This piece was originally published on another blog of mine. http://www.jamesjimenez.com/angtiwarik/2012/06/19/asalto-jose-rizal-pepe/ – James
I was privileged to have been invited to the blogger’s night of the Knights of Rizal – Asalto Para Kay Pepe. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay long and had to bail just before a descendant of Rizal took the stage. By that time, however, I’d already imbibed so much of the spirit of the night that I was buzzed.
This wasn’t surprising at all, considering that almost from the minute I arrived, I was acutely aware of the energies in that small hall. At the same table where I was seated was @tweetnirizal – a gentleman that I’d once crossed 140-character swords with on twitter, on the issue of how best to push for the passage of the RH bill in the arena of public opinion. Unless I am very much mistaken, we ended up cordially agreeing to disagree. So, that discussion turned out pretty well. I have since become an avid reader of his tweets, and meeting him for the first time that evening was a distinct pleasure.
Across from me sat Dean Bocobo – a fervent nationalist and Rizalist – who I met when he was still devoted to long-form blogging via the Philippine Commentary. He was showing me the work that he’d been doing with Florante at Laura and the Noli, turning those parts of our cultural heritage into apps, in effect single-handedly dragging Filipino lit into the tablet age. With typical frenetic energy, he was dismantling his cellphone in front of my very eyes just to show me a micro-SD card. I would’ve stopped him – you could’ve just as easily said micro-SD and I would’ve gotten what you meant, effendi – but he was having too much fun doing it, and I was learning way too much listening and watching him do it.
Next to him, with the unselfconscious cool of the truly cool, sat Noel Cabangon. Introduced to him, I could think of no other thing to say than “we don’t look alike,” thus foolishly demolishing my one true claim to fame.
And there were others too, but then it was time to sing the national anthem. And that was what overwhelmed me.
Singing to the profoundly martial version of the March used by Gang Badoy’s RockEd video, the assembled Knights of Rizal quite literally shook the rafters of the Manila Yacht Club with their voices. I was, in that moment, transported. Suddenly, I wasn’t in the air-conditioned safety of a room with a bay view, I was in the middle of a band of marching men, hearts set aflame by love of motherland, loudly and proudly proclaiming their willingness to die rather than see Her trod upon ever again. And I was one of them.
If once – just once – you’ve had the chance to sing the Lupang Hinirang, with booming voices all around you, keeping time to war drums, you will understand what national anthems are supposed to do, and you will never again feel the same way about artsy renditions, not to mention things like this.
I also got to meet the Supreme Commander of the Knights, an exemplary and well-known gentleman, who introduced me to the Council of Elders – among whom I was pleasantly surprised to see Senator Joey Lina. I’d interacted with the Senator on numerous occasions, most often on his radio program, and I’d never known that he was Knight. Still, given everything about him, it wasn’t that much of a surprise.
So, anyway, there I was. I know I’m leaving a lot of the experience out – the speeches I listened to, the people I met. But then again, all of that – including most of what I’ve already written – is just personal stuff. Y’know, quite possibly interesting only to me?
The Asalto was much bigger than that.
It represented the emergence of the KOR to greater prominence on social media. Driven by the savvy of many of its younger Knights, the KOR’s entry into the world of Twitter and Facebook is the most recent iteration of an ancient pattern.
Throughout history, revolutions and movements have been driven by technological advances in the way information is disseminated. Gutenberg’s press, for instance. Photography and film; telephony and faxes; and most recently – as graphically demonstrated by the Arab Spring – social media.
So it makes perfect sense for the KOR to embrace social media in its campaign to spread the works and teachings of Jose Rizal. By making Rizal ubiquitous and essentially conversant in the idiom of the times, the KOR are making that great man more accessible to those of us who – if we’re being brutally frank about it – have lesser and lesser time to devote to history books and introspective reading.
But social media doesn’t just make the work accessible. After all, about 60% of the apps on my phone languish untouched. So, even if the works of Rizal were made easily available on-line – as Dean Bocobo is striving to make happen – there is still no guarantee that people will read more of it than they normally would’ve.
I would rather emphasize that social media has the potential to make Rizal relevant to the untethered youth, the wireless generation.
This is what I imagine: a group of dedicated Rizalists – Knights or otherwise – commenting on current events with a point of view informed by the principles and ideals of Jose Rizal. Just like Noel Cabangon writes songs that reflect his dedication to his principles, I envision ordinary people learning to speak the ideological language of Rizal.
In a sense, this is the challenge posed by the KOR’s hashtag #JustLikeRizal.
However, in order to make sure that the hashtag doesn’t eventually become a trite accessory to noble sounding – but empty – declarations, I think it would be helpful for the propagators themselves to attach the tag, not just to declarations of what one person will do, but also to insightful commentary about the way things are.
Instead of just tweeting laudable sentiments like “Participate through social media in the fight against poverty, injustice, oppression and corruption. #JustLikeRizal,” perhaps the hashtag can be applied to tweets like:
“Today, I saw how badly one child wanted to make her dreams come true- that singing “Sa Isang Pangarap” already made her cry.”
To be honest, this tweet reminded me more of Rizal than almost all of the other hashtagged tweets.I can imagine that Rizal wanted to free his people from despotism so bad that he could not help but sometimes become emotional about it. And that’s the kind of dedication to vision that would be good for more Filipinos to be exposed to, to be aware of, and hopefully, to someday be inspired to emulate.
I understand that in the early days of this tag being out in the wild, the tendency will be to append it to declarations of personal commitments and such. Nothing wrong with that. But since the intention is to teach people what it means to be #JustLikeRizal, it seems to me that the logical starting point is find sentiments that were not tweeted to fit the tag, but to which the tags fits anyway.
Now that is the work for a dedicated Rizalist. But I don’t mean dedicated in the sense that he does nothing but stalk timelines looking for tweets to tag. I mean dedicated in the sense that he has so imbibed the spirit of Rizal that he is able to find echoes of that spirit in even the most mundane things.
And in my estimation, that has always been what made Rizal a hero that I could identify with. I’ve no martial predispositions like Bonifacio, nor political savvy like Aguinaldo, nor the utterly selfless caring nature of Tandang Sora. So I have always admired those heroes from a distance. I’ve always known that I cannot measure up to them.
But Rizal. I doubt that Rizal did all those things he did because he felt heroic. And it wasn’t really on being a polymath that his heroism ultimately depended, but on his indomitable spirit.
Being a renaissance man made him a celebrity – after a fashion. But from what I know of him, it would have mattered little if he wasn’t so skilled and talented. To my mind, it was his overarching desire to be better than himself that defined him as a man. It was his scrappy willingness to stand up for those he felt were wronged that made him a hero. And it was his refusal to break down even under the worst possible conditions that guaranteed him immortality.
Now guess what? None of those things are beyond our reach. More than any other hero in the Philippine pantheon, Rizal is the most like us, and we, the most just like him.The problem is, we probably don’t see it in ourselves or in others. And that’s where I think the hashtag’s power really is.
By using the tag to identify statements that are Rizal in spirit, an awareness can be built up about how his thoughts and principles persist to this day. By identifying certain sentiments as being worthy of Rizal, we can cut through the accretions of modernity – angst, cynicism, distrust – and reveal the shining core of Rizalian thought that we are all capable of.
This, I think, is what the Asalto was the harbinger of: the resurgence of Rizal as more than just a historical figure to be revered, but as a model for living to be embraced by Filipinos. And it was a great honor and privilege for me to have been there at the turning of the tide.