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19  Rest In Peace

 

Every time peasants undertake the task of organizing themselves, landlord and capitalist voices cry, “Beware.” Their two chief instruments, namely, government and the churches warn in town hall and in pulpits against disturbance of the peace.

We need all the more to strengthen ourselves, says Aling Lety. We are being bombarded again with lies and threats which some of as may be about to accept. I propose that we discuss briefly this whole question of “Peace,” she says gently.

Even the more benign landlords and the few benevolent church officials are saying that for us to organize ourselves is wrong. Organization leads to conflict and disturbance and violence.

They now say that they agree with our ends and objectives but they think, that the means we use is unchristian because it accentuates division.                                               

So, you see, Aling Lety sums up, we are up against unity and “peace,” and “order.” By organizing ourselves, are we doing

 

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wrong again? They say that before we started organizing, all peasants were peaceful and contented. But now, wherever we hold an organizational meeting, it is followed by peasant self-assertion, strikes, court litigations, demonstrations and so many other forms of struggle.                              '

They know, too, Aling Lety continues, that we only seek to do what is just and right. Hence, they use the government and the churchmen to warn our fellow-peasants that what we are doing is wrong.

But I believe that as the birds have been endowed, by their Creator with the instinct of survival and love for life so that at certain times of the year they .migrate from one place to escape death from. harsh elements, so much more God-endowed is our current instinct of survival and love to live that moves us to organize ourselves.

The truth is, Aling Lety’s voice rises with excitement, that in a place where domination or exploitation-is near-absolute, peasants are quiet and “contented.”   There is “peace.”   It is a false, cemeterial kind of peace: rest in peace.

But genuine peace, Aling Lety continues, is the fruit of Justice, as the Bible says. And true peace is not a dead kind of peace, like the tenant’s surrender to the landlord. It is a living, dynamic one which can of ten be accompanied by struggle and conflict.

 

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Wherever there is oppression, there are oppressors and oppressed; And when we the oppressed, are so weak that we can hardly do anything, then a false kind of peace prevails. But when we, the oppressed, begin to gather strength through organization, Aling Lety’s voice is still loud and clear, and we begin to balance somehow the power of the oppressors, then there is conflict and struggle. And should justice prevail, a genuine kind of peace comes about.

A young peasant girl, who dropped out from senior high school for financial reasons, has this to contribute: it does seem to me like genuine peace and harmony presupposes a balancing of conflicting forces. We learn that the harmony of the universe itself is based on this balance and not so much on the absence of conflict. The force of gravity that pulls a planet towards the sun is beautifully balanced by the force of velocity pulling it away from the sun. In our body and in the smallest particle of matter the same harmony holds, based not on the absence but on the balancing of conflicting forces.

But in our present .society, she continues, that balance does not exist. Injustice means precisely that: an imbalanced situation. To bring about balance and justice and true peace we, the weak, must become strong.

In that case, then, Aling Lety speaks again, if we have to increase in position of strength and share in nature’s bounty,

 

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the landlords and capitalists have to decrease accordingly which they will never do voluntarily.

And so, they are now fond of exhorting us to be positive in our approach. We are too negative and destructive, they say.   My friends, how can we take a positive attitude towards injustice? Only by negating it.

It, therefore, seems that my grandfather in the Sakdal Movement was right when he kept telling us long ago that in the Bible, the negative always precedes the positive.  Quoting the prophet he often reminded us that our task is, and here Aling Lety uses her fingers to count: to tear up, and to knock down, to destroy, and to overthrow; to build and to plant.    Four negatives before two positives, she says.

Well, an old man concludes, next week is Holy Week. It only reminds us even more that we can’t have Easter Sunday be­fore Good Friday. Our own process of salvation will be like that.