FILIPINO HIP-HOP ACTIVISTS TAKE A STAND IN OAKLAND/TAKE BACK OUR EDUCATION Favorite 

There is a large Filipino community in the Bay Area that organizes and fights for better workers’ rights and educating youth of color. There are groups within this community that address these issues through hip-hop.

Kiwi Illafonte, 40, is a Bay Area political rapper who talks about social issues in his music.

“Social change is at the center of my universe,” Illafonte said.

Originally from Los Angeles, Illafonte came to the Bay Area purely out of adoration. For the past 13 years, Oakland has been his home. He started out as a youth educator at the League of Filipino Students in Los Angeles, where they connected their Filipino history to current social issues they experience in the United States.

“My move to the Bay Area came at a good time because I felt like the community really embraced me as an artist and as an activist,” Illafonte said.

According to Illafonte, he was unsure of his Filipino identity in his youth. He grew up in a predominantly Black community and strongly identified with the Black community through music.

Illafonte grew up in gang culture in Los Angeles, witnessing the 1992 Los Angeles riots firsthand and experiencing police brutality. His political work was sparked by other conscious rappers, like well-renowned rap group Public Enemy, whose songs address political issues and question the system and law enforcement.

“I think that even though I am Filipino, those things also resonated with my own experience growing up,” Illafonte said, “I didn’t understand racism back then like I do now, but I understood that I was really angry about it.”

As Illafonte built a following in Los Angeles, he started to hear more about another Filipino rapper in the area, Bambu. The two used to be in a rap group together called Native Guns. Their work emerged in line with the West Coast underground hip-hop scene in the early 1990’s. The duo gained a following in both Los Angeles and San Francisco and continued to tour around the U.S., Canada, and the Philippines, performing in night clubs and other small venues.

Their work together aimed to educate and uplift youth of color in the United States by evaluating the injustices that exist in the system. They also draw connections between social issues in the U.S. and in the Philippines, addressing migration issues, racism, and the Filipino diaspora.

The album, Barrel Men, echoes their radical political perspective that earned them a spot next to more famous political rappers like Dead Prez and the Coup. They are now a part of a sub-genre known as raptivism, which is social activism through rap music.

While Native Guns is not currently performing together today, Illafonte said that they are still closely involved with each other. For the past three years, Illafonte has been working with his band, Bandung 55. While he is the main songwriter, he opens up the creative process to his band members, composed of seven Filipino activists and organizers.

Acccording to Illafonte, Bandung 55’s sound can best be described as a rock, reggae and rap fusion.

Illafonte’s keyboardist, Armael Malinis, 35, started out as a youth organizer in the Bay Area. He co-founded Anakbayan East Bay in 2007, a Filipino youth organization that aims to engage, organize and mobilize Filipino youth as well as connect their own struggles to those in the Philippines.

Malinis’ activism work is inspired by living and experiencing the oppression of immigrants. He moved here with his parents from the Philippines when he was five years old and lived in a household in Vallejo with several other immigrant families. Filipino identity plays a major role in his politics.

“I came in as an organizer first, then as a cultural worker,” Malinis said. “My lens is around using the notion of mass moving and building power, and participating in mass movements.”

He is a self-taught keyboardist. According to Malnisi, he started taking it his music more seriously after they put a band together and recruited Illafonte, whose work he had been a fan of for years.

“I’ve always been a fan of political hip-hop,” Malinis said. “That definitely influenced my taste in the music that I put out there.”

Bandung 55 is currently working on their latest album and expects to release it next year.
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THE U.S. EDUCATION CRISIS

Public education in the U.S. has suffered from decades of failed neoliberal policies. Budget cuts have deteriorated the K-12 system and tuition increases have made higher education unaffordable for working class families and youth. The ultimate aim of the richest 1% is to completely defund public education and transform it into a profit generating scheme. This will funnel the majority of the working people, including youth and students, towards becoming extremely exploited low wage workers for multinational corporations or push them to become expendable soldiers for U.S. imperialism’s military industrial complex.

As of 2016, about 43 million people in the U.S. hold student debt that amounts to $1.3 trillion, while tuition rates have increased by 10% over the past five years. Trump’s proposal for addressing college student debt is for borrowers to make monthly payments of 12.5% of their income for 15 years, then the rest of their debt would be forgiven. This is only slightly different from the existing policy under Obama for borrowers to pay 10% of their income for 20 years. Trump has expressed his desire to eliminate the federal Department of Education. This is unlikely as it requires an act of Congress, so instead he plans to use public education funds towards privatization. Trump is promoting a “school choice” model which would redirect $20 billion in federal education funding towards block grants for local governments to implement private school vouchers. These block grants would be prioritized for cities that direct public school funding towards charter schools. These vouchers give families the illusion that they have “options” to send their children to charter schools, private schools, magnet schools, or public schools. In reality, “school choice” is nothing but a privatization scheme to systematically defund and dismantle the public education system across the country at the local level.

Trump also supports “merit-based” pay for teachers and seeks to destroy the tenure system. This neoliberal deregulation scheme would remove job security and further exploit teachers by forcing them into a situation of unstable employment. Moreover, Trump wants to prioritize deporting undocumented people in his first 100 days in office, and has threatened to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which would impact millions of undocumented youth.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE EDUCATION CRISIS AND WAR

Meanwhile, Trump plans to expand military spending by $100-300 billion. These funds will be used for 90,000 additional Army troops, 20,000 additional Marines, an expanded Navy fleet from 272 to 350 ships, quadrupling the number of Air Force fighter aircrafts to 1,200, the large-scale modernization of military facilities and missile defense, increasing the nuclear weapons arsenal, and an increased emphasis in cyber warfare.

To fit the bill, Trump has proposed cutting non-defense spending by about 1% per year. By 2026, spending on non-defense programs would drop by almost a third to 37% of the federal non-defense budget: from $530 billion in 2016 to $380 billion in 2026. This plan would steal and misappropriate funds from necessary public programs such as education, scientific and medical research, healthcare, child care, housing assistance for low-income families, and other social services that the majority of the American people rely on due to economic crisis in the U.S.

This prioritization of the military over education and social services will only exacerbate the current economic and social crisis by plunging the U.S. into further debt and increase the burden and suffering of the working people. They will also further intensify wars of aggression and intervention around the world.

THE IMPACT ON FILIPINOS IN THE U.S.

Since 1974, the Philippine government has implemented the Labor Export Policy (LEP), or the systematic export of its own people abroad as its response to the Philippines’ worsening economic and social crises. Since then, over 10 million Filipinos have been forced to migrate overseas, seeking work and economic opportunities in the hopes of a better livelihood for their children, and to bring financial support to their families back home.

Filipino youth in the U.S.–many a direct result of LEP sending Filipinos abroad–are not exempt from the crisis of the American educational system. Having left the Philippines for “better” opportunities, Filipino parents pressure their children to take advantage of the American educational system in pursuit of the “American Dream.” However, in this educational system, Filipino youth face the rat-race culture in American schools and the necessity to take on several jobs and incur huge debts to afford college. Meanwhile, they are not taught the history of Filipinos in the United States, especially about Filipinos’ positive contribution in the fight for justice here in the United States.

Recent immigrants from the Philippines are now experiencing the frustrating flaws of the new K-12 neoliberal education system that has been implemented in the Philippines since 2011. The K-12 education system in the Philippines is a scheme to turn Filipino youth into more easily exportable and exploitable cheap labor to meet the needs of the international market. However, upon arriving to the U.S., Filipino students who have graduated from high school in the Philippines are only credited for their 3rd and 4th year of high school and forced to retake their first 2 years of high school. In addition, undocumented youth do not qualify for federal and some state funding, depriving at least half a million Filipino youth of the opportunity to access higher education. Even when undocumented youth graduate, they cannot practice regulated professions, forcing them to take up jobs that are not commensurate with their degrees and that leave them in debt for longer.

The neoliberal attack on education affects the content and aim of the U.S. education system—to serve corporate and capitalists’ interests by funneling youth into professions that contribute to the military-industrial complex; partnering with or funding public and private institutions for military research; and by recruiting youth directly into the military after graduating from high school. The military actively preys on youth who cannot afford higher education by promising “free” education, including undocumented youth who are also promised an adjustment of status by serving in the military.

GENERAL DEMANDS

1. REDIRECT FUNDS FROM MILITARY SPENDING AND FOREIGN MILITARY AID IN THE PHILIPPINES TOWARDS EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICES IN THE U.S.

2. STOP THE PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION. MAKE PUBLIC EDUCATION FREE AT ALL LEVELS AND CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT.

3. IMPLEMENT PRO-PEOPLE, CULTURALLY RELEVANT CURRICULUM AND ETHNIC STUDIES.

4. END CAMPUS REPRESSION AND ENSURE THE RIGHTS OF YOUTH AND WORKERS ON CAMPUSES AND THE COMMUNITIES THEY AFFECT.

SPECIFIC DEMANDS

1. END FUNDING FOR WARS OF AGGRESSION AND INTERVENTION AND STATE VIOLENCE AND RE-DIRECT FUNDS TOWARDS SOCIAL SERVICES INCLUDING PUBLIC EDUCATION, HEALTH CARE, HOUSING, JOB TRAINING, ETC. IN THE U.S.

End U.S. military aid to the Philippines and other countries.
End the targeting of low-income and/or undocumented youth and students for military recruitment.
End funding for the prison industrial complex and instead fund youth empowerment and leadership programs.
End militarization and policing in schools.
Withdrawal of U.S. troops and end military exercises in the Philippines and elsewhere.
2. FREE, ACCESSIBLE, AND UNCONDITIONAL EDUCATION FOR ALL

At the minimum, roll back the cost of tuition, increase government funding for student grants, eliminate or lower loan interest rates, and expand federal student loan forgiveness programs to include all. Increase funding for K-12 instruction and programs.
At the maximum, provide full government subsidies for public education without conditions and cancel all student debt.

3. END THE PRIVATIZATION AND COMMERCIALIZATION OF THE U.S. EDUCATION SYSTEM AND IMPLEMENT PRO-PEOPLE, CULTURALLY RELEVANT CURRICULUM THAT RECOGNIZES THE HISTORY, STRUGGLES, AND RESISTANCE OF FILIPINOS AND OTHER HISTORICALLY OPPRESSED GROUPS IN THE U.S.

Establish ethnic studies programs and courses nationwide (i.e. CA Assembly Bill 123 on public education about the contributions of Filipino farmworkers, Filipino language and heritage programs, the root causes of their migration, etc.).
Direct educational institutions to implement social justice-based curriculum to encourage students to serve the needs of their community and not be profit-oriented.
Support programs that allow/encourages students to practice what they are learning in their communities (for example for pre-nursing students, serve the people clinics, etc.)

WHAT YOU CAN DO

1. JOIN ANAKBAYAN

If you are 13-35 years old, of Filipino descent or identifies with the Filipino people, and is interested in making concrete changes in your community, you can join Anakbayan!
2. SIGN ON AS AN ORGANIZATION

If your organization is down to take back our education and agrees with the demands above, sign on to the endorsement form!
3. TAKE A #TBOE SELFIE

Take a selfie answering the question, “How has the education crisis impacted you?” and use the hashtags #TBOE #TakeBackOurEducation!

RESOURCES

coming soon

For more information and submissions, please email us at info@anakbayanusa.org