Diwa Marcelino: Community Organizer with Migrante Manitoba

Stuart Murray 00:00:01
Migrant rights. Workers conditions. You know, one of the things I've tried to accomplish with this Humans, On Rights podcast is to find out what's happening at grassroots levels on various human rights issues. And my guest today, Diwa Marcelino, is somebody that I don't know, but I'm going to get to know, and I look forward to this conversation. I met DWA through an email transfer by one of the people that I had interviewed on another one of my podcasts, Judith Oviasson, who is a tremendous grassroots organizer. And so I was given this introduction, and I just want to say a couple of quick words, Diwa, that are on your bio just so people can get a sense of a little bit of who you are, and then I'll turn this over to you. But Diwa Marcelino is a community organizer with Migrante Manitoba, and that is a grassroots organization advancing the rights and the welfare of overseas Filipinos with the framework of people's struggle for democracy, justice, and peace. In the Philippines. There's more. Migrante Manitoba is a founding member of Healthcare for All Manitobans, an alliance of advocating for expanded public health healthcare coverage to include all residents of Manitoba, regardless of status. He's involved in community solidarity. Manitoba he's the Vice Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, which is a grassroots organization challenging corporate power and advocating for people, the planet, and our democracy. He's on the steering committee of KAIROS, which is an ecumenical organization promoting ecological justice and human rights. So, lots of background there. Diwa, I'm thrilled and delighted you take a moment to chat with me. So, first and foremost, welcome to Humans, On Rights.

Diwa Marcelino 00:01:54
Thanks for having me here.

Stuart Murray 00:01:56
Diwa, tell me a little bit about your background, your education. You're obviously very interested in a lot of advocacy. How is it that you came to be interested in, and what's your background that got you sort of into that area?

Diwa Marcelino 00:02:11
When I was about 16 years old and I was a high school student in Manitoba, there was a Filipino organization called KAMPI, K-A-M-P-I which is a Filipino acronym which roughly translates to Filipino Workers Movement in Manitoba. And I saw the plight of different workers, the different conditions that they were facing, the racism that they were fighting against, and that really inspired me. But I really started my activism in earnest when I moved to Toronto to go to university and to go to post secondary studies. And I saw the plight of migrant workers right away in big cities in Canada, like Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal. You'll see that there are many living caregivers. Vast majority of them are Filipino or Filipinos. And I saw the many issues that they were facing, including extreme exploitation, family separation, everything from wage theft to unjust firings. So that really got me involved. My education actually has very little to do with my activism. I started in Computer Science at the University of Manitoba. I went on to study Divide College of Canada in Mississauga, then to Ryerson University, which is now TMU Toronto Metropolitan University. And I work now as a power engineer. So my job and my activism, although separate, I've used my day job to pay for, or in this case, sometimes nights. I work nights to help me do my grassroots activism.

Stuart Murray 00:03:51
So, Diwal, what is there a reason, again, on your professional side that you talk about going to Toronto to study there? Is it because you were looking at sort of an engineering type of career that you ended up going there? Was there something else that drew you down to Toronto? From Montreal? From Winnipeg, I should say.

Diwa Marcelino 00:04:10
I had a sibling, an older sibling who was there, so I didn't put too much thought into it. It was a new place to go, as fate would have it. It led me down this path of activism, but it wasn't entirely fully thought out. I was just turned 19, and I said, let's go to Toronto. I have about $300 in my checking account. I think I should go there.

Stuart Murray 00:04:32
Sure. Exactly.

Diwa Marcelino 00:04:34
Decision to go to one of the most expensive cities with that little money. But I soon found a home among other activists. Actually, primarily the activism that I was involved was with actual human rights organizations dedicated to helping the Filipino activists in the Philippines who were at that time facing many disappearances, enforced disappearances, enforced killings, extrajudicial killings. That was the time of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, which was the president that I believe she was responsible for over 2000 assassinations of activists of students, of Indigenous peoples, of labor rights activists was the ground in which I was firmly planted on for the first couple of years because of the gross human rights abuses in the Philippines. Almost every other day someone was assassinated. Some political parties, imagine, would have maybe 100 or 200 of their folks assassinated. So this was a huge deal. This was all, of course, supported by the United States. United States and countries like Canada let this happen without too much interference. Canada and the Philippines are, what they say, partner countries in ASEAN. A-S-E-A-N. Association of Southeast Asian Nations, I believe.

Stuart Murray 00:05:58
So it's interesting that you would get so involved in something like that. You go to Toronto, I get it. You got $300. You're looking for a good time. You think, hey, Toronto is a great place to do that. What was your first impact, or what was the first, I guess, situation, maybe Diwa, that you came across that started to bring awareness to you about there's something fundamentally not right here.

Diwa Marcelino 00:06:23
I remember meeting different Filipina migrant workers who are working as living caregivers, and I remember that some of them would call our organization to ask for help. It was one here, one there. After a few months to several months, I realized this is not an isolated problem. There are hundreds, if not thousands of migrant workers reporting abuse. This is the live in caregiver program, which is somewhat notorious. It has been revamped and rebranded as the Caregiver Program. It's no longer called the Live In Caregiver Program because they don't want folks to believe that they're forced to have a live in requirement with their employer. But if you can just imagine living with your employer 24/7 this can lead to all sorts of abuses, like wage theft, working outside your time clock, no privacy. It's ripe for disaster. If you think about it, who wants to live with their employer? It was in the first couple of years in Toronto where I responded to many calls for help. There was a quick response team with Migrante, Ontario, and we would help folks who got themselves into situations where they felt uncomfortable with their employer, either through issues of exploitation like sexual harassment, for instance, or being kicked out of their employer's home, which is their home, or maybe trying to defend themselves or sticking up for themselves. And the employers would be all sorts of people, even folks who are RCMP officers. I remember there was a woman, I said, who's your employer and why did they do this? And the employer was an RCMP officer. I said, wow, this program is the abuse and the exploitation is being produced at a systemic level. That was my first instance of looking at Canada's immigration system and seeing the exploitation it produces.

Stuart Murray 00:08:24
So Diwa, when you were in Toronto and you mentioned Migrante, Ontario as an organization, did you get involved with them when you were in Toronto?

Diwa Marcelino 00:08:35
Yes, I did. Migrante Ontario as well as Migrante Canada. It started, I believe, in 2010, but there were already precursor organizations that existed that later affiliated to Migrante. All the different organizations have different names. In Manitoba, the Migrante affiliate was named Dayote Manitoba, which means linking arms in Tagalog, which later is now called Migrant to Manitoba. So there was already organizations that had deep and rich histories of working with diaspora Filipino community. And they got together in 2010 to formally call themselves under one name with one purpose, to help migrant workers and also to address the root causes of forced migration stemming from the Philippines.

Stuart Murray 00:09:20
So do you want to just talk a little bit about that forced migration for a moment, Diwa? Just give us some background to listeners, to the history or the background to that, and then let's talk about some of the things that you are and your organization are actively involved in to remedy some of those problems or try to correct some of those problems.

Diwa Marcelino 00:09:40
Yeah, as you may know, especially in Winnipeg, there are tens of thousands of Filipinos. Tagalog is the second most spoken language in the city, beating even French. The Philippines is a wonderful country, the country of my birth. It's a very rich country, very small, but rich country, is rich in mineral resources, they estimated it to be the third largest deposit in gold. It has a lot of copper, nickel. It has a huge population that's very well educated. It has everything going for it. But coincidentally or not, it's also very poor. There's a lot of corruption. There's a lot of landlessness. Many workers and many farmers don't own the land that they till. And also, it has a very, very strong history of forced migration, starting from Marco Sr. The dictator who started the labor export policy when the Philippines needed foreign currency because the Marcoses were plundering the economy and needed money. They had the idea sending Filipinos out to the Middle East first, and that progressed. And the Philippines, ever since the 70s, has been basically a state recruiter for migrant workers, pipping out their people to the highest and sometimes the lowest bidder. So that's a bit of the history about how migration is such a phenomenon in the Philippines. It's a state policy that was enacted by Marco Sr. And I see Marco Sr. Because his son Bong Bong Marcos has the same name as him. Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos is his nickname. Bong Bong. He came into power after their family dynasty and legacy was rebranded. They were initially kicked out in 1986 because of all the corruption and the killings and the dissatisfaction of the people because of the poor economy. But due to, I would say, a strong and grassroots and well funded social media machinery, they've been able to revamp their image, try to convince folks that the time that they had in power in the were a golden era in Philippines, which it was clearly not.

Stuart Murray 00:11:55
And so that's a bit of the history Diwa. Thank you for sharing that with us. And again, the notion Amel DeMarcos. I mean, the number of just horrific things that went on. The stuff that was made public, if I could say it that way, the stuff that was not made public, I'm sure, was even more horrific in the background. So I appreciate you taking a moment to share that with us. Thank you so much. What, Diwa, has Migrante Canada and the subsequent other organizations done to help correct that and to bring a sense of, well, dignity and human rights to what any migrant should be receiving when they come to a country? What are some of the things that you're doing, and maybe what are the challenges you're seeing? And I'd also like to see I presume there's successes also. There must be.

Diwa Marcelino 00:12:44
There's a lot of success stories, equal with more number of sob stories as well. But I'm really happy to be part of an organization like Migrante. We're not just here to fight for the rights and welfare of migrant workers. What I really like about our organization and organizations is that we're here to empower workers. So we want to build that collective power among the workers instead of treating them like clients. When we organize workers, we do so with the full and express purpose of lifting them up, learning from them, and also learning from us as a two way exchange and trying to build up different groups of folks, whether they be in a workplace building a little migrant group in a workplace or a city or a town or a different organization where folks want to help their own folks. We want to empower people to fight for their rights, and also to look to the root causes of forced migration in the Philippines. So we also want to fight for the situation in the Philippines. We can solve every single person's problem comes to Canada from the Philippines, set them up, and give them whatever they want, if that even is impossible. But that won't solve the problem. Of the millions and millions of folks who leave the country, about 6000 Filipinos leave the country every single day for a chance for a better life. So this forced migration, this labor expert policy, is really a well oiled machine. And if we don't stop the root causes of that force migration, it doesn't matter what we do on the rights and welfare side, and helping folks their daily needs, which we still do, it will never solve the problems of the Philippines, the economic disparities, the terrible corruption. I know folks maybe have heard of duterte, rodrigo duterte, the former president. He's being investigated by the ICC, the International Criminal Court. It's estimated that at some estimates, he has murdered over 30,000 filipinos extrajudiciously in his war, so called war on drugs. And during the pandemic, which he was still in charge, the Philippines had the most severe quarantine of all the countries in the world. Many folks who were actual adherents or supporters of duterte really lost faith in him, because during the pandemic, the Philippines had no vaccines or very little, except for the rich, for the rich who had access to them. They had no social programs to ameliorate poverty, or lack of food, or lack of work, or lack of income. They locked down folks in their homes or wherever they were. Many people are homeless, and folks went hungry. Folks lost weight. I have a member of Migrante who recalled the time where his family would eat maybe a simple porridge of rice and water and sugar, maybe once a day for his family for weeks on end. And he himself said he lost a lot of weight because sometimes he couldn't even eat, that he would prioritize his kids. And when he went to Canada, to Manitoba to migrate, it was also still the pandemic. So they faced hardships here. They were looking for a better life. But here, many of the workers under the temporary foreign worker program, which is many of the workers that we fight for their rights and welfare, they're in this temporary foreign worker program. They were not able to find other jobs. If they were, for instance, in the service industry or working in a hotel. They were maybe promised 40 hours a week, but during the Pandemic, they were lucky to have ten or 15. And this has you know, this caused huge problem. They were still paying rent, they were still buying their own food, and they're still giving remittances to their families back home in the Philippines. So we saw, especially during the Pandemic, the huge problems faced by many migrant workers. Some folks in some residents in Canada were lucky enough to be I would always hear on the radio and the news, what do you do if you're bored during the Pandemic? Or things like that. Or there were First World problems happening during the Pandemic, and there were Third World problems right here in Canada with folks didn't have even enough to provide for themselves, and they weren't even eligible, many of them, for serve the Canada Emergency Relief Benefit or something like that. So, yeah, we saw right away, and that's why the migrant different partner organizations launched a program to help folks and provide for the basic needs for about a year or two years during the Pandemic, we were providing groceries to many migrant workers around. Manitoba.

Stuart Murray 00:17:42
Wow. There's a lot to kind of, as they say, unpack here. Diwa. But just if we could look at from sort of a global perspective, because you talked about this whole process being systemic, so it is obviously global in its perspective. If you were able to give the Prime Minister of Canada I'm not trying to sort of be political. I'm just saying the Prime Minister could be whatever party. But if you were able to give the Prime Minister of Canada some advice on what's happening with respect to some of these migrant workers and the incredible and horrific situations that they get put into when they come into Canada, I'm not looking for a quick fix, Diwa. I mean, it never is. And I don't mean to sort of just try and brush through it. But would you have some ideas about how you might, from a policy standpoint or from an operational standpoint, how you might give advice to somebody who's in a position, a decision making decision to try to make this a better situation?

Diwa Marcelino 00:18:44
Thanks for that. Great question. And this is not even a hypothetical question. Every couple of years, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and even the Living caregiver Program go under a review process in Canada's parliament. And for decades, advocates have written submissions, academics have written reports, opposition parties have written minority reports and submitted to the government all the different problems in this temporary foreign worker program or the living caregiver program or the seasonal agriculture program, which mainly receives micro workers from Mexico and the Caribbean. All of these deficiencies in this program, if you will, are well documented, and people have been advocating for them for years. So it's not a hypothetical question. We submitted these requests, these stories to the government untold times. But if I had the ear of the Prime Minister, I would first say, treat workers, migrant workers, treat folks with dignity. Justin Trudeau and his family employ a couple of Filipino nannies. They are part of the system that brings workers here. And to leverage their reproductive care work or leverage their labor to help the economy, to help the families of Canada at the detriment, to, obviously, the families back home who are separated from them. So, first and foremost, we need to take a look at the unjust laws that allow migrant workers to come to Canada with a precarious status, which leads to exploitation. If they had, for instance, status upon arrival, or they had full rights like health care, they had full labor rights in Ontario, some migrant workers are not even allowed to start a union. It's illegal. The rights that we've had for hundreds of years, migrant workers still don't have many of them. And that's a travesty. That's a shame for a so called democracy like Canada to have folks not even enjoy certain rights that many Canadians and residents have enjoyed for a century or so. So that's the first part, is to give full rights to the workers here from other countries. From the global perspective, like you mentioned, and I mentioned before, canada, Canadian industries take full advantage of countries like the Philippines. The Philippines, I believe I believe 90 plus percent of their land mass, which is not a lot of land mass. You can fit the Philippines a couple of times over in Manitoba in terms of the land mass. But the Philippines, over 90% of the area has mining applications. And Canadian mining around the world is one of the most exploited of industries around. And Canadian mines operate with impunity in the Philippines and elsewhere. Canadian mines, Greek industrial, environmental damage in countries like the Philippines, and they leave country, leaving a huge mess. Barrack Gold mine in the Philippines was called Placer Dome, I believe. And Barrick Gold bought that out, is a prime example of a mine that failed. The tailing ponds failed, and a lot of toxic waste fell into the river systems and the land, and the company just packed up and left. And these are Canadian companies. They're not just mining. Canada contributes to the disasters in the Philippines. Disasters, plural, in the Philippines, because they support despotic governments. During Duterte's presidency, Canada almost sent attack helicopters to the Philippines. It was not for the protests of many organizations in Canada. Canada was considering to send attack helicopters to the Philippines to a president who is on record and went on the media saying that he wants to bomb indigenous schools in the Philippines for teaching them and empowering them to fight for their rights. So Canada is unfortunately implicated in the human rights abuses in the Philippines. Whether they be through the unjust mining practices and the unregulated mining industry of Canada, its economic tacit economic and diplomatic support of countries and presidents like Duterte or Marcos who are instituting terrible policies. Canada has a role to play, and right now it's playing its role in a way that it's harming folks, not helping folks. It's actually supporting despotic rulers like territory like Marcos, who have no regard for human rights whatsoever.

Stuart Murray 00:23:31
So Diwa, when you talk about the fact that there's all of these reviews that go on, whether it's around temporary foreign worker program or temporary migrant worker program or seasonal, et cetera, when you have those reviews and they get presented, does it just fall on deaf ears? I mean, is there never a process to at least find out what the next steps are? Or presumably they're asking people they're aware of these atrocities that are taking place, and somebody is asking to see how we can correct it or at least give advice on how it can be made better. But it seems, if I understand you correctly, that despite the number of reviews, very little, if anything, has happened.

Diwa Marcelino 00:24:14
That's right. There has been some successes. Recruitment agencies, for instance, which is the lubrication, if you will, of how migrant workers get to countries like Canada. They are the ones that facilitate this migration. They are now not allowed to charge workers the thousands of dollars. I remember there was an article in CBC that showed that migrant workers at Maple Leaf and Brandon Maple Leaf Meat Packing, Sicilian, Brandon, some of these workers from China paid up to $15,000 for what are minimum wage jobs. So that now is illegal, thanks to many of the advocacy and work that many organizations, not just Migrante, but many organizations fought for, but the main tenets of the program, which is a precarious labor force that's being controlled by a work permit that's specific only to one employer. This leads to great expectation. If you're only allowed to work for one employer, you can't tell your boss, hey, I don't like how you're treating me. I'm going to somewhere else. That can't happen. And it doesn't really happen because workers will be faced with having not be able to work for maybe months at a time while they wait for their new paperwork to work for another employer without having a new work permit. Workers are forced to wait on a job, wait on paperwork, and they're not eligible, usually for EI. They may not have much savings. It's a very bad position, and it's something that's very disgraceful that we allow workers to be put in such a disadvantaged position where employers have huge leverage over their employees.

Stuart Murray 00:26:04
Yeah, it's very difficult the way you describe it, for sure, diwa. And I think organizations that you're involved in, like Migrante, Manitoba, how do you function as an organization? I know what your mandate is, and you're obviously doing good work, but how are you funded? How do you ensure that what you're trying to do is achieving the goals that you're fighting for.

Diwa Marcelino 00:26:29
Many of us are full time workers or even more have multiple jobs. So we do this. We are evening and weekend warriors. On the weekends, we do outreach in the different towns in Manitoba like Steinbach, Nipawa, Brandon, Carmen. We are on call 24/7. Basically, during the pandemic, I mentioned before that we were giving out groceries. We did avail of some government funding for the first time to help migrant workers. We applied for some funds, and we were able to translate that into real hard support for workers bags of rice, canned meat, vegetables, and fruits. So we did, during the pandemic, get some funding from the government to help these workers because they were not eligible for other supports like serve or things like that. We are mostly grassroots, or we are grassroots. Usually we are not funded. So this is off the backs of our own members. We charge $5 a year for our members. Most of our members are temporary foreign workers themselves. We find our power not just in our funding, because we don't have that much, but in our collective work that we do. The amounts of connections that we have with different folks, with different agencies, with academics, with organizations, and the migrant workers themselves. The fact that we have such a huge base of migrant workers really helps us understand very intimately what they're going through. We understand during hard times, workers in Manitoba, elsewhere in Canada, were only eating rice and maybe rice and eggs or rice and salt. During the pandemic, workers didn't have enough to pay for their rent and things like that. We have such a connection with workers because we are workers. Our organizations are comprised of workers. So that's where our power lies, and that's where our so called funding is from. It's from the workers themselves and the energy and the inspiration and the passion that they want to fix not only their lives, their own lives, their family lives, but the lives of other workers like them.

Stuart Murray 00:28:42
And Diwa, part of the education of these situations is people get into maybe they're a temporary foreign worker. They're in a position where there's an abuse going on, something's happening. How do you let people know? I mean, as you say, you're workers. So it's worker to worker, really, in terms of grassroots and the education of this, letting people know that there is help, there's places that you can go that you can reach out to. Because I think part of it is that you would feel so helpless because you came over here with this dream of having an opportunity that just gets completely washed out.

Diwa Marcelino 00:29:20
Fortunately, and maybe unfortunately, there are not many organization helping migrant workers. I just got an emergency text at 01:00 p.m.. Today about a worker who's I think stuck at the airport because their paperwork was not properly done and they're subject to deportation. This came by contact who we previously helped in the paw. So again, fortunately or unfortunately, there are not many people helping workers. So if you ask around eventually leads to McGrath. Even politicians, constituency offices, and other organizations will refer their clients to us, or folks who complain to them or ask for help, they refer them to us. So we receive a lot of the calls, a lot of the text message, a lot of the emails from workers who have nowhere else to go. So again, even the way that we receive our different contacts is through grassroots means and through word of mouth. We do have social media accounts and things like that, but by far many of the workers ask for help and agencies and organizations and even politicians themselves will call immigrant to help workers because the problems that they face don't have really quick answers.

Stuart Murray 00:30:33
Yeah, Diwa, so just on that one of the things I like to try to do, if I can, on this Humans, On Rights podcast is if there's a place to go to get more information, if somebody's listening to this and saying, how can I help? How can I get more informed? How can I be educated or become an advocate, where would you recommend that they go?

Diwa Marcelino 00:30:55
Please go to our website, Migrante. That's M-I-G-R-A-N-T-E . CA. Look us up on Facebook. Migrante Manitoba. Our numbers there, you can leave a message, you can talk to your trusted organizations or agencies if they can help. You might also have some resources for you or forward your issues to us if you contact us. We'll do our best not to just help you out in your situation, but to try to empower you, to really take charge of your own predicament and try to fight for your own rights and maybe in doing so, help educate other workers in their workplaces as well.

Stuart Murray 00:31:36
So just Diwa, you talk about so many challenges and I don't want to just sort of switch the conversation to something that's positive because there's so many struggles. But I think if somebody's listening, I think one of the challenges is where people say, I don't know how to help. It's such a big issue. Where can I step in? Where can I advocate or learn? I think sometimes when you hear of somebody and maybe if you could share something very close and personal to you that you've seen some tremendous success in, I think that helps people to say that's a reason to be involved, there is help, there's opportunity. And the old advocate is hope is not a great strategy. I get it, I understand that. But you have been involved in this for such a long time that creating those educated and those advocates who can be people that have come out of the other side of this, can you just share any of your thoughts or experiences on that side of the story?

Diwa Marcelino 00:32:41
There's a bunch of ways to help Stewart. Migrante is sometimes very insular, and we have most of our events are kids to micro workers. But once in a while, we do have forums where the general public are invited to come. I'm really hopeful that other organizations have popped up. Just a couple of years ago in Vancouver, there was a launch of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines. And many Filipinos and non Filipinos joined together to advocate for human rights in the Philippines, which is one of the reasons why there's so much outward migration from the Philippines is because of the lackluster human rights record of the Philippine government. So organizations like that, if folks want to volunteer with Migrante or folks want to help some of the more long term or global issues that we're facing, like human rights, there are things like that. So please get involved for whatever talent you have, whether it be in graphic art or writing, folks with Migrante or human rights organizations like the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, which many of the church organizations are involved with. There are many uses for your talents. If you want to donate, no one's going to stop you from donating to us. But really, you want your support and your solidarity.

Stuart Murray 00:34:05
Okay, well, listen, I appreciate that, and I want to just touch on one thing diwal before we hit the off ramp on the conversation. You're a steering committee member of Kairos, and for anybody that's not aware of it, it's spelled K-A-I-R-O-S-. I have some understanding of that because of The Blanket Program Diwa. But just tell us a little bit about why you got involved in that and the meaning that it has for you.

Diwa Marcelino 00:34:36
I think that I was really attracted to Kairos. My maternal grandfather was a United Church of Christ in the Philippines, pastor a church planter. My mother was also very involved with the church, and I myself was involved early on in the church, and I was particularly interested in the mission part of the church, the part of the church that really wanted to make lives better for folks. And that's the part I really was attracted to. So when organizations like Kairos, who are fighting for Indigenous and ecological justice, when they put a call out for folks who want to help them, I quickly was really attracted to that, because Kairos has been a partner not only for ecological issues, but also for migrant justice issues. They've been a big partner with that, but also human rights. I know that Kairos has sponsored many human rights tours, getting advocates from the Philippines to come to Canada, even to testify and to speak to the parliament, to MPs. So I was really inspired to join Kairos because of their advocacy outwardly to politicians, to Canadians, but also inwardly to many of its member churches.

Stuart Murray 00:36:03
Yeah, they did incredible work through this. The one area that I'm aware of them, as I mentioned when I introduced them on this Diwa is The Blanket Program, which is a very powerful program. And I would certainly recommend anybody who has not been a participant to try to be a participant to understand some of the, from an indigenous perspective, what it means to be basically have everything you thought was yours just basically taken away. Have you participated in many Blanket Programs?

Diwa Marcelino 00:36:35
Diwa not that many. Many of them are during work hours. But I have, and I'm really happy that there are even some changes that are happening to the Blanket Exercise. As an organization, we understand that many of our processes and our systems the church is no stranger to colonialism. We've had a very implicit and explicit part in the residential school system. And I'm really happy that Kairos, even with the blanket exercise that you mentioned, which has been around for many years, we've been revamping it and really at a very systemic level, trying to steer that process and steer that program and have that being led and being supported and being created again and again, many times over by indigenous folks. So we're in the process of even decolonializing that kind of practice ourselves. We still have a long way to go as an organization. I really appreciate the honesty and the transparency of even understanding that we ourselves are a colonial organization of sorts, mainly built of white churches with many white parishioners. So that aspect of decolonializing our different missions and our different programs is something that I really stand behind.

Stuart Murray 00:38:01
Yeah, I think I referred to it as a Blanket Program and that was incorrect. The correct name is it is a Blanket Exercise. So just want to make sure that I correct my own language. Diwa Marcelino, thank you for finding some time to talk to me about a lot of issues, but some things that you have shed a light on. And I thank you for taking the time to do that. I just want to just give the last word to you that if there was somebody who was listening to this that you wanted to send a message to them about some of the challenges that Migrante Canada, migrante Manitoba involved in, what would that be?

Diwa Marcelino 00:38:39
Well, what I would say to folks is we can sometimes feel debilitated by all the news that are happening. We've heard of the road closure on Roxam Road. How Justin Trudeau and the Canadian, the US. Government, with Justin, Trudeau and Biden have now expanded the third,  Safe Third Country.

Stuart Murray 00:39:00
Third Country.

Diwa Marcelino 00:39:01
Yeah, which is anything but safe, which makes migrants crossing an irregular checkpoints or irregular places in Canada making that harder. This will force migrant workers, migrants families to go through even more precarious entry points, which will lead to more deaths, more folks losing their hands and things like that. When you hear of news like that, don't feel debilitated. There are organizations like Migrante who are fighting for migrants. There's the network that we are involved with that we've helped start up, the Migrant Rights Network. Migrant rights. ca. Migrante.ca I mentioned the different human rights organizations around the International Coalition of Human Rights in the Philippines. There are many ways to get involved, to talk about the issues facing migrants, both here in countries like Canada, but also in sending countries like the Philippines, India, Mexico or the Caribbean. There are many organizations who are working at the grassroots level, at the policy level, helping folks. And if you are so inclined, join one of our organizations, attend one of our workshops, browse through our social media, our websites. And again I said as I said before, whatever your talent is, if it's in driving folks to folks, come to a meeting. If it's donating bus tickets or bus passes or donating canned foods, talking to your classroom, talking to your organization or inviting us so we can do a presentation. All those things will really help the mission and the vision of our organizations of helping workers and their human rights to stop a stop being exploited. But also B work on the original issues, the human rights issues, and the economic issues that give rise to forced migration in the first place.

Stuart Murray 00:41:00
Okay. Diwa Marcelino, thank you so much for your time.

Diwa Marcelino 00:41:04
Thanks for having me. Stewart.