Commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the October 24th Movement of 1966

Los Angeles -- The First Quarter Storm Network-USA (FQSN) militantly commemorate the forty years anniversary of the October 24 Movement of 1966. We pay the highest homage to that movement participants living or departed that shook the foundations of the rotten and anti-people system in the Philippines that supported the US aggression in Vietnam and other parts of the world.

The FQSN activists who were involved with different mass organizations then led by the Kabataang Makabayan prominently remember that on the first year of the US-Marcos regime in 1966 , Marcos did an immediate turn-about upon winning the elections and supported the US war in Vietnam and sent the Philippine Civic Action Group (PHILCAG) to build infrastructure to the US planned mechanized war.

On the eve of the eight nation summit talks led by US President Lyndon Johnson in Manila, the Kabataang Makabayan (KM) led by its chair, Jose Ma. Sison led a picket in front of the Manila Hotel. The police promptly routed the picketers arrested Sison and others for few hours. The students taunted US president Lyndon B. Johnson with slogans: “Hey, Hey LBJ, How Many Kids Did you kill Today!”

The following day on October 24, the UP students led a march by 5,000 students in Manila. The police again dispersed the students by wielding truncheons, breaking heads, mashing women students and even shooting some of them. Thus, the October 24 movement under the leadership of the UP Student Council president Voltaire Garcia III. He later became a delegate to the constitutional convention in 1971, arrested and imprisoned by dictator Marcos in 1972, which led o, his early death.

We all today remember Voltaire Garcia for his famous words: “Let it not be said that we never exhausted all the peaceful means to fight for freedom.”

Youth Heightened Struggle

From 1966 to late 1969, the brutal police and army dispersals were repeated again and again. During the RP-Malaysian crisis when the Filipino students attacked the US, Malaysian and the British embassies in Manila in protests over the Philippine claims in Sabah (North Borneo), during the teachers and later the students campus strikes of 1969, during the Nixon visits in July 1969 and later the First Quarter Storm of 1970.

The height of the youth consloidation was seen at the second national convention of the KM in 1967, three years after it’s founding, the KM was able to elect representatives from every city and every region to its national council, develop a common language, concepts, ideas and a language of a single vision – to build a new, democratic and free Philippines.

In each dispersal and police brutality the youth and students learned how to fight. They will never let the police get away with brutal tactics and answered back with organized resistance. From street barricades to street-to-street fighting, the highest form was the Diliman Commune of 1971; these students, youth and workers activist later became the primary leaders, fighters and cadres of the New People’s Army (NPA) when they joined the armed struggle against the US-Marcos dictatorship.

We pay tribute to the October 24 movement because it was one of the building blocks of the First Quarter Storm. Of 1970. The same way that the student anti CAFA rallies and mass actions from 1959 to 1964 served to hasten the formation of the KM, the Oct. 24 served its purpose. There will be FQS if not for the earlier works of our ardent and dedicated pioneers.

As we commemorate the 40th year of the October 24 Movement, we come to a full cycle as a de javu.

Today, the much hated US-Arroyo regime seeks to change the constitution the same brazen way Marcos manipulated the 1970 constitutional convention of 1970 in his favor. In the end he has to declare martial law to pursue his dreams of ruling the Philippine eternally. We beleive PGMA is treading such a dangerous path.

We in the FQSN-USA fervently hope that a new stronger youth and student movement together with a strong workers and peasant alliance will be built and develop in the cities and effectively lead the united front movement to oust GMA and her clique and effect genuine systemic change.

OUST GMA!

LONG LIVE THE MEMORY OF THE OCT. 24 MOVEMENT!

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