From Portland to the Philippines: The Local is Global

Across the world, most people are facing impossible costs of survival. Why are almost all of us, from Portland to the Philippines, being forced into further financial and material precarity? Who is behind this? What are global leaders, who say they represent the demands of the people, doing about it? In November, I traveled to San Francisco with the grassroots organization I am a member of, the Portland Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (PCHRP), to help voice these important questions.  

From November 11th through the 17th, the Bay hosted the much-anticipated Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) annual summit. The U.S. founded APEC in 1989. It is a forum for trade ministers and heads of state from 21 member economies to promote economic cooperation and integration in the Asia-Pacific region.  

While this might sound good on paper, reality tells a different story. 

In truth, APEC is a forum for U.S. business interests to strategize with their counterparts from around the Pacific Rim about how to further exploit workers and the environment for profit. Despite being active for over 30 years, APEC worsened the living conditions of the people it claims to represent. Last year, 68 million more people in Asia were pushed into extreme poverty, bringing the estimated total to 155 million. (1) At the same time, poverty rates in the U.S. are skyrocketing. (2)

Just like other free trade institutions, like the World Trade Organization, APEC seeks to extend private control over the global economy. Despite representing 40% of the world’s population, all APEC meetings happen behind closed doors.

In the weeks leading up to the summit, San Francisco ramped up “sweeps” of unhoused people rather than offering sustainable shelter while welcoming agents from the U.S. Secret Service, Coast Guard, and other forces from around the country. (3) (4)

Additionally, Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. and his entourage of dozens stayed at the Ritz-Carlton, despite the $353 million contempt order still standing to compensate victims of the human rights abuses by his father, dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos. (5) Executives from Exxon Mobil, Boeing, and Meta each paid $4,000 to hear President Biden speak at APEC’s CEO Summit, all while Israel continued killing Palestinian civilians and children with U.S.-supplied weapons. 

If you scratch the surface of APEC even a little, it’s easy to see that its intent is to force Pacific Rim countries open to unequal foreign expansion and extraction. (6) APEC also states that it makes sure “goods, services, investment and people” can easily move across borders. (7) Where is the freedom of movement between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico–all APEC members–that the forum claims to create?          

An estimated 10,000 people from over 100 different grassroots organizations marched through downtown San Francisco on November 12, calling, “No to APEC!” and, “Stop the U.S. War Machine!” (8)

Hundreds of Filipino activists and allies protested and disrupted President Marcos’ arrival at his invite-only event for affluent members of the local Filipino community - the only way, as a speaker from Malaya Movement USA put it, to welcome the son of a dictator.  (9)

Protesters blocked traffic on the Bay Bridge and unfurled a banner reading, “No military aid to Israel!” (10) Others chained themselves together outside of the Moscone Center and for hours prevented APEC delegates from continuing their business as usual. Among these protesters was Brandon Lee, a Chinese-American activist born and raised in the Bay. Lee was working as a land defender and journalist north of Manila when Philippine state forces shot him in front of his child in an attempted assassination. (11) Working together, we opposed APEC’s pursuit of private profit at the expense of humanity and the planet, reminiscent of the protesters who got the 2019 APEC summit canceled in Chile. (12)

After a week in San Francisco, the struggle is not over. 

A global system that values profit above all else inevitably leads to land-grabbing and displacement, whether in the Pacific Northwest or Southeast Asia. There are two facts that I have kept with me since returning from protesting APEC. In 2018, Oregon had the highest rate in the nation of unsheltered families with children. (13) In the Philippines, 48% of people fear their homes could be taken away - the highest rate in the world. (14) I think of the real people these numbers represent as I help my roommate in Portland pack balikbayan boxes of food and clothing to send to her family in the Philippines. 

In the poorer countries of the Pacific Rim, the unhoused, poor, and working people feel the harmful consequences of APEC’s backdoor deals first, and so do the unhoused, poor, and working people in the U.S. These impacts drive my work at Sisters and in the Portland community. 

One Way to Get Involved

Here in Portland, organizations are launching a campaign on December 10 against Oregon-based NuScale Power Corporation and the US-Philippines 123 Nuclear Agreement, signed during APEC. NuScale makes small modular nuclear reactors that no customer in the U.S. wants to use due to high costs and sincere technological concerns. The corporation plans to send these same reactors to the Philippines. The new 123 Agreement clears the road for U.S. companies like NuScale to export untested nuclear technology to the archipelago. Find details about the December 10 event and signing on to the campaign here!    

In solidarity with exploited and oppressed people everywhere, I say NO to APEC! People and Planet Over Profit and Plunder!

Sources:

1. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pandemic-inflation-push-68-million-more-asia-into-extreme-poverty-adb-2023-08-24/ 

2. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/12/1198923453/child-poverty-child-tax-credi-pandemic-aid-census-data

3.  https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-10/san-francisco-prepares-apec-summit

4. https://wraphome.org/2023/11/06/no-to-apec/

5. https://www.rappler.com/nation/marcos-may-go-united-states-united-nations-general-assembly/

6. The Philippine Mining Act passed in 1995, for instance, made it legal for 100% foreign-ownership of mines in the Philippines, thus allowing overseas corporations to keep all the profit taken from Filipino people and land. APEC praised this law as friendly and responsible.

7. https://www.apec.org/about-us/about-apec

8.  https://asamnews.com/2023/11/23/filipinos-no-to-apec-anti-marcos-jr/

9. Ibid.

10. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-16/bay-bridge-blocked-off-by-pro-palestine-protesters-during-apec-summit-biden-visit

11. https://asamnews.com/2023/11/23/filipinos-no-to-apec-anti-marcos-jr/

12. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50233678

13. https://heretogetheroregon.org/understanding-homelessness/

14. https://www.reuters.com/article/global-landrights-housing-idUSL5N2EL2LM/