Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM) - Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP) - Kongreso ng Pagkakaisa ng mga Maralita ng Lunsod (KPML) - Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA)

Workers and urban poor launched this morning their own version of Christ Passion of the Cross in Welcome Rotunda, Quezon City. The depiction is a timely reminder of the sacrifices of the workers and urban poor in today’s advent celebration. Ironically, the workers who produce the nation’s wealth are being pushed further into deep poverty and helplessness. The issue of contractualization continues to wreck havoc on the lives of the workers that is becoming a rampant scheme or practice of most companies. In the same manner that the country’s urban poor are threatened by the unabated demolition of their abode and worst they were left without any relocation endangering their subsistence and right to live.

Through the different crosses portraying the grief and problems of the workers and urban poor, they displayed the sufferings from the elite society and the bankrupt and corrupt capitalist system. Painted in the cross are various issues such as “CONTRACTUALIZATION”, “VAT”, “DEMOLITION”,” “LOW WAGES”, “REPRESSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS”, “CORRUPTION”, and the likes. The group performed the traditional “Pabasa” where they took turns in singing the prepared “Pasyon ng Manggagawa at Maralita”.

Teody Navea, Secretary General of the Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP) in its message during the activity articulated that “Heavy cross! The burden of carrying this heavy cross will never cease for as long as this kind elite democracy continue to lord it over to the Filipino masses. The crisis of capitalism has become a vicious cycle that the marginalized workers and the urban poor bear the brunt of the ill effects of the rotten capitalist system. No other way for this unjust system to be stopped but to offer a society that will truly address the needs and aspiration of the Filipino masses devoid of any form of sufferings and exploitation. A system change should be in placed”.