october: pilipin@ american history month

"pilipin@ solidarity" picture taken by oscar mairena

this is the speech that i gave on mario savio steps today for the pilipin@ american history month visibility event. feelings of overwhelming nostalgia came over me as i saw my community out there..100+ strong..standing in solidarity with one another for ourselves, our families, our friends, our presence, our his/herstories, our futures. i haven't felt more proud to be a part of an "isang bagsak" unity clap circle in so long.

i love my community

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How many of ya'll recognize the shirt that I have on? This shirt is actually from my very first year here at UC Berkeley, before many of you were even students here. This shirt is from my very first SoCal outreach trip an annual trip, organized by pass, the pilipino academic student services. On this trip students drive down to the southern California area during our spring break, to do outreach presentations to middle school, high school and community college students about the things that they need to know about being eligible to apply to different colleges like…..but most of all we as students sacrifice our spring breaks to really empower students from underprivileged backgrounds to pursue higher education as a means of bettering their lives and the lives of people around them.

Now how many of you come from high schools were you didn't have a lot of AP or college prep courses? Or from neighborhoods where gang violence and drug abuse was prevalent? How many of u had to take care of younger siblings or even grandparents or had to work in high school to help out around the house? And even after all of this, once you finally got to Berkeley how many of u had at least one person, a friend, a family member or even a teacher or counselor or even you yourself think that u just weren't good enough?

Well this was my experience, as a product of outreach programs like socal outreach,iap, mesa or Puente. This was my experience as a low-income student of color and as a Pilipina-American womyn. I was told that I wasn’t good enough for college let alone somewhere like UC Berkeley.

These are the types of experiences that many of our Pilipino youth deal with and these are the types of students that members of the pilipino community feel the need to reach out to because they would not otherwise have access to this kind of information. Like many of these students I realized my agency to imagine a future worth fighting for.

Being a part of the Pilipino community here at Berkeley has not only given me opportunities like SoCal outreach to GIVE BACK to my community but it has also instilled in me the value of PAYING IT FORWARD, and TO LIFT AS WE CLIMB. And that is why we are here today to recognize and celebrate the month of October as Pilipino American History Month. It is important for us to remember our his/herstories as Pilipino people on this campus to understand where we are today and to fuel our spirits to continue fighting for tomorrow.