There's Something About Maria

Not yet dead (by a thousand cuts). Not yet jailed (despite multiple lawsuits).

And definitely not back down (despite death threats and business license revoke).?

A while ago, I was thinking about female journalists eg. Barbara Walters, etc… who blazed the trail (see Role Model). Riding on the 70's ERA struggle. How women wanted to have it all.

Now, in the person of Maria, I am more convinced of that possibility (for my girls).?

My daughters saw a Dad who couldn’t type, and couldn’t write (in Journalism 101, I handed in a blank sheet when the stop watch rang). Only to turn down an ABC-Broadcast ENG (Electronic News Gathering) job 4 years later (putting my career on hold for my Mom, an orphan since birth and later abandoned in a refugee camp).?

Back to Maria. To her navigating the perfect storm of technology acceleration, social media harm, and the new politics of divisiveness (due to an algorithm that recommends “friends of friends” which inadvertently polarizes the population by amplifying the lies).

I was in the Philippines back in 1983. That year, in Manila, we learned there was an assassination (Aquino) at the airport.?

I remembered thinking “This can’t be” (earlier, it had been a Congressman, on a fact-finding tour who got killed in Guyana per Jim Jones cult). People outside of the Western World think they can just get away with murders (Abe of Japan, Diem of SVN). The same with mass-shooting here in the States ( anywhere from 6 years old to 72 and 67 Asian American frustrated men).

But there's something about Maria. Princeton, CNN, and Rappler, her crowd-sourced citizen news site.?

From “pajama party” to “Nobel Peace Prize”. What a journey! in the face of FUD’s (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt).?

When I grow up, I want to be like Maria i.e. Face fear. Stand up to bullies. Speak up and stronger together.?

Maria couldn’t have made it without the help of technology. Without the rise of CNN (imagine her at FOX?).

The fight is still on. Just like the Marcos are still here. Still shopping for shoes (Imelda got 3000 pairs) in Makati.?

Something will never change: they smell your fear. Just remember, they are ONLY THE BULLY (remember Sadam Hussein).

That’s their lots in life. In fact, we should feel sorry for those whose ill fate obviously limits their full potential. Like mine, in the alley, who once beat me up bloody (because I did not stay down as ordered), has died of a drug overdose. They get high by intimidating others. Noses up, in search of their next “high” (victim).

When there aren’t any mark around, their urge for brain chemical stimulation drives them to fentanyl (fantasy?).?

How to stand up to a dictator? Either wait him/her out. Or keep standing up and speaking up. If you don’t die by a thousand cuts, you are destined to survive. Even to receive, in Maria’s case, the prize, envied by the very bully-dictator she was up against. Did the Nobel Prize committee take sides? Absolutely. So should we. Unless we want to leave our fate and future in the hands of others’ angst and algorithms.

There is something about Maria. About you and me. Deep down. We are encoded to fit for a civilized world that plays fair and compassionate.

Even in face of a thousand cuts.