By Beth Kneller, Deputy Director ⋅ October 8, 2009
Jackie Mariano
Immigrant Community Organizing
B.A. Sept. 2011, Magna cum Laude
Home College: Hunter
Faculty Mentor: Prof. Lina Newton, Political Science, Hunter
Jackie Mariano entered CUNY BA in Fall 2009. She is a young Filipino-American woman born and raised in Elmhurst, Queens; she lives in the most diverse borough of New York City and goes to one of the most diverse colleges in the United States. Matters of race and identity are deeply important to her. She says “I am a woman. I am a person of color. I am a daughter of immigrants. I am an activist. I hope every day to fit into this world as an equal.”
Mariano is very involved in a grassroots women’s organization called Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment (FiRE), a member organization of GABRIELA-USA, the first overseas chapter of GABRIELA, the national alliance of progressive women’s organizations in the Philippines. She is also a dedicated advocate of Asian American Studies, and was president of the Coalition for the Revitalization of Asian American Studies at Hunter (CRAASH). She says “I am always inspired by the power of student movements to defend the right to an affordable, accessible education, particularly for the availability of ethnic and gender studies.” In her spare time, Mariano is a poet and spoken word artist who infuses her work, often in a comedic style, with issues of oppression and identity.
Mariano is constructed her area of concentration with courses in Asian American Studies, Sociology, Political Science, and Women’s and Gender Studies, courses such as Asian American Civil Rights and the Law, U.S. Immigration Policy, and Social Movements and Social Change. She is considering going to law school to focus on civil rights law and continue organizing the Filipino-American/Filipino-immigrant community locally and nationally.
Upon graduating, she wrote to update us on her activities:
“I spent a month from August to September in Long Beach, CA interning at the Filipino Migrant Center, a relatively new nonprofit organization that educates, organizes, and mobilizes the Filipino migrant worker community. I did research on Filipino domestic workers while attending the National Domestic Worker’s Alliance Congress in San Francisco; lobbied in Sacramento to pass the Domestic Worker’s Bill of Rights, which has also passed in NY; received training on domestic violence prevention and case management; taught a workshop to youth on globalization and labor migration; and assisted in the day to day tasks of the FMC.
When I returned to NYC at the end of September, I immediately started a position at the Flushing YMCA Beacon 194, a YMCA community center based in JHS 194 in Whitestone, Queens. I am an after school Program Coordinator for middle school youth. I run several educational and civic engagement programs. They include the renowned Youth and Government, a mock NY State government program, Teens Take the City, a mock NYC government program, and Y-Scholars, a goal-oriented program that teach youth to plan for their future.
As for my community organizing volunteer work, I have recently been elected to serve at the Vice Chairperson of Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment (FiRE) – GABRIELA USA. I’ve been very active in the recent Occupy Wall Street movement, highlighting the experience of immigrant workers in the 99% in an anti-labor trafficking campaign launched by the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns and BAYAN-USA.
As for my creative work, I’ve picked up the ukulele and written songs inspired by the communities I work with.”
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — GABRIELA-USA, an alliance of organizations representing Filipino women across the U.S. commemorate Nov 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (IDEVAW) with a slideshow of their members and supporters exposing the role of the 1% in perpetrating violence against women throughout the world.
While domestic violence and rape are what comes to mind as examples of violence against women, GABRIELA-USA is choosing to highlight economic injustice, as well as political repression and human rights violations as more pervasive and systematic forms of violence suffered by women throughout the world. “As women of the 99%, we hold the 1% accountable for the culture and system of violence they perpetrate on women around the world. Hunger and poverty, joblessness and exploitation, evictions, forced migration, lack of housing and healthcare are all part of imperialist plunder and war on the 99% by the 1%,” said Raquel Redondiez, Chairperson for GABRIELA-USA.
As the 99% all over the world are rising up, political repression and human rights violations also continue to rise. This is highlighted in events that occurred just last week when University of California, Davis Police brutally pepper-sprayed student activists of Occupy Davis. Earlier this week was also the 2-year anniversary of the election-related Ampatuan Massacre which took the lives of 57 people, 22 of them women, in the Philippines. To this day, family members of the victims continue to seek justice and recently filed suit against former Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for arming and supporting the Ampatuans. “Political repression, human rights violations, and economic injustice continue to be the most pervasive and brutal forms of violence against women. This violence is systematically carried out by the 1% through their private armies, public police, and other state machinery to protect the economic interests of the few, leaving the majority of the world’s population with fewer resources to survive on,” concludes Redondiez.
Women’s activists have marked November 25 as a day to fightviolence against women since 1981. On December 17, 1999, theUnited NationsGeneral Assembly designated 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women byResolution 54/134. The date came from the brutal assassination in 1960 of the threeMirabal sisters, politicalm activists in theDominican Republic, on orders of Dominican dictatorRafael Trujillo.
GABRIELA-USA Raises the Militant Women’s Voice On the National Women’s Day of Protest in the Philippines
On October 28, 1983, over 10,000 women surged to Mendiola in the Philippines to protest the oppression, repression, hardship, and corruption of the Marcos dictatorship. Twenty-eight years have passed since women have shown the power of collective action in the overthrow of a dictatorship, but even with the dictator gone, oppression, repression, and the struggles of the people still remain under the implementation of neo-liberal economic policies that further plunges Filipino families into hardship. Today, on the National Women’s Day of Protest in the Philippines, member organizations of GABRIELA-USA: Babae-San Francisco, Samahan ng Kababaihan San Francisco (SAMAKA), Pinay sa Seattle, Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment (FiRE) in New York and Sisters of GABRIELA Awaken (SiGAw) in Los Angeles stand together with Filipina women across the world to raise the militant women’s voice against the exploitative and repressive practices of the global imperialist system.
In the wake of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, the people of the United States are taking to the streets to demand an alternative to an unjust economic system that upholds imperialist and corporate interests over the lives and needs of everyday people. As the global economic crisis worsens, more and more people are rising up across the globe in response to unjust policies, and the clear unequal distribution of wealth. In the US, while big banks and corporations are bailed out, tens of thousands of people have no jobs, people’s homes are being foreclosed, and the budget for social services and basic needs continue to be cut. Promises made by President Barack Obama for immigration reform, work opportunities, and accessible health care remain unfulfilled, and the living conditions of the 99% of the population continue to deteriorate.
In Third World countries like the Philippines, unequal U.S. foreign policies and trade agreements, along with the plunder of natural resources by foreign corporations, continue to dislocate Filipinos and force them to leave the country and seek work elsewhere. To add insult to injury, the government, ruled by Benigno Cojuanco Aquino III, increase the suffering and exploitation of the people by conspiring and colluding with big foreign corporations. The cost of basic commodities continue to rise, nothing is being done to solve the unemployment problem, and evictions and demolitions occur more frequently than ever. Those who migrate out of the country in search of better conditions also often fall prey to predatory agencies, as with the experience of human trafficking survivors dubbed the Florida 15 who are currently fighting against wage theft and several other labor violations committed against them.
“People all over the world are experiencing the heightening contradictions of a global economic crisis brought upon by U.S. imperialism. The the momentum to unite with people across the world is only increasing, and it is again timely and necessary to gather the strength of women to take part in the growing people’s movement against exploitation, plunder, and hardship,” says Raquel Redondiez, Chairperson GABRIELA-USA. “We celebrate the courageous, fighting spirit of women in the Philippines and the U.S., marching with the rest of the world for justice.”
In honor of the National Women’s Day of Protest in the Philippines, GABRIELA-USA sponsors the following activities:
New York City, NY
On October 25th, Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment hosted a Domestic Violence Training, attended by participants from New York, California, and Australia to craft a community response to violence against women, and connecting larger societal issues to its effects on women.
San Francisco, CA
On October 26th, members of Babae linked arms with several other organizations and individuals to show solidarity with the OccupySF encampment, to fight against San Francisco Police Department’s plans to raid the encampment. After hours of direct action well into 4:00 am, efforts were successful in preventing a raid.
Seattle, WA
Pinay sa Seattle will be celebrating its 5-year anniversary on Friday Oct. 28th with a membership dinner and will be conducting a Philippine-U.S. Migration workshop at the FASA (Filipino American Student Alliance) Conference on Saturday Oct. 29th.
Los Angeles, CA
On Friday, October 28, SiGAw will be launching the 1st session of a monthly discussion group called Pinay Stories, where women can dialogue about issues that they face.
