Montreal, QC – April 28, 2010 – Progressive Filipino Canadians await the days that they will, once again, reaffirm the growing unity amongst progressive national organizations of Filipino Canadians workers, women and youth in advancing the struggle for our community’s empowerment and development at the historic conference “Counterspin towards our just and genuine settlement and integration.”

In deepening our understanding of the Filipino Canadian community as part of a transnational community, internationally acclaimed writer and long-time women’s rights and human rights advocate Ninotchka Rosca will be part of this historic conference as a guest speaker. Rosca will help set the framework of our struggle as a transnational community in North America. She states that “migration is a life-altering process. Completion is as much a part of the migrant’s journey – completion of their lives, homes, families, communities and their value to society…and to treat it like a job application is really to insult and injure the migrant’s humanity.”

Unmasking and challenging the one-dimensional view that migrants and immigrants leave their country simply to “earn a living” regardless of the nature of work, Rosca will present the important role of progressive transnational Filipinos and their organizations to cultivate and nurture the path for genuine settlement and integration. Rosca states that “it is time to turn the word transnational into a noun – to signify those of us who are with more than one language, more than one culture, more than one history and certainly, more than one socio-political affiliation.”

Rosca will join progressive Filipino Canadians in supporting their assertion for full participation and entitlement in Canada and helping redefine the progressive movement and the role of the Filipino transnational community in social transformation.

A groundbreaking event in the history of Filipino Canadian organizing, “Counterspin” will show that Filipino Canadians are part of the dynamic transnational Filipino community in North America. “Counterspin” will define the role of progressive Filipino Canadians in shaping and mapping our community’s future within the context of neo-liberal globalization and imperialism. “Counterspin” will signify the beginning of the new era in the educating, organizing and mobilizing of the Filipino Canadian community towards advancement and development.

“Counterspin” will be held on April 30, May 1 & 2, 2010 at the Jewish General Hospital Amphitheatre Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry (4333 Cote Sainte Catherine, Montreal.

For more information or to register, visit the Kapit Bisig website at www.kapitbisigcentre.org.
-30-