By DOMINGO PERDON
Editor and Publisher, Bayanihan News
Non-organisations
We are going to see more of these non-organised groups without presidents and
a retinue of officials doing important community work and then not meet again.
Often community organisations have the tendency to self perpetuate, meeting
regularly every forthnight complete with the Westminsterian roll call and protocols but often ends the day’s meeting with few achievements at all.
With internet and social networking, we will see projects being carried out without these retinue of organisation officers hanging out later in the community parading with their fancy titles. I can sense that even in civic and community activities, a “new paradigm” is looming as in workplace environment.
Members of some encounter groups almost regularly would chat on Facebook and at one point instantly “plot” their move ….when a need in the community beckons them.
Last year, the Philippine Lantern Festival Group hosted a day-long successful pre-Christmas fete at the Parramatta town hall quadrangle on Church street. In a sense, they did not have a permanent organisation.
Only Blacktown businesswoman Mrs. Emma de Vera and her untitled colleagues Ms. Menchie Maneze, Ms. Bless Salonga and Ms. Michele Baltazar were referred by some as spokespersons of the event. No presidents, no external vice president, nor internal vice-presidents, no sargeant at arms. Perhaps the ladies should have titles, too, like “Emma’s Angels”.
One issue about non-organisations is how can it talk about itself or share its experience when the project is not on.
Recently, Community Relations Commission (CRC) hosted its Annual Multicultural Symposium held at Parkroyal hotel in Parramatta. The Philippine Lantern Festival Group was listed as one of three resource speakers in the stream workshop “Social Cohesion and Volunterism.”
No representative of the Philippine Lantern Festival Group were able to make it and their slot was taken over by an impromptu and lively Q and A. For a moment, this writer joined some in thinking “what an embarrasment” to the Philippine community but later on surmised that was the drawback of a non-organisation type of organisation.
But as one said somewhere before, “The main thing is the main thing.” Non-organisations cannot celebrate endless victory parties nor put up thanksgiving concerts after the job is done. The main thing is they have done the job.
Some old Philippine movies depict village people being summoned by a tambuli (or ancient Filipino trumpet made from anilmal horn) when they need to join a common task such as moving a nipa hut, or repairing a village bridge. And when the job is done, villagers disperse, go home and do other things.
The main thing is the main thing: the job is done.
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By JAIME K PIMENTEL Journalist
A striking imbalance
WHEN the first news stories came through about the latest Israel airforce bombings of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, it was ~ according to almost all press reports ~ about ”retaliation” for rockets fired into southern Israel by Hamas militants
While the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom put the blame squarely on Palestine’s Hamas Government, the United Nations chided the Israeli Government for over-reacting. Many victims of the latest attacks were civilians, including children and women ~ presumably not intended targets.
Barely did we read in this part of the world the ”other” side to this sad conflict.
But as press people we must ask: What about the continuing persecution of Palestinians caused by the Israel Government blockades in the Gaza Strip? Would this persecution have justified rockets into Israel?
We read and hear little of Palestinian families forcibly separated by Israeli-built wire and stone fences, gates, sentries and curfews. Unless we live in the area and have local press to give us the bigger picture, we are, for the most part, ill-informed.
So how balanced has the western press been on the continuing ”troubles” in the Middle East?
