Contact:
Kristen Sajonas
Co-Vice Chair, League of Filipino Students (LFS), San Francisco State University (SFSU)
lfsmc@bayanusa.org
San Francisco, CA, USA — The League of Filipino Students at San Francisco State University (LFS-SFSU) vehemently denounces and calls for an end to United States-Israeli aggression in the Middle East. Despite American media’s bias in favor of Israel we recognize that the violence ripping through the region is not Arab-inspired or Hezbollah-provoked, but in fact a US-sponsored Israeli attack on the sovereignty and self-determination of the Lebanese and Palestinian people. This decades-old conflict rooted in racism, Zionism, and imperialism waged in the name of establishing the Israeli state is hypocritical for the birth of Israel meant the death of Palestine—a true movement for self-determination can never be just if it is freedom for one people but oppression for another. This means that the state of Israel and the Zionist movement is a farce because it is built upon the remains of broken Palestinian homes, lives, and bones, a violent reality that is now being imposed upon the people of Lebanon.
LFS-SFSU, a chapter organization of LFS Philippines and a member organization of progressive alliance BAYAN-USA, stands in international solidarity with our Lebanese and Palestinian sisters and brothers for we see a similar brand of imperialism and terror wrought against our own people. To date 720 political activists have been murdered under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s (GMA’s) illegitimate US puppet presidency for daring to improve the country by organizing for her ouster. She has done nothing to improve the quality of life for the Filipino people, perpetuating an already-poor economy with her subservience to American economic and military policy. GMA’s presidency has only exacerbated the Philippine economy’s ever-growing dependency on Overseas Filipino Workers’ (OFWs’) remittances to keep the economy afloat, 30,000 of whom are under contract in Lebanon and are fleeing for their lives. Two Filipina domestic workers have already died and we ask, “How many more?”
As Filipino youth and students we know our tax dollars are being cut from the budgets of education and social services and diverted to fund the mass killings in the Middle East and the political murders in the Philippines. Every year our tuition increases with no concurrent rise but decline in class availability and campus resources. For youth and students in high school military recruiters finesse disenfranchised youth of color and low-income youth with promises of adventure, travel, and money to attend college, not realizing they are being sent overseas to fight other third world and oppressed peoples with whom they share more in common with in struggles than they are different from.
As Israel bombs Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, highways, hospitals, and water treatment plants” with American-made “precision” missiles, the thin mask of clever euphemisms falls off, revealing the true terror that is behind this current wave of attacks” that is, the continuation of the joint US-Israel imperial plan to dominate the Middle East. In solidarity with the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghani, and all other oppressed and third world peoples around the globe, League of Filipino Students at San Francisco State University shouts LONG LIVE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY!
Join us on Saturday, August 12, 2006 at 10:30am at Powell and Market Streets in downtown San Francisco. LFS will be marching as part of the International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS) contingent, an anti-imperialist international alliance, along with other contingent conveners BAYAN-USA, babae, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Asian Pacific Islander Coalition Against War (APICAW), People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), Viet Unity, the School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL), Friends of South Asia, ALAY, Free Palestine Alliance, and Collision Course Video. We will have a short program with speakers and after will join the larger ANSWER mobilization.
SUPPORT THE HEROIC RESISTANCE OF THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE AND LEBANON!
OUST GMA! END ALL POLITICAL KILLINGS!
OPPOSE US-ISRAELI IMPERIALIST AGRESSION!
ONE STRUGGLE, MANY FRONTS! LONG LIVE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY!
League of Filipino Students at San Francisco State University is an Anti-Imperialist, Pro-People, Pro-National Democracy organization representing the Youth/Students sector. LFS-SFSU is an international chapter of LFS Philippines and is a member organization of BAYAN-USA.