Clip description
Father Brian Gore describes how he educates the poor people of Negros in the Philippines to become empowered against oppression. He stresses the values of human dignity and a display of fearlessness.
Original classification rating: not rated. This clip chosen to be PG
Father Brian Gore describes how he educates the poor people of Negros in the Philippines to become empowered against oppression. He stresses the values of human dignity and a display of fearlessness.
This clip shows Father Brian Gore, who was a Columban missionary on Negros Island in the Philippines during the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos. Gore explains that the Marcos regime used fear to keep the people on the island powerless. He describes how he and his fellow missionaries tried to empower the peasant farmers to bring about change in society. The clip shows an interview with Gore and footage of a farmer who became a leader in this movement for social justice. The farmer is shown using an ox and plough to till the soil while his wife and daughter walk behind him adding fertiliser and seed.
Father Brian Gore is being interviewed.
Father Brian Gore We realised that fear was the greatest tool, if you like, or the weapon of a dictatorship. Keep people in fear and you’ve got them powerless. So having realised that ourselves in our own life, and the circumstances, we had to sort of help to empower people to overcome that fear. So it was a very constant and sort of a thing that we tried to do all the time was to not show fear ourselves and always put on a brave front. You know, it became habit after a while. People would say, ‘Oh, you’re going to be picked up, Father.” I’d say, 'Oh, let them pick us up, you know?’ It was sort of contagious, empowering people not to be frightened because we realised that fear was the greatest weapon.
Binong, a farmer, is using an ox and plough to till the soil while his wife and daughter walk behind him adding fertiliser and seed.
Father Gore (voice-over) Binong is one of the leaders that emerged from the program we started through education of human dignity and organisation. We realised that one thing that the poor people didn’t have was any sense of self-worth, that they were powerless. They didn’t feel that they had had the capacity to bring about the change. If there was going to be any change in society, then they had to be organised in order to bring about that change. And Binong was one of the many that surfaced as new leaders within this new church. We became very close friends, especially over our problems with the sugar planter who ran the hacienda which he was working, and over the years, because of that struggle that they’ve had to survive, we’ve become very close.
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