BAYAN USA is an alliance of Filipino organizations representing workers, youth and students, migrants, women, artists, church leaders, and more. We are the first and largest overseas chapter of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN), and serve as a campaign center for Filipinos in the U.S. fighting for national sovereignty and genuine democracy in the Philippines.
What issues are Filipinos facing in the U.S.?
Filipinos abroad, especially migrant workers, face many challenges in providing a livelihood for themselves and their families. It is increasingly difficult to receive resources from our government and we have been the target of Trump’s brutal anti-migrant policies and foreign aggression.
- Filipinos in detention face medical violence and are separated from their families and loved ones.
- Filipino seafarers/cruise ship workers are being targeted and deported on trumped up charges without due process.
- Filipinos working in service industry jobs like caregiving experience wage violations, unsafe work conditions, and abuse from their employers.
- Filipino women face exploitation, domestic violence, or are economically burdened due to the lack of social services and resources.
- Filipino youth have limited access to education and culturally relevant programs; instead are preyed upon to join the U.S. military.
How are the Filipino people taking action?
We are fed up with growing poverty while the ruling elite live lavish styles off of our backs. Filipinos are making their rage and their voices heard in the thousands in their barangay, work places, churches, schools, and on the street. People are organizing, protesting and bringing attention to:
- Corrupt politicians or bureaucrat capitalists who are wasting the people’s money and getting away with it.
- An economic crisis and rising prices that our families back home can no longer afford.
- Increasing militarism in the Philippine countryside & across the entire nation. We are fighting against the further transformation of our country into a military base for U.S.-led war.
Our Struggles are linked to our Homeland
The issues that Filipinos & Filipino-Americans face in the U.S. are linked to the conditions in the Philippines. The 3 Basic Problems of Feudalism, Bureaucrat Capitalism and Imperialism drive our people to live abroad.
Landlessness, debt, and hunger are the everyday conditions that farmers and peasants face in the countryside. When our people fight back, they are criminalized for it or murdered.
In fact, a massacre took place in Toboso, Negros Occidental on April 19-20 when the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) conducted a 13-hour indiscriminate firing operation in a civilian community. This took the lives of 19 Filipinos including 2 Filipino-Americans. We grieve and demand justice for the Negros 19!
Our families will be the first to suffer if war were to break out between the U.S. and China. That’s why we oppose any kind of war provocation by the U.S. like the Joint Balikatan war exercises. While the U.S. calls this “deterrence through strength,” it won’t be the first time the Philippines will face the consequences of such a reckless show of military force.
Given the current state of Philippine politics and economy - Marcos Jr. is not a genuine voice of the Filipino people. The Philippine’s subservience to U.S. interests show that Marcos Jr. is only a puppet and mouth piece for U.S. interests and will only further endanger the lives of the people in the Philippines.
11 Point Program
- Uphold genuine national sovereignty by asserting national independence and opposing imperialist domination.
- Unite the people and build their collective strength, anchored on the basic alliance of the workers and peasants.
- Build a self-reliant and progressive economy by dismantling the imperialist and feudal stranglehold of the economy and carrying out national industrialization and genuine land reform.
- Guarantee the people’s economic and social well being. Liberate the people from poverty, raise their standards of living, attain full employment, guarantee adequate and humane working and social conditions and better standards for health, education and housing.
- Stand for environmental protection, rehabilitation, and just compensation for environmental degradation by ending neocolonial plunder and its environmentally destructive practices.
- Stand for a nationalist, scientific and mass-oriented people’s culture.
- Uphold the right to self-determination of the Bangsa Moro and Indigenous Peoples.
- Fight for women’s liberation by destroying the basis of national, class and gender oppression.
- Arouse, organize and mobilize Filipino compatriots abroad to participate in the struggle for national democracy and contribute to the building of a society without forced migration.
- Uphold the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, disability and age.
- Partake in building a strong anti-imperialist front in the world, working hand in hand with workers and other oppressed peoples.
