Jc de los Reyes Biography

Short autobiography by Jc de los Reyes, minor editing by JB

"I am forced to stay on in politics because awang awa na ako sa mga mahihirap. I also have to fight for my children's future. Justice demands that those who have been blessed with a good, comfortable life should do battle with a rotten, corrupt system, oppressive to God’s beloved children - the poor and the marginalized." 

                                                                                                                    -- Jc de los Reyes

BORN February 14, 1970, former Councilor and May 2010 presidential aspirant as John Carlo Gordon de los Reyes is married to Dunia Valenzuela with three children, Gabriel 10, Santiago 7 and Barbara 5. 

Jc de los Reyes studied in Ateneo de Manila for his elementary education, and graduated in De la Salle for high school. He finished his B.A. in Theology from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, reputed to be one of the most orthodox Catholic Universities in America. Late 1993 he taught Philosophy in the then Center for Research and Communication, now the University of Asia and the Pacific and was under the tutelage of Fr. Joseph de Torre, a Spanish priest of the Holy Cross who wrote extensively on the social teachings of the Church. In 1995, he ran and was elected City Councilor of Olongapo. 

During his term, he focused on the poor, the youth and cooperatives. In 1999 he finished his post-graduate studies in Public Administration from the University of the Philippines and proceeded to study law in Saint Louis University, Baguio City, finishing his degree in 2005. 

The organizations he helped propagate as an active member since 1995 was the National Renewal Movement and the Ang Kapatiran National Political Party or the Alliance for the Common Good, a registered political party that seeks to promote the politics of genuine social concern. Presently, he is national animator of Solidarity Philippines, a movement to pro-actively advance the Social Justice Agenda of the Church and Executive-director of Breaking the Yoke of Poverty Foundation whose project is Jubillee homes for the Poor, a housing project for 60 families. 

In the 2007 elections, among 27 local and national candidates, he was the lone winner of Ang Kapatiran Party, placing second among ten slots for the Olongapo City Council. This was achieved despite a decade absent from local politics. 

His free legal assistance program under an informal project named JUSTICE CRUSADE has been widely successful among his constituents. He is presently prioritizing the institutionalization of the Barangay Human Rights Action Centers, the office mandated by law for the protection and prevention of human rights violations in the barangay. 

Councilor JC has spoken out and campaigned against illegal drugs, rampant violations of worker’s rights at Hanjin, Subic Bay and has campaigned against illegal fish cages in the area. He has also led protests against the proposed coal power plant and has been outspoken in criticizing government’s plan to open more casinos in Subic. 

The boldest statement he has made for good governance is the filing of numerous cases before the Ombudsman against high ranking government officials where he himself is complainant. This is in line with his political policy of alleviating the people’s suffering by addressing the problem of expensive and increasing costs of basic needs like water, electricity, medicines, health care, etc., and insuring that these basic services are kept free and far from graft and corruption. 

His passion and vision is to unceasingly work to fight and defeat massive, enslaving poverty, a mission to be accomplished not only in Olongapo but in the whole country. 

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Sources:

De los Reyes, Jc. JC who? 1 August 2009. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=128140575989

________. Servant-Mothers - Humble Nation-Builders by JC de los Reyes. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=62509670989

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Nicanor Perlas Biography

 Summary of Nick's Biography

Awards (Top three awards, among other awards)

The Right Livelihood Award or the Alternative Nobel Prize Nick Perlas is only one of two Filipinos (Walden Bello) who has been given this highly coveted global award. The award is given for "outstanding vision and work on behalf of the planet and it's people. It is today’s most distinguished award for courage and social transformation. Other notable recipients are David Lange, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Leonardo Boff, world renowned theoretician of liberation theology, Petra Kelly, co-founder of the German Greens and member of the German Parliament, and Wangari Maathai, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.  Other prominent recipients are David Suzuki, Vandana Shiva and Bill Mollison.



The United Nations Global 500 Award

The UN’s highest award for the Environment. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Global 500 Roll of Honour in 1987 to recognize the environmental achievements of individuals and organizations around the world. Other prominent awardees are Nobel Prize winners Wangari Maathai and former U.S President Jimmy Carter, French explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, former Prime Minister of Norway Gro Harlem Brundtland, and former Prime Minister of Britain Margaret Thatcher.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award for Exemplary Governance.  "The Ramon Magsaysay Award is given to persons who address issues of human development in Asia with courage and creativity, and in doing so have made contributions which have transformed their societies for the better.”  Other recipients are Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno and business tycoon John Gokongwei.


Unrivaled Track Record
1.    Expert and vital consultant to influential institutions of government, international bodies, global agencies and civil society organizations, among others, the:

• Aquino Government as Technical Advisor to the Presidential Commission on the Bataan Nuclear Plant. Mr. Perlas played a pivotal role to the government’s decision to mothball the troubled Plant, despite it being very near completion, and having cost $2.1 billion;
• Ramos Government through his critical leadership in the Pesticides Technical Advisory Committee, which role was decisive in the consequent banning of 32 of the most damaging pesticides and government’s investment of P760 million in integrated pest management, an achievement that has far-reaching effects to Philippine agriculture and the ecology;
• Ramos Government, as principal technical writer and key formulator of Philippine Agenda 21 (“PA21”), a pioneering framework on development and a counter-weight on trade liberalization. The PA21 has been characterized by former President Ramos as the most consultative policy document in post-martial law and is still the recognized blueprint for sustainable development in the country;
• Philippine Council for Sustainable Development as Civil Society Co-Chairman, and through his expertise, formulated and implemented Philippine Agenda 21;
• United Nation bodies such as the UNDP, FAO, UNCSD and UNICEF, where he was the authoritative representative for the Philippines and civil society;
• Critical government agencies throughout several presidencies, as expert consultant to the Senate, House of Representatives, NEDA, DSWD, DA, DENR and as the official Philippine delegate to the United Nations and APEC; and
• Principal negotiator during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (“APEC”) and pivotal to preventing radical and one-sided trade liberalization. Mr. Perlas successfully introduced strong sustainable development language in the Leaders and Ministerial Declarations of APEC, and constrained the Individual Action Plan of the Philippines to abide by sustainable development principles.

2.    Visionary leader who created, developed and broke new ground with several pioneering and momentous initiatives and organizations, including the:

• Centre for Alternative Development Initiatives (CADI), a trailblazer in the agricultural field, which set in motion, organic farming in an otherwise chemical-intensive agricultural system;
• Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which effectively commenced and culminated a campaign against pesticide abuse, and providing expert training and technical assistance to 23 provinces in the Philippines;
• Large-scale commercial organic and biodynamic agriculture, the first of its kind in the country. In fact, Mr. Perlas is recognized as a most prominent force on ecological agriculture in Asia, notable for coining the term: “sustainable agriculture” in 1983;
• Creator of the 'tri-sector' approach to policy-making or “societal threefolding.”  His innovative work launched the Global Network for Social Three-Folding or Globenet3, with more than 17 geographic and functional nodes in over 12 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the United States of America; and
• Author of SIAD: Framework for the Localization of Philippine Agenda 21, a crucial blueprint, which is now being utilized by several local governments and civil society organizations to advance sustainable integrated area development.

Nick Perlas, with his unparalleled expertise and stellar work, is renowned in the field. He has:

a.     Been consistently invited to lecture and impart his visionary and pioneering work before civil society organizations and movements as plenary speaker or resource person. He has lectured in over 100 global conferences and over 150 national conferences;

b.     Written an international bestseller: “Shaping Globalization: Civil Society, Cultural Power and Threefolding”, which has been translated in nine (9) languages.  His book is being continuously utilized by governments, business and civil society for policy-making throughout the world; and

c.     Authored over 500 articles and among others, is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of TruthForce, and Ikabuhi Newspaper for Micro-Entrepreneurs.
Alternative Nobel

The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 to honour and support those "offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today". It has become widely known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize' and there are now 137 Laureates from 58 countries. Other awards of Nicanor Perlas: Global 500 Award TOFIL Masterson Award

CITATION Nicanor Perlas (Philippines) (2003) “…for his outstanding efforts in educating civil society about the effects of corporate globalisation, and how alternatives to it can be implemented.” Nicanor Perlas was born in 1950, and graduated with highest honours in agriculture from Xavier University. He gave up his master’s degree after being drawn into the struggle against the Marcos-promoted Baataan nuclear plant in 1978 and had to leave the Philippines after organising a conference to expose its dangers. After the fall of Marcos Perlas was able to return to the Philippines, founding the Centre for Alternative Development Initiatives (CADI). He became a consultant to the Aquino Government on the troubled nuclear power plant, and contributed to the decision to mothball it, despite it being very near completion, and having cost $2.1 billion. At the same time he engaged in a campaign against the abuse of pesticides, founding the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. This (and very often Perlas personally) gave training and technical assistance in 23 provinces in the Philippines. Perlas also became a member of the government’s Pesticides Technical Advisory Committee, which eventually banned 32 of the most damaging pesticides and caused the government to invest P760 million in integrated pest management, which trained more than 100,000 farmers. For this work Perlas won the Global 500 Award from UNEP, and one of the TOFIL Awards to outstanding Filipinos, both in 1994. In the substantial press coverage that accompanied these awards, Perlas was often referred to as ‘a farmer’ and his work with CADI still helps farmers to shift away from chemical-intensive agriculture. By this time Perlas was already one of the Philippines’ environmental leaders. He had set up student environmental groups and his work on nuclear power and sustainable agriculture had given him a national profile. He was one of the Philippines’ NGO delegation to the 1992 Earth Summit. He later became heavily involved in the post-Rio process in the Philippines, not least through the Philippine Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD), of which he has been Civil Society Co- Chair, and helped to formulate and implement at the local level Philippine Agenda 21 (PA21). Later in the 1990s he became Co-Chair of the Green Forum of environmental groups, and he has been a member of Mikael Gorbachov’s Commission on Globalisation. Perlas explicitly sought to use PA21 as a counter-weight to the trade liberalisation that was being pushed through the Uruguay Road of the GATT, in what he described as a “creative response to the challenge of élite globalisation.” A major practical expression of the PA21 approach is the micro-credit initiative Lifebank, of which Perlas is a Board member. Lifebank has so far reached 15,000 families. Perlas has evolved a ‘tri-sector’ approach to policy-making, which he calls ‘threefolding’: “In social threefolding the three global powers - government, representing political concerns, business, representing economic concerns, and civil society, representing cultural concerns, can come together, where appropriate and feasible, to join efforts in solving major world problems.” This is the subject of Perlas’ most recent book, Shaping Globalisation: Cultural Power and Threefolding, (2000). These ideas are said to have been important in the process that led to the toppling of President Estrada in 2000. Perlas took the book to the State of the World Forum 2000, and has co-founded two networks to take the ideas forward globally: GlobeNet 3 and the Global Institute for Responsible Leadership, which seeks to promote innovative thinking and collaboration across traditional boundaries - departments, organizations, sectors, and cultures. For the past five years Perlas’s focus has almost exclusively been on social movements and their power to change the world. He counts as one of his major achievements that, with Walden Bello, he convinced the Philippine NGO scene in 1996, through major talks, the formation of networks and a big civil society conference that the issue for the future of the Philippines, is the value system underpinning globalisation. Perlas warns that the developments we are facing demand a deeper, ethical and spiritual response: we face a system not just a management crisis. Thus he asks how our sense of identity and humanity will be affected by current technological advances (in genetic engineering, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence) which could lead to the proliferation of half-human half- machine “silicone beings” in the near future. Quotation “We are in fact faced with very deep spiritual social problems, which require spiritual responses from us. Ordinary, secular, materialistic answers will not do. For behind every act of social resistance and creativity is a spiritual act. Spiritual revolution must have happened first within us before we can create the new world we all long for.”

(Reposted with permission from Mr. Nicanor Perlas)

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Source:

Complete Biography (of Nicanor Perlas). 10 April 2010. Official website of Nicanor Perlas. http://www.nicanor-perlas.com/About-Nicanor-Perlas/complete-biography.html

Why Not Mothers First in Biographies?

EVER wondered why it is the case that in reading biographies of great and minor figures, the name of the father is almost always mentioned first than that of the mother? Not counting the cases of one of the parents being lopsidedly famous and powerful or influential over the other, the general trend has been that the father is almost always mentioned first. Notwithstanding if the father is a scum and it is the mother who served as major breadwinner. Even in the case of United States President Barack Obama whose father deserted them, his biographical page in the White House website cites his father first: “With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, President Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961.”

Is such really the natural course to follow? Perhaps, because most human beings carry the surname of the father* it is deemed to be a most natural thing to mention the father first.  Or, maybe, it is thought that God of some patriarchal religion decrees it that way. Perhaps in the days of old when outdated thinking and stiff patriarchy ruled the world, citing the father’s name first was understandably standard operating procedure for historians and biographical writers. Today in a world enlightened by science and humanist philosophy, should fathers still come first?

If it is “natural,” we should abide by, is it not logical that the name of the mother–who carried the infant in her womb for 9 months and risked her life giving birth to the child–instead come first in the biographies of noted humans of this planet? Why should the father, whose paternity is not obvious or readily verifiable be mentioned first?

In the olden times when it was exclusively the men who eked out a living and financially supported the wife and child, such practice of crediting the paternal roots first over the maternal  can be justified. But even that is arguable from an objective, non-patriarchal viewpoint.

In the modern times when women also work, if not actually serve as the family’s main breadwinner, should it not be fair SOP to mention first the mother over the father. I mean, it is the woman, after all, who is the biological source of the child, notwithstanding the genetic contribution of the man. So long as there’s a (valid) witness to the pregnancy and the delivery, the fact of motherhood is always undeniable. It is the woman who suffers the discomfort and extreme pains of pregnancy/labor, and, usually, the responsibility of nurturing the child in the critical early stages of infancy. So why prioritize giving credit to the father whose paternity cannot be perfectly guaranteed unless the mother was under fool-proof eunuch-guarded house arrest for a few months before the estimated date of conception.

In the Philippines, there is a saying that ‘the grandparents can only be certain that a grandchild is theirs if it is the mother who is their offspring.’ Indeed, the marriage of, say, a son to his wife will not guarantee that any grandchild such a union produces carries the grandparents’ genes. The context of the saying is, of course, the traditional setup where DNA paternal testing was not yet available. However, even such DNA testing does not provide 100% accurate confirmation of paternity. Unless, perhaps, the procedure is repeated multiple times.

I say it is high time that humankind flow with the biological and reverse the patriarchal viewpoint of biography writing. Let the naming of mothers come first before that of the fathers. Mothers not only deserve first credit for all their pregnancy woes but, also, such a practice should provide more accurate, biologically founded biographical information.


*At least one exception is Sweden, as a Swedish friend informed me that couples have the option of choosing which surname (the wife or the husband) they wish to legally carry.

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Photo credits

www.filart.com:

Mother and Son – Fruit and Flower Background
by Norma Belleza – 1996

Mag-Inang Nagpipili ng Bigas
by Cesar Amorsolo – 1983

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Reference:

President Barack Obama. White House website. http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/president-obama