Filipino Veterans and Pilgrims

Editorial-2

Filipino Veterans and Pilgrims

The celebration of Thanksgiving Day leads us to the same road in search for that action of grace, the road taken by the Pilgrims who were in search of a new chance to live a life of peace and justice.  

But with the continuing injustice done to the Filipino veterans, many of whom are dying everyday because the benefits that are long overdue have yet to be given them, the Thanksgiving of the Filipino veterans as the new pilgrims comes off as something off tangent. 

With only about 18,000 of them left of the 250,000 who served the United States in order to fight the American War in the Pacific against the Japanese occupiers and invaders, the continuing inaction—despite talks and debates in the United States Senate and in the House of Representatives on how to finally grant them the benefits they deserve—will only exacerbate the kind of treatment given to these soldiers who fought an American war side by side with the American soldiers.

And to think that in that war, more than one million people died in the name of World War II.

The cry of the veterans and those supporting their cause is for the bills S 1315 (The Veterans Benefits Enhancement Act) and House Bill 68097 to be reconciled.  

But when the reconciling would happen is an issue that is as urgent as the need to recognize that more than half a century after the war, these Filipino veterans have yet to receive what is due them. 

"It's long overdue that the United States Senate recognize the contribution made by so many Filipinos in World War Two to the success of ourwar effort," said Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat.

This sums up the fight for justice for these veterans. 

As to their contribution to the cause of fighting alongside the American soldiers, Durbin praised the Filipino veterans: "Our fight in the Philippines was a bitter, long, and tragic battle that ended well but only after great sacrifice by the Filipino people, by Filipino soldiers and by our American soldiers." 

This praise, however, needs to be translated into concrete terms.  

A Solver Agcaoili

FAO November 2009/Editorial

The Giving of Thanks and the Filipino Immigrants

Editorial

The Giving of Thanks—
and the Filipino American 

The constants in the holiday every American awaits each fourth Thursday of November are things that are familiar: a day of celebration, a feast of good harvest, and the memory of the action of grace—action de grace—as the other North Americans, the Canadians, would call it.

It is these same thoughts that connect the immigrant Filipino American to this land, whether that immigrant is a migrant or a local born. 

For the action of grace is in the remembrance of the things of the past that matter to a people, like the motive to that journey of the Pilgrims to come over here and seek a life by eking out something from a land that initially was unfamiliar, strange, and alien.

That act of seeking a life—an act that was returned with grace acting on them—was one fat chance that they needed to completely sever their ties from a homeland sundered by religious wars, religious persecutions, and religious righteousness. 

In their coming to America, the Pilgrims would inaugurate a continuing coming of peoples in search of a chance of a lifetime in the United States, the peoples of the Philippines included. 

As we celebrate this day of giving thanks, the American in the people of the Philippines in this land is celebrating his oneness with all the people of this land, their generous adoptive land. 

It is an occasion of grace, indeed, if by grace we mean the kind of life we celebrate and live, away from the humdrum of the daily life in the country where our ancestors or we come from. 

Then again, part of the grace of coming together in the company of our community is to remember that other people have not had the same chance of a new life that we do have.

Part of that capacity to thank, therefore, is to reconnect with the communities that are in need of this action of grace that we do celebrate each Thanksgiving Day. 

A Solver Agcaoili

FAO Editorial/Nov 2009

Obama the President

Barack Obama the President—
and the Political Future of Filipino Americans

Aurelio Solver Agcaoili


Phenomenal. 

This is the sum of all the excitements and surprises in these last few months of the frenzied and frenetic campaign involving not only money and mind but also a new mentality and vision of presidential politics in the United States.

We have a new president—and like the way the announcement of the election of a new pope is done at the Vatican, the political smoke has cleared and a new beginning is there for us to behold. 

There is a new hope too.  

And a mandate given to the blessed—‘blessed’ is the meaning of his name—the leader of this land, President Barack Obama.

His name says it all: the blessings he gives to that name, blessings the electorate has given to that position of responsibility, and blessings by all those who see that grace and gratefulness continue to visit this land.  

At first, we will witness the honeymoon days, and how they serve to put a context to the inauguration of that leadership.

We can even speculate the short season of the euphoric that may be felt by those who believe in the capability of the new president, and the honeymoon days may go on an extension until things gets settled a bit in Washington after January next year, after the inauguration. 

In the aloneness in any office at the top anywhere else, the leader, after finally taking over, realizes that the demands of his office are an occasion of greatness that he may not squander. 

Even as we congratulate President Barack Obama, and even as we give him our blessing to use this mandate to redefine this country’s directions in the next four years, and even as we see clearly the creativity this presidency has, we have grave concerns about the wars in other countries, some of these wars being fought by Americans. 

We live in the most interesting times—and the times are difficult too—and the challenges to President Obama as the new leader of the most powerful nation on earth are enormous.

With war being fought in several places abroad in order to contain terrorism, the initiation to that presidency will both need detachment and engagement, and the 
constant to-and-fro in both in order to renew everyday some other redeeming ways of looking at the world, and at the difficulties and opportunities that are part and parcel of that world. 

A quiet peacefulness, one President Obama has, is much needed. Warriors, literal and metaphorical, and spiritual and political, need this. 

That quiet peacefulness is the ability to be alone in a crowd and to summon all the energies and inspiration that lead to a creative way of reinterpreting social realities affecting this country. 

One such social reality is the issue of immigration.

The Filipino American community everywhere awaits the development in immigration policy.

Like other immigrant communities, millions of Filipino Americans who have contributed their talents and skills in this country and who have helped this country grow need immigration policies that give prior respect for the human rights of migrants who have followed the rules, but for some other reasons, ended up as undocumented. 

The greatness of the United States of America is based on its welcoming spirit and its generous disposition in opening up this land for migrants. This nation—a nation of immigrants—draws much of its history of greatness from that fact.

While the president is not exactly an immigrant in the way we would define many of Filipinos who came to this country, the fact that his father is not from this land is something that could give him a better perspective on migrant and immigrant rights. 
We expect no less from our president.

Another challenge he needs to look into with speed and precision is the economic downturn that has visited this country. The downturn is not only domestic as it is international because of the globalized nature of developed economies such as the United States. 

For a while, we will reel from this national and international experience of challenges in the economic life of the people. 

For a while, there will be some sacrifices asked of us.

For a while, there will be redirections in government spending in order to spur the economy back to life as it was. 

There will be disappointments and frustrations, as the initial results of presidential pro-action will not come as a ready-made panacea to all that which is wrong in this country at present.  

We will surely be asked to give our share in prodding this country back to where it was before everything went downhill. 

And we will give what is asked of us. 

But as good and fair citizens, we will account, and account we will do. 

This is where the strength of the Filipino American community will be tested, the testing not simply a case of ‘first in something’—like a ‘first mayor’ or ‘first governor’, for instance, with that syndrome of being first more of an exhibit than a commitment.

The inspiration we catch in these joyful days is that of a leader who will work, not for some interest, but for the interest of the ordinary man and woman first. 

President Obama knows where this regular man or woman comes from in terms of the public administration of the common good. His voice—invocatory of the freedoms understood with clarity and grace by the founding fathers of this land—is one that gives recognition and allocates a space to difference. His is a moral voice, indeed, in these difficult and interesting times. 

His election blazes a trail for the Filipino Americans, as is the case for all the various peoples that have come take root in this glorious land.

Soon we can begin to dream: that one day soon, a Filipino American, or one born of the sinews of the hardy, enduring, and persevering people of the sugarcane plantations of Hawai’i or the canneries of Alaska or the hospitals of New York or the factories of Los Angeles or the farms of Stockton will claim this land as its president. 

The dream of the Filipino Americans begins today with President Barack Obama having successfully pursued that same dream. 

Feature story, Fil-Am Observer, Nov. 2009