Passion Profile: Jennifer Anderson
Passion Profile, a monthly interview series for the Politics & Activism section spotlights the community work of grassroots organizers who discuss how the intersectionality of their identity influences their political education and engagement with the world.
Anakbayan Portland
On a drizzly grey morning in May, I sat down for a conversation with my friend Jennifer (she/her pronouns) who is from Kailua-Kona, Hawai’i and is currently living in Portland, Oregon. Jennifer organizes with Anakbayan Portland, which she describes as “a comprehensive mass-based youth organization that's part of the national democratic movement with a socialist perspective based in the Philippines.”
What are you passionate about?
Jennifer: I’m really passionate about creating art. I studied art history in college, and I like studying art but also creating it. I’m really passionate about what it means to create a culture that is pro-people through art, and I think that ties a lot into how I see my work with Anakbayan as fighting for a future and a culture where imperialism isn't so intertwined with the way that we understand the world. So art that serves the people instead of the few.
I don't know much about the culture of art in the Philippines, what is that really like?
J: In the Philippines it is really favored to be lighter skinned, you know, that culture of skin-whitening and using skin-whitening soaps, and just what you see in the media that is really tied back to the history of colonization and imperialism, that has been really ingrained in our brains to condition us to think that darker skin is less, but also we have been conditioned to go elsewhere, because there’s not a lot of opportunity in the Philippines. That’s also tied to the way education is done in the Philippines, where English is primarily spoken rather than Tagalog, where we learn more about American history rather than Philippine history. Things like that are part of the culture in the Philippines that sound silly but really are insidious.
In terms of art, my understanding of art really changed throughout the past years because I [had previously] thought the only art that mattered was art in galleries or museums, but that form of art really only serves a few, rather than art that is from the people and actually speaks about their experience and on their conditions. So there is beautiful artwork made by indigenous people in the Philippines and beautiful art [by] peasants in the Philippines that have very few resources but create these beautiful works that talk about the stories that they have.
As a creative being, what is the relationship between your passion for creating art and your organizing?
Going back to what I mentioned earlier about how my understanding of art has really changed, the art that we do shouldn’t just be for ourselves, it should be for the service of the broad masses. I no longer think of creating as something to sustain myself as an individual, but how can the artwork that we make, the music, the cultural things we do, how can that be a way for us to be a spokesperson for Filipinos back in the Philippines.
Even with speeches, the words that I say, it isn’t coming from me, but it’s coming from the experiences and conditions of Filipinos all around the world.
Isn’t it so beautiful how humans are just meant to create! And then capitalism tells us that we need to be exceptionally good at it, but for centuries how we would make sense of ourselves and the world around us is through art as a form of storytelling. I can see how your cultural background got you interested in organizing. How did you learn about Anakbayan and become involved?
I joined in November 2018 [during] my senior year of college. Really, it came from me learning more about my mom’s migration story, and just the amount of exploitation and oppression she had to face to come here to the US.
When did she migrate to the US?
In 1997, the year I was born. And just hearing her story, I realized her experience isn’t unique as an overseas Filipino worker, because so many other Filipino women are conditioned to believe that you have to marry a white man in order to live a better life. I think just learning about her story made me really angry and inspired me to want to create change where we no longer have a system that normalizes and systematizes forced migration. I had a friend who was in Anakbayan and they introduced me to a few folks and I just felt this was the solution to the problems in the Philippines, through organizing.
I’d love to hear more about your mom and how her story impacted you to start organizing. I’m curious, does your mom or other family members talk about their political ideology or their relationship to the Philippines as they have left?
I mean my mom, or her family come from a peasant background, because a majority of the Filipino people are peasants back home who live in the countryside. A lot of my family are unemployed because there are very minimal job opportunities in the Philippines, especially for folks who live in the countryside. So my family, and many other families, believe we have to migrate elsewhere for a better life, for better opportunities. That really sparked my desire to learn more about what is happening in the Philippines, because that is normalized, that so many people are out of work or have to work contractual jobs in the Philippines with no benefits, for very limited amount of time, to feed eight kids and live in grass shacks, you know, or live in urban poor communities. My mom is very strong, works two housekeeping jobs in Hawai’i, and I just started to understand how her strength comes from her background, but also her story is so connected to other Filipino migrants who face similar struggles.
That is really interesting, I’ve been thinking a lot about what would a world without borders look like, what is that fine line between having the agency and autonomy to have mobility and having to do it out of forced migration, and what would it look like to have everyone be able to return to their indigenous homeland, or to have the choice to move around. Have you been to the Philippines?
I was supposed to go last summer, but then covid. Anakbayan usually does exposure trips every year to the Philippines where a bunch of young organizers from all across the world and around the US get a chance to go to the Philippines and meet organizers there too and integrate with the communities.
Can you talk a bit more about Anakbayan—you explained that you primarily work with the Portland chapter of a national org, and you are also connected internationally and from a socialist perspective; so what exactly does that mean, what are your core values as a group and ideological commitments?
Yeah you’re right, we are an overseas chapter of Anakbayan Philippines which is the main organization. Basically, we are a youth organization that is part of the national democratic movement from a socialist perspective, and what that really means is our movement is national because our primarily struggle is for national sovereignty against foreign rulers like US imperialism, and it is democratic because primarily we wage the peasant struggle for land against domestic feudalism basically because 75% of the Philippine population are peasants, so really upholding the democratic rights of the broad masses against facism, which exists in the Philippines today.
Basically, the national democratic movement has various organizations of different sectors of society fighting for genuine change. And what it means to be a member of Anakbayan is that we really are fighting for national democracy even though we are overseas, and that our struggle here is very much part of the movement in the Philippines.
In Anakbayan we talk a lot about the three root problems of the Philippines: US imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism, and feudalism. So we understand that the Philippines is in an ever-worsening crisis, through semi-colonial and semi-feudal character. What it really means to build this movement is to eliminate those three basic problems and change the worsening crisis for a future that is national, democratic and build towards a socialist future.
Heck yeah, love that. This work is so important and it can sometimes feel so overwhelming when you’re like, I’m just one person against this big machine *Jennifer laughs* and it's so sprawling but it's awesome to zoom out and see that we’re just a limb of a big organism that is working together. I wonder if you can, in your own words, define what would national sovereignty look like for the Philippines and for the Filipino people?
The biggest problem in the Philippines is the problem of land. The Philippines is so rich in its resources, it’s so beautiful and it has the amount of food and other resources to sustain the Philippines over several times its population. Instead, it’s being taken away by these few monopoly capitalists who come in and build mining corporations, extract resources, and push people out from their homes and indigenous lands. So really national sovereignty means that these foreign corporations and these foreign monopoly capitalists no longer have a say in how we get to live back home.
It’s so messed up! One thing a kasama said to me (kasama means comrade or friend in Tagalog) is that countries aren’t underdeveloped, they are overexploited, and that really clicked for me what is happening in the Philippines.
I hear you talking about decolonizing the land and education and the way people interact by challenging corporations. Often we like to think we are post-colonial but the reality is that we aren’t. For your family that has lived in the Philippines, or maybe for you and your kasama who are in diaspora, what does a decolonial lens to this movement mean and look like?
Decolonization—I feel like that’s such a hot word right now. For me, decolonization means really learning the revolutionary history of the Philippines, and continuing to fight for a better future. So doing away with the way that Spain tried to colonize the Philippines through religion but also by force, and doing away also with how Japan tried to colonize the Philippines, and primarily right now how the US through its economic policies and different political ways controls the Philippine government, really doing away with those ways of pressure and control over the Philippines.
And you’re right, I think decolonization isn’t something of the past, it’s something that is very much present today. For example, Anakbayan is calling for the end of US military aid going to the Philippines, because about $550 million US tax dollars were sent to the Philippines, and this is funding different machines, helicopters, drones sent to different parts of the Philippines to target different human rights defenders and organizers. Even last year at the beginning of the pandemic, the current president in the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, was pushing for a $2 billion arms deal with the US—why the heck are you worried about an arms deal when we are entering a global pandemic?!
In this type of work, it’s a lot of intense emotional, intellectual, physical, spiritual labor; how do you deal with burnout?
I think obviously you need to take care of yourself, but also, for me, to understand that the work of organizing isn’t for myself, it’s for the number of Filipinos and non-Filipinos who suffer oppression and exploitation every single day. So yeah, understanding that the work that we do, the long tireless hours, not just meetings but also understanding why our people are struggling so much, for me that keeps me going instead of burns me out. I know this fight is a long one, it’s protracted; what’s being waged right now in the Philippines is a protracted people’s war. All of that to say, yes burnout is very real, but I think the bigger picture too is this fight is going to take a long time, and it’s not just to serve one individual but many people.
Do you have any advice or tips, or what would you share with a younger activist who wants to be involved with organizing grassroots but doesn’t really know where to start?
One piece of advice is to really be with our people, find ways to learn from them. I think specifically about how there are so many Filipinos all around the world, and if I were talking to a young Filipino who wants to learn about activism, I encourage them to go out there in the world and be with them, learn from them, hear their stories, and organize! Organizing is really the only way that we can find solutions for our people. And find things you are passionate about and just go with it, have fun with it! Organizing really isn’t so daunting, it’s tiresome and sometimes it can be stressful but have fun with it, because it’s going to take a long time.
I feel like I’m really tapping into my inner child mindset of asking why things are the way they are as a way to critique the existing systems.
Yeah, I think that also speaks to the youthful energy we bring to liberation movements by really questioning why, why is this normal, why is it systematized, and why can’t we have something different?
It is so important and sustaining to feed ourselves on the work of elders and past revolutionaries because, yeah, we are not alone. Sometimes I get into the trap of thinking wow, our generation, we’re young, we’re diverse, we are the first to do this, but of course that's a fallacy, we could not be here without the work of people from the past. There are a lot of shared struggles and sometimes we may get bogged down with identity politics, but how do we build collective solidarity, and what does it mean to mobilize collectively?
I think what you said earlier about understanding that we have a shared struggle is the essence of it. Because Anakbayan sees US imperialism as one of the main problems of the Philippines, we understand that the system of imperialism is global, so our solidarity work must be global as well. The way that we understand the struggles of our people here in Portland, OR but also internationally is that these rich monopoly capitalists are profiting off the exploitation of the broad masses.
I actually went to an educational discussion the other night that was talking about international solidarity. They talked about ways we can unite together, finding similarities that we can fight towards; find ways to collaborate and find ways to mobilize together; and finding something that we are all against, but also that we are all for, towards building something.
I think it’s really beautiful how during such a terrible global pandemic, there have been such great efforts and victories made by the solidarity work of our people here in the US for international movements, like for the Philippines or for Palestine. Also thinking that the work we do here in Portland, Oregon isn’t isolated from the work of the rest of the world, and similarly, too, in the Philippines, the liberation of the Philippines is a contribution to the overall anti-imperialist movement around the world.
What can the average person do to support this movement?
Our main campaign as Anakbayan is to Oust President Rodrigo Duterte, so joining us in the call to oust this fascist dictator because of the really messed up things he has done as president. Have you heard of the anti-terror law? It targets anyone who speaks out against the government as terrorists, which really impacts the organizers and human rights defenders back home. So for anyone here in Portland or in the US joining us in the call to oust him, and in our fight against fascism and dictatorship in the Philippines.
One concrete way that folks can support is supporting the Philippine Human Rights Act which is a piece of legislation that is calling for the end of US military aid to the Philippines. We as Anakbayan understand that ending US military aid is connected to our campaign to oust Duterte because Duterte works with the US government to get all this military aid and foreign aid to capitalize and profit off the exploitation of the Filipino masses.
Resources to learn more:
@anakbayanpdx [IG + FB]
Written by Katelin Ling Cooper
