Denounce Terror Tagging and Defend Peoples’ Struggle!
Stand with all Activists that Confront and Disrupt Imperialist and Neoliberal Schemes!
The International League of Peoples’ Struggle-US Chapter stands with our members who risked legal recourse and their personal safety to confront and oppose the visit of Philippine puppet president Ferdinand Marcos II to Washington DC and the “Consuls General Panel on APEC, ASEAN and US Partnerships” Panel in San Francisco.
ILPS member BAYAN USA led the actions against Marcos in DC outside the White House and disrupted a lavish state-funded dinner for Marcos and his state cronies while the Filipino people back home starve and homelessness and hunger are on the rise in the US. Marcos was given a red-carpet welcome to the White House, the Pentagon and big-business think tanks where he cut deals and made announcements that promote further land seizures, economic crisis, environmental disasters and militarization that benefit the ruling elite over the millions of Filipinos. Marcos’ visit is part of his global traveling spree to run from the popular discontent back home while selling out Philippine sovereignty abroad.
On the other side of the country, ILPS members and allies disrupted the panel of consular generals of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore to expose the imperialist and neoliberal nature of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ILPS-US is currently leading the national No to APEC Coalition to expose and oppose the APEC Heads of State meeting when it occurs in San Francisco this November.
Shortly after the anti-Marcos protests, media personality and Marcos supporter Dan Jimenez took to social media to condemn and infantilize the ILPS members as “a bunch of angry, clueless and most probably compensated protesters,” and ominously declared, “Those who think otherwise must be eliminated with extreme prejudice.” Infamous spokesperson for the US-inspired Philippine National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) Loraine Badoy responded by falsely declaring ILPS to be a “terrorist front” organization.
Our country chapter decries any attempt to present ILPS organizations as violent, “terrorists” or anything less than the just fighters for freedom and democracy that they are. Terror tagging is a shameless and fascist tool used by oppressors when they fear the power of the people. It is a well-established and widely taught tactic by the US state, its allies and puppet regimes against those it deems a threat to its rule. This is a dangerous move that always intends to paint a target on the backs of activists and freedom fighters to justify legal attacks and violence on them by state forces, or to encourage non-state actors to take action themselves. Under the US “Countering Domestic Terrorism” (CDT) program and its counterpart Anti-Terror Law in the Philippines, this violence against activists will only get worse until these programs are challenged from the people power they attempt to snuff out.
ILPS stands by the brave actions of its members to expose and oppose the true nature of the US-backed Philippine ruling regime, the imperialist objectives of APEC and ASEAN and the effects these institutions have on the people of the Philippines and the Asia Pacific region in general, just as we stand with ILPS members of Students for a Democratic Society for fighting back against trumped-up charges for opposing repressive and discriminatory policies in Tampa, Florida. Fascism can only be met with anti-fascism, imperialism with anti-imperialism.
Let us continue to defend peoples’ struggle as we prepare to oppose the APEC meetings this year in Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco and every city it rears its monstrous face!
Click here to see the video of ILPS members disrupting the APEC panel at SFU.