge Kavanaugh quipped: “What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep,” alluding to the weekend drinking, boozing, partying that happens in this suburban school in North Bethesda, Maryland.
Fr. Devron writes that their euphoric feelings about this nomination have changed since these new revelations. He writes that he is the president of Fordham Prep, a 177-year old all male Jesuit secondary school in Bronx, N.Y. with nearly 1,000 current students and 12,000 living alumni and “been privileged to witness the mission of all-male Jesuit education — to develop men for others, who dedicate their lives to God’s greater glory — as a powerful and transforming force. I believe this force can challenge the prevailing cultural forces that pressure young men to adopt values that reflect a vastly different posture toward the more vulnerable members of our society and those who are different than themselves. God’s spirit helps our students see and know the dignity that resides within each person. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, the term “toxic masculinity” has entered the popular lexicon. Toxic masculinity, we are told, springs from a society that inculcates young men with a “bro mentality,” leaving them devoid of empathy, sensitivity and compassion and leading them –especially when they are together—to objectify and disrespect girls and women.”
Is it any surprising that after 35 years Dr. Ford is now just coming out to reveal her trauma? You, our readers, are at the best vantage point to make your own conclusions.
For me, I believe Dr. Ford as she has revealed her trauma to her therapist in 2012, even passed a polygraph test and told her husband decades before, as Francey Youngberg, a former federal employee and lawyer, posted in her Facebook page.
But more than that, I believe Dr. Ford, as she is the first one to ask for an FBI investigation knowing that lying to the FBI is a felony. She has put herself at a disadvantage, and chose to speak up as a citizen to ensure only a judge to the U.S. Supreme Court has good character, for example, trustworthiness and his ability to tell the truth is displayed at all times.
Even the trait of good citizenship as in not preying on minors, even if that happened in his teenage years, and of course, responsibility, Judge Kavanaugh can now stand up before the U.S. Senate and admit to what he did then, when he was stone drunk and what he did then so as to pin Dr. Ford to the bed and to control her, and placed his hands over his mouth and started to undress her and grope her. Hardly the mannerisms we expect from a jurist that will be in lifetime position of public trust. In fact, as a federal judge of the appeals court, he does not deserve to be in this lifetime position of power as well.
All good teachers understand that the essence of teaching centers on human interactions, especially between teachers and students, but most college professors struggle with how to do this. Here’s one thing that Tracy [Buenavista] does each semester that amazes us. In the first class session, she has all students introduce themselves to her and their classmates. After 30+ students’ introductions, Buenavista goes row by row, reciting each student’s first name from memory. Through this one action, she lets each student know that she has taken the time to listen, to learn their name, and to personally welcome each into her class.
A Cal State University, Northridge (CSUN) student, as told to Prof. Glenn Omatsu, 2018
Charisma is defined as an extraordinary power given to a Christian by the Holy Spirit for the good of the church. It is like an academic professor’s charisma to mentor their students to reach for their life’s goals. It is akin to students who did not even view themselves as probable candidates for higher education, yet are surprised when they actualize their innate potentials, from the mentoring given by Glenn Omatsu and this feature article’s subject, Dr. Tracy Lachica Buenavista, Ph.D.
I once wrote about Glenn Omatsu as the quintessential mentor, effective academic teacher and unselfish life coach at CSUN to Black, Latino, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, White, gay or transgender students, and regardless of any religious background.
One can count on Omatsu’s heart to be a warm welcoming space, a soulful home to seek wisdom from, but mostly to even recognize one’s own innate strengths. Was it because he was keenly aware that he was raised by a village of community-centered hearts, which includes mentors like Ho Nguyen, Kazu and Tak Iiijima, Clarence Spear, Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, Philip Vera Cruz, K.W. Lee, Yuji Ichioka, Mo Nishida and Russell Leong, and even relatively unknown individuals, 60 of whom are listed in his essay on “Listening to the Small Voice Speaking the Truth,” listing Kathy and Mark Masaoka, including this writer?
Revolutionary mentoring and servant leadership
Omatsu’s example calls to mind Buenavista, also a professor, and who she is to her colleagues, her students and her chair.
Buenavista with students from CSUN’s Asian American Studies Pathways Project Photo by Clement Lai
Gina Masequesnay, Ph.D., past chair of the department of Asian American Studies, had this to say, “Tracy is a wonderful colleague and an excellent student mentor and professor. She is efficient, prolific and student-oriented. She is well respected by colleagues and is one of the leaders in her field. CSUN AAS is very lucky to have Tracy contribute to our department. She is engaged in students’ success. Her research is on what matters to our communities. She models and mentors excellence for students, staff and faculty and just won CSUN’s Outstanding Faculty Award [in 2018].”
CSUN’s Faculty Senate chose Buenavista as one of the Outstanding Faculty Awardees, based on her teaching, research, and service achievements in both Asian American studies and education. She conducts research in “critical race work to address the complex experiences of racially minoritized communities and examines the potential of higher education to transform the material conditions for marginalized people.” Her scholarly work has advocated for the educational rights of immigrant students and contributes to the advancement of CSUN’s goals of diversity, inclusive excellence and quality education.
Her prescient research in “’White’ Washing in American Education: The New Culture Wars in Ethnic Studies” (2016) is a two-volume anthology on contemporary attacks against ethnic studies. She completed a new book, “Education at War: the Fight for Students of Color at America’s Public Schools.” It calls to mind the War on Truth, propounded in “Fear: Trump in the White House” by Bob Woodward.
Her award was made even more meaningful when her former students, Martín Alberto Gonzalez and Bhernard Tila, attributed their present successes to the effective mentoring by Buenavista.
In one of her Facebook photos, Buenavista is shown with college undergraduates attending a graduate school 101 seminar, that higher education though often regarded as “the ivory tower,” is within these students’ reach, and even though they might find it difficult to decipher the academic language used, as in CRT. Could that be short for a coronary procedure? Perhaps! It can be construed as a reversal of closed hearts, and narrowly-programmed minds unable to see others and their meaningful contributions.
Not, in Buenavista’s classroom where everyone is welcome!
In an email to this writer, Gonzalez wrote, “I met Dra. Tracy Lachica Buenavista through a Race, Racism, and Critical Thinking course I took with her in the Asian American Studies department [in] my second year at CSUN. Dra. Buenavista made a tremendous impact on my educational and personal trajectory, since six years ago. I am now a Ph.D. candidate at Syracuse University. Through her mentorship, I got to believe that I could do more in school and even, life. She wrote a strong letter of recommendation for me and helped me scout Ph.D. programs. She guided me through the graduate school application process and played a key role in helping me decide, after countless hours of seeking her advice. Because I come from a mixed-status family, I reached out to Dra. Buenavista where to access information about citizenship. I attribute much of my academic and social success to her.
Photo by Jordan Beltran Gonzales
“Additionally, Dra. Buenavista inspired me to do more for my community. She instilled in me a profound sense of social justice to advocate for myself and for others in need of help. At CSUN, she conceptualized and wrote the Campus Quality Fee (CQF) grant for the EOP CSUN DREAM Center in order to employ staff to provide specialized services and establish a sanctuary-type space for undocumented students and other students with marginalized identities. I am continually impressed and inspired by Dra. Buenavista’s accolades and accomplishments with respect to everything she does for the students and her community. She practices what she preaches. I am very grateful and privileged to call her my mentor.”
In a one-on-one interview with this writer in West Los Angeles on May 2, 2018, Buenavista explained, “The EOP CSUN DREAM Center is among the first undocumented resource centers in the 23-campus CSUN system and she is the primary author and co-principal investigator for the Asian American Studies Pathway Project (AASPP), a retention project that centers on Asian American and Pacific Islander needs.”
CRT or critical race theory is a framework Buenavista uses to help students understand the social origins of race and, racism, and as a guide through her courses on comparative ethnic studies, immigration, multiracial experiences, and research methods in Asian American studies and education.
Buenavista accomplishes this interlocking web of understanding, “by scaffolding theoretical discussions that challenge dominant color-blind racist ideologies grounded in [white supremacy], with community-based research and service projects that assert social justice agendas, and through an emphasis on mentoring students beyond the classroom. I also utilize students’ social media literacies and provide opportunities in which students can attend campus and community events,” she explained.
She imprints further her impact, such that Tila wrote that Buenavista “primarily teaches various classes for undergraduate students such as AAS 201, AAS 360, and AAS 311. She [TB1] also teaches in the doctoral program in Educational Leadership at CSUN. I took two classes under her and even met her at a club organizational meeting for Dreams to be Heard, the primary support group for undocumented Students and allies at CSUN.”
“She has been very helpful and supportive of students from historically educationally-disadvantaged and low-income communities. Without Professor Buenavista’s empowerment and active support, in and outside of the classroom setting, I truly believe that I will not be where I am today as an undocumented, first-generation, of senior standing in a higher education institution. I thank her for many things but I cannot thank her enough for encouraging me to continue my education and for pushing me to new limits as a student. Overall, she is dedicated to being a servant leader, advocate, but [most] of all a mentor to many students, faculty and staff,” Tila continued.
Inaugural Critical Filipino and Filipino Studies Collective National Assembly Photo courtesy of Tracy Lachica Buenavista
Given her “cutting-edge” research studies, Buenavista has keynoted and presented at conferences sponsored by Mellon Foundation, Chapman University Ethnic Studies Summit, the Fresh Ayers public lecture series in Chicago, and the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in New York. She has also received CSUN’s Exceptional Service to Students Award in 2017 and was nominated for the AERA Critical Educators for Social Justice Revolutionary Mentor Award in 2018.
In 2017, Buenavista was promoted to the rank of full professor. She wrote a post expressing delight of her history and gratitude to her community of mentors on Facebook: “After 10 years of schooling and 10 years as faculty, it’s official! What we do as underrepresented/marginalized folk are difficult to explain/understand and I thank every single one of you (family, homies, mentors and students) who helped this working-class 1.5-generation college student of color carve a safe space in the hostile place that is the academy. And while it is a long and arduous process with many obstacles along the way, I’m most proud that I did not compromise my values and ideals, and only did work that I believed in and felt was relevant to me, my family, and community.”
Lineage of educators formed her consciousness to serve
Buenavista was born in San Francisco to Robert Abuan Buenavista, her father, and Herminia Lachica Buenavista, her mother. Due to his service in the U.S. Navy, Buenavista’s father lived in Hawai‘i and eventually the San Francisco Bay Area.
From her father, she learned a sense of duty to family and community. Her mother nurtured Tracy and gave her the first exposure to schooling, albeit informal with Encyclopedia Brittanica, and taught her words and math.
Herminia, Tracy’s mom, had always wanted to become an educator and even pursued her master’s degree. But, marriage to Robert preempted her own plans that have now been actualized by her daughter, Tracy.
When her family moved permanently to stay in California, she first moved in with her cousins in Union City, where a big Filipino population lived, and when her family took up residence in Hayward, she went to Mt. Eden High School.
There, she joined the Filipino club and developed a strong appreciation for ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity, as well as an awareness of educational inequities that privileged white and Asian American students and disadvantaged the Black, Latino, and Pacific Islander students at her school.
She credits Mr. Rodriguez, her biology teacher and mentor, who encouraged them all to go to college. As a man of color who taught biology, he modeled for students, including Buenavista, a vision of what their future could be.
She pursued an undergraduate bachelor’s degree in Biology to satisfy her parents’ wish for her to “learn something practical.” However, at UC Berkeley, she realized her schooling underprepared her and she became more interested in the ethnic and racial make-up of students in her science courses.
She entered college in fall of 1996, when debates on affirmative action were fervent. She found an academic home in Pilipino Academic Student Services (PASS) and the nascent consciousness that she is a Filipino, underrepresented and explored with other Asian Americans what that meant. She met other students of color whose parents could not afford the out-of-pocket costs to go to college and though she was working 20-30 hours per week, she struggled to become financially secure as she did not qualify for institutional support that did not consider the complex education generational status and financial obligations of transnational Filipino families in the U.S.
It was at UC Berkeley where she realized her passion for and talent in ethnic studies. She eventually pursued two master’s degrees, one in Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University (SFSU), and another in education at UCLA.
At SFSU, she met her mentor, Dr. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, who has just completed her Ph.D. in education at UCLA and who advised her to pursue a similar path to fulfill her dream to become a professor. Buenavista completed a Ph.D. at UCLA with an emphasis in higher education and organizational change.
“So many people are relying on me to finish my dissertation,” she thought. “This kept me going as it was no longer for myself and I did not want to let anyone down. When I was coming up the ranks as a young scholar, the few books I could read on Filipino-Americans was by Fred Cordova and E. San Juan, Jr. Now, there is a bumper crop of books written by Filipino-American scholars: Dawn Buhulano Mabalon, Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, Dylan Rodriguez, Dean Saranillio, Rudy Guevarra, Robyn Rodriguez, Kevin Nadal, Anthony Ocampo, EJR David, Valerie Francisco, and many more. We are experiencing a Filipino-American Academic Renaissance.”
She credits the late Helen Toribio who “saw something in me and went with it. I wanted to serve my community, and it took people to have confidence in me first, until I had the self-confidence to do it.”
She is also grateful to the consummate mentor of all many Asian American graduate students at UCLA, the late Don Nakanishi, Ph.D. who “consciously interacted and mentored me. Both Helen Toribio and Don Nakanishi were folks whom you observe and learn from, by their actions. They [Tintiangco-Cubales, Toribio] are strong, accomplished Pinay scholars who were accountable to the community. Mentoring is not always active; I chose them [including Nakanishi] as examples to follow. Don showed me how to navigate the academy and showed me the resources available to me at the university.”
This motivated Buenavista to create spaces at CSUN, where she currently works, and through the EOP DREAM Center and Asian American Studies Pathways Project, CSUN students can have a sense of belonging. These “counterspaces” are where students can interrogate their personal experiences so as to understand “what’s it like to be a person of color at CSUN and in higher education.”
Buenavista encourages students to go beyond themselves, much like her mentors and predecessors, while providing the students the guidance and infrastructure to do what they are capable of doing, empowering themselves to do the programming of their own courses.
It is said “To whom much is given, much is expected,” while Anne Frank (a Holocaust prisoner) wrote in her diary: ”Everyone has inside them a piece of good news. The good news is you don’t know how great you can be. How much you can love. What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!”
Buenavista’s resume is 20 pages long and I dare say she is a power dynamo who gives as much as she has been given by her mentors. She is mostly jet fuel-propelled by the ethos of service and her dedication to CSUN’s goals of diversity, inclusive excellence and quality education.
Footnote: I dedicate this to Professor Dawn Buholano Mabalon, Ph.D., whose sudden death in August 10, 2018, at age 44, ignited a show of unity from: a California state assemblymember, mayor, national organizations, the youth, middle-aged professionals, elders, several media outlets, academic and non-profit colleagues who travelled from Alaska, Seattle, Michigan, New York City, Washington DC, East Bay, Santa Clara, Sacramento, Central Valley, Rio Grande New Mexico, Los Angeles, Stockton, Vallejo, San Diego for her funeral on August 24, 2018. Many professors across the U.S. have dedicated teaching their classes this semester to honor Mabalon, including a recently completed short film. A GoFundMe page was set up for her family to bring her remains back from Hawaii to California, which garnered $70,520 out of the $60,000 goal, in a month.
“Yes, Martial Law is now over. The cruel tyrant had died. But there were other perpetrators during this gruesome era, and many of them are still around today. Now, they use their ill-gotten wealth to attempt to rewrite history and boldly proclaim to the present generation, who were not even born during the dictatorship years, that Martial Law is good for our country. We, who were arrested, tortured, and left to rot in prison, continue to “rebel” against these people who dare to rewrite and revise our history of struggle against the evil tyranny of “One-Man Rule.” Let the “Wall of Remembrance” be our altar where the names of our martyrs and heroes are forever enshrined as a reminder that we who have survived this cruel and dark portion of our history will rise up once again and tell (write) our stories: 1. Stories of defiance and struggle in the face of tyranny, 2. Stories of determination and courage under torture and physical degradation, 3. Stories of indigenous peoples rising up to defend their ancestral lands with their lives and 4. Stories of martyrdom and the sacrifice of one’s life so that others might live. Nunca Mas! These are the stories that uplift the human spirit, because we believe that our brothers and sisters did not die in vain.” – Manuel C. Lahoz, “Of Tyrants and Martyrs: A Political Memoir” Published by The University of the Philippines Press, Diliman, Quezon City, 2017.
I have read several books on “One-Man Rule”: Raissa Robles’ Marcos Martial Law: Never Again; Susan F. Quimpo and Nathan Gilbert Quimpo’s Subversive Lives; Primitivo Mijares’ Conjugal Dictatorship, Monina Allaret Mercado’s People Power: The Philippine Revolution of 1986 and Ninotchka Rosca’s A State of War, a captivating novel which I could not put down for three consecutive nights.
I am reading Manuel C. Lahoz’s Of Tyrants and Martyrs and still rereading chapters, as I believe it is one of the best books on the “One-Man Rule” of Ferdinand Marcos. It explains in layers how life decisions were made, how one gets arbitrarily arrested, even without any apparent crimes or wrongs done.
It presents an insider’s view of what happened to the high school principal, to the deacon, to the band leader, to the nun, to the priest saying the mass then assassinated, to the oppressed farmers and workers, to the indigenous tribes people who defended their tribal lands from being denuded and defiled by the construction of the Chico Dam.
Manny Lahoz’s book is to be relished and savored, as if God is near you, as Manny’s loving and literary soul is etched in every page of this political memoir. He has eyes that observe every minute detail of each person he met.
As a reflective person, he is acutely aware and conscious of what his life’s purpose is: “gradually, as in a self-revelation, it dawned on me that there was more to being a priest than just a minister of the sacraments. I had taken the first steps towards the ministry of sevice, which was more than just offering the sacraments to the people, when I made a commitment to be with and be part of the poor and the oppressed in their struggle for justice. I would follow this ministry of service for many years to come.”
One of the best books on “One Man Rule”
Nestor Castro, Vice Chancellor for Community Affairs in UP Diliman affirms the writings of Lahoz, the author, and also attested to how, he too was imprisoned at Camp Dangwa, Benguet in 1983 and chose to block the details from his memory.
I also found convergence in my assessment, after reading Francisco Lara, Ph.D.’s “Le Politique Du Ventre” mirroring my notes, yet more his eloquent words are much more beautiful: “each chapter has a section where simple tasks and the local knowledge of the poor is shared to the reader—such as, how do you repair a section of a destroyed rice terrace (with brains rather than brawn); or cook molasses to sweeten a rice cake (with the right heat and the best rice); or take a dump [referred to in the US as #2] in the forest, with native pigs surrounding you (with sticks and stones), or walk through a hanging bridge without trembling in fear (by looking ahead and not below).” This is where Lahoz’s sense of humor is vividly in display, particularly in how to take a dump.
The book is a first witness account of what happened to the martyrs and even verified by newspaper accounts, Bantayog ng mga Bayani’s account, and other authors. It satisfies the known standard of “believe the assertion, but also verify,” and in one instance, the author even provides three different accounts of what happened to Santiago Arce: laying out the PC Commander’s version of Mr. Arce’s death, the Judge’s Inquest, and the People’s Reaction to the PC Commander’s Version of Arce’s escape.
The reader equipped with critical thinking skills can discern the details around the Arce’s escape, advanced by the PC Commander, as his use of a gun as improbable and the judge’s inquest more credible and believable – given a simple examination of the gun barrel that was shiny and without bullet residues, confirming Mr. Arce did not use a gun, as falsely asserted by the military.
It also contains details of Arce’s longest funeral in Abra with twenty priests concelebrating the mass and a funeral procession of about a kilometer long, four abreast, making a long procession of Abrenians walkng 0.62 miles.
Why did Arce merit a hero’s funeral?
Santiago Arce was Little Flower High School’s principal, who was also an ordained church deacon, a band leader who led the best marching band in Abra, and helped provide seminars to the farmers.
He describes in vivid details what it is like to have fish caught from the streams and banana blossoms gathered from the forests and then to enjoy eating the charred grilled fish with steaming aromatic rice cooked in bamboo tubes, with cooked banana blossom; half-cooked rice wrapped in woven palm leaves dunked into boiling syrup. He even details the livelihood of folks, and how sugar cane is grown in sandy loam soil, then, harvested and milled into cane juice then molasses, and how lumber is gathered from cut trees, and how at the peak of deforestation – about 50,000 logs await in the river, to be milled and turned into paper. He even describes how a carabao is slaughtered.
The book ‘s details allow us a glimpse into that period where fear predominates first, until conviction makes one stand up and others as well, “the members of the FFF (Federation of Free Farmers) attended the funeral procession in big numbers, unafraid of the presence of the military spies.” It makes us recall the longest procession accorded Lean Alejandro who was reportedly assassinated by Marcos’ military and over 50,000 people lined up the streets to show their sympathy but also their protest to the “One Man Rule.”
Lahoz wrote about the assassination of Ama Macli-ing Dulag, who spoke of the land being one with their tribes, “If the land could speak, it would speak for us. It would say like us, the years have forged the bond of life that ties us together. It was our labor that made the land she is. It was her yielding that gave us life. We and the land are one!”
“Dulag was murdered for speaking out,” Lahoz wrote, “Dulag’s death was planned from the very beginning when he championed the rights of Kalinga and Bontoc peoples against the Chico Dam, a pet project of Marcos with $160 million funding from the World Bank. The proposed Chico Dam was envisioned to provide nearly 2,000 megawatts of hydroelectric power. It would irrigate 65,000 hectares and keep industries and manufacturing companies in Manila running. On the other hand, it would submerge three towns in Mountain Province and five in Kalinga. Nearly 100,000 hectares of ancestral lands, rice fields, farms, forests, hunting grounds, water sources, natural orchards, burial grounds, and pastoral lands would be submerged and lost forever. Some 250,000 Bontocs and Kalingas would be directly relocated,” Lahoz wrote, and he meticulously footnoted who orally shared and related the stories to him, including itemizing the list of 11 donors, priests and nuns, who contributed Php 7,000 each for the Grand Bodong in the Cordilleras.
He wrote about the cultural workers and “the Kalinga women proceeded to approach the bulldozer from the north, the Igorot warriors with their gongs beaten in crescendo, defiantly encircled the engineers like hunters entrapping their prey. With engine roaring, the bulldozer operator continued to do his work approaching the Igorot women coming from the south side. With barely about fifteen meters away, the moving giant machine and the dancing Igorot women were on collision course. The spectators started to cry in alarm. Suddenly, the Igorot women stopped, went down on their knees, ripped their blouses open and bared their breasts, with heads tilted upward to the heavens and arms outstretched as if trying to grab a piece of the sky.“
“They cried as one in a loud voice, “Dagami daytoy, pumanawkayo!” (This is our land, leave us alone.) The operator stepped on the brakes and stopped the giant earth-moving machine with barely five meters to spare. Read more on this chapter as “President Marcos decided to unleash the military powers to confront and crush the united opposition of the Bontocs and Kalingas led by their brave and charismatic leader Ama Macli-ing Dulag. The massive use of military in suppressing the population did not go unnoticed by the leaders of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).”
“It was a silent retreat, but it did not detract from the fact that the Bontocs and Kalingas had accomplished something rare in a third world country, the [World] bank’s withdrawal in the face of popular resistance, “ economist Walden Bello had said.
With such robust capacity of observation and memory recall, the blood pouring out of the carabao’s jugular vein in his neck, makes for a visual sensory metaphor for how the women and men were arrested, tortured in prison and how women were raped wantonly by a gang of military men, leaving red blood taints all over the place.
Lahoz describes these incidents of torture with precision and specificity, yet with such respect for the women and the reader as to spare us the gory details of the criminal acts, and leaving us to imagine the atrocity, while describing the details after the gory incident. We came to know the various methods of torture, including the use of flat iron to sear the soles of the prisoners, the grabbing of hair until they are torn off one’s scalp with brute force.
Many good deeds are equally described, including soldiers who give a hand to the tortured prisoners, or how Abra farmers were supported by construction of irrigation systems funded by the Catholic Lenten Fund of Germany, enabling the farmers to have two croppings a year.
You could sense the tedious verification that the book went through, as he writes about ordinary people in these chapters and then, through a series of circumstances and the decisions they made, we sense how noble they are, through the words that Manny used in writing this book, not flamboyant, but precise enough for a person to appreciate how a pregnant woman is helped by movement allies to give birth to her child and even a lesson on how to make spaghetti by her host only to cook this spaghetti using sardines with canned tomato sauce, and a separate red sauce for Manny.
It was a gift from her heart to Manny, appreciating how she and her child were sheltered from harm. What is the big deal, as the book asks? Spaghetti is not something you can simply buy at the country store in that period; imagine eating this at a remote village where one has to walk by foot for miles to reach the highway. So, one is left wondering? How did she make the spaghetti? The woman thought of keeping the spaghetti noodles she got from her host family and kept it with her for months, on the mere chance she would see Manny and thank him for what he did for her.
Who was Manny Lahoz’ muse?
Even before coming to the US, he had already written half of this book. But when he got to Chicago, he encountered writer’s bloc. It was an imagined conversation with Padre Zacarias Agatep (who was assassinated) that got the words to flow again. The outpourings of events were so fast for his slow hands to capture, that at some point, his handwriting was labored.
Who was Fr. Agatep? He entered the Immaculate Conception Minor Seminary in Vigan and ordained a priest in 1965, assigned to a small parish of Banayoyo, Ilocos Sur. When he heard a presentation of the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF), “he asked the permission of his bishop to become a full time chaplain and organizer for FFF,” Lahoz wrote, “Like Paul of Tarsus, who found Christ on the road to Damascus, Zacarias followed Dean Montemayor on the road to Mamatid, Laguna, to study the gospel according to Montemayor.”
Imagine fulfilling your dream to be an author at 76 yo? He wrote this first book, dedicating it “to Mia, Karl and Angela…that you may learn what really happened during the martial law years.”
In the United States, he held book launches in Minnesota, Chicago, New York, Oakland, West Covina and Carson. In one book launch, a disabled young student in a wheelchair remarked, “Can you give us some hope? I am hearing mostly borrowed understanding from my parents.” It piqued with such intensity that I responded – You are looking for hope – the fact that he survived the trauma and not allow the trauma to sink him into depression is hope. The fact that he is doing book launches at age 76 and caring enough that the true accounts of these martyrs are shared is hope. Also, you can have your primary understanding, not relying on your parents’ borrowed understanding by reading the book fully, by interviewing known martial law survivors and discern for yourself why there is hope in standing up for what is right, why there is hope in standing up for the truth, why there is hope in relying on true accounts, and not the opinionated false claims that it is fake news.
