The year of standing up to bullies

San Francisco Women’s March against Donald Trump. SFIST

I took a break from writing this column for a few weeks. It was partly because I became busy. It was also because I wanted to step back and reflect on what’s been going on.

Time for reflection is over. I began writing this column over the weekend as more than two million joined women’s marches throughout the globe to demonstrate against the new U.S. president.

In San Francisco, we marched in the rain with tens of thousands of people carrying defiant signs. One read: “If he builds a wall, I will raise my kids to tear it down.”

As the crowd marched down Market Street, a powerful chant echoed in downtown San Francisco: “We will not go back! We will not go back!” It echoed in other cities where hundreds of thousands of people joined the protests.

Protest against the burial of Ferdinand Marcos as a hero. INQUIRER FILE

Women spearheaded the demonstrations to send a powerful signal to the new administration: Any attempt to roll back the rights of women and to block efforts to expand those rights will face stiff resistance.

Women weren’t the only ones marching on Saturday, of course. There were people of color, gays and lesbians, Muslims, pretty much every group the new American president and his supporters have insulted, bullied and threatened.

“We will not go back! We will not go back!”

It should also be the chant of Filipinos. In fact, it is.

It’s the slogan of Filipinos opposing a fascist president who unleashed a wave of violence that has claimed more than 6,000 lives.

It’s the battle cry of Filipinos resisting this leader’s efforts to downplay the abuses of yet another fascist ruler who wreaked havoc on the nation.

“Depressed. Naiiyak ako sa poot,” a friend in Manila said in an email.

On my attempt at satire in commenting on the Duterte era, she said: “I don’t know if this murderous regime lends itself to any sense of humor at all. It’s vile, it’s evil, it kills for pleasure. Uses little people as smokescreen for its abusive exercise of power.”

We were part of the generation that lived through the dark years of the Marcos dictatorship, another “murderous regime” that used people to abuse power.

A segment of the San Francisco march against Trump. AP

There were days recently when I shared the feelings of hopelessness and defeat expressed by my friend.

But then one morning I woke up to read a social media note from another friend, a Mexican American classmate from journalism school. She was talking about the situation in the U.S. But what she said was relevant to the situation in the Philippines.

“These days are hard,” she said.

“To all my J-school compadres and my extended circle of justice-seekers, just write. Write. Write everything you see, feel, hear, believe. Don’t stop writing. Writing, in and of itself, is a form of resistance. Don’t forget. Take a minute every day and write.”

Those of us overseas can only do so much in the struggle back home. But we can speak out in support of those on the frontlines, those leading the fighting in this critical time, the year of standing up to bullies.

Visit the Kuwento page on Facebook.

On Twitter @boyingpimentel