Men Marching, 2

Literally, I held my tears when we started the march, this men's march that inaugurated my politicization to domestic violence, a pandemic in this state as well as in this nation, according to some accounts by even the Surgeon General of America himself as read out by Rep. John Mizuno, vice chair of the committee on health, in his speech prior to mine. 

On my right in the march--we were next in line--next to the organizers Joe Bloom and Salvatorre Lanzilotti--was John and on my left was Rom Trader, a state prosecutor, who got an award for his work on DV. 

There were others in the line of battle, with our banner declaring what we were doing: men marching to stop domestic violence--Men's March Against Violence--as can be gleaned from today's account by the Honolulu Advertiser, with their photo gallery and a bit, just a bit of video: honoluluadvertiser.com. 

Others who were in that line of battle were Mr. Robert Lorin, representing the Chuukese community in the state and who is himself involved with healing and the religious ministry and Dr. Kahu Kaleo Patterson, a Hawaiian who spoke on social violence and the culture of violence that the country is steeping its people with. 

The four of us would speak--and would persuade people into looking at the issues of domestic violence and domestic peace side by side with the duty to look at the bigger issues of the world. All four of us committed to give our share in that monstrous task of responding to the challenges of DV.

Joe Bloom, who together with Nanci Kriedman, founded the Men's March in Honolulu 14 years ago, was by his usual self: bubbly, energetic, and totally in-charge. You could sense in the sincerity of the man that here is one issue that should concern every human being but more particularly, every man in his relationship with his spouse, intimate partner, domestic partner, lover, and/or children. 

Joe tells us: Salvatorre and I first, on the first line of duty, and you speakers hold the banner and announce--all of you by holding that banner--what we are doing.

And you come after us, he continues,  and we walk all around the Capitol, walk towards Punchbowl, go all around, turn right, then turn right again, and then the last right on Beretania, and we are back to the Capitol and we will have our program.   

We start on time, he says, and that was past noon, in the heat of the Waikiki sun, in this time of the year, when Fall is not that of the almost wintry degrees in the US Mainland. We are in paradise, of course, in these isles, and this paradise is in peril with all these stories of wife beating and of men doing the wife beating and killing their women and then killing themselves. One even killed his child, a boy of seven, and the three of them, man, woman, and child, left this world all in the name of DV and its evils.

We took the first step, in step with the Joe Bloom command. We know--and we who held the banner--we know we had to calculate our steps.

The roads down here are paved, but they are narrow, and the banner declaring our domestic politics was long, and many pairs of hands, about six, were holding on to it, and we were passing on pavements meant only for a pair of feet. 

I was amazed of the instincts that played out in that march: we knew how to maneuver, laughing to ourselves while we were doing it, and recollecting what we did with our drums and bugle exercises when we were young, or our marching band when we were a bit older. 

I laughed and truly so, but I did not tell them that in the Philippines, the marching was all we learned in Citizen's Army Training during Martial Law that taught us how to be good Marcos Society citizens, a training that would be wasted for two more years in college, when that Military Science thing--call it Reserved Officers Training Corps--did not mean anything except to learn how to curse a la Saving Private Ryan or Exterminator or Band of Brothers each Sunday of our broken and tortured college lives. 

Two years of right-left, right-left would certainly mold you into a crazed soldier, pretense and all, with that last MS in second year of second semester only your one fat chance to see how an armalite looked like, and how to fire it in one firing range somewhere in Fort Bonifacio, with you missing all of your targets anyway because of the lack of practice except for that snappy execution of a salute for the less-intelligent guy--that lowlife creature--who commands you to do the push-up twenty times and which you followed nevertheless even if you wanted to give him his share of a kick that would make him fly and then land on some crazy lady's lap, who would, invariably, use her six-inch heel of a shoe to whack his idiot's butt. 

So we maneuvered all those corners, with the traffic flow in the noonday heat. 

I heard the honking of horn, and I felt the welling up of tears on my face--again. This is solidarity at its earnest, and solidarity makes you cry wherever you see it or sense it or feel it, like the solidarity you feel in those two EDSA revolutions that presidents who benefitted wasted, and their wasting was absolute as per my own brand of historical accounting and interpretation, both of which I have the legal and moral right to do as an active participant of those people's revolutions. 

The welling begins and it continues with profuseness. This is not sweat, this is not because of the heat. Where is the handkerchief? Where is the toilet towel? 

Secretly, I touched a tear from my eyes, and I bit my lips. No man, on the day of the march against DV, should be allowed to shed a tear despite Christ's beautiful account of wailing in the Garden of Gethsemani and giving us a template of how to express the sorrow of man. No way for Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani! Not now. 

So we moved, and the line became a long one, so that while we were turning right on one of those streets that lead to Beretania, the tail of the line was still on the street that turned to that street that we were turning. Joe, of course, was pointing out that long line of people, and he was satisfied. The turnout this year, he says, is one of the biggest. Honolulu Advertiser estimated the marchers to be about 2000. 

The police people, of course, provided escort to us, with a policeman on a moped ahead of us, and another on a motorbike giving direction, in coordination with Joe, on which way to go.

When we returned to the Capitol, we could feel the difference in the breeze that got into our lungs: the Capitol ambiance, the air that comes from its open roof in the center, the air that goes in and out of its four open walls, the air gave us all the regeneration we needed after walking for some miles in the name of domestic tranquility and in the effort to make known what we were fighting for--the Capitol declared that we were alive and that it was high time that we declared that we needed to end the violence in our homes. 

The ceremonies began right after, with a prayer that invoked the Hawaiian ancestors, with a prayer that asked for the blessing of Queen Lilio'kalani, she who had so much love for the people of Hawai'i. There was a Hawaian chant, the same kind that I heard when I was young in the Ilocos. And there was the leiing of the ancestors invoked. 

Beforehand, Joe and the organizers made it sure that the speakers and those who would be awarded were given a seat in the reserved seat on the right of the podium, a podium that looked like one of those they use in the Capitol. On the far left were three lines of police people in uniform--the very people who had first hand knowledge of the social malady we call DV--a number of them, we were told, had been killed when responding to domestic disputes. 

The rest of the people who marched with us--some key people from the community, some from cause-oriented groups, some from the State Senate, some from schools and centers that serviced children who suffered because of DV--were there all around, many standing, some seated on the cemented floor of the Capitol. Our view of the program looked out to the side of the palace of the Hawaiian monarchy, a palace true to its form before the monarchs were overthrown by the American government. I saw them, the key people who are into this cause: Lydia Abajo, Dr Raymund Liongson, Helena Manzano, Leslie Cabingabang, and some big shots in community organizing work. 

I had my chance to speak, and I thought I had managed to come across. Some young men said they liked the bluster and the bravado of my talk. I liked that I said my piece in the name of my daughters and of my son and of my wife--and in the name of all other daughters, sons, and wives in this state and everywhere. 

And then the leiing: each speaker and awardee was to hand over our leis to the young children who have become witnesses or victims of DV so that they will take over the same cause when their time would come. 

I gave mine to Jonathan, whose name I got to know better when I met him again on the road while rushing to the parking lot to get my car and rush back to the University miles away to the east. The papers say Jonathan is a witness to DV and is on the way to being healed. I prayed for him when I read that detail of his life. 

On the night of the event, I could not do anything. I had hoped to write something but could not. I remembered my tear welling up and how I did not allow the tear to fall in that march. No, not in that march. 

I prayed for Jonathan and the rest of them. And I allowed the prayer to take the form of a poem which I had hoped to write one of these days.

On my way out after the ceremony, I met Cindy Spencer, vice president of Domestic Violence Action Center. She was speaking with Nanci Kriedman. I bid goodbye to Cindy, kissing her as we always do over here to friends and colleagues. Nanci said she would like a copy of my talk. I told her I would email it to Cindy, and which I finally did today.  

Such is our life here, with our causes. They are worth fighting for.

A Solver Agcaoili

Hon, HI/Oct 10, 2008

Men Marching, 1

For the first time in my adult life in the United States, I took part in a Men's March, the 14th in the State of Hawai'i. The march was held at the State Capitol at noontime, today, October 9, the month designated celebrate the end of Domestic Violence, or sometimes called DV. 

I do not know much about marches like this one, and except for some hodge-podge marches I joined during the Filipino fiesta and other fiestas where my Cordillera dancing skills would be needed--my G-string proudly on my Ilokano-Cordillera body and nothing more--I confess my ignorance and I want absolution and forgiveness. 

The street dancing we did recently on Waikiki, with me acting as the secretary of Aguinaldo--who is that guy again who looked like me, according to my friend who was one of the organizers?--was one of those that gave me chicken skin early this year. Chicken skin is what they call the goose pimples over here, when you are touched and you promise yourself you will never forget the second and the minute and the hour of the event that touched you so. But by the following day, you could have forgotten everything especially when those who came to invade your privacy by taking your handsome pictures do not even have the courtesy of telling you, Hey, hey, this is your free copy of the picture I took of you when you were showing your butt!

But no. This march had nothing to with those things.  

I remembered that I was asked to take part of the silent march in honor of Erlinda Adviento early this year--and in that march, I had for company Senator Clarence Nishihara. And a TV station was there, and I was interviewed, and I was asked to recite a poem for Erlinda for the public to hear. No, the poem--that poem--inaugurated my public support to end DV. I wrote that poem for Erlinda as soon as I heard via email the news of her death. I sent the poem to a friend who sent me the email, and the friend sent it to many others until it reached the press, first by the Honolulu Advertiser, and then that TV station. 

In that silent march, we faced Beretania from the steps of the State Capitol. Some car drivers would honk at us in solidarity, and I would feel a tearing mechanism somewhere in my tear duck. I had my eye glasses for company. With the eyeglasses, I am certain I could not be caught tearing even if in my soul my tears were welling up. 

I marked that date right after Joe Bloom, director of Caritas Hawai'i, asked me in an email if I could lend my hand in the Men's March, and if I could speak from the perspective of the Filipino community. Months before, I took part in the Men's Voices, and there, I trained the GUMIL Hawai'i writers how to declaim a DV piece I put together from the hodge-podge of our work in the writing workshop I conducted for many Saturdays at the Philippine Consulate. There was where Joe Bloom saw me, and he remembered that perhaps, perhaps, here is a Filipino that could talk--and could talk a mouthful.

And so I said yes to the invite, right away, right away. I did not know anything about this bigger Men's March, so I googled and there, on cyberspace, I was deluged with all those events of Men's Marches everywhere. 

That did not deterred me from taking part. Backing out is not a phrase in my list of favorites. More importantly, this is an issue I believe in as I am enraged by all issues that involve social and individual injustice. I have seen so much social and individual injustice that now, I do not think I can ever tolerate it. 

I went ahead, more than an hour before the march. Parking space is an eternal problem in these parts, and if you would like to get a better parking, go to your appointment hours before. Never mind that the parking fee--with all those hungry metered parking posts giving all the flashes that are connected to a central parking center tucked somewhere in the city, the meters always asking for quarters every 15 minutes, or one cent per minute, and if you don't feed the meter, some traffic guy would come and insert in your windshield your parking citation. You do not put in the quarters, you get a parking ticket of about $30. 

The night before, I had not had the talk. No, nothing. I simply was playing footsie with my thoughts. I tried figuring out my mode of attack but I was not writing. Not a dot. 

For one thing, I did not even have an inkling of what I was to say. My three years of residency in Honolulu could have been enough, what with my weekly ration of banquets in hotels that bilked me of precious dollars that could have otherwise been used to help the poor like myself. 

But there are social obligations that you cannot do without--and these are one of them, especially when those people who are inviting are the same people who are helping you run your own Ilokano heritage program at the University. Which is not that many--the people who are in the know, the people who care to know. Some of those who help even have the temerity to tell on radio that they needed to be thanked all the time. Ha! And the help they gave was given long before I came in to run the program. So have them, these kinds over here, the social climbers and those who are in serious need of attention. 

So these thoughts came rushing as I tried to think what would I say.

I keep on, I keep on thinking, and other things caught my attention, like the ten books I borrowed but have been recalled and these had to be returned, right now, on that night before the strike of 12 midnight otherwise, you will have to be bilked with one dollar a day per book. 

No thoughts. I looked out the window. No thoughts. I opened my blog and there I wrote about seminary lives, the brutal and brutish seminary lives that I know.

I looked out the window again, and I remembered the poem I wrote for Erlinda Adviento. 

It was late, and the slopes of the Manoa mountains were dark. A tower glimmered somewhere in the north. I let the whirr of the aircon take hold of my thoughts.

I stood up. I lighted an incense stick, an opium. 

I remembered my seminary days. 

Ha, I told myself. I will talk from the deepest recesses of my heart. Which I did, today. 

Hon, HI

Oct 9/08

 

 

Domestic Violence, Men's March

Domestic Violence Is Not, Never the Way to Go

 A Solver Agcaoili

(Note: This is what I am going to say at the Men’s March to be held at the State Capitol, October 9, at noontime, in celebration of the Domestic Violence Month. I thank the organizers, specifically Joe Bloom, director of Caritas Hawai’i, for including me as one of the speakers. The Men's March Committee has been doing the men's march since 14 years ago. Many organizations will join the march, with speakers from the State House of Reps, the prosecutor's office, the Honolulu Advertiser, local community leaders, and the Domestic Violence Action Center.) 

I come before you wearing many hats.

Ever since that death that made my stomach churn—the death of Erlinda Adviento—things have never been the same for me.

As a poet, domestic violence has become for me the antithesis of the poetic: it snuffs out the life of words, it snuffs out the healing power of words, and it snuffs out the redeeming power of words. 

In death, there simply will no longer be a speaker. Word will be absent. 

In death, there simply will no longer be a listener. Word will be absent. 

Speaking and listening—the very heart of a healthy relationship—will simply not happen.

I tell you my story: I am a husband.  

I am a father of two daughters. I am a father of a son. 

Like every husband and father, I go through a lot but I pray that anger will not get hold of me, that rage will not get hold of me, that destruction will not overcome me. And I am here to say that domestic violence of whatever form is never ever the way to go in resolving domestic conflicts even if in life we have a good share of them, these conflicts that if we only know how to resolve them will make us stronger, wiser even. 

In that ping of a computer on that dark night that I first heard of Erlinda Adviento’s death via e-mail, I remembered my wife. I remembered my two daughters. I remembered my son. 

I looked out the window of my office in the stillness of that dark night, a late night, and in the silence, I could hear the weeping of children, the weeping of mothers, the weeping of women, and the weeping of those who loved the dead woman. 

I have not heard of Erlinda Adviento before—and she probably had not heard of me. But on that late and dark night I knew, I knew that the only way to get out of the cauldron of mixed emotions that gripped me was to translate these emotions into a creative rage, into a poem, a poem for this dead woman I do not know, a poem for all the other Erlinda Advientos that came before her and that came after her.  

In that poem is the covenant that I have with all people who go through hell because of domestic violence. 

In that poem I asked Erlinda and all the women why did you stay? 

But in that poem as well, I asked men—my manner of asking more and more and more of incomprehension and disbelief—the men like me, why, why did you hit? Why, why, why did you kill? Why, why did you use the gun to settle your domestic differences? 

In all these incidents, this epidemic of domestic violence, I think of my wife, and I tell myself, in a prayerful wish: domestic violence will not be our route to make peace, in our home as well as in our heart. 

I think of my two daughters, and I tell myself, in a prayerful wish: domestic violence will not get into your heart; it will not get into your homes; and it  will not blight the beautiful lives you lead. 

I think of my son as well, and I tell myself—and I tell him in a prayerful wish: domestic violence will not reside in your heart. You will not use those hands that I held with care when you were young, hands you used to hold onto me so you can hold onto the world and see for yourself the beauty of life. I tell him you are going to use those hands not to hit anyone but to take good care of everyone. 

I have witnessed enough of domestic violence and I do not want to become a witness to another one. 

For each death that I come to know on the papers, there is sorrow that builds up upon my chest, and the sorrow swells, and the sorrow becomes a volcano until I cannot write a poem any longer. 

All I want is the fundamental poetry of life. 

All I want is the hidden magic of words that come from the lips of people who know peace and quiet, people who know justice and love, people who know what care and kindness are all about. 

All I want is the magic of those words that will save us eventually from the hell that is domestic violence. 

All I want is the magic of those words that will reveal to us the surprises of what love can do to heal all of us, words that will teach us what gracious kindness can do to our communities so that we all become aware of our duty to take good care of others. 

I come here to speak as a Filipino as well: we all know that many of those who have died in the hands of their intimate partners, their lovers, their husbands, or their relatives are women of Filipino descent. Of those Filipinos, majority of them are Ilokanos. 

This reality hits me hard in the way every one of us is hit hard: why, why? What is the connection between being an Ilokano and Filipino and this ugly business of domestic violence? Pray, tell me, what?  

Deep within, this is what I know: we need to get educated to the challenges of putting an end to domestic violence—and Ilokano men and women must join hands to finally say, Stop the Violence. 

Our men also love—they know how to love, this I am sure. 

But our men are hitting their women—and some kill them as well. 

This abomination has nothing to do with our ethnolinguistic community; it has something to do with us as men; it has something to do with that lack that we have in our heart as men; and it has something to do with that lack that gnaws at our soul. Sure, we can blame society, but the blame game boomerangs on us. 

In the attempt to offer a healing covenant with our women, we need to name that lack in our heart, that void in our heart, that darkness in our heart and say, with finality, that domestic violence, indeed, is not the way to go. 

In our attempt to become one again with the community of women and children we have hurt, in the attempt to heal our hurts as well, we need to look at our soul again, and fill that lack that gnaws at our soul with a love that heals and that makes us whole again. 

This is our solemn vow now: to commit ourselves to ending this crime against our women and against our children and against ourselves. 

May all men grow in wisdom to know the difference between a loving heart and a violent one. 

Mahalo and good day.