This week, Rising Tiders from Portland and Seattle traveled to the Philippines on a solidarity mission to visit Indigenous communities in Mindanao on the frontlines of climate destruction, capitalism and imperialism.
They will be traveling in Kidapawan, currently in a state of calamity due to a crippling drought and the recent site of a massacre in which farmers and indigenous folk were fired upon after setting up a street blockade to demand that inaccessible government food rations be distributed.
And then traveling to Davao for two human rights conferences: the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines general assembly, and the International Conference on Peoples’ Rights in the Philippines.
As the group has said:
“We believe that joining our allies on this trip to the Philippines is the most important way we can show our solidarity with this People of Color led movement in the United States, and our allies in the Global South. In fact it is the thing we have been repeatedly asked to do by our BAYAN kasamas.”
Historically conditioned as a colonial experiment and geographically located in the rapidly changing climate of the Global South, the Philippines stands as a frontline nation against political and environmental repression. As international mining companies seek to drive communities off their ancestral mineral-rich land, the Philippine Armed Forces uses its monopoly on violence to enforce this destructive logic of capital accumulation, while escalating deforestation is wiping out ecosystems, poisoning water sources, and removing natural sources of carbon sequestration.
Meanwhile, though the country is hardly industrialized enough to be a major contributor to climate change, it bears some of the worst effects, such as increased risk from sea level rise and massive typhoons. Yet despite it all, the Filipino people rise up and resist. Now is the time for uncompromising solidarity with our allies in the Philippines fighting for their right to life, dignity, and a world in which we all can live.
Transnational solidarity is an important step in fighting the root causes of climate change. Furthermore, ensuring that our allies in the Philippines fighting for their right to life, dignity, and a world in which we all can live are given support and solidarity from the Global North.
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