One Filipino Rage

Joshua Dineros stands outside the Philippines Consulate in San Francisco on July 25, 2022. Photo: Jen Rocha

I run uphill from the BART station to join my people assembled on Sutter Street in San Francisco. I leave behind my parents in Southern California; they're the only support system I've known, my last strand of a safety net that I’ve webbed for myself. I am bound to my people in power by the roots of our ancestors and connected together by Mother Earth.

One hour later — I shed my first tear — whisked away by the summer wind. My hurt and anger against the institution that recycles the same dirty rhetoric filled with unkept promises to our people.

As a politics student in America — in the diaspora — I feel hopeless. What am I to do? Who am I to be angry? My people are dying and Mother Earth warms my feet in rage. My extended family is cut off by the politicians that are fueled by corruption, greed, and capitalism. A cyclical system that was established decades ago laughs in the face of a 20-year-old college student trying to uproot it.

We've been made puppets strung along by Uncle Sam who is no Tito of mine. Filipino-American at heart, but Filipino first. I feel the fire lit by Mother Earth at the bottoms of my feet and the energy of my pamilya surrounding me. We are one people, one community, one Philippines against the institution.

My safety net is stronger because of the people around me. An infinite number of webs that spider together to create a mosaic of hope. We fight like seeds from compost; buried and replanted to blossom one day.

One day like this one; one day like the beginning of the People Power Revolution on February 22, 1986; our Mother Earth's energy webbing our shared rage into one.