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#YouthResist trends as youth groups hold alternative SONA to Duterte’s ‘fake news SONA’

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Various youth groups came together to form the #YouthResist movement and held what they called as an alternative State of the Nation Address (SONA) at St. Scholastica’s College on July 18, leading the hashtag #YouthResist to trend on Twitter in the morning on the same day.
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#YouthResist

Parody page Superficial Gazette tweeted a livestream link by one of the participating groups, Millennials Against Dictators (MAD).



Some Twitter users were quite active in giving updates about the event.



Twitter user Sandro Marudo, @kaeofficial, tweeted about the “minute of silence” for the lives lost in the government’s campaign against drugs.

He also quoted ninth grader Shibby de Guzman about the drug-related deaths. Shibby was one of the St. Scholastica’s students who joined the protests against Marcos and was cyberbullied by some of Duterte’s supporters.

“Shibby now speaking on stage. “Why is it okay to kill 4-year olds who just want popcorn?”  #YouthResist,” he tweeted.



Shibby was referring to four-year-old Althea Fhem Barbon, who was killed along with her father during a buy-bust operation. She was the youngest to die in the government’s drug war. Her family said she went with her father, Pim Alrick Barbon, a suspected drug dealer, to buy popcorn in the plaza on August 30, 2016. Instead of going back home, Barbon took Althea to rendezvous with two men and sell drugs. The men turned out to be undercover cops who wanted to entrap Barbon, but he sensed the trap and fled on his motorcycle. The cops chased after him on another motorcycle and fired at him. The bullet hit him on the back but overpenetrated and struck Althea on her spine. Barbon died immediately, but Althea was taken to the hospital, where she died two days later.

Other Twitter users posted more about Shibby.



Marudo also tweeted the message from Senator Risa Hontiveros, a St. Scholastica alumna.

“Tinawag na kayong… masyadong entitled. Hinusgahan kayo… pero maling-mali sila,” Hontiveros was quoted saying.



As for those who might be concerned about the young students’ involvement in the protest, Marudo said their parents were actually supportive of their kids’ participation in the event.



@TomasinoWeb also tweeted the same thing about the parents.



Here are more tweets about the event.


On July 16, Superficial Gazette said the four things that Filipinos must resist include dictatorship, state-sponsored murder, corruption, and fake news.

The #YouthResist movement is composed of Millennials Against Dictators (MAD), Akbayan! Youth, the Student Council Alliance of the Philippines, and other campus- and community-based youth groups that stand against the extrajudicial killings linked to the government’s war on drugs.
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Karla Yu of MAD said it is to be expected that Duterte will focus on the “best parts, the milestones of this administration’s first year.” However, they believed that the President will not touch on many important issues.

“Pero naniniwala po kami na marami pa pong mga detalye ang hindi sasabihin sa SONA, and marami pang mga issues—katulad na lang ng human rights, katulad na lang ng extrajudicial killings, katulad na lang ng validity ng pagdedeklara ng martial law sa Mindanao—ang hindi pag-uusapan sa SONA ng Presidente. And that’s why I think, ‘yung pagwi-withhold ng information, that’s also a form of a lie. We want the truth to come out. We think that this is going to be a fake news SONA na naman—dahil puro na naman propaganda ang ipapakain sa atin ng Pangulo,” Yu said.

“Today, we are announcing that we are continuing to resist and that we [will] constantly fight and struggle for this country’s future. We refuse to stop asking for a say [in] our officials’ decisions. We reject the notion that the loss of lives can be simplified as collateral damage,” said Shibby.

Youth groups have always played a huge role in civil demonstrations during political unrest. They organized protests against former President Benigno Aquino III after the Mamasapano clash, joined the People Power Revolutions, and even during the People Power Revolution of 1986.

This is not the first time for student activists and youth groups to play noisemakers, but social media did help them become louder and faster in organizing movements.

Esquire PH has written about the #YouthResist groups, urging for people not to “insult” the youth’s intelligence and conclude that they are simply victims of a “brainwashing phenomenon.”

“So whether or not you agree with what these kids have to say, it wouldn’t be fair to insult their intelligence and debase their capacity to participate in our democracy by chalking it up to some imaginary brainwashing phenomenon. They’re on the streets and speaking up out of their own volition, as young people always have,” Esquire wrote.

Sources: ( esquiremag.ph , newsinfo.inquirer.net )
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