Potential to Organize

psychological, and legal assistance. One of the most important activities they undertake is providing opportunities for EJK survivors to connect and organize with other families affected by the drug war (Ballaran, 2017).

Families and individuals seeking justice are moreover emboldened by the fact that they are backed by other human rights champions, like Chel Diokno, who have not backed down in their fight to help abolish systematic killings and have leaders be held accountable under the law (Subingsubing, 2018).

49

The growing numbers of organizations and groups aiming to seek accountability and justice have been organized and established by various NGOs, CSOs, faith-based institutions, or by surviving families of EJK victims themselves. These associations provide support and access to services for their rights and needs such as psychosocial, legal, and financial assistance. These are the short-term goals that need to be immediately provided to ensure that the survivors will be able to cope and move forward from what they have experienced (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC], 2015).

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2015), one facilitating factor to assist surviving families cope and recover is to build a safe space for them to have a sense of unity and security. Some of the affected individuals and families were being connected to groups with people that have similar experiences with them. These associations could offer support, protection, and sanctuaries to surviving families especially if the incident happened recently. Fr. Danny Pilario, the president of Project SOW, shared how it was the need for such safe spaces and supportive community that led to the establishment of their organization. “Their first reply actually wasn’t money or food— even if we know there is no food or no money at home” (Pilario in Boghani, 2019). The overwhelming emotions and thoughts of affected individuals and families can also be channeled into healthier ways as there is support and guidance coming from these organizations. There are various factors that could facilitate the surviving families’ realization of the importance of belonging to or starting an association with other families who have gone through the same kind of loss. It could be rooted from the actual experiences of the surviving families, their exposure to networks and materials that discuss human rights issues, or first-hand support from various associations, among others. Becoming part of an association or organizing their own is a longerterm goal for surviving families (UNODC, 2015). There is another level of realization that transcends from addressing their immediate personal needs to extending support to other individuals with similar circumstances to them.

There are various non-governmental organizations that were formed in different countries such as Spain, Canada, France, and others, that aim to level up the public discourse on good practices to support survivors of terrorism (UNODC, 2015). This may be a different context from EJKs that have become rampant as ever in the Philippines during this administration (The Quintessence, 2016), but the research of UNODC (2015) captures the significance of survivors creating their own associations to support one another and, ultimately, to demand accountability and seek justice.

Surviving families who have organized themselves and established associations create representation in our society. These groups of advocates call on the government to fulfill its responsibility to address these issues as a duty bearer (UNODC, 2015). On a personal level, these associations of surviving families serve as a safe space for members to express their thoughts, emotions, struggles, and other issues that interconnect with various aspects of their lives, including their sense of security and empowerment (Edmund & Bland, 2011). With the sensitivity of the nature of their circumstances, surviving families may experience a lack of support from their other family members, friends, and/ or neighbors, which further isolate them from their communities. In addition, there has been little to no support from the government to provide assistance to the families that are left behind (Boghani, 2019). In the article that Boghani (2019) wrote regarding the state of the families who were left behind, many of these families and individuals proactively reached out to civil society and other faith-based organizations as they wanted to share their experiences and stories. The importance of organizing surviving families lies within the creation of spaces with a non-judgmental atmosphere that values confidentiality and are mutually supportive as each shares their struggles and stories, and as well as their budding hopes for a better tomorrow (Edmund & Bland, 2011).

Through organizing survivors and equipping them with knowledge and skills to advocate for human rights, it helps their group to be sustainable and able to build a clearer path for their group. They can connect and partner with other larger networks such as NGOs, CSOs, or government agencies that could work to develop or influence policies and programs that will be effective for reparation, claim-making, and ensuring that these cases will not happen again; if circumstances won’t permit, justice should still be served and perpetrators should be held accountable (UNODC, 2015).

Organizing work is a fundamental process to mount any social impact, and it could be one of the more effective ways to lobby for the rights of the surviving families of EJK and ensure that their cries for justice will be heard.

50

51

One of the landmark thinkers of collective behavior, Smelser (1965), theorizes in his Structural Strain Theory that social movements emerge in the presence of shared grievance or deprivation. He argues that when people become aware of the situation as a problem and experience structural strain, the situation where expectations and needs are unmet or challenged, the structural conduciveness within which people gather becomes supported. The mass EJK and disregard for human rights could be generally considered as the current strain suffered by the Filipino people, among others. Smelser (1965) also underscores that this awareness must be widespread, similar to what Freire (1970) referred to as conscientization. In fact, Manalili (1990) claims that collective critical consciousness is a prerequisite in all community organizing and mobilizing work. Part of the struggle in mainstreaming consciousness is also the formation of collective identity (Melucci, 1989). Eventually, these conditions, according to Smelser (1965), will birth a social movement.

Another perspective worth interrogating in terms of people’s potential to organize is their resources. Moser and Mcillwain (1997) assert that people confronted with negative situations employ varying strategies to mitigate its impact. Moreover, they argue that the ability to strategize coping is directly related to their asset ownership. These assets could take the form of human, natural, financial and social capital, which in turn enable others the capacity to act (Sampson & Bean, 2006 as cited in Homan, 2011 p.40). These assets are used, reproduced, depleted, or converted into other forms of resources, access, and even status. In poverty-stricken communities, social capital is one of the key bridging elements to economic survival. Moser and McIlwaine (1997) illustrate this in their case study of urban poor communities in Quezon City, where social capital played a major role for households’ economic vulnerabilities to be addressed by pooling and borrowing monetary and non-monetary support from the neighborhood. In this case, social capital is defined by Homan (2011, p.42) as the set of community norms and embedded interconnections that “produce trust, collaborative actions, and community consciousness.”

Beyond bilateral reciprocity, social capital is a “complex web of relationships” outside one’s immediate environment, allowing resources otherwise unavailable or accessed (Homan, 2011 p.43 and Moser & McIlwaine, 1997). Such relationships are founded on the principle of trustworthiness, and without which, as Homan (2011) asserts, social capital cannot thrive (Homan, 2011). As such, trust and social capital reinforce each other, attracting people’s participation and cooperation in activities (Homan, 2011). Cooperation, along with aspirations, hopefulness, and the like, are intangible assets part of the social psychology of communities advancing development and rights work (Moser, 2008; Burnell, 2013; and Mathie & Cunningham, 2003).