jannele-jimenez

[jannele-jimenez]

Twin Plagues: The Housing Crisis and COVID-19

Even in Katipunan, the urban poor cluster in shantytowns tucked  into back alleys, lurking behind the glamorous buildings lining the highway. Before COVID-19 dealt the fatal lockdown-powered blow, such a living condition had already bared a lethal variety of health hazards. Now, with the pandemic ominously hovering over every facet of life as we know it, these risks have morphed into something even more insidious and deadly: spatial inequality has made urban poor communities a breeding ground for contamination and death. According to a study conducted by the World Bank, “Opportunities for containment and treatment will also be difficult given challenges of reaching and isolating COVID 19 affected people in slums and it will be even more difficult to trace contacts, leaving those who came in contact equally vulnerable and without treatment or isolation.” Simply put, the inherent character of subjecting whole populations to such living conditions is a paralytic that has rendered the healthcare system immobile – or worse, obsolete. In the violent throes of a global pandemic, the National Land Use Act (NLUA) has become a medical strategy.

Land is a complex thing — not just in its science, but in its politics, too; hence, NLUA mirrors that complexity and endeavors to navigate its labyrinth in a cross-sectoral attempt to linearize land distribution. Among the peripheral quarters of society that the policy aims to  push out of the margins is the urban poor. The provisions servicing that end include the “improved access to affordable housing” through its “direct allocation.” Though NLUA has been denounced for prioritizing food security over the housing crisis, this does not seem to be the case whatsoever. Hectares upon hectares have been converted for commercial use, but for whom? Settlements have broadened in density and soared in number – housing 18.4 million Filipinos as of 2019 according to the Philippine Statistics Authority – because the problem endemic to the housing crisis is not the lack of land, but who is allowed to assume ownership of it. As direct allocation of this resource is an integral part to the vision behind NLUA, it presents a possibility that the skewed distribution of land may come to a balance. This Act, in essence, seeks to pry land from the iron grip of the rich’s monopolization.

This pandemic, this plague, sprawled and unbending, is far from over. There are 18.4 million people barely sheltered – if at all – from its hostilities, unable to witness the ‘old normal’ contort to an ugly new one from a safe distance the way the rich and the privileged have. All the while, they are barricaded from their wages, lambasted by the government, and then abandoned by it. Perhaps it can be said that there have been two plagues all along.

[jannele-jimenez]

Appeal to Hon. Greg Gasataya: the Youth of Bacolod Demand Action on NLUA

September 25, 2020

Hon. Greg Gasataya

Congress of the Philippines

Congressman

Dear Hon. Gasataya,

Greetings!

As a founding member of the Bacolod Youth Alliance, I  would like to express my sincere gratitude for your efforts to initiate safe and meaningful discourse with our members; and, by extension, the youth of Bacolod City.

In the spirit of dialogue that you have both cultivated and fostered, I would like to articulate my views on the National Land Use Act, and how this policy is beneficial to your constituents in the lone district of Bacolod. Experts at German Watch found in their study that, in the Global Climate Risk Index of 2015, the Philippines is geographically vulnerable to storms, floods, and heatwaves. Studies have also shown that the Philippines will be the tenth most affected country by Climate Change, especially its agricultural sectors. Though Bacolod is an urban city, its economy and food security are inextricably linked to its Negrosanon counterparts in rural areas. In times of disaster, prices of even the most basic essentials hike, making access almost an impossibility for the urban poor.

With the climate crisis looming overhead, such calamities will only increase in both frequency and intensity. The National Land Use Act will assure the protection of agricultural and ancestral lands, thereby equalizing food security to a degree and lessening privately owned property. The monopoly on land not only marginalizes millions, but also functions as an apparatus of over-production, which is the leading cause of climate change. Moreover, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority, the Philippines has an annual growth rate of 1.72%. Without a careful, participatory, and democratic delineation of land, the monopoly will leave the vulnerable to cram in hazardous, disaster-prone areas. If the land of the lone district of Bacolod remains centralized in the hands of a few, houses, lots, and even rent will drastically increase with the population, and many more will lose access to shelter—a basic need and right. Already, we have a housing crisis in your constituency, but the lack of land is but a myth—it is merely a matter of its distribution. The National Land Use Act is a step towards a future where my people—and your constituents—will no longer have to bear the cruel rains of monsoon and the torrid heat of summer without roofs over their heads and warm beds to lay themselves and their children to rest.

As a concerned citizen, I urge you to use your personal power and your political influence to advocate for this bill on the congress floor and in the local public sphere. I implore you to prove your loyalty to the populace that has awarded you the title ‘Honorable’ by voting yes for NLUA when the time comes.  As congressman, you are mandated by the 1987 Constitution to “give highest priority to the enactment of measures that protect and enhance the right of all the people to human dignity, reduce social, economic, and political inequalities, and remove cultural inequalities by equitably diffusing wealth and political power for the common good. To this end, the State shall regulate the acquisition, ownership, use, and disposition of property and its increments.” Therefore, I merely ask that you and your office honor the public’s trust by abiding the laws of our nation. As climate change and economic ruin both accelerate, it is not only the people of Bacolod City whose lives are on a delicate balance, but that of all Filipinos.

Thank you, and I look forward to your reply.

Regards,

Jannele Michelle M. Jimenez

[jannele-jimenez]

Guess that fallacy: Jannele edition!

Me: points out valid criticism of the patriarchy 

Person: This is why I hate cancel culture. It’s so toxic. 

Me: “Duterte is a fascist” 

Person: Dilawan ka, noh?

Me: White women are relatively less marginalized than women of colour 

Person: stop dragging down other women! That’s such an un-feminist thing to say

Me: Christianity needs to be held accountable for its colonial past

 Person: You must be anti-christ

Me: I’m a feminist 

Person: So you’re a man-hater?

[jannele-jimenez]

Hi, Sab! The fallacies in the situations you wrote are overgeneralisation, Tu Quoque, and false dilemma, respectively. The last two examples particularly piqued my interest because these are narratives we hear all around us. We all seem to know a Person B, and the western modernist rhetoric has manifested in societal issues such as gentrification as a failed mimicry of the global north. This goes to show that logical fallacies are not empty words. 

Logical Fallacies

1. 

My mom drinks soft drinks all the time and compared to my dad, she never gets sick. So, soft drinks aren’t really bad for you.

2.

Person A: “You should stop going out for non-essential matters. There is still a pandemic going on.” Person B: “You go out too! You’re not sick. I’m not sick either. It’s fine, who defines what’s non-essential anyway?”

3.

Either we follow the path to modernization by the West, or the world will never develop.

[jannele-jimenez]

Hi, Faith! Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seemed to have illustrated the ‘false dilemma’ fallacy in your first example. Politics is not an ‘either/or’ topic. In fact, even the political spectrum, which offers range as well as depth, has become problematised. 

I believe the second example is an overgeneralisation. The BLM movement is a deeply complex resistance to a historically and structurally embedded form of systemic oppression, and to characterise it as a ‘nuisance to society’ is a appalling simplification. 

If I guessed it correctly, the third one is a fallacy called the red herring, which employs diversion tactics. Instead of validating or negating the argument, Person 2 replied with a shift in topic. 

Falling Deep Into Fallacies

To sharpen our critical thinking, try to figure out what kind of fallacies these statements are: 

1.Person: Either you’re a dilawan, or a DDS. Either you’re red, or yellow. 

2. Karen: I don’t support the BLM Movement! All they do is vandalize and destroy buildings. They’re a nuisance to society. 

3. Person 1: This government has failed to manage this COVID-19 health crisis. A lot of people lost their livelihoods, and are struggling to get by everyday.

Person 2: But hey, look at the bright side! At least we have dolomite in Manila Bay. Do you want to come with and film a vlog with me?

[jannele-jimenez]

Logical Fallacies: What I Always Hear As An Activist

I. 

At the height of protests against the Anti-Terror Law, hundreds of trolls would comment on statements and pictures of mobilisations, saying, “Why would you call for the junking of the Anti-Terror Law? Are you terrorists?” 

II. 

When people find out about my politics, they point out that I own a cellphone and a laptop, and say, “Why do you criticise capitalism when you enjoy what it produces?”

III. 

When I try to politely explain the failures of the Duterte administration, people often retort with, “Bakit, ano ba ambag mo?”

[jannele-jimenez]

Thoughts on Chatterjee and Quebral

CHATTERJEE 

Though Chatterjee admits that the definition of development detailed in the paper is merely for a ‘general understanding’, it is still an incredibly un-nuanced, and even outdated statement that harkens back to a time when development still strived to assimilate the labor-intensive East to the capital-intensive West. Defining development as an ‘Activation of a country’s human and material resources in order to increase the production of goods and services, thereby leading to the general progress and welfare of its people’ is unabashedly Neo-classical. 

Furthermore, the previous stress on ‘behaviour change’ instead of ‘institutional change’ implies that underdevelopment is a by-product of community oversight instead of systemic oppression, thereby absolving harmful structures of any sort of accountability. 

However, Chatterjee argues that both development communication and communication for development has departed from ‘“winning hearts and minds” over to a capitalist way of life’ and the erroneous notion that depravation is a character flaw instead of a phenomenon borne out of an appropriative global dynamic. Development communication and communication for development as a tool for empowerment, in my understanding of Chatterjee, should therefore be a process and an outcome by which a linear and horizontal form of governance may be achieved through participatory, grassroots-oriented consensus building among stakeholders and involved institutions. 

Moreover, the discussion on development journalism particularly piqued my interest. As traditional journalism tends to gravitate towards sensationalism, stories of those deemed ‘irrelevant’ remain unsung. In the Philippines, traditional journalism has become Capital-centric, thereby becoming complicit in the plight of those living in rural places and disadvantaging their movements. The urban tends to be glamorised, which provides a breeding ground for even more issues to proliferate. I am especially drawn to the concept of development journalism creating relevance instead of responding to what the mainstream has already dubbed as such. 

QUEBRAL

Quebral, being a Filipino, offers a perspective more nuanced to local realities. She quotes scholars at UPLB and defines development communication as an interaction of two social processes: development and communication. As she describes development as the ‘weightier one’ of the two, there is an implication that communication is merely a tool of development. I am with agreement with her on this. Aside from processes, development and communication are also disciplines, both of which are deep and vast in nature, and there are but a few boundaries that blur and overlap. 

However, I have qualms about Quebral’s claim that economic development is a necessary prerequisite to a holistic development. Though access is often hinged on fiscal capacities, it still hold true that such a statement is erroneous. She discusses agriculture in  the later parts of the primer, and the plight of farmers simply cannot be divorced from its sociopolitical origins.  Quebral states that “We cannot rightfully talk about national or human development unless they too are a part of it”, pertaining to rural populations. But as we have seen, and as even Quebral herself argues, the stress on economic development has caused many to flock to the city to loosen economic restrains, usually only trading one form of exploitation for another. Moreover, Quebral’s argument that the media must take on the role of the teacher is quite patronising. Though I understand that knowledge-transfer is an integral part of development, we must acknowledge that there is value in rural and indigenous knowledge as well.