we shall overcome. someday.

This was the first street protest that actually moved me to tears. Migrant workers from the Cordillera region in the Philippines met to mourn and protest the state-sponsored killing of comrades from the Cordillera Peoples’ Alliance. (The Flickr photoset is here.) Yep, I’m an ironic pomo wanker, but when they pulled out the guitars out and sang “We Shall Overcome” (really!), I was… overcome.

Some of these people happened to be “actual comrades” of ours (with old friends on common) from the Asian Students Association, to which my own activist organisation was affiliated back in the 1990s. And despite my many differences with their overwhelmingly Maoist bent, our Filipino comrades were a constant source of inspiration back then, because they understood the joy of performance and the creativity of games. I even tried reinjecting some of the old Philippines-Australia Cultural Interaction Network methodologies into some of our work with Smash Racism a couple of years ago.

Of course, CPA and ASA comrades weren’t the only people on the streets, because every Sunday, on their one day off, thousands of Filipino migrant domestic workers occupy heart of Hong Kong’s financial district. To just hang out. Relax. Gossip. Organise industrially. To Get the Fuck Out of the Live-In Closet That Their Employers Call a Room. To be autonomous. To have an “inappropriate” visibility in the city that runs on their labour. We’ve been here for weeks, but so far hadn’t gotten our shit together to witness this regular occurrence. I didn’t feel comfortable taking photos, but it was breathtaking: Filipino women occupied every square inch of the space in between the towers of the HSBC building and the surrounding streets, playing cards, napping on towels, being raucous. The authorities can do nothing but officially block the streets that have already been blocked.

A woman was handing out leaflets amongst the crowds, and when I enquired what they were about, she gave me the dirtiest look imaginable, her whole body assuming a defensive posture, as if I’d threatened to eat her baby. Fair enough — a Chinese man wanting to know Filipino women’s business on their day off in Hong Kong isn’t really a recipe for dialogue. Until that moment, I don’t think I ever realised quite so starkly the possibility for me to be the enemy, or the oppressor, via a particular constellation of class, race and gender.

After the protest, we got to talk to some domestic worker activists. How the fuck did they have time to organise politically outside the official channels, when they work for — and live with — their employers, around the clock? By using buckets and rope to surreptitiously pass things to other workers upstairs or downstairs in the same apartment block. By whispering into mobile phones while feeding their bosses’ kids. By taking said Chinese kids to political rallies! (A couple of activist nannies had indeed brought their charges to the protest.)

Migrant domestic workers enjoy very few rights in Hong Kong; for example, unlike everybody else, they can’t apply for a resident’s card, even if they’ve lived in Hong Kong for decades — their visas forever remain at the mercy of their employment contracts. Some are immediately deported when their racist potential employers decide, upon their initial meeting, that their skin was darker than the recruitment agency’s profile suggested. (My overriding memory of Hong Kong television is from 1988: I saw a prime-time variety show in which Chinese comedians got made up in blackface and acted like hysterical buffoons to portray Filipino people.) When grievously assaulted by their employers, it is often they, and not their employers, who are taken in for questioning by the police. And in a final (but predictable) irony: now that Hong Kong is part of China, the traditionally “communist”-influenced trade union federation has sided with the state against migrant domestic workers in the familiar name of “patriotism”. In the face of all this, migrant workers’ resistance in Hong Kong is to be celebrated without reserve.

[ tags: activism, affect, hong-kong, immigration, labour, migrants, philippines, protest ]