News Release
September 4, 2012
Reference: Jackelyn Mariano, Deputy Secretary-General, BAYAN USA, email: depsec@bayanusa.org
BAYAN USA Joins March/Rally on the DNC
Filipino-American Alliance Raises Issue of Obama Administration’s Military and Economic Pivot to the Asia-Pacific Region
Bernadette Ellorin, Chairperson of BAYAN USA, on stage (credit: Brenda Sandburg)
CHARLOTTE, NC– Amidst thousands gathered in Frazier Park protesting intensified corporate greed days before the scheduled Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, BAYAN USA speaker Bernadette Ellorin spoke before the crowd about US government’s military rebalance on the Asia-Pacific region.
“Earlier this year, the Obama administration announced it would shift its military focus to the Asia-Pacific region,” Ellorin stated. “It has been reported that there are US drone exercises now being conducted in the Southern Philippines, in Mindanao. The Philippines has lived under the thumb of US imperialist aggression since 1898, one of the longest US military occupations in history.”
BAYAN USA endorsed and participated in last weekend’s March on Wall Street South, as the only Filipino-American organization on stage and at the march through downtown Charlotte, dubbed “Wall Street South” as it is home to some of the world’s biggest banks and financial institutions such as the Bank of America headquarters.
Nearby Bank of America Stadium is the chosen site of the 2012 Democratic National Convention, where President Barack Obama is scheduled to deliver his acceptance speech as the 2012 Democratic Party Presidential Nominee this week.
Organizers for the March on Wall Street South addressed urgent bread-and-butter issues in the US such as record unemployment, lack of jobs and wage depression, housing foreclosures, rising cost of food, education, healthcare, and basic commodities in the midst of the increasing federal budget for endless wars of aggression and militarization abroad.
“The people of the Asia-Pacific region do not need more US militarization any more than the American people need an increased federal budget for war. What we all need is basic livelihood, jobs, security, and justice,” Ellorin stated.
Ellorin also stated that the last four years of the Obama administration has proven the economic, social, and moral bankruptcy of the two-party system of the US ruling elite. “Whoever ends up sitting in the White House after these elections, what matters most is we build a viable people’s movement here in the US that can fight for the people’s needs and challenge the system, one that is linked in solidarity with peoples abroad fighting US imperialism in the form of US foreign policy. We have many examples in world history of how organized people power can bring the traditional governments to their knees.”
In addition to addressing the US military rebalance to the region, BAYAN USA is also actively educating and campaigning against the Obama administration’s push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) a new free-trade agreement larger than NAFTA and designed to enforce a US-dominated free-trade zone in the Asia-Pacific region. For more information, visit www.bayanusa.org. ###
March on Wall Street South (credit: Grant Baldwin for Creative Loafing Charlotte)