migrant work

today's my last day in hong kong. i've been here for almost a week. most of which was spent in deep consternation, movement building, and learning.and today is my first day really getting to sit and write/process what has happened here in the past couple of days.

first.
ya'll know i struggle most with my own thoughts and ideas of home. i suppose it's the dialectic that many immigrants or displaced people face. but in a stroke of revolutionary genius, it was really at this international meeting of the world's organizers, political movers and shakers and hard-working, dedicated peeps that i felt like home.

where every morning, walking out of the bungalo and seeing a kasama, whatev nationality they e, warranted a good morning.where each workshop, analysis of class and capitalism necessarily included an anti-imperialist perspective.where at each coffee break, an opportunity to learn about a struggle halfway across the world could and would ensue.where each person you sat next to had a history of resistance unsaid and at the same time open like a book.

second.the plague and plunder of imperialism has got us FUCKED UP.HOWEVER, it is powerful to see so many people across the GLOBE (sonnnn) taking stock of imperialism's faults and offenses then claim rights and demand change.

whoever said that unity across time and geography couldn't be done should come to the fourth international assembly.

third.
hong kong's migrant organizing is illllllllllllll.
sundays are days off for domestics here. and twice displaced, once from their motherlands and again from their residence/workplaces that they don't really belong to, they occupy the city's public spaces.

the word "occupy" has several latent meanings when i use it here. occupy as in the sheer masses of them that are visible in every nook and cranny of the city looks like a strategic occupation. occupy as in their visibility on this one day out of the week is in stark contrast with the emptiness and eerie sparcity of people on the Hong Kong streets daily.
then the other occupy is the one that may interest you as it did me, the most.
occupy as in, every mat across the Bank of Hong Kong space or in Chater Garden or Bus 13 or the footbridge towards Worldwide has some occupying presence of organizaion.

i'm talkin peoples belong to a mass organization, speaking most closely to their own affinities, region, city, gender, etc. then these organization with mass membership come together in alliances that represent particular needs of migrant workers or regional formations. then these alliances (i know, and i ain't even done yet) make up confederations of migrant concerns. then each confederation (yup, there's more than one) then comprise the migrant mass movement here that eventually does work on the international level. a perfect example is the international migrant alliance's founding congress days before ILPS.

*deep breath* the breakdown of this character really showed in our mat to mat, area to area integration. we got to sit with domestic workers that work 6 days a week and STILL find time to organize on their ONE day off. their stories of exploitation horrific but their analysis sharp.

i learned that to sit and listen is an imperative organizing tool. there's a lot of potential in migrant organizing. i learned this.

last.i'll be on a plane back to the phils in a couple of hours and i'm already feeling fantastic about what i've learned.

i'm excited to be with my GABRIELA sisters and learn some mo'. i feel good, in my bones good.
i will be a proponent for migrant exposures though, that's fsho.