Last Tuesday night, 10 March, a small group of Ateneo Law Students (who were mostly Interns of the Ateneo Human Rights Center), visited the farmer's groups, most of whom were spending their last night in Manila before going home to their respective provinces.
Before I continue, let me tell you the story of how this night came to be. I received several emails, and was seeing in the news that about a thousand or so farmers from various parts of the country were converging in Manila to urge Congress and Malacanang to pass the CARPER law (or CARP Extension with Reforms). Then I realized it was unfortunate that the Ateneo Law Community has not done anything to support the farmers this time, especially since we strongly supported the Sumilao Farmers in December of 2007. So, I forwarded the email, in the hope that my fellow law students would at least have a glimpse of what was happening in the streets of Manila. Thursday last week, I had a meeting at the Loyola Campus. I arrived early and saw that several farmers were in campus, talking and engaging with the college students (apparently, they were the preparatory group for the larger contingent which spent the night there). I then told myself that Ateneo Law had to do something. So I got in touch with some of my fellow AHRC Interns, and we decided to have a solidarity night with the farmers, wherein we share a meal with them and at the same time entertain them with some songs.
All went well, and over the past weekend we were expecting that we had a few days more to prepare for the soldiarity night. Alas, on Monday morning, we were informed by the NGOs helping the farmers that their last night in Manila would be Tuesday night; and it meant that we only had Monday night and Tuesday morning to prepare for what we were planning. An emergency meeting was called, and we decided that we will push through, and that we were going to "beg" money from our rich classmates so that we cna buy the farmers a meal for Tuesday night.
Tuesday came, and we were all set to go room to room to ask for donations, and invite teh law students to join us in the evening. I was quite scared that we would not be able to raise enough money to even provide half of them with food. 1pm came, our first class to visit - no class for the day: this definitely got us worried. Luckily, we got the ball rolling at 2pm, and the donations started trickling in. I had straight classes from 12pm-6pm, so I had to occasionally go out to see what was happening. We ended my last class early, which was a blessing since we still ahd much to do. Then, good news came: at 430pm, i was informed that we already had 7000 pesos in donations; 7k in 2 1/2 hours! That covered the food for the farmers, and we also had extra to buy them other items that they needed.
It was 6pm, and we already had to leave for Adamson (that's where the farmers were staying for the night). Now guess how much we had by this time: we collected donations totalling 10,235 pesos, all in a matter of 4 hours. I think it was simply a miracle that we were able to collect that much in such a short span of time; add to that the fact that we only had 2 minutes to convince people who were preparing for class about the cause we were fighting for.
We arrived in Adamson at around 8pm. There were around 80 or so farmers present. We gave them dinner (we didn't have enough to buy food for ourselves), we shared stories with them, and for a brief moment, we were able to make them feel that indeed Ateneo Law students was supporting them in their cause. We prepared a short program, but we had to cut it short because the Adamson pep squad was practicing with their drums adn cheers.
It was indeed a brief moment, we were only there for abour 21/2 hours. But we left determined to continue supporting them. We didn't want this to be a one time thing which would simply make us feel content that we did something good for the day. We knew, and we now know, that the farmers' struggles are far from over. And we will do whatever little thing we can, in our little nook called rockwell, or in the graeter world out there, to share in the plight and the cause of our farmer brothers and sisters.
SUPPORT OUR FARMERS, SUPPORT CARPER!
MAMULAT, MANGMULAT, TUMUGON AYON SA PAGKAMULAT!
- Ateneo Law Task Force CARPER
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