The UP SAMASA Activist

 

Photo: UP SAMASA member (Credit: Home - Samasa Alumni) 

The UP SAMASA (Sandigan para sa Mag-aaral at Sambayanan), a progressive and multi-sectoral student political party within the University of the Philippines (UP) system, is known for fostering critical awareness among students, empowering them to take a stand on national and international issues. Their members and activists often lead university-wide campaigns, participate in protests, and engage in discourse on policies affecting both the UP community and the broader Filipino population.

In essence, a UP SAMASA activist is a committed advocate for societal transformation, embodying the ideals of servant-leadership and progressive activism. They continue the legacy of UP as a bastion of critical thought, resistance, and action.

A UP SAMASA activist typically embodies qualities that reflect the organization's values of activism, leadership, and commitment to democratic ideals.

Who is the UP SAMASA activist?  

Atty. Raffy Aquino, a former SAMASA student leader, once spoke in a forum organized by UP SAMASA during its 40th anniversary last year and enumerated the five (5) important implications of activism. These are the qualities that SAMASA activists strive to uphold:

·        FIRST: The activist is not an occasional adventurer. His activism is habitual, sustained, disciplined, and purposeful. He keeps at it despite reversals and defeats, and he does not rest upon victories but constantly learns from them and builds upon them. The activist is not the socialite or the politician who attend rallies only to be televised, or to secure for themselves some short-term political advantage. The activist is in it for the long haul.

·        SECOND: The activist is outward looking. He looks to his neighbors, to his community, to his people and the society they live in. He realizes that the affirmation of his own humanity ultimately depends on his taking part in building a society that would allow everyone else the same affirmation. The person who is consumed by angst over his floundering career or his failed marriage will have no time to look outward, will have no energy to help uplift the human condition, and will probably never become an activist; and society will probably never have any use for him either.

·        THIRD: The activist acts. He does not simply wring his hands in anguish over corruption in government and rising unemployment, and he does not simply offer novenas for the Supreme Court to strike down the Anti-Cybercrime Law. He writes, he teaches and lectures, he emails, tweets, and shares in FB, he attends meetings, joins organizations and forms organizations, and in general, actually intervenes in social reality. And because such social action is most potent if undertaken by many people moving in the same direction at the same time, the true activist is almost always an organized activist.

Photo credit: ABS-CBN News

  FOURTH: The activist is instinctively normative, forward-looking, modernist, and progressive, dedicated to moving things in society from what they are to what they ought to be. A person who is committed to the preservation of existing social structures, no matter how moribund, is a reactionary, and a reactionary can never be a true activist.

·        FIFTH: In seeking to change society, the true activist has no choice but to try to understand the nature of his society, its afflictions, the roots of these afflictions that often lie deep in history, the strengths and weaknesses of his people and their culture, and the experiences of other societies, other cultures, other histories. Then he will have to define what human society should be in the future, figure out what he wants for his people generations from now. And finally, he will have to clarify his activism’s line of march and define his route from what is to what may be.

This means the true activist can also be “an observer and a philosopher, a theorist and a thinker”. Aquino said that if an activist strives to attain these “by reading, listening, studying, and learning”.

He added: “To be sure, the activist should never lose the capacity to be outraged by what is outrageous, but as important as the fires of emotion is the certitude that one is on the right side of history – and this certitude is attainable only through intellectual struggle. Passionate buffoons will never make good activists”.

Photo credit: filipinawomensnetwork.org
Conclusion

Thus, an activist is someone who works tirelessly to make the world better. Whether through protests, policy changes, or educational campaigns, activists are at the forefront of societal change. While their methods may vary, their dedication to justice and progress remains a constant force shaping the world around us.

Ref: News & Blog - Samasa Alumni


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