Speech given at the closing plenary session of the Now We The People conference, at the University of Technology, Sydney, 24.8.03

Elmer Labog

Comrades, parent, brothers, sisters. Warm and militant greetings to you all. On behalf of my organisation, the KMU Labor Centre I extend my sincere thanks to the organisers of this conference Now We The People, for inviting me to this important interval, that of challenging the US empire, and Australia for Peace and Justice.

This conference has further enhanced my experience and knowledge, and I will be bringing back this experience to my organisation.

Comrades, parent, brothers, sisters, the aggressive role of the US in global politics should really be a wake up call for all progressive and democratic organizations and movements to be up in their field and meet this new challenge. Indeed this conference is a forum for examining our ideas and priorities in order to combat authoritarian regimes in our region and take part in mobilising the people in our countries. I'd like to address some of the important issues that we've been picking up in the past few days, like that it is so important to establish union to union links to establish bilateral links amongst mass organisations, especially those that are existing now. We have union to union links under federations under the ACTU which is continuing up the present time, and concretely we have exchanged experiences like we've been picketing the Australian embassy in Manila during the MUA struggle, as well as the latest visit of John Howard, where he wanted to give some bribe to the Arroyo government in order that they would help in the anti-terrorism campaign. We need to establish regional formations in order to continue our goals, and there are existing regional formations that are union-based as well as based on mass organisations. I'd like to mention the Southern Initiative on Globalisation and Trade Union Rights which is meeting every two years, and we also are a part of the International League of People's struggle, which has been newly formed only two years ago.

In this conference there was a reference to the young people of Australia, which there is a recognition of their importance in the struggle. However, the combination of the experience and knowledge of our old people, plus the energy of our young people would create a dynamic duo, in order to further fight and struggle for our rights and interests.

While we are making the regional formations there are other initiatives in other parts of the globe that are ongoing against globalisation, the ongoing US led war, and other issues besetting our people in various countries. The initiative that the Southern African unions and other people did last November when Colin Powell spoke before the UN gathering in Johannesburg because Bush would not go there because of his unpopular position on the war on Iraq. So Colin Powell was speaking before the Assembly and he was agitating the crowd to support the war in Iraq, and the implementation of GMOs in Africa, and the audience suddenly came out with streamers and the posters denouncing the position of the United States, and hell broke loose because the presiding judge was unable to control the crowd and they were all shouting. There were arrests, and I tell you it was American activists who were first arrested before the African people who came into the hall were arrested by the security of the United Nations. So there were a lot of initiatives ongoing resisting this world order.

One thing that I'd like to mention is the framework when we talk about globalisation - we know that this neoliberal globalisation thing affects us and it is an evil, so it is important to assert a new world order, meaning should we revolve, should we move, we should mobilise within the framework of globalisation, so we progressive forces can really assert the commitment of a new world order when inferring we could really be of service to the working people and the struggling people of the world today.

There are several important aspects already mentioned about alliance work, and in a nutshell as out speakers have earlier presented it is a thing of learning to like things we dislike. Perhaps our experiences in easing out Marcos and Estrada would help us in this and the war. Perhaps if you want to get rid of John Howard let me invite you to my country and we could talk more about this.

At this juncture I want to share with you the important aspects of our mobilisation. Forums like this are things that we call arousing our members, but there re two important things that we should include, like mobilising and organising the community as well as our people. An in mobilising our people it is very much important to go direct to the communities and go direct to the most exploited sector of our society and explain things that we are discussiing now, that it is necessary that we would not only talk about things like bringing food onto the table, but also the major issues that were are confronting nowadays. So in order to remember easily the major components and comprehensive components of mobilising people: we say arousing as a part of education drive; we say we have to mobilise them; and lastly we have to organise and organise and organise.

As a guide for organisers I'd like to tell you about the paraphrase the sentence of a great leader, who said wherever we go as organisers, wherever we go we need to unite with the people, take root and blossom.

And lastly, it is important to have a commitment, like the commitment of our delegates coming from interstate, and recognising the value of this conference, a commitment for international people to join our brothers and sisters here in this conference. In ending, I was listening intently to the message given by Doug Cameron yesterday, and he was mentioning that as we go along discussing it is also important that we act now before it is too late. In ending my presentation, I'd like to paraphrase a statement given by an activist whose name is Junior Sarmiento, during the time of Marcos he was incarcerated, and he died in jail. And he said if we do not speak now, who's gonna speak? If we do not move now, who's gonna move? If we do not speak and move now, then when?

Elmer Labog is the chairperson of the May 1st Labor Centre (KMU) of the Philippines.

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