Back to the future at Club Filipino

Bayanko.org.ph had its own back to the future event at Club Filipino last Wednesday.  Like its science fiction counterpart, we were unconsciously going back and forth from memories of the past to our present reality and wishing for a better future at the same time. There were mixed emotions all throughout a meeting that lasted from 4 to 7 p.m. as we listened to both the crowd and the guests at the head table.

Probably it was the venue that brought us into this dreamlike stance but all those who were there agreed. We have made the start for a movement that had its roots in bayanko.org.ph a crowdsourcing website. It was a start of how Facebook friends with the same mind can come together in real life and organize to fulfill their ideas for a better life in a better society. True it was similar to a small town hall meeting but it will evolve and as long as we keep at it with the use of technology we can draw together the elements to make the Philippines the great nation it deserves to be.

* * *

The science fiction “Back To The Future” fits perfectly what we were trying to achieve that evening. How do we bring back the fervor for change that we once had in the face of the challenges of the present for a future that is still to be. “Back to the Future” was a 1985 film directed by Robert Zemeckis about how an adventurous scientist invents a machine that enables a teenager to travel back to 1955 where he meets his parents to be who were still teenagers at the time. Living in that past, he wants to make sure they fall in love and get married or he would never be.

There have been other interpretations of that bold experiment in going back in time. One photographer, Irina Werning, used it as a way of encouraging individuals to look back at their old photographs and articulate what they felt looking at the old photographs.

It is being done all the time in Facebook but most (I am one of them) who want to show the face they had when they were younger. So unconsciously and without planning to do so, the posting of these photographs could open a minefield to understand human emotions about time.

“I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today… Two years ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future,” Werning says and then invited people who lived in Korea, Taiwan and Tokyo to join in his back to the future experiment.

I think it would be a brilliant if bayanko.org.ph could start a similar back to the future experiment to gather pictures of the veterans of the 1986 EDSA revolution and come up with articles, essays or even better, poems of what happened to them since then that would enable them relate the past to the present.

It is supreme irony of the bayanko.org.ph acquaintance party at the Club Filipino that it did just that. The past is Cory Aquino and her failed presidency. The present is about the anger of activists against the incompetent son and his government. If it were possible, we could have taken a picture to represent that past, present and future in a single photograph in a place called Club Filipino.

* * *

There was a complaint from an FB friend that we should not hold it in Club Filipino because that was where Cory Aquino was inaugurated. My reply to that complaint was “on the contrary.” It would be perfect as the counterpoint to the Cory government that failed us in our search for real change. Holding it in Club Filipino was a reiteration of our unending revolution. Perfect  because it states our case against  Cory Aquino. She might have ousted the Marcos dictatorship but she returned the old feudalistic structure that was the main reason for the “revolution.” Interestingly, the Lopezes using their vast media empire was Cory Aquino’s partner for this “revolution” to put back the old order. So from Marcos-Lopez we have gone back full circle to Aquino-Lopez.

Its history according to Wikipedia reads like our own history. “Club Filipino was the first exclusive social club in the Philippines, founded in 1898 by Filipino high society, including Spanish mestizos and members of the native aristocracy.

“An elite Filipino country gentlemen’s organisation, it was originally called Club Filipino Independiente, later changed to Club Internationale and finally, Club Filipino.“

In time it gained the reputation as the place where progressive Filipinos meet. “The club has developed a reputation for being a meeting ground for Filipino political progressives throughout its history, and was the site of several political events immediately prior and during the country’s Post-Martial Law Era.”

That reputation was reinforced when Corazon Aquino was proclaimed president on 25 February 1986 at the height of the People Power Revolution. Governor Luis Chavit Singson broke away from former President Ejercito Estrada in the same club accusing him of being involved in a (jueteng) payroll scam in 2000.

And most crucially to  bayanko.org.ph acquaintance party it was also here that the present president, Cory’s heir, Benigno Aquino III announced his candidacy as the Liberal Party candidate for the 2010 elections.

Once again, the event  was a strange coincidence as if a moving hand was leading events to its natural logic. We would not have held the acquaintance party in Club Filipino because we were told all function rooms were already reserved for the week in which we wanted to hold it — before or after the President’s controversial SONA. The last day of July was the only one available date but it was too large covering Kalayaan Halls 2 and 3. We crossed our fingers,  but by the time a freewheeling discussion was taking place between various groups and individuals, the halls filled up with attendees who came to organize and  take an active part in bayanko.org.ph in real life.

All difficulties were overcome eventually and the bayanko.org.ph acquaintance party is now in Club Filipino’s history book.