Miagao women protest to save livelihood



Miagao, Iloilo
March 9, 2015

 "Women hold half the sky"

 That statement, attributed to Ho Chi Minh and echoed by Mao as well as other revolutionaries in the world, point to one fact: there can be, not just development but life itself, without women.

 Ambulant vendors, all women, picket the townhall of Miagao today denouncing the "harassments" they suffered in the hands of town officials. They wave flags and placards indicating they are members of the militant women's organization Gabriela.


 The women are not just vendors plying their wares on foot to earn their keeps. They sell fresh and dried fish, fruits and vegetables, among others, to reach homes, thus serving fellow housekeepers (who are mostly women) who are constrained to go to the public market. They are wage earners whose hands feed families.

 These are not just ambulant vendors, these are persons, angry women who are defending life by mounting a protest against the powers-that-be out to stifle their right to earn a decent living.

"We pay the mayor's permit and other taxes, yet we are still being arrested by the men of Mayor Napulan for violation of an ordinance," they decry.

 The local police shoo them away but they hold their line: they argue they are staging a peaceful action and are not leaving not until they have publicly expressed their grievances against Mayor Macario Napulan.

 This is the first time the people of Miagao, an-all women group at that, publicly protested against their town mayor.

 Their placards say it all, including the ones calling on Napulan to step down for violating women's rights, incidentally, a day after Filipino women and those around the world, brave the heat of the streets to cry freedom and democracy, March 8, International Women's Day.

 Miagao, a coastal town 40 south of Iloilo City, hosts the main campus of the University of the Philippines in the Visayas (UPV)

 (Addendum: Journalist Alex Vidal tells me this morning -- March 10 -- that he interviewed the protesters. 

 * Mayor Napulan and women's representatives have talked to thresh problems: he tells them he will honor the permit he issued but asks them to "organize" so town enforcers can distinguish them from "outsiders" peddling on foot, the latter being tagged as his target. 

 *The protesters interviewed by him decry not just lost income but lost goods as well as the mayor's men detained them and seized their fresh fish that they grilled for consumption, preferably, with the help of booze.

 *For those who borrowed money to buy fish at the fish landing area for re-sale, it's a double loss. Nawad-an na, nautangan pa!)






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