RAIL chapter successfully launches peasant support campaign

SANTA BARBARA, CA -- Over 100 people came to the screening of 
"Golf War" and half stayed for the 40 minute discussion which 
followed. This political education event launched intensified 
support for anti-imperialism in the Philippines.

Many government officials in the Philippines, from local officials 
all the way up to the president, are greedy and corrupt, according 
to the comments of one young Filipina at the most recent 
screening. As a result, they cannot solve the basic problems 
facing Filipinos -- whom they exploit for their own ends -- and 
the people turn from them to the revolutionary movement led by the 
Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

While the young womyn seemed ambivalent towards the CPP and its 
New People's Army (NPA), she aptly summed up the crises facing the 
reactionary government and the opportunities awaiting the 
revolutionary movement.

The reactionary government is tied the local big landlord and 
comprador classes and foreign imperialists. The corrupt officials 
portrayed in "Golf War" are bureaucrat capitalists; they use their 
government positions to skim public funds and take bribes from the 
big capitalists and imperialists they toady up to. Because of 
these ties and corruption, the reactionary government will 
repeatedly undermine the interests of the people and cause them to 
lose faith in it.

It is only natural for the masses to seek an alternative -- and 
the revolutionary movement is proving itself a viable alternative. 
The revolutionary movement distributes land to poor farmers in 
liberated areas, protects forests which are home to indigenous 
peoples from multi-national loggers, and as described in "The Golf 
War," helps protect peasant organizers from harassment and murder.

"The Golf War" describes the struggles of peasants and fisherfolk 
in the village of Hacienda Looc to defend their lands from golf 
course developers who wish to evict them. After thugs tied to the 
developers murdered several peasants associated with the militant 
organization Umalpaska (Rise up!), the NPA promised to retaliate 
for any future attacks. Since then, no more peasant activists have 
been killed, and work on the golf course project has come to a 
standstill.

"The Golf War" concretely captures the relationship between legal 
national democratic organizations like Umalpaska and underground 
organizations like the NPA. Legal organizations engage in 
educational work and militant civil disobedience (Umalpaska for 
example formed a humyn chain in front of developers' bulldozers) 
and do not engage in armed struggle like the NPA. But they share 
similar goals, such as implementing fundamental agrarian reform 
("land to the tiller"). Furthermore -- life in a Third World neo-
colony being what it is -- often just organizing peaceful protest 
can bring a violent response from the government or landlords' 
goon squads. The New People's Army breaks the reactionaries' 
monopoly on violence and helps the people defend themselves and 
fight back. Without the NPA, attempts at radical land reform would 
be bloodily suppressed, as would legal organizations like 
Umalpaska. This is the essence of Chairman Mao's saying, "Without 
a people's army, the people have nothing."

The screening also marked the beginning of the local RAIL 
chapter's participation in the "Adopt a Peasant Organizer 
Program." The RAILers took in $130 for the program from donations, 
video sales, and t-shirt sales. The chapter committed to regularly 
solicit donations for organizers with the Peasant Movement of the 
Philippines (KMP), a legal national-democratic organization 
(Umalpaska is a part of KMP). The donations will go towards the 
organizers' daily operating expenses and their families' 
subsistence. The "Adopt a Peasant Organizer Program" is an ongoing 
project of the Philippine Peasant Support Network (PESANTE -- see 
related article on the Los Angeles commemoration of the Mendiola 
Massacre). To chip in, talk to MIM or RAIL, or contact PESANTE 
directly at p_core

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