The Obama visit: Its impact to the Filipino working class

The coming of President Barrack Obama at a time that our country is being bullied by China, in the defense of our national territories, carries a strong symbolic boost  to our morale,  viz-a-viz the international family of nations. With China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, standing by us, in addition to our nine partners in the  ASEAN, the Philippines, albeit small relative to China, can now stand up to the pressures being put to bear on our country and people. Notice is being served on China that an attack against the Philippines will be a virtual declaration of war against the USA.

Well, to be pragmatic about it, it is not really because Uncle Sam loves us. It is because the USA needs the Philippines as its strategic ally in a strategic location that makes our country the gateway from the Pacific to South East Asia. Our territories were used both in the wars between South Korea and North Korea and the tragic Vietnam conflicts. Our country shares with the USA common history of struggles in the Second World War, especially in our war of liberation against Japan. And so, the ties that bind the Americans and the Filipinos are so strong that President Barrack Obama is just reassuring us that, in these times of critical need, the US will not abandon us.

But, in addition to international and regional politics, this visit carries a strong symbolism that shall benefit the Filipino working class. President Obama is a strong pillar of the Democratic Party, the party of the working class, the party of the US-Filipino veterans, the party of the Filipino migrants. The administration of President Obama is being attacked by the Republicans and by some recalcitrant right of center Democrats for, among others, his Obamacare, which is nothing but an expanded counterpart of our Philhealth. But this scheme is helping a lot of Filipinos in the USA.

We should know. My 89-year-old father is a veteran and a US citizen who lived in Hawaii for almost twenty years before he and my 87-year old mother transferred to Federal Way, a city south of Seattle, in the great state of Washington, a two-hour drive to Vancouver, Canada, We strongly believe that in coming here, President Obama will not just be talking politics but also his advocacies for labor and for the poor, and the marginalized sectors in society. Being a son of a Kenyan immigrant to the USA, having lived in Indonesia as an alien in his teens, the President belongs to the ''hoi polloi''.

President Obama can easily identify with the working class in our country. His father was a poor man from the African continent. His paternal grandmother still lives in a lowly hut in a poor rural village. His maternal grandma and his own mother were working class. President Obama was just lucky to have obtained a good legal education using college scholarships. He was lucky to have married a very fine lady, Michelle, whose origins were also working class. Today, the family lives a very simple and ordinary life, save for the protocols and the trimmings of the office of the President. Thus, our common people can identify with our Kumpadre Barrack.

We do not expect President Obama to give us dollars for our millions of minimum wage-earners. But his visit will bring hopes and joys to our workers. And that symbolism is beyond pecuniary estimation. It is something that billions cannot buy. My parents love Barrack. My siblings idolize him. I can only watch with awe from a distance. But, like the way I admire the great John F. Kennedy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, perhaps more than I hold in high esteem the dynamism of Bill Clinton, and respect the integrity of President Carter, I really applaud President Barrack, in his principles, policies and the values he stands for.

His visit is good news to us working people in the Philippines. In many ways, President Barrack Obama is one with us, in our struggles, our daily pains and in the hopes that make our lives worth living and fighting for.