Every year, on the last Monday of July, the President of the Philippines addresses the nation and reports on the situation of the country and its people. In the last 5 years of the Duterte regime, his State of the Nation Address (SONA) has increasingly become deceitful and farcical each succeeding year. After 5 years in office and more than 1 year into the pandemic, the Duterte presidency has achieved:

– one of the longest pandemic lockdowns in the world
– P11.98 trillion ($240B) in foreign debt
– GDP shrinkage by 9% (end of 2020)
– 12 million Filipinos unemployed
– inadequate aid to Filipinos overseas
– full vaccination less than 4% of the population
– 9 out of 10 farmers remain landless
– 315 peasants and advocates killed
– 30,000 killed from the “war on drugs”

The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex hosts many corporations and institutions that bear heavy influence around the world. In the context of the Philippines, war materiel produced by Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, etc. are used in the displacement and massacre of Indigenous people in the Philippines. Dallas-based AT&T heavily exploit the labor of call center workers across the country. And since 2016, more than $550 million of our tax dollars have been sent as military aid to the Philippines enabling grave human rights abused detailed above.

We invite communities across Dallas-Fort Worth to rise up with the Filipino people demanding justice and to call for an end to the Duterte regime.