Born on the 4th of July: Nanay Fedelina, 2022, Oil and acrylic on canvas. Eliseo Art Silva.
Her name was Fedelina Lugasan, and she was born on July 4, 1936, in Leyte, Philippines while the Philippines was a commonwealth (re: colony) of the United States. She lived with her family in a rural village where her mother was a farmer and her father, a fisherman. After first grade, her parents pulled her out of school to help with work. When Fedelina was 16, she left for Manila and sought out a job. She found a role as a live-in domestic worker and worked with a family for 30 years. They said Fedelina was “like family,” but she was never paid.
Fedelina was trafficked to the United States by this family. In California, her traffickers confiscated her passport - leaving her undocumented, vulnerable, and alone in a new country where she didn’t speak the language. Fedelina was forced to care for her traffickers’ children, clean their house, run errands, and cook for them. She was not permitted to eat with the family, and they refused her the dignity of a bed. For 35 years, Fedelina slept on a couch or the floor of one of her trafficker’s room.
She was enslaved for 65 years by four generations. When Fedelina was 82 years-old, she regained her freedom with the support of the Pilipino Workers Center (PWC). The PWC also helped Fedelina adjust to life in freedom, walking with her through court proceedings, and she lived at the center for a time. Then, she moved into a PWC employee’s home before they helped her secure a place at a nursing home.
Fedelina bonded with community members of PWC and was deeply loved. They called her Nanay Fedelina - mother in Tagalog - and even threw her first birthday party in the US on July 4, 2019. She reunited with her family in the Philippines, whom she hadn’t been allowed to contact in years, and met nieces for the first time.
Just two years after regaining freedom and a few weeks shy of her 84th birthday, Fedelina contracted Covid-19. She passed away on June 11, 2020. Her family had to watch the funeral online from the Philippines.
Dear Beloved,
I share Fedelina’s story because on the fourth of July, I want to commemorate someone important. I want to remember Fedelina because she was a good person who loved and forgave when she didn’t have to, who bravely shared her story to empower other trafficking survivors. I share Fedelina’s story because it intersects with so much of what is happening now: American imperialism, class struggle, immigration, politicized pandemics, and the necessity of community care.
More than that, I share Fedelina’s story because her life mattered and she should be remembered.
Happy birthday, Fedelina. On this fourth of July, I celebrate you alone.
Kayumanggi Ina ng Kalifornia-Brown Madonna of California, 2022, Acrylic on canvas. Eliseo Art Silva.
Capitalism is a development by refinement from feudalism, just as feudalism is development by refinement from slavery. Capitalism is but the gentlemen’s method of slavery. - Kwame Nkrumah
Today, the authoritarian will sign the budget bill we have all dreaded. This budget bill will add billions to the US Gestapo’s budget, cut Medicaid and SNAP, and strengthen state surveillance tech. It is going to kill a lot of people. It is going to make a very small group of people even wealthier.
We live in a country where it takes 11 years to replace one city’s lead pipes and 8 days to build a concentration camp. We live in a country where concentration camp merchandise is sold and elected authoritarians giggle over cages. We live in a country where, once again, people of color are being hunted by state agents and people pretending to be state agents. We live in a country built by stolen people on stolen land, fueled by immigrants, where everyday people are collateral. We live in a country where slavery never really ended; it’s just been rebranded again and again.
The regime’s terror on immigrant communities will make the oligarchy even more money. With the budget bill’s brutal cuts to public programs and oligarchs’ unbridled price gouging, poverty is on the rise, which will further enrich private prison corporations. it’s good for private prisons’ business.
“Poverty, for example, plays a central role in mass incarceration. People in prison and jail are disproportionately poor compared to the overall U.S. population. The criminal legal system punishes poverty, beginning with the high price of money bail: The median felony bail bond amount ($10,000) is the equivalent of 8 months’ income for the typical person in jail because they can’t afford a bail bond. As a result, people with low incomes are more likely to face the harms of pretrial detention. Poverty is not only a predictor of incarceration; it is also frequently the outcome, as a criminal record and time spent in prison destroys wealth, creates debt, initiates or perpetuates cycles of homelessness, and decimates job opportunities.”
The US’s violence - only heightened by this regime, mind you, none of this is fucking new - is a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Moving forward, we will see its brutality enhanced and uninhibited.
Under this regime, slavery is undergoing yet another rebrand. While on tour at Alligator Auschwitz, Trump openly discussed it.
"We’re going to take care of our farmers and hotel workers, but we're working on it right now. And Ron [DeSantis is] going to be involved."
"We have a lot of cases where ICE would go into the farm, and these are guys that are working there for 10 to 15 years, no problem.
"The farmers know them. It’s called ‘farmer responsibility’ or‘owner responsibility,’but they're going to be largely responsible for these people…
"They [immigrants] can be here legally. They can [still] pay taxes and everything. They're not getting citizenship, but they get other things. And the farmers need them to do the work. Without those people, you're not going to be able to run your farm."
Already, monsters weaponized the US’s punitive immigration system against immigrants and trafficking victims like Fedelina. Already, villains buying ICE uniforms on Amazon utilize the regime’s terror to rob and rape people. Now, it will be either slavery on American farms or torture in concentration camps and death by alligators.
The Republicans laugh and unleash more terror, and the Democrats talk and ask for more money to do nothing. Both are but the bloody hands of one imperial body. Both wanted this. We live in a country divided by fear and hatred, controlled by tyrants and white supremacists, owned by oligarchs.
To control a population, you need the people to be afraid, desperate, exhausted, distracted, cynical, and hopeless. We need you in your courage, caring for yourself, focused, discerning, faithful, and rooted in your soul power and sacred relations. Society is you. You are the resistance and the medicine. The generations are praying. You embody their prayer on earth. You are needed by the fire. We will be in this ceremony for many moons to come. - Jaiya John
Artwork by Jamie John
Follow the leadership of the Seminole and Miccosukee Nations as they defend the Everglades - their land - against human atrocity.
Learn from Miccosukee elder Betty Osceola, an Indigenous leader speaking out against the US concentration camp in the Everglades, about her tribe’s sacred land.
TAX STRIKE! LABOR STRIKE!
It costs taxpayers over $89,000 to incarcerate and torture a single human being in Alligator Auschwitz. Stop paying taxes. Stop giving warlords your money. Visit the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee for resources.
STOP FILMING PEOPLE AT PROTESTS! No, seriously, stop livestreaming, stop posting on social media, stop sharing comrades’ faces and making cops jobs easier.
Blocing Up is an updated (2020) guide to using the black bloc tactic at demonstrations. It is presented as a comic covering the history, basics of the tactics, and recent lessons from the streets.
Cover Your Face - a zine on protecting yourself at direct actions in the surveillance state.
Fuck the Fourth of July. American “freedom” is not liberation. Share Frederick Douglass’ speech “What To The Slave is The Fourth Of July?”, as read by his descendants, and don’t let self-professed patriots forget what this country is. Kill the mood at that barbecue.
Tell a white supremacist to go back to [insert random European country]. Or to bury themselves in a hole somewhere and compost themselves. If they get physical, beat their ass. Punching Nazis is community care. If you don’t think you’d win a fight, cyberbully them.
For legal reasons, I’m not serious about the last bullet point.
But it brings up an important topic: Risk.
We live in dangerous times, and it will become more and more unsafe. But if we do nothing, people will continue to suffer and die. Our oppressors will not spontaneously have a change of heart: They will keep hurting people because they enjoy it. They will kill more people because they want to kill people.
We need organized, strategic action utilizing many tactics. Every action will come with risk, and each of us needs to know what our risk tolerance is. For upcoming actions, make sure to do a risk assessment and have honest conversations with comrades on your risk tolerance. Pressuring anyone to take risks they do not have the tolerance for puts everyone in danger.
Beloved, it’s okay if you need to step back from higher-risk actions. You do not have to be on the frontlines, especially if your identity or circumstance makes you a more vulnerable target for fascists. There are many things you can do that our communities need.
Thank you for all of the resources! (ᵔᴥᵔ)