INFORME DE LA JUNTA DE VIGILANCIA

A c t i v i t y

P U S H I N G T H E W A L L

Procedure:

1. Ask the participants to form two equal teams and arrange themselves in a column formation.

2. Instruct them to face their opponent and put their palms together.

3. When facilitator shouts 'Go!' opponent members will push each other.

4. The one that is pushed back (loses balance) loses the game and one who remains in position wins.

A l t e n a t i v e G a m e T u g - o f - W a r

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Structural Violence

H u m a n R i g h t s A c t i v i t y

A N T O N Y M S

Procedure

1. Ask the participants to form pairs and assign themselves as A and B.

2. A shouts an adjective for which B gives the opposite.

3. Then B shouts an adjective for which A gives the opposite.

4. No repetition of the same adjective is allowed.

5. Repeat until the facilitator calls for a stop.

Synthesis Points:

• We are conditioned to think in terms of binary opposites -for every word, there is a corresponding opposite (e.g., good - bad, white - black, rich - poor, male - female, young - old, ruler - follower, strong - weak, powerful - powerless, superior - inferior, etc.). We tend to ignore the variance between these two polar ends, i.e., between black and white is a wide range of colors, that between happy and sad is an array of different emotions. Society imposes this EITHER/

OR mode of thinking on all of us.

• Such dichotomization/polarization breeds power differential (inequalities in power) and results in the divide into the powerful and the powerless.

• Discrimination and inequality manifest in different forms (race/ethnicity, age, socio-political-economic class, gender, international status, religion/faith).

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Structural Violence

A c t i v i t y

K A R A H A S A N O K A A P I H A N G T U W I R A N A T D I - T U W I R A N

Objectives

1. To enumerate different forms of violence in society.

2. To define structural violence.

3. To identify manifestations of structural violence.

4. To relate structural violence to the structures of power.

Duration:

10 minutes

Procedure:

1. Participants will be grouped into three teams, each given a set of meta cards and markers.

2. Tell each team that they are tasked to write down forms of violence in society, one form per meta card.

3. The meta cards are posted on the board. The facilitator will categorize the cards into direct and indirect forms of violence.

4. The facilitator leads the input-discussion of forms of violence in society towards the definition and understanding of structural violence and its forms.

Synthesis Points:

• The term VIOLENCE is usually associated with harm, hurt, exploitation, abuse, threat, intimidation, oppression, killing and death.

• Violence can manifest in different forms: physical (hitting, kicking, stabbing, etc.) , psychological (threats, put-downs, humiliation, discouragement, etc.), verbal (cuss words, shouting, labeling, etc), economic (denial of support, deprivation) etc.

• There are two categories of violence: direct and indirect.

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• Direct Violence refers to violence with easily recognizable and measurable cause and effect, and whose perpetrators are quite identifiable. Agents of direct violence can be personal (as in cases of murder, rape, assault, brutality, terrorism, ethnic cleansing) or institutional (as in cases of war, state-sponsored terror, industrial destruction of plant and animal life).

• On the other hand, Indirect Violence is hard to recognize and measure, largely invisible and structured within society such that identifying the perpetrator would be quite difficult.

There is no specific person to blame. Agents of indirect violence are structural (as in cases of sexism, racism, discrimination/prejudice, poverty, hunger, and lack of education and health services).

• Structural violence - is built within the structures of society.

That is why people may think and accept that it is normal or even necessary. They may even be unaware it exists.

• Structural violence manifests itself in inequalities within society.

• Structural violence feeds on the inequalities and hierarchy of power.

• Power need not be physical but it can be ideological, economic, etc. While early history reveals a strong valuing of physical or military might, today's concept of power has tremendously evolved. In terms of money, the dollar has been very powerful over other currencies such as Philippine pesos (hence, the peso devaluation). Patenting is another example of non-physical power.

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Structural Violence

A c t i v i t y

M A H I K A N G P A L A D ( H A N D H Y P N O S I S )

Objectives:

To explain how structural violence works through political subordination and power hierarchy

Duration:

20 minutes

Procedure:

1. Tell the participants to form pairs and decide between them who will be the hypnotist and the client.

2. The hypnotist places his/her right palm in front of the face of the client (at least six inches away).

3. The hypnostist will move the palm (up or down, right or left, forward or backward), the client must follow as if his/her face is fixed to the palm.

4. The facilitator will lead the discussion as participants share their experience.

Synthesis Points:

•

Individuals can be victims of structural violence like women, children, elderly, Moros, and Christians and whole countries as well particularly poor countries. We ourselves maybe victims of structural violence.

•

We can say that children are structurally oppressed in most societies in the world since adult-role sets the order for the young. Although this may be changing now with the growing consciousness on children's rights and child participation.

•

In mostly macho societies, women are structurally oppressed together with other sexual minorities (gays, lesbians,

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Structural Violence

bisexuals, transgendered) as compared with men. The continuing and growing struggle among women and sexual minorities to defend their rights is a clear effort to tilt the balance.

•

Culture has become an instrument of structural violence.

Certain cultural codes/norms have placed individuals or groups of people in lower status below other groups of people.

(Note: In the succeeding modules, we will find out how culture can be used as instrument of value transformation.)

•

Some people capitalize on their strengths and take advantage of the weaknesses and vulnerability of others.

•

Structural violence can also produce internalized disempowerment among the oppressed as political

subordination can create blind trust/obedience.

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Structural Violence

A C T I V I T Y S E R I E S 3

Objectives

1. To explain how economic centralization (and its resulting marginalization/disenfranchisement/neglect/deprivation) constitutes a structural violence.

2. To relate structural violence with local development budget and pork barrel.

Duration:

25 minutes

A c t i v i t y

S I N O ' N G S I K A T ?

Procedure:

1. Colored papers (at least three colors) are randomly distributed one to each participant.

2. Instruct the paticipants to fold their paper in half.

3. On the left part they will write their names. The right side must be kept blank.

4. Instruct the participants to detach the left part (with the name) and put it in a small box held by the facilitator.

5. While holding on to the rest of the paper, the participants will move around the area in random.

6. The facilitator shouts: 'Sinong Sikat?'

7. All the participants will shout back: 'Sino nga ba?'

8. Facilitator draws out a paper from the box and reads the name.

9. The person called becomes the celebrity and all participants bearing the same color should surround him/her while keeping the other participants in the margins.

10.Repeat step 5 - 9 several times.

11.The facilitator will lead the participants in discussing and analyzing their experience in a plenary.

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Structural Violence

A c t i v i t y

N A S A A N A N G K A U N L A R A N S A M A P A ?

Procedure:

1. Using the map of the Philippines as reference, the facilitator divides the space into 3 parts: Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

2. Facilitator asks participants to move into the island where they think development is most concentrated among the three.

3. When positioned, participants are asked to name as many markers of development (e.g., Luzon - Skyway, MRT, etc.).

4. Then facilitator asks participants to concentrate on a particular island and to position themselves in a province where development in most concentrated. Again, participants are asked to give examples of development.

5. Then facilitator asks participants to concentrate on a particular province and to position themselves in a municipality/city where they think development is most concentrated. Again, participants justify their answer by giving examples of development.

6. Facilitator can present data on congressional pork barrel or development fund in the regions for review. Participants can interpret data and correlate it with their finding from the mapping exercise.

7. Discussion and analysis of experience follows.

Synthesis Points:

•

Development is usually associated with booming economic activity, higher incomes, mushrooming of infrastructures, increased tourism revenues and massive industrialization.

•

Because development is highly centralized, central areas are more privileged than others. The term “central” may not necessarily refer to geographical centers but more aptly to the locus of power. Thus, a wide discrepancy in levels of development between urban centers and remote rural villages.

•

Discounting the rampant graft and corruption in congressional pork barrels, a comparison of development budgets of various cities and municipalities in the country would reveal structural bias in favor of metro cities.

•

The poorest among the poor areas in the Philippines are

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Structural Violence

A c t i v i t y

E V O L U T I O N G A M E

( a . k . a . ' h a n g g a n g d i y a n k a n a l a n g f o r e v e r a n d e v e r ! ' )

Objectives

1. To explain how structural violence breeds a false consciousness of disempowerment.

2. To relate structural violence with social mobility.

Duration:

10 minutes

Procedure:

1. The facilitator introduces the game by asking participants what they know about Dr. Charles Darwin and his theory.

2. Instruct the participants that there will be 4 stages in the game, namely: cockroach stage, bird stage, monkey stage, and finally the human stage.

3. Instruct the participants to agree on an action and sound effect for every stage.

4. At the shout of 'Go!' by the facilitator, the participants will move around the area using the action and sound for the first stage and look for a partner.

5. The partners play jac-en-poy using one of three hand-codes:

scissors, paper, stone. Scissors wins over paper, paper over stone, and stone over scissors.

6. Participants who win the jac-en-poy go to the next stage, move around using the bird action and sound and look for fellow birds for another round of jac-en-poy.

7. The participants always go back to the cockroach stage whenever they lose at jack-en-poy at any particular stage.

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8. Once a participant makes it to the human stage, he/she will sit down.

9. Discussion and analysis of the exercise follows.

Synthesis Points:

•

Structural violence puts people into tightly-controlled system-created boxes and makes it difficult for people to change boxes. That is, in order to maintain order, and hence, protect the structure. Thus, it creates stereotypes of people while stigmatizing the lower of the ranks.

•

Structural violence makes social mobility difficult since a

change in position disarrays the structure.

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Structural Violence

A c t i v i t y

G U E S S W H O T H E L E A D E R I S

Objectives

1. To identify ways by which structural violence preserves the status quo or existing dominant order.

2. To explain how dominant forces use structural violence to their advantage.

Duration:

10 minutes

Procedure:

1. Tell the participants to stand in a circle. Ask for a volunteer to play IT.

2. Ask the IT to go outside the room.

3. The remaining participants choose a leader among themselves.

4. Instruct the leader to lead the group in a simple action, e.g.

tapping the right foot. Members must imitate the action inconspicuously.

5. The IT is asked to go inside the circle and is tasked to identify the leader of the action.

6. The leader must constantly change his/her action while the rest of the team follows.

7. The volunteer can make only three guesses.

8. Repeat the game a few times.

9. Discussion of exercise follows.

Synthesis Points:

•

Structural violence thrives when culture preserves it.

•

It employs propaganda to condition the minds of people that the way (or the only way) to order and peace is to follow the rule of the dominant force.

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Structural Violence

A c t i v i t y

T E N S Y O N N I

A L I N G G L O N G B A L I S A

Objectives

1. To define Globalization.

2. To identify how globalization impacts on society and contributes to structural violence.

Duration:

25 minutes

Procedure:

1. The facilitator makes a short introduction about globalization by asking participants about their favorites: food, movie, actor, shoes, etc. The facilitator may probe deeper by asking where the product comes from. Then facilitator points out how the world has become one global village as manifested in the products we consume.

2. The participants will form a circle and are asked to give ten words ending in -SYON (Filipino) or -TION (English) that are related to globalization. (e.g. , privatization, deregulation, konsumisyon, collision, contractualization, etc.)

3. The facilitator writes down the words on meta cards while participants verbalize them.

4. instruct the participants to form small groups.

5. Each team is given a set of meta cards bearing the words ending in -SYON or -TION.

6. The teams are tasked to share, discuss and later, report about how these words are interrelated with each other and to globalization.

7. After the group reporting, the facilitator leads a brief discussion on the terms in order to understand globalization and its impacts (both local and global), and its relationship with structural violence.

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Synthesis Points:

•

The unrest happening in Mindanao is not isolated with what is happening in other parts of the country, moreso with the rest of the world. This tension in Southern Philippines that produces so much konsumisyon to many of those directly and indirectly affected and that has pushed certain groups to a revolution is so connected with the issues of peso devaluation, the liberalization and deregulation of trade, the privatization of public services - all by-products of the so-callled globalization.

•

Globalization is not something new. In fact, earlier contact of our ancestors with foreign explorers and traders is but a prototype of today's globalization. Imperialism, colonialism and globalization all belong to the same genre. But what differentiates today's globalization with that of the past is its rapid, uncontrollable nature as mediated by technology.

•

Economic globalization which consists of the flows of goods and services, capital and people across national borders has been rapidly changing the structures both in the global and local picture.

•

Globalization has dramatically linked countries in the world into one global village where giant corporations are even more powerful and controlling than some nation-states, thanks to liberalization, privatization, deregulation and the constant meddling of IMF-World Bank and GATT-WTO into affairs of states.

•

The so-called “MacDonaldization” and “Starbucksization” of the world have advocated neo-liberal capitalist values that further aggravates the situation for poor countries while enriching the already rich and developed countries. Thus, widening further the gap between poor and developed countries.

•

Neo-Liberalism is the philosophy of free market, believing that markets are far better than governments in the usage and allocation of limited resources.

•

Main Economic Policies of Neo-Liberal Globalization (Source:

Fighting Back With Social Movement Unionism: A Handbook

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for APL Activists, Alliance of Progressive Labor & Labor Education and Research Network, Manila/Quezon City, 2001):

1. Trade and capital liberalization = removal or elimination of controls such as tariffs (taxes on imported goods), quotas (amount or quantity of a certain product that can be imported), and other non-tariff barriers (quality of the products, sanitary regulations) on trade or capital investment

2. Deregulation = un-regulation; range of economic measures that a government is forced to implement to reduce its role as provider of services and promoter of social welfare, including:

o removal of subsidies o removal of price controls o reduction of direct taxes

o removal of state regulation on business

3. Privatization = selling of government-owned-and-managed corporations to the private sectors; privatizing government work

4. Liberalization of Labor Market = government changing labor laws to allow more flexibility for capitalists to hire and fire labor, while at the same time restricting workers' trade union rights

o 'War on Terrorism' has become a global commodity being sold by US and its allies.

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Structural Violence

A l t e r n a t i v e A c t i v i t y

F O U R M A R C H I N G S O L D I E R S

Objectives

1. To define militarization.

2. To identify how militarization impacts on society and contributes to structural violence.

Duration:

25 minutes

Procedure:

1. Ask for four volunteers who will act as "soldiers." The rest of the participants will act as "villagers." Each villager will choose a role to play, e.g., Barangay Captain, Health Worker, tanod, parent, farmer, child, tambay, etc.

2. The facilitator will tell the participants about the "situation:"

The soldiers will "enter" the village.

3. The soldiers will talk and plan about the reasons why they will be entering the village and how they will go through with it. The villagers will talk and plan if they will allow the soldiers to enter or not. If not, how will they prevent the soldiers from entering? If they will agree to let them in, what are their conditions if they have any? Provide 5 minutes.

4. The facilitator will let the scenario play out and should encourage the group to improvise and keep the story going.

The facilitator should take note of the decisions, responses, motivations, behavior and dynamics of the participants.

5. The story will end when the group feels it should end.

In document 1. INFORME CONSEJO DE ADMINISTRACIÓN Y GERENCIA GENERAL (página 25-30)