NAFCON Solidarity Statement on the Founding Congress of Anakbayan-USA

May 18, 2012

NAFCON Solidarity Statement on the Founding Congress of Anakbayan-USA

Warm greetings to the members of Anakbayan-USA!

Congratulations on your founding congress as the first overseas national chapter of Anakbayan! We of the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON) look forward with great enthusiasm in Building a Brighter Future for the Filipino youth and students in the U.S. and in the Philippines.

As an overseas chapter of Anakbayan Philippines, you play a special role in the Filipino youth and student movement in the U.S. Because of U.S. foreign policies in the Philippines that has trampled on our national sovereignty and poverty continues to worsen, many of us, as Filipino migrants or sons and daughters of Filipino migrants, are forced to join the 4,500 Filipinos leaving the Philippines everyday to find greener pastures. The majority of our families have found ourselves in the US, where the brighter futures we hope for are becoming bleak. In a time where we are seeing attacks on immigrants intensifying in the US, budgets cuts in education and youth services coupled with exponential increases in university tuition fees, the ongoing violence against women in all forms, and increasing military aggression in the Philippines and all other countries that the US has economic and military interests, the need for forging youth and student alliances in advancing and defending our rights and welfare in the midst of US aggression, both in the US and in the Philippines, come with great urgency. It is the youth and students that provide the firey enthusiasm, ambitious vigor, and passionate determination in progressive movements.

Prior to the founding of Anakbayan-USA, Anakbayan chapters all over the U.S. have also been members organizations of NAFCON, figuring prominently in advancing and defending the rights and welfare of Filipinos in the US. Anakbayan chapters were also key in the formation of SanDiwa, the youth and student network under NAFCON, casting the broadest and widest net possible in arousing, organizing, and mobilizing youth and students from all walks of life.

NAFCON congratulates you in celebrating your many victories and is planning for the coming years of continuing the struggle for youth and students, which continues as early as this weekend. NAFCON will unite with you on the streets of Chicago as we gather on May 20, 2012, in making our voices heard to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as its members gather in Chicago for their summit.

NATO has been one of the major world organizations in expanding brutal military aggression in third world countries in the name of the so-called “war on terror”, causing massive environmental destruction, increasing poverty, and peoples being displaced from their homelands. It is military and economic aggression by the U.S. and NATO that has had disastrous effects on countries like the Philippines, forcing many of us to leave the country daily to escape the worsening poverty and find work abroad just to be able to provide for their families.

NAFCON, in unity with Anakbayan-USA, will demand an end to military and economic aggression in our home countries. Let us continue on in the struggle to advance and defend the rights and welfare of Filipinos in the U.S., the Philippines, and the diaspora.

Mabuhay Anakbayan-USA!
Mabuhay ang Kabataan at mga mag-aaral Pilipino!