HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz Actress Liza Soberano ain’t the first actress to approach Gabriela to talk on girls’ and women’s rights. And she won’t be the last. Founded in 1984 by the likes of Sr. Mary John Mananzan and Maita Gomez, Gabriela first standing up against the kleptocrat and brutal Marcos...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz By now, Reina Nasino and her baby River have become household names. An urban poor community organizer, Nasino, together with Bayan Manila campaign director Ram Carlo Bautista and labor advocate Alma Moran, was arrested in November, 2019, after the police raided the Bayan...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz Two things workers are looking forward to at the end of each year are the 13th month pay and the Christmas bonus. And it seems about two million workers may not get any 13th month pay at all, if the Duterte government would have its way. The reason? Because of the pandemic. In...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz “Facebook, listen to me. If government cannot espouse or advocate something which is for the good of the people, then what is your purpose here in my country. What would be the point of allowing you to continue if you cannot help us?” This was President Duterte’s reaction...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz Many have practically given up on the perceived stupidity in social media and even of fellow Filipinos. Sometimes I can’t blame them for thinking that way. But the latest announcement of Facebook against “coordinated inauthentic behavior” should be helpful in clarifying the...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz The dumping of dolomite in Manila Bay and the President’s address this week failed to distract or stop an international news agency from reporting a new Duterte “legacy.” In a story read across the world, Agencia EFE reported: “Manila reached six uninterrupted months of...
Tonyo Cruz HOTSPOT More than a dozen national and international organizations are inviting everyone to participate in the September 14 Global Day of Action which raises the call “stop the killings in the Philippines!” The organizers say the September 14 worldwide mass actions wish to tell the...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz The pandemic and national public health emergency provide us an opportunity to make education relevant in solving our main problem today. But instead the government seems intent on giving more problems for students, teachers, and parents. There’s no debate that...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz It has been months since the administration declared a “national public health emergency,” but what has defined its response is not any impressive or effective national public health response. Instead, the public has been regimented into believing the pandemic’s spread...
HOTSPOT Tonyo Cruz It is now a familiar sight in many streets in Metro Manila: Jeepney drivers flagging down private car owners and begging for alms. It is a sight we never expected to see in our lifetime, although we’ve had an inkling that it could happen, especially considering the previous and...
HOTSPOT Come 2022, I look forward to a groundswell of support and perhaps even an emphatic victory for Anakpawis if it runs again for partylist representation in Congress. And we have to thank Randall Echanis for it. Today, the memory and record of Echanis towers over traditional political beasts...
HOTSPOT Doctors have been repeatedly asked about and have also been repeatedly giving their opinion about the coronavirus pandemic since March. Unfortunately, our leaders have depended on an entirely different set of advisers. The result of indifference to health care workers has been, to say the...
