ON PROJECT NAMELESS

Our salute and congratulations!

• To Project Nameless, the spirit, advocacy, concept and work behind it,

• To the creators, workers and supporters of the project and all those striving and helping to ensure its reach, links, quality and integrity;

• To our heroes and martyrs in the struggle for national freedom and democracy, including many who have been and continue to be emerging from the ranks of the nameless - - to all whom the project is rendering honor and making space for their cause, deeds and legacies that continue to live beyond their own lives, and that the project is helping to perpetuate;

• To comrades, fellow advocates, sympathizers, loved ones, friends and many nameless others picking up the fallen, naming the unnamed. Sharing the causes and reliving the deeds of our heroes and martyrs. Growing their legacies in ways such as this project and many other ways, versatile, dynamic, expansive and overcoming the limited processes and numbers.

Many of our heroes and martyrs were victims of fascist state terror during Martial Law, fought such through various means and sacrificed a lot, including freedom. Limb and life.

Many have been named, and since remembered and honored. For their heroisms and sacrifices. For their feats and legacies. For their fight not only against fascist terror and the oppressions they and the people suffered. But also for their fight and sacrifices for wider and deeper causes. For national freedom and democracy. For the people’s rights and welfare. For genuine fundamental changes and progress in society. They continue to be bannered high and carried forward, even if the sea of victims of fascist terror and elitist antipathy tend to drown their names. Still, many, many more remain nameless and need to be named, even as many are expected to continue remaining nameless for long.

There were also many before, and there have also been many, many more even after – when pseudodemocratic façade replaced out-and-out fascism – and well into the present, increasingly so, as the rotten system continues to exist and resist fundamental change, so that essential elements of fascism continue to remain under pseudodemocratic veil and empty slogan. The rise of the named and nameless persists amid continuing dangers, difficulties and sacrifices. Even amid chains, iron bars, broken bodies and death.

More names emerge, linking ideas and arms. With them, the rising nameless. And myriad more of the unnamed about to rise.

While the named and the nameless have among them, an array of persuasions and modes of struggle, these range to the highest (the elimination, by stages, of foreign and local ruling class oppression and exploitation of the mass of the people), with aspirations that their sacrifices be rewarded with the people proud of their gains and victories. And more solid bases to be proud of their history. Of their society. Of its rise from subjugation. From squalor. From being just a sea of the nameless drowning in misery.

While the heart of the site is about heroes and martyrs, we look forward to rich and rewarding positive discussions on the struggles our heroes and martyrs fought for and the legacies they left behind. For the others to carry on. And for the nameless and our society to rise to their fullest.

ALAN JAZMINES

NDF Peace consultant

Detained at the Special Intensive Care Unit (SICA), Camp Bagong, Bicutan

20 February 2013