Steve: Woke up this morning with my mind set on… the Church Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines. Because who doesn’t wake up thinking about the Church Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines?
There are inspiring people everywhere. But work in human rights or where people are organizing seemingly quixotic efforts against historical-structural suffocation and you will witness people who leave you in awe.
Allow me to ramble about a few such people I knew a long time ago.
My first job after college was at the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy, the fall of 1985. I was paid $200 per month and slept on a thin mattress on the floor of a group house in DC with a dozen other activists and as many holes in the walls. My roommate, Glen, worked for the Nuclear Freeze movement. I wonder what happened to Glen, or what his last name was. (Note on privilege: Though I tried hard to make it on the $125 leftover after paying rent every month, my parents helped me, as they would do in one way or another for a long, long time to come as I climbed the non-corporate ladder. And I often stayed over at my girlfriend Janet’s toasty apartment with a tv and homemade biscuits -- and Janet!)
At the Coalition, I coordinated the national campaign to defund the Trident D-5 missile program, the highly accurate, sub-launchable, incredibly fast and powerful, first-strike-capable nukes which right now are protecting us from an economy based on peace and prosperity instead of permanent war profiteering and holocaust. Our “campaign” went down worse than McGovern 13 years earlier. I'd been hired by Michael Ferber, he of the Boston Five and the Trial of Dr. Spock 1960s anti-draft resistance who’d also been a Yale English professor. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ferber)
Out of the blue Michael asked me to write a small newsletter brief updating our members about the situation in the Philippines, where dictator Marcos’s rule was beginning to waiver. Even the Reagan administration had begun to turn on him. I ended up with a longer piece and to my surprise they put it on the cover.
I can’t remember how we met but sometime after that I met an Irish priest, Fr. Mike O’Laughlin. At some point, he asked me to work with him at something called the Columban Fathers Justice and Peace Office (now the Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach.) I have always described the Columbans as the Maryknoll of Ireland, missionaries who have dedicated their lives to communities in the Global South and to coming back to the North and seeking to undo the harm the First World is causing to the people they have shared their lives with. Fr. Mike had been the assistant to the Archbishop of Seoul for two decades and had incredible stories. My desk initially was the dining table in Fr. Mike’s tiny apartment near Catholic University. Susan Thompson worked with him there too. We later moved to an office building housing various Catholic groups.
The Columbans were big in the Philippines, meaning there were about 200 of them there, I think. They were in Fiji, Vanuatu, South Korea, Pakistan, Jamaica, Belize, and some other places few in America were paying attention to then or now. So, we tried to be a voice on Capitol Hill for those calling out US policy on human rights and poverty issues in those places. In the Reagan era. Didn’t get far.
We tried, modestly at best, to echo the calls for de-militarization and non-colonial policies. Say what you will about some missionaries (and I will likely agree), but Fr. Mike and the other Columbans I got to know around the country were such good men trying to do their best to call attention to the unnecessary suffering of those they knew and to witness for radical policy changes.
Enter the Methodist Building. Across the street from the US Supreme Court is the unlikeliest of buildings – a hub for America’s progressive church lobby, a building filled with small offices of small nonprofits nibbling at the policies of empire.
So, enter the Methodist Building I frequently did. One of those small nonprofits was the Church Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines. Running the office was Dr. Dante Simbulan, a former Philippine Military Academy professor whose conversion and resistance to Marcos’ brutality got him sent to prison there. He was in exile. I remember my admiration when he told me he intended on returning to his home country when he could to continue his work there. Return he did, to teach and lead. I see he has a memoir out last year, “Whose Side Are We On? Memoirs of a PMAer.” I intend on ordering it. (http://www.yonip.com/whose-side-are-we-on-memoirs-of-a-pma…/)
I don’t think the Church Coalition lasted into the mid-1990s. Marcos was gone while I was still at the Columbans. But deep problems in America’s colony persist. I see that just yesterday Oregon's US Senator Jeff Merkleysent a letter of congratulations to the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines - ICHRP US for their starting a new US chapter. Godspeed, ICHRP-US. (https://www.facebook.com/ICHRPUnitedStates/photos/a.1445755008827738.1073741829.1414310785305494/1445754992161073/?type=3&theater)
Facebook is evil, but it does have some redeeming qualities. Nah, it’s just evil.
But there were a couple of other people at the Church Coalition who I had the most interaction with, and about whom I am so happy to have discovered through Facebook to seem to be thriving: Doug Cunningham and Rebecca Asedillo. They'd met, as I recall, when Doug had worked in the Philippines, and they come back to work at the Church Coalition. Like many others I'd come to know, these folks set an example for me of hard work and determination, though I doubt they’d remember me. They were seemingly singularly focused on making the most of their modest operation out of that building.
Now I see that Doug is the pastor of New Day Church in the Bronx. He founded the community in a cafeteria where they still hold Sunday services. Take a look at Doug’s congregation to see what a meaningful, alive community of faith looks like. Its mission is to “challenge white supremacist, patriarchal and heterosexist norms… committed to crossing boundaries, including race, class, sexual orientation, gender, and age – and confronting injustice with the compassion and abundance of God.” (http://www.newdaychurch.nyc/about/)
Becky, Dante, Doug, Glen, Michael, Mike, Susan, and a long list of others – heroes all! Thank you for your steadfastness and example.
These are such harsh, ugly times. I’m grateful to remember that there are beautiful, inspiring people all around past and present.
They're always asking us: Whose side are we on?
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